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

to his lips. “What do you mean?”
    “There’s a trickle of dried blood on your left temple.”
    “There is?” He pushed to his feet and went to inspect his forehead in the mirror over the washstand. “So there is. That shot obviously came closer than I realized.”
    “Someone shot at you?
Tonight?
”
    He wet a cloth and dabbed at the cut. “Just as I was turning onto Brook Street. They must have been lying in wait for me.”
    “And it didn’t occur to you to mention it to me?”
    “They missed.”
    “No, they didn’t.”
    He dabbed at the dried blood again, his gaze still on his reflection in the mirror. “I’ve obviously stirred someone up. The problem is, I haven’t the slightest notion whom. The only vaguely possible suspects I’ve found so far are a hussar captain who’s been showing an unwelcome interest in Preston’s daughter—unwelcome to Preston, that is—and a banker who publicly quarreled with Preston the night he died. But the banker is by all reports out of town, and I haven’t even tracked down the captain yet.”
    “Someone must see you as a threat,” said Hero, her voice oddly tight. “They tried to kill you.”
    “It could have been meant as a warning.” The babe stirred and let out a soft cry, and Sebastian set aside the bloodstained cloth and turned to reach for the child. “Here; let me have him for a while.”
    She hesitated, and he saw something flare in her eyes, something that was there and then gone, as if quickly hidden away from him. They’d grown so much closer in the months since their marriage, yet he knew she still kept many of her thoughts and feelings from him.
    “What?” he said.
    “Just . . . be careful, Sebastian.
I don’t understand what’s happening. But whatever it is, it’s ugly. Very ugly.”
    “My dear Lady Devlin,” he said teasingly as he eased the now squalling infant from her grasp. “Are you worried?”
    He expected her to answer with one of her typically wry, flippant responses.
    Instead, she reached up to touch her fingertips to the flesh beside the still raw wound on his forehead and said, “Yes.”

Chapter 13
    T he royal residence of Windsor Castle lay in the provincial town of Windsor, some twenty miles to the west of London on the southern bank of the river Thames. Jarvis had dispatched one of his men that morning with a message warning the Dean to prepare for a visit to the royal vault. But by the time he arrived, the sun had long since slipped below the western walls of the castle.
    The Honorable and Right Reverend Edward Legge, who served in the prestigious position of Dean of St. George’s Chapel, waited in the lower court to meet him, the ancient medieval battlements looming dark against a black sky. A ferociously ambitious cleric who’d long ago perfected the art of flattering and pleasing those in power, Legge was ponderous and fleshy, with startlingly dark, heavy brows and a weak chin. Now his jowly face showed slick with a nervous sweat despite the cold wind that whipped at his cassock and sent dried leaves scuttling across the castle’s wide, sloping lawns. At his side stood the chapel’s virger, Rowan Toop, with a horn lantern gripped tightly in one hand. The Dean might be in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the chapel, but it was the virger who oversaw the care and maintenance of the venerable old buildings and supervised the burial of the dead.
    “My lord,” said the Dean, both men bowing low as a castle guard leapt forward to open the carriage door. “We are truly honored to—”
    Jarvis stepped down with an agility surprising for one of his size and cut off the Dean with a curt, “I trust all is ready?”
    “Yes, my lord. If I might be so bold as to offer your lordship a nice hot cup of tea? Or perhaps a glass of wine before we—”
    “No.”
    The Dean bowed again, his habitual bland smile still firmly in place as he held out a hand toward the chapel’s ornate western front. “If you’ll come this