Free Who Buries the Dead by C. S. Harris Page A

the nearest horse’s quivering hide.

    Sebastian could hear Simon’s colicky wails even before he reached number forty-one Brook Street.
    “At it again, is he?” said Sebastian, handing Morey his hat and driving coat.
    A harassed expression drifted across the majordomo’s normally carefully controlled countenance. At close range, the child’s screams were painful. “I’m afraid so, my lord.” He laid the driving coat over one arm, then froze when he got a better look at the elegant, high-crowned beaver hat in his hands. “Is that a bullet hole, my lord?”
    Sebastian yanked off his driving gloves. “It is. And it was a new hat too. Calhoun is going to be devastated.” He glanced up as another howl drifted down from above. “How long has he been at it?”
    “A good while, I’m afraid. He started early this evening.”
    “Well, at least we know there’s nothing wrong with his lungs,” said Sebastian, taking the stairs to the nursery two at a time.
    He was halfway to the third floor when he met Claire Bisette on her way down to make a fresh bottle of sweetened dill and fennel water. Hero might have refused to employ a wet nurse, but she’d welcomed Claire into their household with relief. An impoverished French
émigrée
in her early thirties, Claire was both older and considerably better educated than the young, ignorant country girls who typically served as nursemaids.
    “What set him off?” he asked Claire.
    She paused to push a stray lock of light brown hair out of her face with the back of one delicate wrist. “Who knows? Believe it or not, he’s better now than he was.”
    Climbing to the top of the stairs, Sebastian found Hero walking back and forth before the nursery fire, the child’s rigid body held so that her shoulder pressed against his stomach, his little fists clenched tight, his face red and distorted with his howls. At the sound of Sebastian’s step, she turned, her quietly exasperated gaze meeting his.
    “Here,” said Sebastian, and walked forward to take his screaming son into his arms.

    “I showed the section of inscribed lead to my father,” Hero said sometime later, in a quiet moment when Simon dozed fitfully against her.
    Sebastian had settled on the hearthrug beside her, his back propped against the side of her chair, a glass of wine in one hand. “And?” he asked, looking up at her.
    “He says the tomb of Charles I was discovered just last week in St. George’s in Windsor Castle, when the workmen constructing a new passage to the royal vault accidentally stumbled upon it. Needless to say, he was not at all pleased by the possibility that someone might have made off with the royal coffin strap.”
    Sebastian took a slow sip of his wine. “Interesting. Especially when you consider that Stanley Preston was an avid collector with a special interest in items from the Tudor and Stuart periods. He even has Oliver Cromwell’s head.”
    “His actual
head
?”
    “The actual head—along with those of Henri IV and the Duke of Suffolk.”
    “How ghoulish—not to mention suggestive, given how Preston died.” She cautiously readjusted the sleeping child’s weight. “What manner of man was he?”
    “Preston? Proud. Socially ambitious. Quarrelsome. Although, according to a rather interesting spinster I met, he was also a devout and devoted family man. The sort, she says, one could like in spite of himself.”
    “If one could overlook the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves,” said Hero.
    “Yes. But it never ceases to amaze me the number of otherwise decent members of our society who can overlook it without any difficulty at all. I suppose it’s because the institution is both legal and biblical—not to mention highly profitable. So it never occurs to most people to question the custom any further.”
    He realized she was staring at him with an oddly intent, unreadable gaze. “What is it you’re not telling me?” she said.
    He paused in the act of raising his wineglass