Authors: C.S. Harris
What Angels Fear (6 page)
He hauled on the reins, wrenching the bays sideways. The horses plunged, snorting, hooves striking sparks from the edge of the footpath. The joints of the old landau squealed. Wood snapped. The coach body crashed to the pavement, the box skewing sideways.
“
Devlin
,” screamed Sir Henry, struggling to push open the hackney’s door.
“Shit,” whispered Sebastian. Rain sluiced down his face; at some point, he realized, he’d lost his hat. Sliding off the box, he skidded on the wet paving blocks and dodged the young lady’s groom as the man scrambled off his own mount to grab the bridle of his mistress’s squealing, wide-eyed black.
Well mannered and patient, the groom’s mount stood with its big-boned, gray head down, its reins trailing loose in the swirling gutter. Snatching up the wet leather, Sebastian vaulted into the saddle.
“Hey! You there! Stop!” The white-faced groom swung around, his hands full with his mistress’s still-skittish hack. “
Stop! Horse thief
!”
Sebastian kneed the gray into a flat-out gallop that carried them down the rain darkened street, toward Covent Garden and the shadowy underworld of St. Giles beyond.
C
harles, Lord Jarvis, couldn’t remember precisely when he’d become aware of the level of incredible stupidity that characterized the vast majority of his fellow beings. He supposed the realization must have come upon him gradually over the years as he observed the behavior and thought processes of the housemaids and grooms, solicitors and physicians and country squires who populated his childhood world. But Jarvis knew exactly when he’d understood the strength of his own intellect, and the power it gave him.
He’d been ten years old at the time and suffering under one of that long line of tutors his mother had insisted on hiring to teach her dead husband’s only son and heir, rather than expose his fragile health (and her own position as the heir’s mother) to the potentially deadly rigors of Eton. Mr. Hammer, this particular vicar had been called, and he’d considered himself quite a scholar. Only vulgar necessity had induced Mr. Hammer to accept such an inferior position as tutor to a young boy, and he lost no opportunity to impress upon his pupil the magnitude of Jarvis’s relative ignorance and mental incompetence. And then one day he set for Jarvis what was intended to be an impossible task: a mathematical problem that had taken Hammer himself, as an undergraduate at Oxford, a month to decipher.
Jarvis completed the assignment in two hours.
Jarvis’s success so enraged his tutor that the man soon found an excuse to punish the boy with a severe beating. But it had been worth it, because in that moment of sweet triumph, Jarvis had understood. He’d understood that most men, even those who were gently born and well educated, had minds that limped and plodded and tied themselves into knots. And that his own ability to think clearly and quickly, to analyze and discern patterns, and to devise intricate strategies and solutions was not only rare. It was also, potentially, a very powerful tool.
At first he had expected things in London to be different. But it hadn’t taken Jarvis long to learn that essentially the same degrees of imbecility and incompetence existed at the highest echelons of society and government as were to be found, say, at a meeting of the hounds in Middlesex.
The man Jarvis was dealing with now, Lord Frederick Fairchild, was typical. He was a Duke’s son, Lord Frederick, but only a younger son, which meant he’d had to make his own way in life. He’d succeeded fairly well by his society’s standards, although a stubborn adherence to Whiggish principles had limited his access to power under the old King George III. Now, with the Prince of Wales about to be named Regent, Lord Frederick had expectations that his years of loyal adherence to Prinny were finally to be rewarded. He’d come here, to the chambers the Prince kept set aside for Jarvis’s use at Carlton House, in a rather transparent attempt to ferret out which position, exactly, would be his. That he had aspirations of perhaps even being named Prime Minister was an open secret known to everyone in London.
“The representatives from the Lords and Commons are to have a conference next Tuesday,” Lord Frederick was saying, his gentle gray eyes wide and watchful. “If a compromise on the wording can be reached, I see no reason the swearing in of the Prince as Regent should not take place on the sixth.” He paused and looked at Jarvis expectantly.
Despite his two-score-and-ten years, he was still considered a handsome man, Lord Frederick: tall and broad shouldered, with a trim waist and an enviably thick, wavy mass of silver hair. A widower, he was quite a favorite with the ladies. He could always be counted on to squire an unescorted matron down to supper, or to solicitously turn the pages of her music when she played. His amiability and social skills kept him amply supplied with invitations to country house parties and the usual whirls of the London Season. But Lord Frederick had expensive habits—dangerously expensive habits, which added a hint of urgency to his voice as he cleared his throat and asked with studied casualness, “Has the Prince made any decisions yet on the disposition of offices for the new government he’ll be forming?”
The question was delicately phrased. Everyone knew the Prince of Wales made few decisions on his own outside such pressing matters as choosing the color of the new silk hangings for his drawing rooms, or selecting an architect to undertake his latest renovation project. From his position near the window, Jarvis simply smiled. “No. Not yet.”
A spasm of disappointment, quickly veiled, passed over Lord Frederick’s features. The man was atypically nervous today. He even jumped when one of Jarvis’s secretaries knocked softly at the door and announced, “A Sir Henry Lovejoy to see you, my lord. He says it’s important.”
“Show him in,” said Jarvis, very much aware of Lord Frederick’s presence. It would be interesting to see if the man had heard of Rachel York’s death. Interesting, indeed. “Well, what is it?” Jarvis asked, his voice gravelly with a deliberate show of impatience when the magistrate appeared.
Sir Henry cast an inquiring glance toward Lord Frederick and hesitated.
“You may speak frankly,” said Jarvis, waving a vague hand in Lord Frederick’s direction. “I assume this is about Lord Devlin?”
“Yes, my lord.” The magistrate paused again, and something about his manner told Jarvis he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear. “He’s escaped.”
