He nodded. "The Patriots. He was opposed to home rule. Not that Peter Eliot ever knew it."
"Ah." Garrett leaned against the wall for a moment, considering. "Or maybe he did."
Richard laid the palm of his hand against her cheek, breaking her train of thought. "Abby Irene. . .."
His tone rang alarms. She stiffened, did not answer. He continued. "A man was seen leaving your house late last night."
Garrett stepped back. "Don Sebastien de Ulloa," she replied. "What of it? I am not a married woman, and I am old enough to make my own decisions, Richard."
His lips twitched, his eyes dark with concealed pain. "You are beholden to no man," he said, very quietly.
Garrett laughed low in her throat, tired and giddy. "That's right, Richard. Not you. And not him either. Do you understand?"
He took a breath, let his hand fall to his side, and leaned forward slowly, touching his lips to the center of her forehead. "Perfectly," he said, and turned away.
* * *
"I have the maidservant's name," Sebastien said from the darkness of the parlor doorway. "Where were you this afternoon?"
Garrett dropped her velvet carpetbag inside the front door and leaned against the frame. Mary would not thank her for the clutter, but she was too exhausted to care. "I was with the Duke, and then at University. There have been more disappearances. Why are you here?" She was too exhausted for politeness, either. She stripped off gloves and cast them on a side table.
"You did not keep our date. I was concerned."
Mary bustled down the hallway to take Garrett's coat, clucking over
the mess.
The bruise on Garrett's thigh ached, and more than anything she wanted to be left alone. She wove unsteadily on her feet. "So you came to check on me when darkness fell. Thoughtful."
Sebastien ignored the dig. "We need to talk in private."
Garrett bit her lip and nodded acquiescence, leading him up the stairs. "I'd bet a guinea the Mayor's somehow behind this," she said. "He's got a sorcerer dancing attendance—black mark, not red, so he could have graduated from any little backwater college of magics and I have no way of knowing what his ethics are. Furthermore, I've learned that the man who vanished yesterday was working for the Duke on the sly."
"Interesting. Was there another dismemberment, or merely the disappearance?"
Mike ran at their heels, determined not to be left behind. Abruptly, Garrett stopped and crouched, offering her hand to the patchwork dog. "I'm sorry, boy. I should have said hello when I came in." He wriggled adoringly, and she tousled his head before she straightened. Don Sebastien caught her arm to keep her afoot. "Disappearances. A whole household again, which sent me to the library for the balance of the day. I can think of only one reason for attacking entire households."
"And what is that?" They attained the landing; Sebastien opened her chamber door. Mike gamboled past him, having decided that wampyr made acceptable houseguests after all.
"Fear," she said. "To engender fear."
"I keep asking myself," Sebastien commented, "what was different about the boy? Why did he need to die so terribly, when the others just. . .softly and silently, vanished away?"
Garrett staggered again. "I need to lie down."
"Of course you do. A sleepless night, and the blood you gave to me. . .on top of the work of the past two days. Forgive me." He scooped her into his arms like a child—like a doll—and carried her to bed. Mary had made it, tidied the counterpane, placed a new candle on the bedside table to replace the one burned out the night before.
Blackness like an undertow, Garrett tried to remember the last thing. She yawned jawcrackingly. "Sebastien. You said. . .."
"Ah, yes," he answered. "The missing maidservant. I haven't found her yet, but I have her name. Forester. Maeve Forester."
Sleep sucking her under, Garrett knew to a certainty that there was something enormously important about that name, but she was damned if she could remember what it was.
* * *
A chill awakened her in the small hours of the morning. Sebastien lay curled beside her, but his body offered no warmth, and her heart hammered in her chest as if she awakened from nightmare. Mike whined by her feet, huddling into the covers.
"Sebastien?"
"I feel it," he said. "Like last night."
But it wasn't. Similar. But colder and stronger, and it froze her to the bone. The curtains on the casement windows fluttered—odd, she thought, those should be tight shut. And she