C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

The boy paused in midchew, his gaze going from Hero to Sebastian and back.

Hero said, “I understand it’s difficult to know whom to trust.”

Drummer swallowed, hard.

“Tell us,” said Sebastian, his voice quiet but implacable.

“White ’Orse Yard,” Drummer blurted out, his chest jerking with the agitation of his breathing. “She’s got a room at the Pope’s ’Ead in White ’Orse Yard, jist off Drury Lane.”

Sebastian took the boy with him, along with a hamper packed with more sandwiches and cakes, and a warm coat that had recently grown too snug for Tom. Hero was cross about her inability to accompany them, but even she had to admit that the uproar provoked by the appearance of a gentlewoman in a Drury Lane tavern was unlikely to be helpful.

The warren of narrow, crooked alleys and foul, dark courts around the Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters had long ago degenerated into a precinct of flash houses, low taverns, and rat-infested accommodation houses where families of ten or more could be found crammed into a single small, airless room. Sebastian made certain both his coachman and the footman were armed, and slipped a small double-barreled flintlock into his own pocket.

It was still several hours before nightfall, yet already the narrow cobbled lane leading to White Horse Yard was filling with a rough, half-drunken crowd and a thick mist that drifted in a dense, wind-swirled, suffocating cloak between the tightly packed houses.

“Why did she take refuge here? Do you know?” Sebastian asked as the carriage drew up at the end of the lane.

Drummer shook his head, his mouth full of cake. “I think meybe she used to work round about ’ere, when she first come up to London.”

“How do you know she’s here? Did she tell you?”

“Her brother, Jeremy, tumbles with us. She wanted ’im to bring ’er some o’ ’er stuff a couple days ago and ’e asked fer me ’elp. Only, she were right cross when she see’d me. That’s when she made me promise not to tell where she is.”

“She’s right to be cautious.”

The boy looked doubtful but paused to grab a couple more sandwiches and thrust them into his pockets before tripping down the carriage steps in Sebastian’s wake.

Sebastian grasped the lad firmly by the arm and held on to him as they worked their way through the surging, boisterous crowd. The damp, smoky air was thick with the smell of broiling meat and unwashed bodies and the pervasive, inescapable stench of rot.

The Pope’s Head in White Horse Yard occupied what looked as if it had once been the carriage house of a long-vanished grand residence, its redbrick facade now worn and blackened by grime, a broken gutter dripping a line of green slime down one side. As they approached the inn, the door flew open and two drunken soldiers staggered out, arms linked around each other’s shoulders and heads tipped back as they sang, “King George commands and we obey, o’er the hills and far away. .”

Drummer hung back, eyes wide, lips parted, chest jerking with his agitated breathing. “Do I gotta go in wit’ ye? I mean, ye know-”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, hauling the boy across the entrance passage to the inn’s dark, narrow staircase. “I need you to convince Jenny that I’m here to help her.”

“She ain’t gonna be happy I brung ye.”

Lit only by a single smoking oil lamp, the stairs creaked and groaned beneath their weight. But the telltale sounds of their approach were lost in the convivial roar from the taproom and the raucous laughter from a chamber at the end of the hall and a man’s well-bred voice raised in anger on the far side of the door nearest the top of the steps.

“Where is it, damn you? I know you took it. Where is the diamond? Did you-”

The rest of his words were swallowed by a woman’s terrified scream.

“’Elp!” she shouted. “’ E’s killin’ me. Somebody ’elp!”

Sebastian kicked in the door hard enough to splinter the thin wooden panels and slam it back against the wall.

The room beyond was small and dingy, the air close and foul. A single tallow candle on a battered table near the narrow bed flared in the sudden draft, casting long shadows across the bare floorboards and ancient paneled walls. Blair Beresford, his hat gone, his handsome features twisted with determination, had pinned a tiny slip of a girl against a tall, battered wardrobe, her birdlike wrists clasped in one hand and wrenched over her head.

“You son of a bitch,” swore Sebastian, tackling him in a rush.

The two men went down together, hard. Jenny Davie, finding herself unexpectedly free, broke for the door.

“A guinea if you grab her and hold on to her!” Sebastian shouted at Drummer, then ducked his head as Beresford swung a fist at his face.

Sebastian scrambled to grab the man’s wrists, grunting as Beresford jabbed his knee into Sebastian’s groin and tried to scoot backward on his elbows. He was dimly aware of Jenny Davie shouting, “Ow, let me go, ye little shabbaroon!” as Drummer snagged her skirts and held on.

Beresford threw another wild punch that grazed the side of Sebastian’s jaw. Grunting, Sebastian fisted his hand in the front of Beresford’s waistcoat and hauled him up to slam his back against the near wall. “God damn it,” swore Sebastian, breathing hard. “Somehow, I never pegged you for a killer.”

Beresford bucked against Sebastian’s hold, then subsided in resignation, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “What the devil are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Then why the hell are you here?”

“The diamond.” He jerked his head toward the girl. “She must have taken it! I was thinking that if I could recover it, it would be a way to pay Hope back for all he’s done for me.”

Sebastian swung his head to look over his shoulder at the girl, who had suddenly gone utterly still. “What makes you think she has it?”

“Because no one else does, and she was there. I dropped her in Fountain Lane less than half an hour before Eisler was killed. Look-I know I lied to you when I said I didn’t take Eisler a girl that night. But everything else I told you was the truth. I swear!”

Sebastian tightened his hold on the younger man, his lips curling away from his teeth in a hard smile. “Why the bloody hell should I believe you? I think you shot Eisler, and now you’re here to get rid of your last witness.”

“Oy, what ye talkin’ about, then?” scoffed Jenny Davie, her voice sharp. “’E ain’t the cove what shot that old goat.” Then, as if suddenly aware that she had captured the interested attention of everyone in the room, she looked quickly from one to the next and tried to take a step back. “What? What’s everybody starin’ at me for?”

For the first time, Sebastian took a good, long look at the girl Hero called the Blue Satin Cinderella. She looked more like fifteen than seventeen, with an incredibly tiny, small-boned frame and hair that might have been honey colored if it were cleaner. Her face was thin and delicately featured, her eyes a soft, luminous gray, her chin small and pointed.

“You saw who did it?” said Sebastian, releasing his hold on Blair Beresford. The younger man slid down the wall and just sat there, back pressed to the panels, legs outstretched.

“Course I did,” she said. “That old goat took and shoved me in a nasty little cupboard when someone come a-knockin’ at the door afore ’e was done wit’ me. I saw the ’ole thing, and this cove”-she jerked her chin dismissively toward Beresford-“weren’t even there.”

“So who did shoot him?” Sebastian demanded.

“’Ow the bloody ’ell should I know?”