“No,” he said baldly, his gaze raking the crowded ballroom beyond her. In actual fact he was looking for a murderer, but he wasn’t about to tell his aunt that. His eyes narrowed as he spied Patrick Somerville talking to a pale-haired young matron near the bank of French doors that overlooked the rear terrace. “If I change my mind, believe me, Aunt, you’ll be the first to know.”
Excusing himself, he pushed on through the laughing, chattering crowd. But as ill luck would have it, he had only worked his way around half of the room when he came upon Miss Jarvis.
“Good heavens,” she said in a tone that exactly matched his aunt’s, except that Miss Jarvis was not smiling. “What are you doing here?”
“I received an invitation.”
“Yes, but you never attend these things.” She was wearing an emerald green silk gown that became her surprisingly well, and had crimped her hair so that it softened the angular planes of her face. But there was nothing soft about her expression. She frowned. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you? Who is it?”
He deliberately turned his back on the row of French doors. “Perhaps I’ve suddenly taken it into my head to enjoy a bit of dancing.”
“Nonsense.” She cast a quick glance around. “We can’t talk here. Escort me to the refreshment room.”
He was too much of a gentleman to refuse her, and she knew it. Lending her his arm, he led her through the crush to a chamber that had been set aside for refreshments. He was hoping to find it crowded. It was nearly deserted.
“I want you to tell me what happened last night in Orchard Street,” she said, accepting a glass of lemonade. “You do know, don’t you?”
She would have read about the fire in that morning’s papers, of course. He picked up a plate and surveyed the delicate tidbits offered by their hostess to sustain her guests until supper. “I think the abbess was the intended target,” he said as calmly as if they were discussing the orchestra or the silver streamers decorating the ballroom. “Do you like shrimp or crab?”
“Shrimp, please.” He didn’t expect her to know what an abbess was, but in that, he reckoned without the research that had embroiled her in this murderous tangle to begin with. She said, “They killed her?”
“Yes.” He selected three fat shrimp, then added a slice of ham and some melon. “Along with a fair number of others.”
“Because they thought she could identify them? Is that it? If she could, it’s a wonder they let her live so long.”
“I suspect she didn’t know their names. She only became a threat as we began to circle around toward them.” He let his gaze wander over the table. “Would you like an ice?”
“No, thank you.” She took the plate he’d prepared for her. “Do you think they’ll go after Hannah Green again?”
“They would if they knew where to find her. Fortunately, they don’t.”
She applied herself to the refreshments with a healthy appetite. “How is she, by the way?”
“Hannah? Last time I saw her, she was in rapture over the stable cat’s litter of black-and-white kittens.”
Miss Jarvis glanced up, half frowning and half laughing, as if uncertain whether to believe him or not. “Kittens?”
“Kittens.” He studied her clear gray eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek. He considered telling her about the harp player and about Patrick Somerville, then changed his mind. The less he involved her in all this, the better.
She said, “What will become of her, when this is over?”
“Hannah?” He shook his head. “I’m not certain. In many ways she’s still a child.”
“But not in all ways.” He knew she regretted her words the instant she said them. For one frozen moment, their gazes met and held. She set her plate aside. “Thank you for the refreshments,” she said, and turned on her heel and left him there, looking after her.
By the time Sebastian made his way back to the ballroom, Patrick Somerville had disappeared. Sebastian prowled the conservatory and the rooms set aside for card playing, before finally wandering out onto the terrace to find the hussar captain leaning against the stone balustrade and smoking a cheroot.
“Nasty habit I picked up in the Americas,” said Somerville, blowing a cloud of blue smoke out of his lungs. “My sister Mary keeps telling me it’ll be the death of me, but I tell her the malaria’ll kill me long before then.”
Sebastian came to stand beside him and look out over the glistening wet garden. The rain had eased up, but the air was still chill and damp and smelled strongly of wet earth and wet stone. “I hear they’ve found your friend’s body.”
Somerville drew on his cheroot, his eyes narrowing. “Yes, poor old sod.”
“I understand he had a pair of sewing scissors broken off in his heart.”
The hussar turned his head to stare directly at Sebastian. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From the surgeon who performed the postmortem.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the garden. “A man killed at the Orchard Street Academy last week was stabbed by a pair of sewing scissors.”
Somerville drew on his cheroot, and said nothing.
Sebastian said, “How many bodies do you think have turned up in London in the past year with pairs of sewing scissors broken off in their hearts?”
The captain tossed the stub of his cheroot into the wet garden below, then pursed his lips, expelling a long stream of fragrant smoke. “You know I was there, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Somerville flattened his hands on the wet balustrade, his back hunched as he stared out over the shadowy gardens. “I still don’t understand what happened that night. First the girl I was with disappeared. And then, when I went looking for Ludlow, they said he’d already gone.”
“You believed them?”
“Why wouldn’t I? We were supposed to meet up later, at a tavern near Soho. I went there expecting to find him waiting for me. But he never showed up. At first I thought he’d simply changed his mind and gone home. It wasn’t until he was still missing the next day that I realized something had gone wrong. I thought he’d been jumped by footpads or something. I never imagined he hadn’t even left the Academy.”
“Who else was with you that night?”
“No one.” He pushed away from the balustrade. “What’s your interest in this, anyway?”
From the ballroom behind them came the lilting chorus of an English country dance. Sebastian said, “I’m just doing a favor for an acquaintance.” He studied the man’s pale face, clammy with sweat despite the chill from the rain. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: When’s your birthday?”
“My birthday?” Somerville gave a shaky laugh. “Why do you ask?”
“It was last week, was it?”
A muscle jumped along the man’s tightened jaw as he considered his answer. “Yes,” he said slowly, realizing the futility of denying it. “Why?”
“Happy birthday,” Sebastian said, and walked off into the night.