“It’s the ruins of the eastern gardens of the original Somerset House,” said Miss Jarvis. “When they tore down the old palace, the plan was to construct an eastern wing on the new building that would stretch nearly to Surrey Street. But the government ran out of money. My father is always raging about it. He thinks the capital of a great nation needs impressive government buildings, and London is woefully lacking in anything majestic or monumental.”
Sebastian narrowed his eyes against the glint of the light reflected off the Thames. Down near the river’s edge, to their left, stood a lumberyard, its great stacks of drying timber towering twenty to thirty feet in the air. But a strange air of quiet hung over the area. “I don’t like it,” he said, thankful for the weight of the small, double-barreled flintlock pistol he’d slipped into the pocket of his groom’s coat before leaving Brook Street.
“Surely if it were a trap,” she said, “the rendezvous would have been set for tonight. What are they going to do? Cosh me—and my servant—over the head in broad daylight? It’s not exactly a disreputable neighborhood.”
“Would you have come here at night?”
“Of course not.”
Sebastian studied the expanse of overgrown gravel paths and untamed shrubbery. “Where exactly is this Hannah Green supposed to be?”
“There,” said Miss Jarvis, nodding to what looked like a caretaker’s cottage at the base of the garden near the water’s edge.
Sebastian swung out of the saddle. “Wait here,” he told her. “Your groom is going to knock on the door.”
He expected her to argue. Instead, she took his reins in her strong gloved hand, a frown line forming between her eyes as she studied the small stone house.
The original Somerset House had been built in the mid- sixteenth century by the Duke of Somerset, uncle and Lord Protector of the boy king Edward VI. A vast Renaissance palace, it had been pulled down late in the previous century and replaced by the current Somerset House, now used by various Royal societies and government offices. Only this stretch of the old gardens had survived. Once, the sandstone cottage near the river might have been a part of the ancient Tudor palace itself. A retainer’s lodge, perhaps, or a delightful garden retreat for the dowager queens who had once used the old palace as their Dower House. The echoes of the original house’s renaissance glory were there, in the crumbling stone steps, in the sweet-scented damask rose blooming stubbornly from amidst a thicket of thistles.
Sebastian walked up the neglected path, the gravel crunching beneath his feet, his senses alert to any movement, any sound. The garden appeared deserted.
Studying the cobwebs draping the delicately carved tracery of the windows and the leaded panes, Sebastian knocked on the warped old door and listened to the sound fade away into nothing. He was raising his fist to knock again when he heard a furtive whisper of sound from the far side of the thick panels. The scrape of a slipper over stone flagging, perhaps, or the brush of cloth against cloth.
He waited, aware of a sense of being watched. Tilting back his head, he scanned the crenulated decoration at the wall’s edge, then heard the rasp of a bolt being drawn back.
The door creaked inward a foot and stopped. He had a glimpse of a young woman’s pale face, her brown eyes widening in fear. Behind her stretched an empty stone-flagged passageway with thick whitewashed walls.
“Miss Jarvis sent me to inquire—” he began, only to have the woman let out a little mewl of terror. Her hands slipping off the door’s latch, she whirled, her fists clenching in her skirts, her brown hair flying as she pelted back down the passageway.
Thrusting open the door with one outflung hand, Sebastian sprinted after her. He took two steps, three, then felt a blinding pain that crashed down upon the back of his head and brought with it the bright darkness of oblivion.
Chapter 40
The pain was still there. He realized he was lying on something cold and hard. That confused him. He considered opening his eyes to investigate, but at the moment, that seemed more effort than it was worth. He lay still, trying to recall where he was and what he was doing here. He remembered handing the reins of his horse to Hero Jarvis. He remembered walking through the abandoned garden. Stone steps. A warped door. A brown-eyed woman running.
He shifted his weight, wincing as a jagged agony arced around the side of his head. From somewhere quite close, he heard Miss Jarvis say, “You were right. It was a trap.”
He opened his eyes.
He found himself staring at a stone groined vault high above where he lay. The stones were old and worn, and stained with damp. Turning his head ever so carefully, he was able to see a row of thick, crude pillars holding up the roof and the no-nonsense face of Miss Jarvis.
He groaned again and closed his eyes. “Where the hell are we?”
“I’m not entirely certain what this place was originally. At first I thought it might be the crypt of one of the churches or chapels Somerset pulled down to build his palace. But more likely it’s simply a storeroom or cellar from one of the medieval bishops’ palaces he also tore down.”
Sebastian brought up a hand to probe gingerly at the back of his head. “And why precisely are we here?”
“I am told the vault floods when the tide comes in.”
He opened his eyes again, his hand falling. He realized he was lying on a wide, elevated stone ledge some three feet off the ground that ran along as much of the crypt wall as he could see. She sat perched on the edge of the ledge beside him. She was hunched forward, her arms crossed at her waist, her hands hugging her elbows in close. From the way she had her jaw set, he suspected she was having to try very, very hard to keep control of herself. He realized her veiled hat was gone, her sleeve torn. However she had come to be here with him, she obviously had not come without a fight.
“What happened?” he asked.
She rocked gently back and forth in a movement so subtle he doubted that she even knew she was doing it. “I waited for you for about five minutes, but you never came back. Just as I was trying to decide what to do, a gentleman walked out of the Cock and Magpie and asked if I needed help.”
“A gentleman?”
“Most definitely a gentleman. He was both well dressed and well spoken. Just like the gentleman with the gig on the road from Richmond.”
“And?” he prompted.
“I wheeled my horse, meaning to flee. But he reached up and grabbed my reins just above the bit. And then he pulled a pistol on me.”
“In a respectable neighborhood in broad daylight.”
“Quite,” she said evenly. “I freely admit to deserving any and all reproaches you care to heap upon my head. It was a trap.”
He might not like Hero Jarvis, but there was much that he found he did, reluctantly, admire about her. And so he surprised himself by saying gently, “We all make mistakes.”
She raised her head to look at him. “When they dragged me down here—”