Page 61 of Who Cries for the Lost

“If yer lordship will jist holler when yer done,” said the gaoler, “I’ll come and git the wench.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian again.

The gaoler went to wait in the passage, his arms crossed at his chest, his expression blank as he stared into space.

“Sit down, please,” Sebastian told Phoebe.

She went to sink onto one of the benches, her hands knotted in her lap, her face pale and trembling as she stared up at him.

He said, “You should have told me you’d seen Sedgewick.”

She swallowed hard, her gaze dropping to her clenched hands. “I was afraid,” she whispered. “Afraid that if anyone knew I’d seen him, they’d think I’d killed him. But I didn’t! I swear to God, I didn’t.”

“I don’t think you did.” Sebastian studied the huddled, half-starved woman before him and wondered how anyone could imagine her capable of overpowering a man like Miles Sedgewick, killing him, mutilating him, and then somehow hauling his body down to dump it in the river.

“Why did he come to see you?” he asked.

She sucked in a deep breath that shuddered her thin chest. “I’d been to Mount Street that morning, to beg him to help me. I was actually standing outside his house, trying to decide how to approach him, when he came home. I didn’t know he’d been away, you see. He was furious when he saw me—told me he would come talk to me later, but that I wouldn’t get a penny out of him if I didn’t leave right away.” She dashed the back of one fist across first one eye, then the other. “I didn’t really expect him to come, but he did. I suppose he was afraid that if he didn’t, I’d go back to his house and make a scene.”

“What did you want from him?”

“I was hoping he’d give me money for Amelia. I was desperate.”

“And did he?”

She shook her head. “But I didn’t kill him! I swear. Why would I? He was my last hope.”

“And yet you threatened to kill him.”

“No! I know that’s what that old hag of a landlady told them, but it’s not true. I only said I wished I’d died in childbirth and taken the baby with me, and it’s true. It’s true!” She flattened both her hands over her face, her voice a torn whisper, her body convulsing with her sobs. “Dear God, how I wish I were dead.”

“What happened to your baby?” Sebastian said gently.

Her hands slipped down her face until they were covering only her nose and mouth. “He took her.”

“Sedgewick?”

She nodded, her eyes two dark, pitiful bruises in a pale face.

“You gave him your child?”

“How could I stop him? He insisted it was his right, as her father. Said he would find a wet nurse for her.”

“And you believed him?”

“What else could I do?” she wailed. “I couldn’t feed her—my milk had dried up, and she couldn’t keep anything else down.”

“What time was this?”

“That I saw him? I don’t know. Half past six? Maybe seven?”

Sebastian figured Sedgewick must have gone straight to her after leaving his house in Mount Street. Only, where the hell had he gone after that?

Aloud, Sebastian said, “Where is the baby now?”

“I don’t know! Alexi told me I was a fool to trust him like that, that I never should have let him take the baby. But what was I supposed to do? I asked him to give me money, but he wouldn’t.”

“Alexi?” Sebastian stared at her. “You mean Alexi Sauvage?”