Where Shadows Dance sscm-6 Read online

  “If I’m more than ten minutes, walk ’em,” Sebastian told the young groom, or tiger, who clung to his perch at the rear of the curricle. From the far side of the palisade came a belch of steam and the shriek of a whistle. The chestnuts snorted and tossed their heads nervously.

  “Easy, lads,” crooned Tom, scrambling onto the seat. A half-grown urchin of thirteen years, he was gap-toothed and scrappy and utterly devoted to Sebastian. “Meybe I’d best walk ’em now.”

  “As you wish,” said Sebastian, hopping down. “Actually, you might use the time to see if you can discover where Foreign Undersecretary Sir Hyde Foley takes his nuncheon.”

  “Aye, gov’nor.”

  Dutifully handing over his shilling entrance fee, Sebastian pushed his way into the vast enclosure to find an open space circled by a single line of tracks laid just inside the wall. On the far side of the ring stood a small black steam engine mounted on wheels, with a modified open carriage bolted behind it. The engine’s boiler smoked and steamed, filling the air with the hot pinch of burning coal.

  Some forty to sixty brave souls ranging from well-dressed ladies and gentlemen to gawking artisans and apprentices milled about the enclosure. But the carriage remained empty. It was one thing, obviously, to pay one’s shilling for a look at the throbbing, hissing machine, but something else again to actually risk life and limb by going for a ride.

  Sebastian let his gaze drift around the assembled crowd, looking for Miss Hero Jarvis. It was nearly half past eleven; perhaps she had already come and gone.

  “I’d no notion you took an interest in the advances of modern science,” said a well-bred female voice behind him.

  He turned to find Miss Jarvis regarding him with an expression he found impossible to decipher. She was a tall young woman, nearly as tall as her powerful father, Lord Jarvis. No one would ever describe her as “pretty,” although she was handsome in her own way, despite having also inherited her father’s aquiline nose and haughty expression. She wore a carriage gown of soft moss with a matching parasol she held tipped against the glare of the sun, and a jaunty, velvet-trimmed hat from which escaped wisps of soft brown hair. A frightened-looking abigail hovered behind her, for a single gentlewoman never went anywhere without her maid.

  “We don’t know much about each other, do we?” said Sebastian. He did, in fact, have a passing interest in modern science—but not, as it happened, a fondness for steam engines.

  “True.” She let her gaze rove the crowd of curious onlookers. “Mr. Trevithick hasn’t attracted much of a crowd, I’m afraid. And even those who’ve paid to take a look seem to lack the courage to actually go for a ride.”

  “Perhaps they’re waiting for someone else to be the first?”

  She brought her gray eyes to his face and smiled. “I’m game if you are.”

  He stared at her. “Me?”

  “Surely you’re not afraid too?”

  Sebastian studied the engine’s fiercely glowing fire. “You do know why Watt insists on the use of low-pressure steam, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Because high-pressure steam engines can be dangerous. But they can be made so much smaller. This”—she gestured with one elegantly gloved hand toward Trevithick’s steaming engine—“this is the future.”

  Sebastian rubbed the side of his nose with his bent knuckles. “I hear one of his engines exploded, killing four men.”

  Her lips tightened. “That was an earlier design. I tell you, one day engines such as this will propel passenger-carrying vehicles on our roads.”

  “I like horses,” said Sebastian.

  “So do I. But I also recognize their limitations. Imagine what working steam locomotives could accomplish—if people could only learn to accept them.”

  With a wry smile, Sebastian stepped to the side of the empty carriage and held out his hand. “Very well, Miss Jarvis; shall we set an example?”

  She put her hand in his.

  “Oh, Miss Jarvis!” cried the abigail, her fists clenched tight against her bosom. “You’re never going to make me ride in that thing?”

  Miss Jarvis glanced back at her. “You may await me here. It’s no different, surely, from going with his lordship for a drive around the park.”

  The abigail heaved a visible sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you, Miss Jarvis.”

