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was the bastard child of a Ludlow barmaid, but the resemblance between them was as undeniable as it was inexplicable.

Chapter11
    S
ebastian walked out of the Black Devil to find a woman waiting for him in a fashionable high-perch phaeton drawn by a dainty white mare. She had her famous auburn-shot hair tucked up beneath a shako-style hat, and a veil hid most of her face. But he would have recognized Kat Boleyn anywhere.
    He paused for a moment, aware of an unpleasant tightening in his chest. Then he stepped up to the kerb. “How did you know where to find me?” he asked.
    Rather than answer, she turned to the liveried groom at her side. “Wait for me here, Patrick.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said, yielding his place to Sebastian.
    “Yates told me you’d been to see him this morning,” she said as Sebastian vaulted up into the high seat beside her. “I wanted to thank you for offering to help.”
    “For God’s sake, Kat. As if I wouldn’t? Why the bloody hell didn’t you come to me instead of Hendon?”
    She gave her horses the office to start, her gaze on the lane ahead. “You know why.”
    “If you’re worried about Hero, I think you underestimate her.”
    She remained silent, her attention all for the task of guiding the mare between a brewer’s wagon and a coal cart.
    He said, “You didn’t tell me how you knew where to find me.”
    “It was more in the order of a good guess. Yates says Knox was involved in smuggling goods into the country for Eisler. Only, he doesn’t know what.”
    Sebastian shifted his grip on the oilcloth bundle in his hands. “According to Knox, it was books. Strange old manuscripts written mainly in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.”
    She threw him a quick, incredulous glance. “Old books? But . . . why?”
    “He seems to have been something of a collector, our Mr. Eisler.”
    “The man was a bastard.”
    “That too.”
    She swung sharply around the corner. “Does Knox know anything about Eisler’s death?”
    “He says he doesn’t.”
    “But you don’t believe him?”
    “He’s not exactly a pillar of rectitude and responsibility.”
    “True.”
    Sebastian let his gaze travel over her exquisite, familiar features. He had fallen in love with her when she was sixteen and he barely twenty-one. So long ago now, long before Hendon’s machinations had driven them apart not once, but twice. Before Sebastian joined the army and saw death, destruction, and savage cruelty on a scale that had come close to expunging his humanity and withering his soul. Before Kat began feeding information to the French in an effort to aid Ireland, the land of her birth. Before she’d married Russell Yates in a desperate maneuver to save herself from the vindictive wrath of Charles, Lord Jarvis, who’d promised her torture and an ugly death.
    Sebastian knew her marriage to Yates had never been—could never be—more than one of convenience. Yates’s association with the most beautiful, most desirable woman of the London stage was for him a tactic to quiet the whispers about his sexuality, while Kat, in exchange, gained the protection of whatever damaging information Yates held against Jarvis. It was a marriage devoid of both sexual attraction and romantic love. But Sebastian knew that over the past year the two had nevertheless become friends—good friends. And Kat had always been fiercely loyal to her friends.
    Yet Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more to her concern, a subtle nuance that eluded him.
    He said, “You told me once that Yates has evidence against Jarvis—evidence of something that would ruin him if it became known.”
    “Yes.”
    “It should be in Jarvis’s best interest to see that no harm comes to Yates. If anyone has the power to get the charges against him dropped, it’s Jarvis. So why hasn’t he done it?”
    She drew in a deep, troubled breath, a subtle betrayal that was unusual for her.
    “What?” he asked, watching her.
    “Jarvis