and hair that might have been honey colored if it were cleaner. Her face was thin and delicately featured, her eyes a soft, luminous gray, her chin small and pointed.
“You saw who did it?” said Sebastian, releasing his hold on Blair Beresford. The younger man slid down the wall and just sat there, back pressed to the panels, legs outstretched.
“Course I did,” she said. “That old goat took and shoved me in a nasty little cupboard when someone come a-knockin’ at the door afore ’e was done wit’ me. I saw the ’ole thing, and this cove”—she jerked her chin dismissively toward Beresford—“weren’t even there.”
“So who did shoot him?” Sebastian demanded.
“’Ow the bloody ’ell should I know?”
“You just said you saw him.”
“That don’t mean I know who ’e was!”
Sebastian tamped down a spurt of impatience. “But you can tell me what he looked like.”
Jenny shook her matted hair out of her face. “Course I can. A death’s-’ead on a mopstick, ’e was.”
Sebastian stared at her, not understanding. “A what?”
She huffed her breath and rolled her eyes. “Ye know, a tall, skinny cove what looks like ’e ain’t long for this world. An’ ’e ’ad one of them cavalry mustaches.”
Sebastian stared at her with the heavy heart of a man who has just had one of his worst fears confirmed.
“If ye ask me,” Jenny was saying, “’e weren’t right in the ’ead. ’E come in wavin’ that gun around and sayin’ ’e were there t’ bell the cat.”
“And then what happened?” asked Sebastian, keeping his voice even with difficulty.
“That old goat, ’e laughed at the cove, wanted to know ’ow exactly did ’e propose t’ do that? Only, just then someone else come poundin’ on the front door real hard. The skinny cove got spooked and looked around, and the old goat pounced on him. That’s when the gun went off.”
“And what did the, er, skinny cove do then?”
“Why, ’e bolted out the back door, just afore these other two coves come in, one after the other, with the chinless, curly-’eaded one hollerin’ ‘murder.’”
“And the diamond?” asked Blair Beresford from where he sat on the floor, a lock of golden hair tumbled across his dusty forehead. “What happened to the diamond?”
Jenny Davie pushed out her lips, opened her eyes wide, and shook her head. “I keep tellin’ ye, I don’t know nothin’ about no diamond.”
“Then why are you hiding here, in Covent Garden?” asked Sebastian. “Why didn’t you go to the magistrates and tell them what you know?”
He saw the leap of fear in her wide gray eyes, saw her small pointed chin jut forward in determination, and knew his mistake an instant too late.
“Hold on to her!” he shouted at Drummer, just as Jenny hauled back her fist and punched the boy in the nose.
“Ow,” he cried, tears starting in his eyes, blood spurting as he let go of the girl to cup both hands over his face.
“Stop her!” Sebastian yelled as Jenny bolted for the stairs. “Bloody hell.”
Sebastian pelted after her, half running, half falling down the steep, narrow staircase. He reached the entrance passage just in time to see the girl squeeze through a boisterous knot of drovers trying to shove into the taproom.
By the time Sebastian pushed his way into the street, Jenny Davie had disappeared, swallowed up by the fog.
Chapter 57
S
ebastian returned to the Pope’s Head to find both Drummer and Blair Beresford long gone.
But the crossing sweep had simply returned to the carriage at the end of the lane and was waiting there for Sebastian. He had his head tipped back, the bridge of his nose pinched between one thumb and forefinger as he sought to stem the blood that still trickled from his nostrils. “Do I get my guinea?” he asked, his voice muffled by his oversized sleeve. “Even though she got away from me in the end?”
Sebastian handed the boy his handkerchief and steered him toward the carriage steps. “Considering your battle wounds, I’d say you earned yourself two guineas for this night’s work.”
The boy’s eyes grew round above the voluminous folds of Sebastian’s handkerchief. “Cor.”
Sebastian pressed the coins into the boy’s hand and turned to his coachman. “Take the lad back to Brook Street and ask Lady Devlin to see that he is attended to.”
Drummer stuck his head back out the open door. “Ye ain’t comin’?”
“I shall be along directly,” said Sebastian, closing the door on him.
He nodded to the coachman, then went in search of a hackney to take him to