information privileged.”
A gleam of what looked suspiciously like sly triumph flared in the other man’s eyes. “I know I can rely upon you to exercise the utmost discretion with the information I have provided you.”
“Have something against Beresford, do you?”
But Perlman only smiled faintly and returned to his study of the oil.
It took Sebastian a while, but he finally tracked Blair Beresford to Bond Street, where the Irishman waited outside the bow-fronted establishment of one of London’s most fashionable milliners. The rain had finally eased up, the clouds breaking apart to show pale aquamarine streaks of clear sky above. Beresford was leaning against the side of Louisa Hope’s elegant barouche, his arms folded at his chest, his chin sunk in his cravat, his thoughts evidently far, far away.
“Ah, there you are,” said Sebastian, walking up to him.
Beresford straightened with a jerk, his eyes going wide in a way that told Sebastian the young Irishman had obviously at some time in the past several hours had an interesting conversation with his friend Matt Tyson. “Actually, I was just about to go see if Louisa—”
“Not to worry,” said Sebastian, ruthlessly turning the younger man’s steps toward Oxford Street. “I won’t take but a moment of your time. I’m just wondering if you could explain something for me.”
Beresford cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, toward the milliner’s shop. “I can try.”
“Good. You see, I’ve been wondering: Why would someone whose cousin is married to one of the richest men in England need to go to a bloodsucker like Daniel Eisler to borrow money?”
Sebastian watched as all the color drained from the younger man’s face to leave him pale and visibly shaken. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He drew up abruptly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must—”
“Cut line,” said Sebastian, swinging to face him. “You can answer the question, or I can ask it of Louisa Hope. Which do you prefer?”
Beresford met his gaze, then looked away, his lower jaw thrust out as he exhaled a long, painful breath. “Louisa doesn’t know anything about any of this,” he said quietly.
“Why Eisler? Why not go to Hope?”
Beresford continued walking, his soft blue eyes fixed on the wet pavement before them. “I did. The first time.”
“Go on.”
“It all happened one night right after I first came to London. I fell in with some friends from Oxford. They wanted to try a gaming hell near Portland Place, so I went with them. The stakes were . . . high. Almost before I knew it, I’d lost a thousand pounds.” He gave a nearly hysterical laugh. “A thousand pounds! My father only clears twelve hundred pounds in a good year.”
“So you went to Hope?”
Beresford nodded. “He behaved remarkably well, under the circumstances. Read me a lecture, of course, but nothing I didn’t deserve. When he handed me the money, he warned me there would be no second time.”
“Don’t tell me you went back to the same hell again?”
Beresford’s lips crimped into a painfully thin line. “Hope told me I didn’t need to repay him. But . . . it didn’t sit right with me to just take his money. The problem was, I knew the only way I could ever get my hands on that much blunt would be to win it.”
“How much did you lose the second time?”
“Five hundred pounds. I was winning at first—”
“You always do.”
“But then my luck turned. Quite suddenly and rather disastrously. I did have the sense to quit. Only, not soon enough.”
“If you’d had any sense, you wouldn’t have gone back there at all.”
Beresford’s eyes flashed with resentment. “You think I don’t know that now? I came damned close to putting a pistol in my mouth. There was no way I could go to Hope and admit I’d lost another five hundred pounds.”
“So you went to Eisler instead. How the devil did you imagine you would ever repay him? Were you planning to take to the high toby next?”
The rat-a-tat-tat of a drum sounded from the top of the street, accompanied by the tramp of marching feet. Beresford glanced toward the sound, a deep stain of shame spreading across his fair cheeks. “He . . . I . . . That is to say, I agreed to perform certain services for him.”
Sebastian was beginning to understand at least part of Perlman’s motivation in sending him to Beresford. “You mean, you undertook to regularly provide him with whores.”
Beresford’s eyes widened, his throat working painfully as