Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,87

with Nicholas in the gardens that night?”

“No. Just as I was about to leave the house, one of the kitchen maids scalded her arm quite badly. I had to deal with it, and it took so long that by the time I reached Pennington’s Gardens, they were closing.” Her face had acquired a pinched, haunted look. “All I could do was sit in the hackney and watch the stream of happy, laughing people leaving the gardens. I kept hoping I’d see Nicholas, but he never came.” She swallowed convulsively and bowed her head. “I was devastated. I was certain he must be thinking that I’d changed my mind, that I’d decided I didn’t want to see him after all. But by then he was already dead, wasn’t he?”

“Did you see anyone you recognized in the crowd?”

Her head came up, and it was obvious from the consternation in her face that it had never occurred to her that she might unknowingly have seen Nicholas’s killer. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“And then you went home?”

“Yes. I had the hackney stop by the apothecary’s so I could pick up a headache powder on the way. That was the excuse I’d given for going out, you see—and my explanation for having the footman call a hackney rather than go through all the bother of having the horses put to and the carriage brought ’round. Of course, I was gone a ridiculously long time for such a simple errand, and I could have sent one of the servants for it in the first place. But I didn’t expect anyone to inquire too closely. I mean, why would they?”

Why indeed? thought Hero. Servants were accustomed to accepting their employers’ little prevarications and obvious outright lies without a blink. “Did Nicholas have a child with him when you saw him—a little boy of perhaps eight or nine?”

“Not when I spoke with him in Piccadilly—or at any rate, I didn’t see the boy then. But I remember there was a child who seemed to be with him in the square. A pretty boy, with very dark hair.” She paused. “Why? Who is he?”

“His name is Ji. We don’t know for certain what his relationship is to Nicholas Hayes, but the two came together from China.”

“Is that where Nicholas has been? In China?”

“Yes. He didn’t tell you?”

“No. But we spoke so briefly. I was afraid someone might see us. Where is the child now?”

“We don’t know. He disappeared after Nicholas was killed. I saw him yesterday morning, but some men tried to grab him, and he ran off again.”

“Good heavens. Who would want to hurt a child?”

“Lord Seaforth, actually. He was afraid the boy might be Nicholas’s legitimate heir, and thus able to challenge the succession.”

Kate stared at her. “And is he? Nicholas’s child, I mean.”

“I think he probably is.”

Kate was silent, and Hero had the impression that all of her focus, all of her thoughts, had been drawn into herself. Eighteen years before, this woman had given birth to Nicholas Hayes’s child—her only child, a child who had died. Hero wondered how such a woman would react to the discovery that the man she’d once loved so desperately had fathered a child by another. But with Kate, such things were almost impossible to discern.

Hero said, “Nicholas didn’t say anything to you about the boy?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything—anything at all that might help explain his murder?”

“No. As I said, we spoke for only a moment or two.”

“Can you tell me what he said? It might help.”

Kate nodded, the skin of her face tight, the struggle to maintain her composure so obvious as to hardly be worth the effort. “When he first walked up to me in Hatchards, I said something like, ‘Dear Lord, it really is you.’ I think by then I had somehow managed to convince myself that I must have imagined seeing him. I said, ‘What are you doing in England? If they find you, they’ll kill you.’” She paused.

“And?” prodded Hero.

“And he said, ‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’ I remember I was suddenly furious with him. I said, ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? It matters to me.’ And then he smiled this strange, crooked smile and said, ‘You still care? Even if it’s just a little?’” She paused again, her gaze dropping to where her fingers were playing aimlessly with the strings of her reticule.

It was a long moment before she could go on. “He said . . . he said, ‘You still care?’ and