Why Kill the Innocent (Sebastian St. Cyr #13)(6)

The surgeon was a slim, wiry man, thinner than he should be, thanks to an opium addiction he knew was going to kill him if he didn’t master it soon. Once, his hair had been dark. Now it was increasingly threaded with silver, although he was only in his thirties. He’d just spent hours fighting for the lives of two half-drowned, broken men, and yet one of them had died anyway. He was feeling tired and old and useless.

A soft feminine hand touched the small of his back, and despite the glumness of his mood, he found himself smiling.

“You saved one,” said Alexi, who frequently seemed to know what he was thinking better than he knew himself.

“And lost the other.”

“It happens.”

“It shouldn’t.”

She shifted on the bed, rising onto her knees to slip her arms around him and hold him close. He could feel the weight of her breasts through the thin cloth of her night rail, pressing against his back. “The babe I delivered today will not survive forty-eight hours.”

He tipped back his head to rest it against hers. “And that doesn’t bother you?” he asked, somewhat in awe. There was a side to Alexi that mystified him—a hard side that could frighten him even as it attracted him.

“On one level, yes. But the babe’s mother already has three children she can’t feed, and she’s so starved herself that her milk will never come in. Lady Devlin left the woman money, but it won’t last. Perhaps it’s better that the infant die now, quickly, rather than linger to die slowly.” Alexi made an angry noise deep in her throat as passion roughened her voice and accentuated her native French accent. “And then there’s our charming Prince Regent, who has no problem at all finding the funds to drape his mistresses in jewels or rebuild his various palaces year after year.”

Gibson knew a faint blooming of disquiet. She didn’t often discuss such things. But after a year of sharing this woman’s bed and going through the pattern of his days with her, he’d come to realize that she despised the British monarchy nearly as much as she hated Napoléon and his empire—and for the same reason: because at heart she was very much a fervent republican.

And then, because she always seemed to know what he was thinking, she tipped her head to nuzzle his neck. “Don’t worry. I was most demure and respectful when the Prince’s men came to carry away Jane Ambrose’s body.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s just as well you weren’t. You like to think you’re always so prudent and wise. But the truth is, you’ve a stubborn streak yourself.”

Grunting, he set aside the ointment and lurched up to hop over to the basin and wash his hands.

She watched him, her eyes narrowing. And although he was nowhere near as prescient as she, he knew what she was going to say. “Your leg is hurting.”

“The stump? Aye.” He laid on his Irish burr thick and heavy. “Although not nearrrly as much as the foot that ’tisn’t therrre.”

“I could do something about that,” she said.

He gave her a lopsided smile. “With your smoke and mirrors?”

“No smoke. Just mirrors.” When he kept silent, she said, “Why not try it? If it doesn’t work, then you can say, ‘It didn’t work.’ But it might.”

He didn’t answer because they’d been over it all before, and in truth he was as terrified the idea might work as he was afraid it wouldn’t.

Smiling faintly in a way that told him she knew his reasons only too well, she grasped handfuls of her night rail and drew it off over her head.

“You’ll get cold,” he said even as the heat of want surged within him.

She shook back her fiery hair, her neck arching seductively. “Then come keep me warm.”





Chapter 5

Friday, 28 January

The snow eased up shortly before dawn. Then a howling wind swept in from the north, and the temperatures plunged even lower.

London awoke to a paralyzed white world. Shopkeepers and servants were out early shoveling the snow from the pavement in front of their establishments, but the streets remained hopelessly blocked. Sebastian took one look at the drifts clogging Brook Street and decided to walk to Bow Street.

“You’ve seen the papers?” said Sir Henry Lovejoy when the two men met in a crowded coffeehouse beneath one of the ancient arcades overlooking Covent Garden Market. The air was thick with the smell of roasting coffee, hot chocolate, and wet wool.

“The Morning Gazette was the only one to make it through to Mayfair,” said Sebastian, sliding into the old-fashioned high-backed bench opposite the magistrate. “But I assume they’re all the same.”

Lovejoy nodded. “The palace has announced that Jane Ambrose slipped in the icy streets and hit her head.”

“Less sensational than the footpads option, I suppose.”

“Decidedly.” Lovejoy sipped his hot chocolate in brooding silence, then said, “I received a visit late last night from a certain Major Burnside.”

Sebastian was familiar with the major, who played a key role in that legion of former military men, spies, informants, and assassins used by the Regent’s powerful cousin, Lord Jarvis, to maintain his position. “And?”

The magistrate set down his cup with pronounced care and cleared his throat. “I will attempt to assist you in this where I can. But officially my hands are tied.”