Four dead. Sitting back on his heels, Sebastian lifted his gaze toward the first floor above. Surely one of them had cried out in alarm or terror before they’d died. Had no one upstairs heard? Or were the inhabitants of this house so accustomed to the sound of screams and shouts that no one had paid any heed?
Pushing to his feet, he was about to mount the steps when he became aware of another scent hanging in the air, mingling with the odor of blood and decay. The hot, pungent scent of a quickly extinguished candle.
His gaze shifted to the lacy alcove to the right of the hearth. When he’d been here before, the alcove had been lit by a candle that had shown him the wraithlike silhouette of a woman and a harp. Now all was darkness and silence.
He crossed the room with rapid strides to snatch back the lace curtain. The alcove smelled of hot wax and charred candlewick and raw fear. The harp stood abandoned in the center of the alcove, the low stool beside it overturned. Just inside the curtain, a tall, gaunt-faced woman pressed her back to the wall, her hands splayed out beside her as if she could will herself to disappear into the paneling.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gently. “You’re safe.”
The woman’s thin chest jerked with her ragged breathing. “God have mercy on me,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They’re dead, aren’t they? All dead.”
Sebastian studied her pale face, the straight brown brows and sharply edged bones so obvious beneath the inadequate flesh of cheek and forehead. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her speech was cultured, her gown rigorously high-necked and modest. And judging by the milky-white glaze that obscured her eyes, she was quite blind.
He said, “How long ago did this happen?”
“A minute. Maybe two. Not long.”
Sebastian’s gaze lifted to the stairs. He had walked the length of Orchard Street, the Academy always in his line of sight. If anyone had left the house a minute or two before his arrival, he’d have seen them. He felt his body tense. “Where did they go? The men who did this, I mean. Upstairs?”
Even as he asked the question, he heard a thump from overhead followed by a woman’s high-pitched laugh and the lower tones of a man’s voice.
“No,” said the harpist, her spine still pressed flat to the wall. “Down the hall, toward the back of the house.”
His gaze shifted to the darkened hall that ran along the back of the stairs. “What’s there?”
“The kitchen,” she said. Her head lifted suddenly, her face turning as a more pungent scent of smoke overrode the lingering wisps from the candles. “Do you smell that?”
He smelled it. He could hear it, too: the crackling of flames, the roar of ancient timbers catching, flaring up. “Bloody hell,” he swore, grabbing her wrist. “They’ve torched the place. Come on.” Jerking her from the alcove, he raised his voice to shout, “Fire! Everyone out! Quickly! Fire!”
“No,” she said, squirming from his grasp to dart back behind the curtain. “My harp.”
“Bloody hell,” he said again as she struggled beneath the instrument’s weight. “I’ll bring the bloody harp.” Already he could see the faint reddish glow from the rear of the house, hear the screams of the women, the excited shouts of the men, the thump of running feet on the stairs. “Just get out of here.”
She refused to leave without him—or, more accurately, without her harp. “Be careful,” she cautioned as he staggered beneath its bulk. Squealing, half-naked women and men with bare pink flesh that glowed in the lamplight pushed past them in a scrambling rush for the door. A middle-aged man with a hairy, sunken white chest and flaccid phallus kept bleating, “I say, I say, I say.”
The clanging of the firebell reverberated up and down the street. Already a crowd was forming at the base of the house’s front steps. Buckets appeared, passed hand to hand. Swearing softly beneath his load, Sebastian pushed their way through the shouting throng and turned toward Portman Square. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Miss—”
“Driscoll,” she said, hovering protectively about her harp as the crush of men, women, and children rushing toward the fire increased. “Mary Driscoll.”
“Miss Driscoll.” The sounding board of the harp was beginning to dig unpleasantly into his back. “Why didn’t those men kill you?”
“They didn’t know I was there. I put out my candle and quit playing the instant I heard them in the hall with Thackery.”
“You know who they were?”
“No. But I recognized their voices. They came to the house the night Hessy Abrahams died.”
Sebastian studied her gaunt, strained features. “You recognized their voices? How many times have you heard them?”
“Only the once.” She must have caught the doubt in his own voice, because an unexpected smile curled her lips. “When you’re blind, you learn to listen very, very carefully.”
He could see his curricle now, Tom at the chestnuts’ heads trying to quiet them as they sidled nervously, their manes tossing, nostrils flaring at the scent of the fire. Sebastian said, “Tell me about the men. How many were there?”
“Only two,” she said. “The one was older, in his thirties, I’d say. He was the one in charge. The younger man listened to him, did what he was told without question or argument.”
Like a good soldier, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “What about their accents?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t tell much, beyond the fact that they were gentlemen.”
He put out his hand, stopping her when she would have kept walking. “We’re at my carriage.”
“Gov’nor,” said Tom, his mouth falling open, “you ain’t never gonna fit that thing in the curricle.”
“Yes, I am,” said Sebastian, temporarily setting the harp on the flagstones beside the carriage. “Miss Driscoll here is going to hold it on her lap.” He offered her a hand up and she took it without hesitation.
With the Academy in flames, he supposed she had no place else to go. But as he watched her settle on the curricle’s high seat, another thought occurred to him. He said, “Do you know who I am?”
Again, that faint smile. “Of course I know who you are. You’re Viscount Devlin. You came to the house last Tuesday. You had wine with Miss Lil, Tasmin, Becky, and Sarah. Then your questions made Miss Lil uncomfortable, and she asked you to leave.”
“I never gave my name.”
“No. But I heard Miss Lil and Mr. Kane talking about you later. People are strange in that way. If you can’t see, they often act as if you can’t hear, either. Or perhaps they simply assume I’m stupid.”
She was far from stupid. He handed the harp up to her, grunting softly beneath its weight. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re willing to come with me.”
She clutched the harp to her. “Those men were looking for Miss Lil. Once they’d killed her, they left.” He saw her delicate throat work as she swallowed. “I don’t want them to come for me.”