under her weight. The cushions were soft; she might have leaned back on them, but the corset held her up.
Silently, he served her. A green salad, brook trout, and green beans almondine. The wine was an local white, too sweet for Garrett's palate. She wasn't hungry. She buttered tidbits of bread and laid them aside. "Please don't draw it out," she requested, turning her water goblet in her hand.
He laid his fork down. Dining with Sebastien for company could make you forget what a man could eat when he had a will for it, but it seemed to Garrett that the Lord Mayor was no more than picking at his food. He stood and came to his desk, returning shortly with a letter. "You must read this, Crown Investigator."
Silently, she took it. The seal was broken; the address scrawled in a masculine hand. She recognized that writing from an hour on Monday night spent examining Colm Sheridan's desk.
With every appearance of calm, she flipped it open.
It was a plea for help.
"Thank you," she said. "I'll keep this. And authenticate its source, of course."
"Of course," the Lord Mayor said. "May I tell you the rest of the story?"
* * *
It was the sorcerous work of ten minutes to prove it, once she returned home. The letter was genuine, and genuinely sent from Colm Sheridan—or Emmett Goodwood—to Lord Mayor Peter Eliot. She slipped the flattened paper into a glassine envelope and tucked it into her blue velvet carpetbag. And then she summoned a cab and took herself to Sebastien's house, where Mr. Priest met her at the door.
He helped her off with her coat. He would have taken the bag, but she waved him away, and he was wise enough not to insist. "Is Sebastien in?"
"Waiting for you," Mr. Priest said. Garrett had sent a note ahead, to warn of her arrival, mailed from the Lord Mayor's house. As she came into the den she saw it unfolded on the side table. Sebastien sat in a yellow wing chair beside the cold fireplace. He was knitting.
Or, Garrett reassessed, playing with a ball of yarn and the orange cat. Which did not remove the fact that he had been knitting at some point. A sweater, ivory and cabled up the front, sized for a small man. He laid it aside, discomfiting the cat, and stood. Garrett glanced from sweater to wampyr, eyebrow cocked in amusement.
Sebastien shrugged. "I'm not pressed for time."
No, Garrett thought, full of pity again. You wouldn't be. "The days are getting shorter," she answered, and he smiled half-gratefully.
"Just so. I got your message. And one from the Colonial Police. There were, unfortunately, unable to recover the envelope in which Mr. Sheridan was sent the paddereen."
"Pity," Mr. Priest said, with a glance at Garrett's burden. "Could you have traced it back to the sender?"
"Confirmed who sent it, if we had a suspect," she said. She shrugged. "There are other ways."
She laid her things down on a coffee table and knelt before it. Unladylike, creasing her dress, but she managed well enough. She opened the carpetbag and pulled out the envelope, mostly unbattered.
Sebastien took it from her and tilted it toward Mr. Priest, and incidentally the light. The cat rubbed against Garrett's thighs and knees while the two men read, ensuring another scolding from her terrier when she got home. When Sebastien looked up, his forehead over his eyebrows was positively corrugated. "Sheridan was looking for a way out?"
"He was laundering money for the Fenians," Garrett confirmed. "And he wanted to escape their machinations. The Lord Mayor was a personal friend, and—upon receipt of this letter—offered to help him escape both his revolutionary creditors and the scaffold, if he would testify."
"And?" Mr. Priest asked. "Is that illegal?"
"No. It's certainly within his rights as the head of the Colonial Police to deal with informants." Her knees hurt from the floor. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. When she put it down, Mr. Priest placed a glass of cognac in it; she hadn't even seen him fetch the drink. She closed her eyes and inhaled the fumes, but did not yet partake. The aroma did not soothe her twisting stomach, and she set the glass aside.
"Duke Richard would expect you to destroy this letter," Sebastien said, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger. She pointed to her luggage, and he slipped the envelope inside. "It could clear the Lord Mayor of any prior knowledge of Sheridan's political leanings."