Chapter 48
More troubled than before, Sebastian waited a moment, then quickly crossed the court to the tumbledown shed that stood beside the cottage.
Part of the shed’s upper course of fieldstone had collapsed, and he used the fallen chunks of rock to scramble up onto what was left of the shed’s crumbling roof.
Careful to keep his weight on the stout beam that ran along the roof’s high edge, he crab walked his way over to a small window that gaped open beneath the peak of the cottage’s mossy slate roof.
The room beyond was no more than a low-pitched, dusty attic, empty except for the remnants of a mouse-eaten straw mattress against the far wall and what looked like a heap of old rags.
There was no staircase leading down to the single room below, only a crude ladder, the worn, rounded ends of its rails poking up above the scuttle hole cut in the center of the floor.
Moving cautiously, he swung one leg over the rotten windowsill, then the other, easing himself inside. Wary of telltale creaks, he flattened himself on the filthy floorboards and slithered over to the opening to peer over the edge.
Sasha stood alone in the center of the small, dirt-floored room below, her elbows cupped in her palms to hug her crossed arms to her chest as she turned in a half circle, taking in the piles of wooden crates and barrels stacked against the surrounding walls.
She looked uncertain and frightened, and he was still trying to figure out what the hell she was doing here when he heard two sets of footsteps crossing the cobbles of the court outside.
Then the latch lifted, and Sasha whirled to face the opening door.
“You’re early,” said Sir Samuel Toole, his brows drawing together in a frown as he drew up just inside the entrance.
He was dressed more conservatively than was his habit, in a powdered wig, with a long plain duster buttoned up over his fashionable coat and breeches.
“You were told to come between half past two and three.”
Sasha stared at him, her nostrils flaring on a quickly indrawn breath, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “How do you know that?”
“Because we wrote the note,” said Lord Bridgewood, following his friend into the cottage and closing the warped old door behind them with a screech of rusty hinges.
“Or I suppose one might more accurately say we composed it. A certain convicted forger of my acquaintance was kind enough to transcribe it for me in a fair imitation of your brother’s hand.
The man’s quite talented, wouldn’t you say? ”
She gave a faint shake of her head. “Why did you bring me here?”
Bridgewood and Toole exchanged glances. As Sebastian watched, the men separated, Lord Bridgewood staying where he was, his back to the door, while Sir Samuel Toole shifted to a position that put the young woman between the two men.
“What do you want?” she said, looking from one man to the other as the crackling boom of a rifle sounded somewhere in the distance, followed by another and then another.
“Ah,” said Bridgewood with a faint smile. “It has begun. The streets are about to become decidedly unsafe, you know. Today’s events will be written about in history books: theft, senseless destruction of private property, mayhem, riot, and murder—the usual panoply of civil disturbance.”
Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “The only way you can know that is if the government has arranged it.”
“Of course they’ve arranged it. Did you seriously think these meetings would be allowed to continue, stirring up the people, filling them with a dangerous, mindless hatred for their betters?
We’ve all seen where that leads.” Reaching beneath the edge of his open greatcoat, he drew a sleek ebony-handled dueling pistol from an inner pocket and calmly thumbed back the hammer.
“Order will be quickly restored, of course, but not before a few innocents have been killed. I fear London’s opera lovers will be saddened to hear that one of the stage’s beautiful young dancers is amongst the dead.
But that dismay will turn to horror when it’s discovered that not only was she found dressed as a man, but she had secreted on her person a letter from her brother—also kindly forged by my friend—implicating them both in the appalling string of recent murders. ”
No longer hugging her chest, Sasha had allowed her arms to fall to her sides.
Now, as Sebastian watched, she tucked her hands into the pockets of her greatcoat as if she were cold.
Neither Sir Samuel nor Lord Bridgewood seemed aware of what she was doing.
But Sebastian knew, for she made the move at exactly the same point as he slipped his own double-barreled flintlock pistol from his pocket.
Sasha said, “Do you seriously think anyone will believe that a sixteen-year-old opera dancer single-handedly killed—what? Five men and three women?”
“Not single-handedly,” said Sir Samuel, smiling faintly as he drew a hunting knife from his pocket and removed its sheath. “You and your brother, working together.”
