the corner, and she saw him set his back against the paneling and square his shoulders in a silent dare. Go ahead and ask me to leave.
She had her own bravado. She finished the brandy—not apple, but good New Holland grape—and rummaged in her bosom for the telegram. Silently, she gave it to Sebastien, and silently, he read it.
Twice.
"Your prince is in danger?" he asked, when he was done.
"He's hardly my prince."
Sebastien gave her the yellow rectangle, slightly damp from her skin. "You never told me how the murder case ended."
The murder in question had been that of the Lord Mayor's wife. And Garrett, in other circumstances, might have expected the outcome of that case to endear her to the Lord Mayor.
Eliot had gotten something he'd wanted: King Philip's heir, Prince Henry, returned to England in well-concealed disgrace. Duke Richard might have sworn Garrett to secrecy, but the truth was that Henry had killed
Eliot's wife. Sebastien hadn't asked. But then—he wouldn't. However old
he was, if patience hadn't been among his native gifts, the years had taught it to him. And it was a test, too, to see how much she'd give him in front of Mr. Priest.
With sharp certainly, it struck her: she was being invited into the family. If Sebastien and Mr. Priest could be called a family, precisely. Sebastien was offering something. Something she had to rise to.
She wished she hadn't finished the brandy. Or that she'd drunk more. "Henry wanted to confess." She wasn't wearing gloves. She fidgeted her sapphire ring. "And I told him I would abide by his brother's command."
"I recall," Sebastien said gently. He didn't touch her again, but she stood at his side and that was strength enough. He'd been present for the first argument. Not for the second, though. "And then?"
"King Phillip commanded, and I abided," she said, without audible irony. "I swore an oath to serve and obey the Crown."
"You also swore an oath to seek the truth."
"So I did." She turned and ran a stare through him. He stared right back. "Of course, you eavesdropped, just now."
"I overheard." He had the grace not to excuse himself with a shrug. "As one does."
She snorted, familiar with the excellence of his hearing. "As it happens, before I was forced to decide which oath to break, Henry shouldered the burden. He agreed to remain silent, and I was spared." And then she must ask, "And of what you overheard?"
Sebastien neither looked down nor stepped away. "At my age, one loses the conceit that one's actions have a positive effect on the larger world," Sebastien said. "Or that the exigencies of politics are of any lasting import. One is left with the options of withdrawing from the world, or with the conviction that whatever small kindnesses and justices one can accomplish are more useful in the long run than revolution. People will be unhappy no matter what you do, Abby Irene. One helps where one can."
"Unhappy under law, then, or unhappy under anarchy?"
"I have devoted the last several hundred years to catching clever criminals," he said. "Whatever my feelings on the equal inutility of political systems, surely you can have no doubt as to where my allegiance lies."
It wasn't the answer she wanted. She glanced at Mr. Priest, who still stood with folded arms, like an allegorical stature representing obduracy.
"I know a lot of people," he said. "But it doesn't mean I agree with them. I'm not an Irish nationalist, D.C.I., if that's what that glare is asking so eloquently."
"No," she said. She rather suspected he was another kind of revolutionary, entirely. Not unlike Peter Eliot.
* * *
Sebastien and Mr. Priest stayed through supper. Afterwards, during more brandy, Sebastien arranged a convenient absence to take the air. Garrett knew it was a convenient absence, because Sebastien didn't breathe, and the sort of euphemistic accommodations required by wampyr were rather different than those of ordinary humans. "He did that on purpose," Mr. Priest said, when he'd vanished down the corridor toward the back garden.
Garrett toasted him with her glass. "He's leaving us alone to get to know each other, do you think? Matchmaking?"
She was, she admitted, trying to shock him. If she wasn't two and a half times his age, she hadn't a day.
But, "You're of Sebastien's court," Mr. Priest said, with a fine display of unconcern. "It would be easier on him if we didn't throw fits and jealous squabbles." And then he smiled up at her through his lashes, a beautiful golden child.