  As Sebastian scrambled up behind Miss Jarvis, a tall, dark-haired man with a craggy face dominated by a large nose nodded to the engineer. A shrill whistle cut through the air, eliciting a shriek from those nearby. The engineer opened a valve. There was a rush of steam, and the engine’s wheels began to turn. With a sharp jerk, the carriage lurched forward.

  “How fast can it go?” shouted Sebastian over the whoosh of steam leaving the cylinders and the roar of the crowd.

  “Twelve miles an hour,” she shouted back, her hand tightening on the handle of her parasol. “But you didn’t come here to talk to me about steam engines, did you, Lord Devlin?”

  Sebastian met her gaze squarely. “You know why I’m here.”

  Two months before, they had faced death together, trapped in the subterranean vaults beneath the abandoned gardens of a long-vanished Renaissance palace. In a moment of desperate weakness, they had sought comfort in each other’s arms. Only, they had cheated death. And now it had become apparent that those moments of unexpected intimacy had resulted in an unintended consequence.

  Thus far, Lord Jarvis’s indomitable daughter had determinedly resisted all Sebastian’s efforts to convince her to accept the protection of his name. But he was not one to give up so easily. He said, “Have you reconsidered my proposal?”

  She held his gaze without flinching, although he noticed her throat tightening as she swallowed. “In point of fact, I have.”

  “And?”

  “I have decided you are right; it is in the best interests of all concerned that I accept your generous offer. Therefore, I would be honored to be your wife, my lord.” She paused, then added, “Preferably as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 6

  H er response caught Sebastian so completely by surprise that for a moment he could only stare at her in stunned silence.

  A wry sparkle lit up her eyes. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

  “To be honest? No. But believe me when I say that I will never give you cause to regret this decision.”

  She responded with what sounded suspiciously like a derisive snort. “Personally, I’ve no doubt we shall both have multiple occasions on which to ponder the wisdom of this moment.”

  He huffed a soft laugh. Then his smile faded. “What made you change your mind?”

  When she’d refused his offer, before, she told him she’d decided to leave England. Travel the world. Give birth to their child in some exotic locale and then return after several years, claiming the infant as an adopted foundling. It was a suggestion that had revolted Sebastian on many different levels—not least because it touched on the secret but raw wound of his own cloudy parentage.

  “It would not have been”—she hesitated, as if searching for the right word—“good for my mother had I left England. She needs me here.”

  Sebastian had heard that in her youth, Lady Jarvis was a pretty, vivacious thing, dainty and gay and different from her daughter in most ways imaginable. Then an endless series of miscarriages and stillbirths had ruined her health and debilitated her mind, leaving her easily frightened and more than a little addlebrained. Of the relationship between mother and daughter he realized he had no knowledge at all.

  “Will she be unhappy to see you wed?” he asked.

  “My mother? Hardly. The first time she sees you, she will doubtless fall on your neck and shower you with her undying gratitude. She never could understand my refusal to marry.”

  “Most women do wish to see their daughters established in life.”

  She started to say something, then obviously changed her mind and looked away.

  He studied her carefully schooled profile and acknowledged a
moment of deep disquiet. They may have faced death together; they may have joined their bodies to create a new life. Yet they were still, in essence, wary strangers—while he and her father were sworn enemies. He said, “I thought I would ask the Archbishop to officiate. Would sometime next week suit you?”

  “Arrange the time and place, and I will be there.”

  “I suppose it only appropriate that I also formally approach Lord Jarvis.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, although whether it was amusement or a quite different emotion he could not have said. “That should be an interesting encounter, seeing as how in the past eighteen months you have at various times broken into his house, held him at gunpoint, and thrown a knife at him.”

  “Don’t forget that I also kidnapped his daughter,” Sebastian reminded her. It’s how they had first met, when Sebastian had been a fugitive unjustly accused of murder and Jarvis had been doing his best to avert a scandal by having Sebastian summarily killed.

  She said, “That too.”

