What Angels Fear

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.

Chapter 9

The 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.

He abandoned the gray in a warm stall on the edges of St. Giles. It was a notorious district, St. Giles, into which pursuing constables had been known simply to disappear forever. London’s authorities avoided it.

The Black Hart Inn lay at the end of a mean little lane known as Pudding Row, in an area of crooked streets and rickety old medieval buildings that seemed to lean against one another for support, their upper floors jutting out over unpaved passages running foul with open gutters. A low, half-timbered relic, the inn had leaded front windows through which only a faint glow of light spilled out into the night. Sebastian paused in the shadow of the doorway,