“What have you done with Damion?”
“Nothing yet,” said Bridgewood as another round of gunfire boomed in the distance. “He’s proved unexpectedly difficult to locate today. But I’ve no doubt—”
He broke off at the sound of the latch lifting on the door behind him.
“Damion!” shouted Sasha. “Look out!”
His face sagging with shock, Bridgewood whirled and fired point-blank at the man coming through the door, the deafening explosion filling the small room with the stench of burning gunpower.
He was still turning when Sasha jerked a small ivory-handled flintlock from her pocket, thumbed back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.
Her bullet slammed into the side of Lord Bridgewood’s head, splattering her with blood and shattered bits of bone and gore.
He staggered, took one step, two, his eyes widening, his arms flinging out at his sides.
Sebastian heard him gasp and say, “Theo!”; then the anguished cry was nearly drowned out by the crackling boom of Sebastian’s own pistol when he pulled back the hammer and fired at Toole as the Baronet lunged toward Sasha.
The angle for the shot was awkward, the small flintlock wildly inaccurate at this distance.
Sebastian’s bullet caught Toole high in the throat.
He reeled back, his mouth gaping open, the knife tumbling from his grasp as he brought up both hands to clutch at his neck.
His gaze went from Bridgewood, to Sasha, to the shadowy opening above their heads. “Who?” he said, his voice gurgling.
The pistol still in his hand, Sebastian dropped through the scuttle.
He landed in a low crouch in the room below, quickly thumbing back his flintlock’s second hammer, ready to fire the other barrel.
Then Toole’s body convulsed, the blood spurting through his fingers as his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed.
His ears still ringing from the three deafening roars, Sebastian’s gaze met Sasha’s through the stinking, smoky haze of burnt powder.
Wordlessly, she leapt to close the gaping open door while Sebastian went to check first Sir Samuel Toole, then Lord Bridgewood.
Both men were still alive but wouldn’t be for much longer.
Then, his pistol still in his hand, he moved cautiously to the young man who had fallen just inside the doorway.
It was Theo Bridgewood.
Crouching beside him, Sebastian cast one swift glance at the bloody hole in the younger man’s chest, then brought his gaze back to his face.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” said Theo, looking up at him with pain-filled eyes.
“Yes.”
Theo’s shattered chest heaved and shuddered as he fought to suck in air.
“I didn’t know. Swear…I didn’t. Not till…
not till what you said about Lucan…about how the bodies were posed like Celtic sacrifices.
That’s when…figured it out. Confronted him.
” Theo brought up a shaky hand, his fingers convulsing as he clutched at the sleeve of Sebastian’s greatcoat.
“It was his jest, you know…not ours. Not sure…why I used it that day with Accum. Stupid thing to have done.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the younger man’s increasingly pale, waxy face. “How did your father find out about the women?”
“Phineas…” Theo paused, his tongue leaving a bloody smear as it flicked out to wet his dry lips.
“Phineas came to see me that evening, only…I wasn’t there.
So the bloody fool…poured it all out to my father…
How he’d told you about Diamond, only now he was afraid that what we’d done to his sister and the other women might come out.
The old man garroted him right then and there, in the library…
Got Sir Samuel to help haul the body out to Marylebone and then kill… kill the women. Shut them up.”
“He and Sir Samuel killed them all? Not Keebles and Toole, but all the others?”
Theo shook his head. “Just Phineas and…the women. He wasn’t even ashamed of it. Said…said they deserved it. But he swore…swore he had nothing to do with what happened to Bayard or Emmanuel.” A spasm of raw agony convulsed his features. “Oh, God, it hurts. I can’t…can’t believe he shot me.”
“What were you doing here?”
“Following…him. Knew he was up to something.” Theo blinked slowly, his gaze going to where Sasha stood with her back to the closed door, looking down at him.
“I swear…swear I didn’t know…He didn’t tell me you…
you’re my sister. Not till…I confronted him.
It’s why…why he wanted to shut everyone up.
If the truth had come out…the scandal…incest…
” An expression of revulsion and horror contorted his features.
