Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,77

loading a lighter. “There is no other way. The appeal of such a tawdry tale to the more unscrupulous elements of the press is obvious, but even they have finally moved on. Why you continue to involve yourself in matters that are really none of your affair is beyond me.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on the East India Company man’s smooth, lying face. “Did you tell anyone else that Nicholas Hayes had returned?”

“I did not. Whom would I tell?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Forbes’s deceptively soft blue eyes narrowed as if with thought. But Sebastian was beginning to understand just how much of everything this man said and did was for show. “I’ll admit I did consider warning McHenry,” said Forbes. “But in the end I realized it was unnecessary.”

Whatever Sebastian had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You mean Hamish McHenry?” It came out more sharply than he’d intended.

“Yes. Why? Do you know him?”

“How do you know him?”

“As it happens, I met him in India, although I understand he’s in England at the moment.”

“What made you think he might need to be warned of Nicholas Hayes’s reappearance?”

Forbes gave a negligent shrug. “I suppose because he was involved with Chantal de LaRivière himself at one time. That, and because he worked in the Foreign Office with Crispin Hayes.”

“He did? Both of them?”

Forbes’s lips curled into their habitual, smug little smile. “They did indeed. I understand it was shortly after Crispin’s death that McHenry decided to buy a pair of colors. I always thought there was more to that tale than met the eye, but unlike you, I am not given to tilting at other people’s windmills.”

“So why didn’t you warn McHenry?”

“I probably would have done so, except I haven’t seen the man recently. And then Hayes was dead, so there was no point.”

“And in the midst of all this ruminating, it never occurred to you to notify Bow Street?”

“It did, obviously. However, I decided against it. And to forestall your inevitable next question, I decided against it because I happen to value my family’s privacy and had no desire to see the unpleasantness of the past paraded in public again for the amusement of the hoi polloi.”

“Hayes tried to kill you on the waterfront in Macau. You weren’t concerned that he might try again?”

“As it happens, he caught me unawares that day in Macau. After all, I thought the man dead and had no anticipation of encountering him in China, of all places. But forewarned is forearmed, as they say.” The smug little smile was back. “I have every confidence in my ability to defend myself.”

Sir Lindsey Forbes was a much smoother liar than Brownbeck. He’d obviously had years and years of practice at it. Sebastian said, “Did you tell your wife Nicholas Hayes was still alive?”

The smile faded from the man’s features, leaving him looking considerably less pleasant. “You leave my wife out of this.”

Sebastian gazed beyond him, to where a man with a barrel was selling ale to the dockworkers. “Odd, don’t you think, that four men—you, Brownbeck, Seaforth, and the Count de Compans—all knew that Nicholas Hayes was in England, and yet not one of you ostentatiously upright, law-abiding pillars of society felt moved to inform the appropriate authorities?”

“As I said, I am not the type to constantly be busying myself about other people’s affairs.”

“You might not be. But Brownbeck has made it his life’s work—that and amassing a fortune, of course.”

“Then I suggest you direct your questions toward that worthy,” said Forbes with the faintest of bows. “And now you must excuse me.”

Sebastian watched the East India Company man turn back toward the water, the breeze off the river lifting the tails of his finely tailored coat as he walked past the sweating, ragged dockworkers and seamen. The vague outlines of a possibility were beginning to occur to Sebastian, an idea so outlandish that he wanted to immediately discard it.

And yet he couldn’t.

Chapter 46

S ebastian had left Tom with the curricle beside the jumble of sheds, shops, hovels, and low taverns that trailed away from the docks toward East India Company Road. The docklands were busy this time of year, for June was the month for the return of the great East Indiamen with their deep draughts and precious cargoes of tea and spices, silks and saltpeter. The wind gusting off the big artificial basins was cool and damp, the air heavy with the scent of wine and cinnamon, and so absorbed was Sebastian in his contemplation of the various possibilities