Free Why Mermaids Sing by C. S. Harris Page B

EPTEMBER 1811
     
    E arly the next morning, Sebastian received an unexpected visit from a furtive little man with sun-darkened skin and an accent that could change from Geordie to Cockney or from French to Spanish to Italian and back again in an instant. His name was Emmanuel Jones, and he had once worked for Sebastian in the Army. Now he was working for Sebastian again in an entirely different capacity. He was searching for Sebastian’s mother.
    “That ship you was askin’ about,” said Jones. “The San Remo ? You were right. It didn’t sink seventeen years ago. It made port at the Hague, then worked its way along the coast in slow stages, through the straights of Gibraltar and around the toe of Italy, to Venice.”
    Sebastian rested his elbows on his library’s broad desktop and studied the enigmatic features of the man who stood before him. “And the Englishwoman who was on it?”
    “She calls herself Lady Sophia Sedlow now.”
    Sebastian nodded. Sedlow had been his mother’s maiden name. “And?”
    “She lived for a time in Venice, with a poet. He died. Nine years ago.”
    “Where is she now?”
    “She left Italy in the company of a Frenchman, sometime around 1803. One of Napoleon’s generals.”
    “Which one?”
    “Becnel.”
    Sebastian stood from behind his desk and went to fiddle with the inlaid Moroccan box he kept on a shelf near the hearth. It was a moment before he trusted himself to speak. “She’s in France now?”
    “Yes. But I don’t know exactly where.”
    Sebastian swung to look at him. “Then why are you here?”
    Something flickered across the man’s normally impassive face. “I’m not messing with Becnel.”
    Crossing to his desk, Sebastian opened a drawer and drew forth an envelope from which he counted a stack of banknotes. “Speak of this to anyone,” he said, shoving the notes across the desk, “and I’ll kill you. It’s as simple as that.”
    Jones folded the money out of sight with a sniff. “I know how to keep me mouth shut.”
    After he had gone, Sebastian went to stand, again, beside the empty hearth, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the cold, empty grate. He would need to find another agent, someone both trustworthy and unafraid to venture into the heart of Napoleon’s France.
    It wouldn’t be easy. But it could be done.
     
     
     
    He spent much of what was left of the morning interviewing applicants for the position of valet.
    “We come highly recommended,” said one of the applicants, a softly rounded man named Flint who affected a thin black mustache and punctuated his words with soft flutterings of his flawlessly manicured white hands. “Highly recommended, indeed.”
    Sebastian glanced through the valet’s glowing credentials and felt a spurt of cautious optimism. In a field of applicants distinguished by nothing so much as mediocrity, the man looked promising. “So I see. You take considerable pride in your work, I understand.”
    “We consider our work more than a vocation,” said Flint, sitting painfully upright in a chair on the opposite side of Sebastian’s desk. “For us, taking care of our gentleman is akin to a calling. No measure is too extreme to achieve the best presentation. If a gentleman is a bit thin in the calf, we add padding to the stockings. If a gentleman grows corpulent in his advancing years, we are conversant with the discreet use of the corset. And for that unfortunate tendency displayed by some gentlemen to grow hair on the backs of the fingers, we are well versed in the art of hot waxing.”
    Something of Sebastian’s reaction to this speech must have shown on his face, for the valet hastened to add, “Not that your lordship requires any of these extreme measures.”
    “Thank God for that.”
    The valet tilted his head, subjecting Sebastian to an intense scrutiny that made him feel like a nag being offered for sale at Tattersall’s. “We would, of course, press for a bit more precision in the presentation. Sporting