“Wouldn’t…would never have done that to you, if I’d known. He should have told me. Should have…”
Whatever he’d been about to say was lost in a fit of coughing.
Sebastian could feel the tremors shuddering through the dying man’s body as frothy pink blood bubbled up through his lips.
Theo made a choking sound, his body heaving, his eyes rolling back in his head.
And then the tremors stopped and it was over.
Swallowing hard, Sebastian eased the dead man’s body down to the packed earthen floor. He knelt there for a time, resting back on his heels, his bloodstained hands pressed flat against his thighs. Then he looked over at Sasha.
She stared back at him, her breath coming so hard and ragged it jerked her chest.
He said, “Lord Bridgewood was your father?”
Her face was wooden. Unreadable. “Yes.”
“Did he know? Before you came to London, I mean.”
“He knew. His brother had told him years ago. He found it…amusing.” Her gaze drifted to where Lord Bridgewood lay face down on the dirt floor, one leg half-bent, his arms flung out in an ungainly sprawl.
“I’m glad I shot him.” She looked back at Sebastian, her eyes huge and dark, her voice husky.
“He’s my father, and I’m glad I shot him. Does that make me an awful person?”
Sebastian did her the courtesy of considering the question before answering.
“I can see how some might think so. But given that he raped your mother, deliberately left you to languish in slavery, and was planning to kill you and frame you and your brother for the murders he and his friend had committed, I’d say no. ”
She was silent for a time, her attention shifting to the sprawled, bloody remains of Sir Samuel.
And then she gave voice to the question that was bedeviling Sebastian.
“What are we going to do? I’ve just shot a peer of the realm, while you’ve killed a baronet, and I don’t think anyone is going to believe Theo was accidently shot by his own father. ”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “Where is Pitcairn?”
“He told me Bow Street was planning to arrest him after today’s meeting and charge him with the murders.
He said you wanted him to leave the country, but he was determined to stay and fight the charges.
So I told him the truth—that Alison, Kate, and I had killed Keebles and Toole, and why.
I said if he was arrested, I would turn myself in and confess.
” She paused. “That’s when he packed up what he could from his room and brought it to me.
Last I heard, he was going to Gravesend to try to arrange passage for both of us on a ship to France—leaving tomorrow, if possible.
Then this came.” She drew a folded note from her pocket and handed it to Sebastian.
“It’s a good forgery. Bridgewood must have had a sample of Damion’s handwriting from when he was teaching Theo fencing. ”
Sebastian opened the single sheet and read.
Sasha,
Meet me at the cottage in Swine Court between half past two and three. Don’t fail me.
Damion
“I was expecting to hear from him,” she was saying. “So I wasn’t surprised when a boy brought me that.”
Rather than hand the note back to her, Sebastian went to crouch down beside Lord Bridgewood.
Rolling the Baron onto his back, he set about methodically searching the dead man’s pockets.
The forged incriminating letter was in an inner pocket of his lordship’s expensively tailored dark blue coat.
Sebastian glanced through it quickly, then slipped both the letter and the forged note into his own pocket.
They would need to be burned and the forger—if he was still alive—found.
Sasha watched warily as Sebastian rose and went to search Toole’s pockets as well, just in case. Blood still oozed from the wound in the unconscious man’s neck, but it was slowing. He would be dead soon.
She said, “If you have a plan, I’d be interested in hearing it.”
Sebastian wiped his bloody hands on his ruined greatcoat and looked over at her. “I’m working on it.”
The winter sun was sinking low by the time Sebastian headed back to where he had left Giles.
As he drew closer to the square, he found himself staring at a familiar yellow-bodied cabriolet and team of matched blacks drawn up at the kerb.
A tall, well-dressed woman stood on the pavement beside his curricle, her head tipped back as she said something to his groom.
“Hero? What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing here?” said Sebastian before he could stop himself.
She turned, her gaze going from the dirty smudges on his face to the blood-soaked greatcoat he’d taken off and was carrying thrown over one arm. “Looking for you. I’ve just found out that Lord Bridgewood is Sasha’s father.”
“I know,” he said, his eyes narrowing as his gaze drifted back to the cabriolet. “And I need to borrow your carriage.”