Page 2 of Who Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery #20)
S ebastian Alistair St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, rested his hips against the edge of his desk and leaned back, taking the weight off a leg that still gave him more trouble than he liked to admit. He was a former cavalry captain, in his thirties, tall and lean, with dark hair and strange, wolflike yellow eyes. He was known to the world as the only surviving son and heir of the Earl of Hendon, although he was not, in truth, Hendon’s son.
The black-haired boy who stood before him, blue eyes wide with fear as he nervously twisted his wet, ragged hat between his hands, looked to be perhaps fourteen or fifteen, although seriously underfed and scrawny. His features were even and surprisingly clean, but then, that might be the work of the rain.
“What’s your name, lad?”
The boy had to swallow hard before he could answer, and even then his voice came out hushed and scratchy. “Gallagher, sir. Jamie Gallagher.”
Jamie . It was a name that still had the power to twist at something deep inside Sebastian, even after three years, so that it was a moment before he trusted himself to speak. “Tell me about this dead man, Jamie. Where is he?”
“He’s in the ruins of that old chapel, sir,” said the boy in a soft Irish lilt. “Ye know the one? In the courtyard off Swallow Street where they’re tearin’ down everything to make way for the Regent’s grand new avenue?”
“I’ve seen it. You say he’s hanging upside down?”
Jamie nodded. “Hangin’ by one foot, he is, sir. And someone done tied his hands behind his back, too—like this.” The boy bent his arms, elbows spreading wide as he thrust both hands behind him.
So obviously not a suicide, thought Sebastian. Aloud he said, “Why come to me? Why not find a local bailiff or constable, or go to the nearest public office?”
The boy dug one mud-streaked bare big toe into the rug at his feet. “Faith, ye think they’d listen to the likes of me? Toss me in the watchhouse for making a disturbance, that’s what they’d do—if they didn’t go decidin’ it musta been me who done for the nob and hang me.”
The nob. This was a new detail. “The dead man is a gentleman?”
The boy sniffed. “Sure then, but he must be, wearin’ clothes that fine.”
Pushing away from the desk, Sebastian walked to the library door. He spoke for a moment with his majordomo, then glanced over at the boy. “Morey here will take you down to the kitchens for a bite to eat while the horses are put to.”
At the mention of food, something leapt in the boy’s eyes, something painful to see. But he wasn’t about to be distracted from his original purpose. “So you’ll be comin’, then? You’ll be lookin’ into it?”
“I’ll come,” said Sebastian.
“It might be a trap,” said Hero some minutes later as she watched Sebastian move about his dressing room. She stood in the doorway from the bedroom, the Honorable Miss Guinevere Annabelle Sophia St. Cyr, their nine-month-old daughter, balanced on one fashionably gowned hip. The baby was chewing on a chubby fist, her brilliant blue eyes narrowed with the seriousness of her task, and Sebastian paused for a moment to tousle with a gentle hand the child’s silken fair hair before turning away again.
“It might be,” he acknowledged, reaching for his greatcoat. “But I doubt it.”
“You will be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
His wife made a scoffing sound deep in her throat and shifted the baby to her other hip. “No, you’re not.”
“Well, more careful than I used to be,” he acknowledged, looking up with a smile as he slipped a small double-barreled pistol into the pocket of his coat.