Jarvis never allowed himself the luxury of losing his temper, although he did at times express anger for effect, to inspire fear and to spur men on in their determination to please him. Now he allowed several calculated heartbeats to pass, then said, his tone icy with a nice mingling of incredulity and righteous indignation, “Escaped, Sir Henry? Did you say
escaped
?”
“Yes, my lord. He stabbed one of my constables and stole a hackney carriage, which he then—”
Jarvis pressed the thumb and index finger of one hand to the bridge of his nose and momentarily closed his eyes. “Spare me the details.” Jarvis sighed, and let his hand fall. “I trust you’ve discovered Devlin’s destination?”
A faint flush colored the little man’s cheeks. There was nothing like a subtle hint of incompetence to make a man feel, well, incompetent. “Not yet, my lord.”
From his seat near the fireplace, Lord Frederick rose to stare at them. “Do I understand you to say you’ve attempted to arrest the son of the Earl of Hendon? On what charges?”
“Murder,” said Jarvis blandly.
“Murder? Good God. But . . . I thought Talbot’s wound more embarrassing than life threatening. Has he indeed died?”
It was Sir Henry who answered, with another of those bobbing little bows he affected. “Lord Devlin’s most recent affair of honor was not, as I understand it, fatal. However, he has been implicated in the death of a young woman whose body was discovered this morning in St. Matthew of the Fields, near the Abbey. An actress by the name of Rachel York.”
Jarvis watched with interest as Lord Frederick’s jaw went slack. The man was usually better at maintaining his composure. “You’ve arrested
Viscount Devlin
for Rachel’s murder?”
Sir Henry blinked. “You knew her, my lord?”
“I wouldn’t say I
knew
her, exactly. I mean, I’ve
seen
her, of course, at Covent Garden. And I’d heard she’d been killed, of course. But I had no idea that
Devlin
. . . ” Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, Lord Frederick pressed the delicate linen to his lips. “Excuse me,” he said, and hurried from the room.
A faint frown deepening a line between his eyes, Sir Henry’s gaze followed Lord Frederick’s retreating figure.
“I want every available man put on Devlin’s capture,” Jarvis said, recalling the magistrate’s attention.
Sir Henry bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“You’ve sent to have the ports watched, of course?”
Another bow. “Yes, my lord. Although the Viscount wouldn’t exactly be welcome on the Continent these days.”
“There’s always America.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The little man was beginning to bore him. Jarvis reached for his snuffbox. “I trust I’ll receive a more satisfactory report on this matter in the morning.”
“Let us hope, my lord,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, and bowed himself out.
Yet after he left, Jarvis stood for a time at the rain-splattered window, his snuffbox held forgotten in his hand as he stared out at the darkness. The fog had finally cleared so that from here he could see the Mall, its wet pavement shining in the flickering golden light thrown by the streetlamps and the lanterns of the passing carriages.
He hadn’t cared, before, whether Devlin was responsible for the death of that actress or not. He still didn’t care. All that mattered was that official inquiries into Rachel York’s murder be ended as quickly as possible and that the young Viscount’s notoriety be prevented from damaging the government at such a critical juncture. If necessary, the Viscount’s father, the Earl of Hendon, could be eased out of the government.
In fact, the more he considered it, the more Jarvis thought that some good might come of this tangle after all. While his staunch Tory sentiments made Hendon more palatable to Jarvis than a man of, say, Fairchild’s stripe, the fact remained that Hendon had never been one of Jarvis’s supporters. The old fool actually believed that politics could be conducted by the same rules of sportsmanship and fair play as a cricket match on the fields of Eton. If Jarvis could finally get rid of Hendon, managing the Prince would be that much easier.
Besides, Devlin’s precipitous flight from justice and his presumably fatal attack upon an officer of the law certainly suggested an unexpected degree of guilt. The young man needed to be caught soon. Or killed. Jarvis flicked open his snuffbox, lifted a pinch to one nostril, and inhaled deeply. Yes, he rather thought it would be better if Devlin were killed.
T
he sounds of pursuit had long since faded into the distance.
Sebastian slowed the gray to a walk. Darkness was falling fast, the rain easing to a fine mist as the wind rose. Turning up the collar of his greatcoat against the cold and the wet, Sebastian had time to regret the loss of his hat and to consider his future course of action.
Even here, away from the more fashionable neighborhoods of Mayfair, heads swiveled to follow his passing, and fingers pointed. Sebastian was acutely aware of his missing neckcloth, his mud-splattered boots, the bloodstains on his greatcoat and gloves. His immediate need, he decided, was to remove himself to an area in which his disheveled appearance would occasion less remark. In the back alleys and byways of someplace like Covent Garden or St. Giles, no one would look twice at a hatless man with a torn greatcoat and blood on his gloves.
Beneath the folds of his greatcoat Sebastian felt the weight of his pocketbook and knew a moment of thankfulness for the forethought that had led him to slip the purse into his pocket before leaving the house. He would find an inn, he decided; someplace humble, but warm and dry. And then he would set about contacting those who could—
Sebastian’s head came up, his attention caught by a faint sound, barely discernable above the racket of wooden wheels rattling over ruts and the interminable patter of the rain.
He was in a poorer quarter now, a neighborhood of narrow streets with aging houses and small shops, their dirty windows protected by iron grates. There were no fine carriages here, only heavy lumbering wagons and dogcarts winding their way through a growing throng of sturdy working folk, coopers and ferriers, laundresses and piemen, their voices raised in a singsong chorus of
Pies. Rare hot pies.
But he could hear it now, quite plainly: the steady thunder of hooves coming up fast and a boy’s voice, shouting, “If’n yer lookin’ for that rum cove on a gray, he went that way!”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Sebastian, and urged his purloined mount forward into the night.
