After a moment, he looked away. “I’ve arranged for Sean to go to a private house just outside London, to be treated by a doctor who specializes in disorders of the mind. If that doesn’t work…” His tone turned bleak. “I will have to commit him to Bedlam.”
The following morning Kell went to fetch his brother and escort him to his new dwelling in the country.
Hearing the plans for his incarceration, Sean grew white about the mouth and clenched his fists in cold fury, his expression clearly seething. But all he said was one word.
“Traitor.”
Two nights later, however, Kell realized he had left the decision too late. He was at his club, playing host to a sizable crowd in the hazard room, when Timmons appeared and murmured in his ear.
“Mr. Lasseter…my lord…there is something you should see.”
“My brother?” Kell asked, his heart giving a ragged skip. His first thought was that Sean had somehow fled the new doctor’s care and come here to create worse trouble than his last drunken episode.
“No, not Mr. Sean.”
The majordomo looked curiously pale, but Kell tamped down his alarm and followed the servant out to the corridor. Timmons held a handkerchief to his mouth and seemed to have trouble speaking.
“Well, what’s amiss?” Kell demanded. “Spit it out, man.”
“There is a man…in the rear alley. I fear…he is…dead.”
“Dead?” Kell’s stomach lurched. “Not my brother?”
“No…It appears to be your lady’s groom, O’Malley.”
Kell stopped breathing. Swiftly he made his way out to the alley behind the club. Several of his servants had gathered around a prone figure, and in the lantern light he could see the dead man was indeed Michael O’Malley. He was coatless, and a dark stain of blood covered his chest.
Kell knelt down. Sweet Christ, had Sean done this? He clenched his jaw in rigid denial, and yet who else would have committed such an atrocity-or even wished the groom ill? Sean had vowed revenge on the Irishman for striking him two nights ago and for being the cause of his impressment last summer.
There was no blood on the ground, Kell saw. The body evidently had been carried here to the alley. He bent forward, probing for wounds. He wouldn’t put it past his brother to have deliberately picked a fight with Raven’s groom-
Kell suddenly froze when his fingers found the tiny hole beneath the dead man’s breast. O’Malley had been stabbed in the ribs with a blade of some kind. Very much like his uncle William’s mortal wound.
Kell suddenly felt sick, dazed, while his throat burned.
“Sir?” Someone coughed deferentially.
He forced himself to look up while he tried to take in the enormity of what had happened.
“What shall we do with the body?”
He found it hard to speak. “Send…for the coffin-maker… And notify the vicar. We will give him a decent burial.” He would have to tell Raven-
Just them Emma Walsh appeared at his shoulder. “Kell,” she began, but her quiet murmur turned to a gasp. “Oh, my God…”
Numbly Kell rose to his feet, pushing Emma back and shielding her shocked gaze from the dead man.
“Is that…?”
“O’Malley,” he returned grimly as he escorted her back inside. “What is it you wanted?”
She visibly shuddered and seemed to recollect what had brought her out to the alley. “Raven…she is here…and she seems distressed. I asked her to wait upstairs in your rooms.”
“I’ll go to her” was all he could manage to say.
Raven was pacing the floor of his study when he entered, her expression one of anxiety as she turned to him. “Kell, I am worried about O’Malley. He hasn’t come home-in fact, I haven’t seen him since our morning ride. This is so unlike him to disappear without a word.”
“Raven…I’m sorry,” he said, taking her by the shoulders.