how you knew where to find me.”
“It was more in the order of a good guess. Yates says Knox was involved in smuggling goods into the country for Eisler. Only, he doesn’t know what.”
Sebastian shifted his grip on the oilcloth bundle in his hands. “According to Knox, it was books. Strange old manuscripts written mainly in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.”
She threw him a quick, incredulous glance. “Old books? But . . . why?”
“He seems to have been something of a collector, our Mr. Eisler.”
“The man was a bastard.”
“That too.”
She swung sharply around the corner. “Does Knox know anything about Eisler’s death?”
“He says he doesn’t.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“He’s not exactly a pillar of rectitude and responsibility.”
“True.”
Sebastian let his gaze travel over her exquisite, familiar features. He had fallen in love with her when she was sixteen and he barely twenty-one. So long ago now, long before Hendon’s machinations had driven them apart not once, but twice. Before Sebastian joined the army and saw death, destruction, and savage cruelty on a scale that had come close to expunging his humanity and withering his soul. Before Kat began feeding information to the French in an effort to aid Ireland, the land of her birth. Before she’d married Russell Yates in a desperate maneuver to save herself from the vindictive wrath of Charles, Lord Jarvis, who’d promised her torture and an ugly death.
Sebastian knew her marriage to Yates had never been—could never be—more than one of convenience. Yates’s association with the most beautiful, most desirable woman of the London stage was for him a tactic to quiet the whispers about his sexuality, while Kat, in exchange, gained the protection of whatever damaging information Yates held against Jarvis. It was a marriage devoid of both sexual attraction and romantic love. But Sebastian knew that over the past year the two had nevertheless become friends—good friends. And Kat had always been fiercely loyal to her friends.
Yet Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more to her concern, a subtle nuance that eluded him.
He said, “You told me once that Yates has evidence against Jarvis—evidence of something that would ruin him if it became known.”
“Yes.”
“It should be in Jarvis’s best interest to see that no harm comes to Yates. If anyone has the power to get the charges against him dropped, it’s Jarvis. So why hasn’t he done it?”
She drew in a deep, troubled breath, a subtle betrayal that was unusual for her.
“What?” he asked, watching her.
“Jarvis visited Yates in his cell last night. Yates says he came to reassure him that he was in no danger.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line as she turned her horse back onto Bishopsgate. “Yates used to think the evidence he has against Jarvis could protect us both. Only, I’m not so sure.”
Sebastian knew a sense of profound disquiet. If given a choice between saving Kat and saving himself, he had little doubt which Yates would choose.
But all he said was, “How well did you know Eisler?”
“I didn’t. But I’ve been asking around. Word on the street has it he was killed by a Parisian named Jacques Collot. Collot likes to claim he fled France during the Revolution because his monarchist principles were revolted by the excesses of republican and democratic fervor. But from what I’m hearing, the truth is probably considerably less flattering.”
Sebastian frowned. “What was his connection to Eisler?”
“Let’s just say Eisler wasn’t exactly careful about the origins of the jewels he bought. He also had a tendency to cheat the people he did business with.”
“You think he cheated Collot?”
She drew up outside the Black Devil again, where her groom was rushing to finish eating a paper-wrapped sausage he’d bought from a nearby cart. “They say Collot was heard raging about Eisler in a tavern just two nights ago—swore next time he saw the man he was going to kill him.”
“Drunken talk is cheap.”
“True. But it’s a place to start, isn’t it?”
“It is, yes. Do you know where I can find this man?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He dropped lightly to the paving, then paused with one hand on the seat’s high railing. He had the unsettling sense that there were unseen but powerful forces at work behind all this. Powerful and dangerous. He glanced over at her groom. “Is your man armed?”
She pressed her lips into a thin, tight line and shook her head. “I refuse to allow Jarvis to frighten me.”
“Jarvis frightens me, Kat. Please, just .