Free Why Mermaids Sing by C. S. Harris

be serious. I don’t know about young Stanton, but no one ever questioned Barclay Carmichael’s interest in the ladies.”
    Devlin shrugged.
    Henrietta pressed her lips together and made an exasperated sound deep in her throat. “Hendon told me you’d involved yourself in these latest murders. Don’t you think it’s a bit, well, common , Devlin?”
    His brows twitched together into a frown that was there, then gone. “Common? Dreadfully so. In fact, if you had the least regard for the reputation of this Lady Julia, you would most definitely advise her not to dance the quadrille with me.”
    Henrietta pushed to her feet with a grunt. “I fear it would take far more than an unnatural interest in murder to render you anything other than an enviable catch, my dear.” She looped her arm through his. “Now take me back to my ball, you troublesome child. I believe the quadrille is next.”

Chapter 19
     
    K at stood beside the heavily draped windows of her bedroom, her arms wrapped across her chest. The room behind her was dark. The night watchman had long since called out, Two o’clock on a fine night and all is well , but she still wore the robe en caleçon of blue satin piped in white that she’d worn home from the evening’s performance. She had not been to bed.
    She didn’t want to look, but she had to. Touching the edge of the curtain, she shifted it so that she could peer down on the street below. The night was unusually bright, the moonlight mingling with the light from the streetlamps to bathe the pavement in a soft glow. She searched the shadows, looking for a shape that shouldn’t be there, a hint of movement on a still night.
    Sebastian would have seen the figure in an instant; it took Kat several minutes. She had almost given up looking when he raised his hand to his mouth, like a man stifling a yawn.
    She let the curtain fall back into place, then simply stood there, her breath coming hard and fast. She had no illusions about the situation she was in. Jarvis was not a man given to idle threats; he had meant everything he said. She had until Friday.
    She’d found it curious, at first, that he’d given her several days to deliver up to him the spymaster’s name. Then she’d realized he must have had agents watching her for months, ever since Pierrepont’s flight last February. It must have been when Jarvis grew frustrated by his inability to ascertain the spymaster’s identity by stealth that he had decided to approach Kat directly. Convinced that she did not, indeed, know the new spymaster’s name, he had decided it necessary to allot her that brief span of time in which to discover it.
    Pressing the fingertips of one hand against her lips, Kat swung away from the window. She had no need to discover the name of Napoleon’s new spymaster in London, for she knew it. Aiden O’Connell was an Irishman who cooperated with the French for the same reason Kat once had: for Ireland. He had approached her last summer hoping to reestablish the connection she had once enjoyed with his predecessor, Leo Pierrepont. She had told him at the time she wanted out of the game, but that wouldn’t save her now from Jarvis.
    Her options were limited and she knew it. She could attempt to escape, but Jarvis was notorious for his network of spies, and her stomach roiled at the thought of the things his henchmen would do to her if they caught her. She could wait until Friday and nobly refuse to give up O’Connell’s name, but Jarvis would then simply wrench the information from her by torture. She knew she would tell them anything they wanted to hear—anything, even as she knew it wouldn’t be enough to save her. Or…
    Or she could betray O’Connell freely, and hope it would be enough.
    With a groan, Kat sank to the floor, her arms drawing her bent knees against her chest. Jarvis had left her no real choice, and he knew it. On Friday, she would tell him Aiden O’Connell’s name. The trick would be to find a way to