Too late, Sebastian felt his boot come down on a trampled sludge of rotten cabbage leaves and mud. The leather of his sole skidding dangerously, he slid sideways, one leg shooting out at an awkward angle.
Dark Coat pivoted and ran.
“Shit.” Catching his balance, Sebastian raced after him, past smashed hogsheads and broken crates and dust bins of refuse that reeked of fish guts and offal. They erupted out of the end of the alley through an open gate and into a coal yard. Sebastian heard a hoarse shout from one of the workmen as they pelted past, dodging between towering mountains of gleaming, blue-black coal, their feet kicking up foul clouds of fine coal dust.
The man ahead of Sebastian swerved sideways. Scrambling over the yard wall, he darted out into the traffic of the quay. Dodging lumbering drays and the cracking whip of a bellowing teamster, Sebastian pelted after him.
The dark mouth of a warehouse yawned before them, a vast vaulted chamber whose dank air breathed the heady, forbidden fumes of the Bordeaux and the Côte d’Azure. Dark Coat plunged down the stone steps, the string of lamps above flickering with his passing. Sebastian raced after him. Racks of wine casks towered over them, threw long shadows across a cobbled floor gleaming damp in the wavering lamplight. Somewhere, moisture dripped—wine, or a residue of last night’s rain—a slow drip-drip that formed a counterpoint to the slap of boot leather and the rasp of gasping breath.
“What the hell do you want from me?” shouted the man, his voice echoing back as he took the stairs at the far end of the wine cave two at a time.
“Who hired you?”
“Go to hell!”
At the top of the steps, the man veered right. Wary of an ambush, Sebastian slowed. By the time he emerged into the blinding light of the afternoon, the man had disappeared.
Breathing hard, Sebastian let his gaze travel over the darkened warehouses around him. A couple of drunken flaxen-haired sailors stumbled past warbling a German sea song. From the distance came the sound of coopers hammering at casks on the quay, the rattle of chains flying up on a crane . . . and, from the warehouse to his right, a thump, like the sound of a body careening into an unseen obstacle.
This storeroom was dark, without the string of lanterns that had turned the wine warehouse into a long cavern of dancing shadows. Sebastian entered cautiously, giving his eyes time to adjust. With each step, his feet stuck to the floor as if it were newly tarred. It took him a moment to realize what it was: years and years of sugar that had leaked through casks to cover the floor, then half melted in the damp air. From up ahead came that same furtive sucking sound. Then it stopped.
Away from the open doorway, the darkness of the warehouse was nearly complete. But Sebastian’s senses of sight and sound had always been acute. Wolflike, Kat used to say. Trying to still his own breathing, he listened, his gaze raking the towering rows of casks.
It was the barest hint of sound—cloth brushing against wood. Sebastian whirled just as Dark Coat leapt toward him from atop the nearest stack of kegs.
The sudden movement dislodged the casks, toppling them in an avalanche of crushed staves and cascading sugar that swept Sebastian off his feet. He went down hard, his hand scooping up a fistful of sugar he threw in Dark Coat’s face as the man lunged toward him, knife in hand. The man swore and staggered back, buying Sebastian enough time to roll to one side and come up onto his knees, a broken stave clutched in both hands.
“Ye son of a bitch,” swore the man, charging again.
Swinging the stave like a curving club, Sebastian slammed the jagged edge into the man’s wrist, sending the knife skittering away into the darkness. “Who hired you?” shouted Sebastian.
Whirling, the man took off toward the distant rectangle of light, his boots sliding and sucking in the sugar.
Shoving to his feet, Sebastian tore after him. They erupted into the sunlight covered in a fine dusting of sparkling white crystals.
“Englishes,” said one of the German sailors, laughing as Sebastian ran past.
He could hear the bleating of a goat from a ship out on the river, the raucous cries of the seagulls circling over the docks. Heads turned as, one after the other, the sugar-encrusted men raced up the hill and into the lane. Dark Coat had a good hundred-foot lead, and Sebastian couldn’t close it.
Snatching up his gray’s reins on the fly, Dark Coat threw himself into the saddle, the horse shying violently as the man’s weight came down hard, and he set his spurs into the animal’s sides.
“Son of a bitch,” said Sebastian. Breathing hard, he leaned forward, his hands on his sugar-dusted knees as he watched the gray’s tail disappear with a shivering swish up the lane.
Sebastian was in his dressing room brushing the sugar out of his hair when Jules Calhoun came in. “A bath is on the way, my lord.” He held out a sealed missive on a silver tray. “This arrived while you were out. Delivered by a liveried footman.”
Sebastian reached for the letter and studied the masculine-looking handwriting of the address. He flipped it over, frowning at the sight of the familiar coat of arms on the seal. The handwriting might be masculine, but it obviously belonged to Miss Hero Jarvis. He broke the seal and unfolded the heavy white page.
My lord,
I have new information concerning Rose’s identity. I will be visiting the Orangery in Kensington Gardens at two o’clock this afternoon. Please be prompt.
Miss Jarvis
“Please be prompt,” repeated Sebastian, dropping the missive back on the silver tray. Bloody hell, he thought. That acorn didn’t fall far from its tree.
Calhoun moved about the room gathering up the Viscount’s sugar-dusted disguise. “You think the man who followed you was working for Ian Kane?”
“It’s possible. Kane is the one who sent me after O’Brian in the first place.” Sebastian glanced over at his valet. “But there may well be more to Mr. O’Brian than meets the eye.”
“Would you like me to look into the gentleman, my lord?”
“It might prove interesting.”
Calhoun bowed and turned toward the door.
“Oh, and, Calhoun—tell Tom to bring my curricle around in half an hour. I think it’s time I paid a little visit to Bow Street.”
Chapter 20
Dressed once more in his own exquisitely tailored dark blue coat and buckskin breeches, Sebastian drove his curricle to the Brown Bear, the aging inn in Bow Street that was essentially treated as an extension of the Bow Street magistrate’s office.
“Walk ’em,” he told Tom, handing the boy the reins. “We’ll be leaving for Kensington as soon as I’m finished here.”
Pushing through the inn’s smoky public room, Sebastian found Sir William Hadley seated at a booth near the rear, a plate of cold roast beef and a tankard of ale on the worn, stained boards before him. “You might be interested to know I’ve discovered the identity of one of the women who was killed Monday night at the Magdalene House,” said Sebastian, sliding into the bench opposite the Bow Street magistrate.