  The steam engine’s shrill whistle sounded again, drawing new shrieks from the crowd. She said, “I believe he has meetings with the Prince early this afternoon. But he should be in his chambers at Carlton House later.”

  Belching steam and soot, the engine picked up speed, chugging round and round the tightly circling tracks, the carriage swaying rhythmically from side to side. Sebastian kept his gaze on the woman before him. “I don’t intend to give him the option of forbidding the match.”

  “I should think not. I am five-and-twenty, after all.”

  “He could disinherit you.”

  “He won’t. You are hardly unsuitable. Just ...”

  “His enemy.”

  “My father has many enemies.”

  The carriage swung around the track, and she adjusted her parasol against the shifting angle of the sun. “I should like to make it clear at the onset that I have every intention of continuing with the various projects in which I am currently involved.”

  He found himself smiling. Miss Jarvis’s “projects”—which ranged from an analysis of the economic stresses driving women into prostitution to an ambitious study of possible ways of improving the survival rates of infants left on the parish—alternately puzzled, infuriated, and bemused her father. Sebastian said, “I would not have expected otherwise, Miss Jarvis. After all, I intend to continue with my own involvement in murder investigations.”

  She regarded him with interest. “Are you involved in an investigation now?”

  “No one’s been murdered, have they?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  A great cracking noise cut across the circle. The craggy-faced, dark-haired man started forward with a shout. The wheels of the engine froze with a sliding screech.

  Sebastian craned around. “What the hell?”

  “I believe the track has broken,” said Miss Jarvis calmly as the carriage lurched sideways. The bench pitched wildly to the right, and she flung out a hand to maintain her precarious perch. “I heard Mr. Trevithick expressing some concern that the engine might be too heavy for the rails.”

  A great gasp went up from the crowd of spectators as the steam engine and its carriage came to a shuddering, lopsided halt.

  Sebastian said, “Are you all right?”

  She used the back of her wrist to push her hat out of her eyes. “Quite all right, thank you. But I fear for the success of Mr. Trevithick’s New Steam Circus.”

  “Keep a smile on your face,” said Sebastian, sliding off the seat. Boots firmly on the ground, he reached up to help her alight.

  She came down beside him in an unruffled swirl of petticoats and artfully balanced parasol. “Oh, that was such fun,” she exclaimed loudly for the benefit of the excited, jabbering crowd.

  He leaned forward to whisper, “One of the staves of your parasol has snapped.”

  “Oh.” She quickly closed it. “Thank you.”

  “My dear Miss Jarvis!” exclaimed the craggy-faced man, descending on them. “Please accept my heartfelt—”

  “No, no, Mr. Trevithick, let me thank you,ʺ she said, cutting him off. “What a wonderful experience! And do let me know when the tracks are repaired so that I may have another ride around your amazing circus.”

  “You can’t be serious,” whispered Sebastian as they pushed their way through the crowds rushing forward to gawk at the steaming, hissing engine.

  “But I am.” She drew up just inside the palisade’s gate, her gaze scanning the crowd for her abigail. “Where is that woman of mine?”

  Sebastian spied the harried, pale-faced maid threading her way toward them. He said, “I’ll let you know the details once I’ve spoken to the Archbishop.”

  Miss Jarvis nodded, her gaze on the abigail.

  He found himself studying the woman beside him. She had a streak of soot across her cheek; a lock of soft brown hair had escaped from beneath her hat. The combination made her look both less formidable and considerably more likeable.

  “You won’t regret this,” he said suddenly.

  She brought up a hand to shove the stray lock of hair back up under her hat with a brisk motion. “It was always my intention to never marry. To be forced to do so, now, seems somehow a defeat.”

  He reached out to wipe the smudge of soot from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Yet you also told me that your one regret was that you would never have children.”

  An uncharacteristic rush of color tinged her cheeks, and she tightened her grip on her parasol. “Yes, well ... We have already remedied that, have we not?”

