panel, the lamplight gleaming on the backs of its high-stepping team of matched bays. “And yet it’s not enough. That little boy must be so afraid—alone and afraid. I keep imagining Simon in a similar situation, and it’s unbearable.” She paused. “At least we know Ji’s still alive, thanks to the makeshift altar you found.”
“It’s possible the killer doesn’t know the boy exists.”
“Perhaps. Yet even then, he’s still alone and in danger.”
“I know.” He turned her in his arms to thread his fingers through the thick fall of her hair and lift her chin with his thumbs. Her eyes were dark and glittering with unshed tears, and he touched his lips to hers. He heard her breathy exhalation as her hands slid up his back to grasp his shoulders. He kissed her half-closed eyelids, her cheeks, the arch of her nose, then came back to capture her mouth again.
She clung to him, her fingers splaying over his bare flesh, her breath raspy as she pressed herself against him. Then she drew back, her hand finding his to tug him toward the curtained recesses of their bed.
They fell together, legs tangling, lips coming together again. He touched her breasts, kissed the tender flesh of her stomach. She gasped, arching against him, her palms cradling his face. “Now. Please,” she said, and he rose above her. There was an urgency to their lovemaking, a desperation he couldn’t quite define even as he understood its source. Then he felt her body convulse with her release, and he cried out as she pulled him over the edge with her.
Afterward they lay together, his hand caressing her bare arm. They shared a companionable silence for a time. Then he felt the tension begin to coil within her again, and he knew that while she had found some solace in their lovemaking, her thoughts had again returned to the missing child.
He said, “Ji is unusual enough that I think we have a good chance of finding him.”
She shifted her head against his shoulder. “I wish I knew where to look next.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere around either the tea gardens or the Red Lion.”
“Dear God. I hope he’s not sticking close to the Red Lion. That’s an appalling neighborhood. Although you’re right. It’s probably the part of London he’s most familiar with.”
She was silent a moment, then said, “I’ve been thinking about what Nicholas Hayes might have been doing in the days before he contacted Jules Calhoun. Grace told you he and the boy arrived in England at least two weeks ago, yet he didn’t see Calhoun to ask for his help until last Sunday. What if he spent those days trying to do something but failed? That could be why he finally reached out to Calhoun, even though he doesn’t seem to have wanted to, at first.”
“Hmm. It’s an interesting theory. Although if you’re right, the question then becomes, what was he trying to do?” He pressed his cheek against the top of her head, breathed in the sweet fragrance of her hair. “Calhoun describes Nicholas Hayes as a headstrong and passionate but nonetheless honorable man, while everyone else talks about him as a scandalous son disowned by his father for abducting some heiress. And yet no one seems to know her name.”
“Well, it is the kind of thing her family would try to keep quiet, isn’t it?”
“It is. But I’d like to know who she was.”
She turned in his arms with a smile. “I can think of someone who might be able to tell you.”
* * *
Saturday, 11 June
The next morning, Sebastian paid a call on his aunt Henrietta, the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne. Born Lady Henrietta St. Cyr, she was Hendon’s elder sister and thus not actually Sebastian’s aunt, although they hadn’t allowed that truth to interfere in their relationship. Now in her seventies, she was one of the grandes dames of London society, famous for her ability to ferret out—and remember—every scandal and on-dit to have convulsed the ton over the past sixty or more years.
A blunt-faced, fleshy woman with the famous blue St. Cyr eyes, the Dowager was known to never leave her room before twelve or one o’clock. But when Sebastian arrived at her Park Lane town house early the next morning, he was surprised to find her not only up and dressed in a lilac gown trimmed with pink silk, but already breakfasting on toast and tea in her morning room.
“Good heavens, you’re up,” said Sebastian