She was an appallingly bad liar.
Sebastian cut himself a slice of ham. “Yet your father quarreled with Mr. Austen over a simple statement of regret voiced by the man’s wife from her sickbed?”
“Father never could abide having his judgments questioned or being told he was wrong-about anything.”
“Oh? And what, precisely, led your friend to change her mind about Captain Wyeth?”
Anne Preston threaded her reticule strings between her fingers. “When she opposed the match between Hugh and me six years ago, Eliza was very much governed by material considerations. She thought at the time she had my best interests at heart. But. .”
“Yes?” prompted Sebastian.
“She says her illness has altered her perception, that she now sincerely regrets the part she once played in helping to deprive me of the happiness I could have enjoyed all these years.”
“Your father found that objectionable?”
“Father always hoped to see us-that is, my brother and me-marry well. It was extraordinarily important to him.”
“So Captain Wyeth has renewed his quest for your hand?
“Oh, no. No. We. . we’ve only met a few times since his return to London-as old acquaintances. Nothing more.”
Sebastian noted the telltale stain of color on her cheeks. But all he said was, “I understand Captain Wyeth has taken a room in Knightsbridge. Where, precisely?”
She stared at him. “But. . I’ve just explained there is no reason to involve him in any way.”
“Nevertheless, I would like to speak with him.”
He watched her nostrils flare in panic as she realized her bold attempt to shield the captain from suspicion had failed utterly. She dropped her gaze to her clenched hands and said quietly, “He’s at the Shepherd’s Rest, in Middle Row.”
“Thank you,” said Sebastian.
She fiddled again with the strings of her reticule. “You asked yesterday if there was anyone with whom Father had quarreled recently.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been giving your question some thought, and it occurs to me that there is someone. I don’t know if you could say Father quarreled with him precisely, but Father was definitely afraid of him. His name is Oliphant. Sinclair Oliphant.”
In the silence that followed her words, Sebastian could hear himself breathing, feel the slow and steady beat of his own pulse. He cleared his throat and somehow managed to say, “You mean, Colonel Sinclair Oliphant?”
“Yes, although he’s Lord Oliphant now. He inherited his brother’s title and estates, you know.”
“Yes; I did know. Although it was my understanding he’d been posted as governor of Jamaica.”
“He was, yes. But he recently surrendered his position and returned to England. He’s taken a town house in Mount Street for the Season.”
Sebastian reached for his ale and wrapped both hands around the tankard. Three years before, in the mountains of Portugal, Sinclair Oliphant had deliberately betrayed Sebastian to a French major known for his inventive and painful ways of inflicting death. Sebastian had survived. But what the French major had done after that would haunt Sebastian for the rest of his life.
He took a long, slow swallow of the ale, then set the tankard aside with a hand that was not quite steady. “Why was your father afraid of Oliphant?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I mean, I know Father was furious with Oliphant’s behavior as governor. In fact, Father went out there last year precisely to try to do something about him.”
“Your father was in Jamaica last year?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go with him?”
“Oh, no; I stayed with the Austens. I’ve never actually been to Jamaica at all. Father always said it wasn’t a healthy place for a woman.”
“It isn’t a healthy place for anyone.”
He studied her smooth, seemingly guileless young face. He wanted to ask if it bothered her to know that the clothes on her back, like the pearl drops in her ears and the food she ate every day, were paid for by the labor of enslaved men, women, and children. But all he said was, “Do you know if your father had anything to do with Oliphant’s decision to return to England?”
“No; Father never discussed such things with me. But last Friday, he was out for several hours in the afternoon, and when he returned home, he looked positively stricken. I asked what was wrong, and he said that he was afraid he’d made a mistake-that Oliphant is far more dangerous than he’d realized.”
“Your father was right. Oliphant is dangerous. Very dangerous.”
Something in his voice must have given him away, for she looked at him strangely, her lips parting, a faint frown line creasing her forehead. “You know him?”
“I did. Once,” said Sebastian, and left it at that.
After she had gone, he went to stand before the long windows overlooking the terrace and the gardens below. The neatly edged parterres showed a vibrant green in the fitful sunshine, the newly turned earth a warm brown. But he saw only ancient stone walls burned black and a child’s doll lost in a drift of orange blossoms.
There are moments in the course of a man’s life that can irrevocably alter its path and sear his soul forever. Sebastian had encountered such a pivotal moment one cold spring in the mountains of Portugal, when he had obeyed the orders of a colonel he knew to be both vicious and deceitful, and dozens of innocent women and children had paid with their lives for his gullibility. Another man might have sought refuge in a string of excuses: I didn’t know. . I was simply obeying orders. . I was too late to save them. But not Sebastian. Their spilled blood had irrevocably colored his sense of who and what he was.
Once, he had sworn to avenge their deaths, sworn to kill Oliphant even if it meant he had to die for it himself. But, with time, he had come to realize that the drive for vengeance was his own, that it was his own pain he sought to ease, his own guilt he hoped to redeem. Those gentle, religious women who had dedicated their lives to the care of others, and died because of it, would have prayed for Sinclair Oliphant’s salvation. Not for his death.
Sebastian would not violate their memory by killing in their name. But there was a difference between vengeance and justice, and he was determined that the innocents of Santa Iria would have justice.
One way or another.
The elegant house on Mount Street so recently hired by Sinclair Oliphant for his gently bred wife and their five children rose five stories tall, its shiny black door flanked by polished brass lanterns, its marble front steps freshly scrubbed. Sebastian stood for a time on the footpath, his gaze on that stately facade, his thoughts on the man he’d last seen in a rough campaign tent in the mountains of Portugal. Colonial governorships were coveted, lucrative positions seldom surrendered voluntarily. If Stanley Preston was, in fact, behind Oliphant’s sudden, unexpected return to London, then Preston had made himself a dangerous enemy indeed.
Still thoughtful, Sebastian mounted the house’s front steps. His knock was answered by a somber butler who provided the information that his lordship was breakfasting that morning at White’s. But Sebastian had to trail Oliphant from the clubs of St. James’s through several exclusive shops in Bond Street before he finally came upon his former colonel at Manton’s shooting gallery in Davies Street.
Leaning against a nearby wall, Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and waited while Oliphant methodically culped wafers with one of Manton’s sleek new flintlock pistols. The man looked much as Sebastian remembered him. In his mid-forties now, he was trim, broad shouldered, and tall, with the erect carriage typical of a career military officer. His jaw was strong and square, his cheeks lean, his lips habitually curled into a smile that hid a capacity for self-interest that was brutal in its intensity.