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visited Yates in his cell last night. Yates says he came to reassure him that he was in no danger.”
    “But you don’t believe him?”
    She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line as she turned her horse back onto Bishopsgate. “Yates used to think the evidence he has against Jarvis could protect us both. Only, I’m not so sure.”
    Sebastian knew a sense of profound disquiet. If given a choice between saving Kat and saving himself, he had little doubt which Yates would choose.
    But all he said was, “How well did you know Eisler?”
    “I didn’t. But I’ve been asking around. Word on the street has it he was killed by a Parisian named Jacques Collot. Collot likes to claim he fled France during the Revolution because his monarchist principles were revolted by the excesses of republican and democratic fervor. But from what I’m hearing, the truth is probably considerably less flattering.”
    Sebastian frowned. “What was his connection to Eisler?”
    “Let’s just say Eisler wasn’t exactly careful about the origins of the jewels he bought. He also had a tendency to cheat the people he did business with.”
    “You think he cheated Collot?”
    She drew up outside the Black Devil again, where her groom was rushing to finish eating a paper-wrapped sausage he’d bought from a nearby cart. “They say Collot was heard raging about Eisler in a tavern just two nights ago—swore next time he saw the man he was going to kill him.”
    “Drunken talk is cheap.”
    “True. But it’s a place to start, isn’t it?”
    “It is, yes. Do you know where I can find this man?”
    She shook her head. “Sorry.”
    He dropped lightly to the paving, then paused with one hand on the seat’s high railing. He had the unsettling sense that there were unseen but powerful forces at work behind all this. Powerful and dangerous. He glanced over at her groom. “Is your man armed?”
    She pressed her lips into a thin, tight line and shook her head. “I refuse to allow Jarvis to frighten me.”
    “Jarvis frightens me, Kat. Please, just . . . be careful.”

    Returning to Brook Street, Sebastian sent for his valet and asked without preamble, “Ever hear of a somewhat unsavory Frenchman named Jacques Collot?”
    Most gentlemen’s gentlemen would be outraged by their employer’s suggestion that they consorted with or were in any way familiar with the members of London’s vast criminal class. But Jules Calhoun was not your ordinary gentleman’s gentleman. Small and lithe, with a boyish shock of flaxen hair and a roguish smile, he was a genius at repairing the ravages the pursuit of murderers could at times inflict on Sebastian’s wardrobe. But he also possessed certain other skills useful to a man with Sebastian’s interests—skills that had their origins in the fact that he began life in one of the worst flash houses in London.
    “I have heard of him, my lord,” said Calhoun. “I believe he arrived in London some ten or fifteen years ago. But I can’t say I know much about him.”
    “Know where he lives?”
    “No. But I can find out.”

    Several hours later, Sebastian was seated at the desk in his library with Knox’s manuscript open before him when Hero came in.
    She still wore her emerald green carriage dress, although the plume in her jaunty hat was now sadly drooping, for it had come on to rain. “Ah, there you are,” she said, taking off her hat to frown down at the bedraggled feather.
    “So, did your crossing sweep talk to you?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
    “He did. And you would not
believe
some of the things he told me.” She came to peer over his shoulder at the manuscript. “I didn’t know you read Hebrew.”
    “I don’t. I’m looking at the pictures. They’re . . . strange.”
    She let her gaze run over the page, her eyes widening slightly at the illustration of what looked like a spinning wheel surrounded by odd symbols. “Where did this come from?”
    “I’m told it