  “Oh, Miss,” exclaimed the abigail, rushing up to them. “What a frightful thing! You could have been killed!”

  Miss Jarvis turned toward her maid. “Nonsense, Marie. I am quite all right.” She nodded to Sebastian with what struck him as a regal inclination of her head. “My Lord Devlin.”

  He tipped his hat. “Miss Jarvis.”

  He stood at the gate, his gaze following her across the square. He was still watching her when Tom drew up the curricle beside him.

  “What did you discover?” Sebastian asked, leaping up to take the reins.

  Tom scrambled back to his perch. “Yer Sir ’Yde Foley takes’is nuncheon at a public house on the corner o’ Downing Street. The Cat and Bagpipe.”

  Ancient and low ceilinged, its atmosphere permeated with the wood smoke and spilled ale of centuries, the Cat and Bagpipe had once echoed with the shouts and bawdy songs of medieval pilgrims to the nearby shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. Its current patrons were considerably more sedate, being drawn largely from the government offices occupying the warren of old houses fronting Downing Street and St. James’s Park.

  Pushing his way through the early afternoon crowd of clerks and MPs, Sebastian found Sir Hyde Foley eating a plate of sliced boiled beef at an age-darkened oak table near the pub’s vast stone hearth. A slim man with pale skin and dark hair, he watched Sebastian’s progress across the hazy room with narrowed eyes.

  “Let me tell you right off,” he said as Sebastian drew up beside his table, “that if you are here as your father’s emissary—”

  “I am not.” Without waiting for an invitation, Sebastian drew out the opposite chair and sat. “I’m told Mr. Alexander Ross worked for you.”

  Foley cut a slice of beef. “He did. Why do you ask?”

  Sebastian studied the other man’s thin, sharp-boned face. “You don’t find the sudden death of a healthy young man at the Foreign Office cause for concern?”

  Foley chewed slowly and swallowed. “Mr. Ross died of a defective heart.”

  Sebastian caught the eye of the plump, middle-aged barmaid and held up two fingers. “Mr. Alexander Ross died from a stiletto thrust to the base of his skull.”

  Foley hesitated with his fork raised halfway to his mouth. “How do you know this?”

  “That, I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Indeed. So I am simply to take your word for it?”

&
nbsp; Sebastian waited while the barmaid set two foaming tankards on the battered tabletop between them. Then he said, “When exactly did you last see Mr. Ross?”

  Foley frowned as if with thought. “He died ... when? Last Sunday?”

  “Either early Sunday morning or sometime Saturday night.”

  Foley shrugged. “Then I suppose I must have seem him that Saturday, at the Foreign Office. Why?”

  Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of his ale. “What precisely were Mr. Ross’s duties with the Foreign Office?”

  “He dealt with foreign nationals.”

  Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that anything beyond that is none of your damned business.”

  Sebastian smiled and took another sip of ale. “What was your opinion of him?”

  “Ross?” Foley shrugged. “He was a good man. A very good man. We were sorry to lose him. Too many young men in his situation would have treated his position in the Foreign Office with negligent indifference. Not Ross.”

  “‘In his situation?’ What does that mean, precisely?”

  “Only that his brother, Sir Gareth Ross, is both childless and half-paralyzed from a carriage accident. As the heir presumptive, Alexander Ross would doubtless have inherited—had he lived.”

  “Sir Gareth’s fortune is considerable?”

  “Considerable? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. But comfortable, definitely comfortable. The family is an old one, while the estate—Charlbury Priory—is both ancient and widely admired.”

  “Ross was how old? Twenty-five? Thirty?”

  “Six-and-twenty, I believe. He’d been with the Foreign Office since coming down from Cambridge.”

  “Always in London?”

  Foley carved another slice of beef. “With the exception of a two-year stint at our embassy in St. Petersburg, yes.”

  “He was in Russia?”

  “That’s right.”

  “By which I can assume that some of the ‘foreign nationals’ he dealt with here in London were Russian?”