What Angels Fear

soon as you’ve finished here.”

The phrasing was deliberately delicate and Lovejoy knew it, for this was a summons no magistrate could refuse. All the Public Offices, whether at Bow Street or Queen Square, Lambeth Street or Hatten Garden, had standing orders to report to Lord Jarvis immediately if it appeared a crime might involve some sensitive person, such as the mistress of a royal duke or the brother of a peer of the realm. Or the only son and heir of a powerful cabinet minister.

Lovejoy sighed. He had never exactly understood the precise nature of Lord Jarvis’s influence. In addition to a mammoth townhouse on Berkeley Square, the man kept offices in both St. James’s Palace and Carlton House, although he held no government portfolio. And while it was true that he was tied by blood to the royal family, the relationship was that of cousin only. It had often seemed to Lovejoy that Jarvis’s position could best be described by that vague, medieval phrase, the power behind the throne, although how Jarvis had acquired that power and how he had maintained it through the course of King George’s long descent into madness, Lovejoy could never understand. He only knew that the Prince of Wales now depended on the man as much as the King ever had. And that when Jarvis summoned a magistrate, the magistrate went.

Lovejoy swung back to his constable. “You’ve already sent him word of this?”

“I thought he’d want to know right away. Devlin’s father being so close to the Prime Minister and all.”

Lovejoy blew out a long, tense breath that turned into a frosty mist in the cold air. “You do realize the delicacy of the situation?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lovejoy’s gaze narrowed as he studied the constable’s impassive face. Odd that it had never occurred to Lovejoy to wonder until now about Edward Maitland’s politics. But then it had never really mattered, until now. Lovejoy tried to tell himself it still didn’t matter, that their job began and ended with the need to investigate and solve this murder, and punish the malefactor. And yet . . .

And yet the Earl of Hendon, like Spencer Perceval and the other ministers in the King’s cabinet, was a Tory, whereas the Prince of Wales and the men with whom he surrounded himself were Whigs. At any time, for the son and heir of a prominent Tory to be accused of such a crime would have been explosive. For the accusation to come now, when the old King was about to be declared mad and the Prince made Regent, could have profoundly far- reaching implications. Not just for the composition of the government, but for the nature of the monarchy itself.

Chapter 4

The privileged inhabitants of fashionable London were just leaving their beds when Sebastian climbed the short flight of steps to his Brook Street home. Only the distant, fog-muffled rumble of traffic from New Bond Street and the squeals of children playing chasey in the charge of nursemaids in nearby Hanover Square disturbed the noonday silence.

There was a kind of sweet oblivion in exhaustion, a blessed numbness, and Sebastian felt it now. Morey, his majordomo, met him in the hall, an unusually anxious look drawing the man’s features together into a frown. “My lord—” he began.

Sebastian’s gaze fell on a familiar cane and top hat resting on the hall table. He was suddenly, intensely aware of his crumpled cravat and the blood-encrusted graze across the side of his forehead and the inevitable toll taken by all the brandy-tinged hours that had passed since last he’d slept. “I take it my father’s here?”

“Yes, my lord. The Earl awaits you in the library. But I believe it imperative that you first be made aware of an incident which occurred this morn—”

“Later,” said Sebastian, and crossed the hall to open the library door.

Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, sat in a leather armchair near the fire, a glass of Sebastian’s brandy cradled in the hand that rested on one knee. At his son’s entrance the Earl looked up, his jaw working back and forth as it had a tendency to do when his emotions were aroused. At sixty-five, he was still a powerful man, with a barrel chest and a thick shock of white hair above a heavily featured face. He had the most startling, deep blue eyes Sebastian had ever seen. For as long as he could remember, Sebastian had watched those brilliant eyes flare with an emotion he could never quite identify each time Hendon’s gaze came to rest upon his only surviving son. And for the past fifteen years or more, Sebastian had watched that blaze of emotion quickly disappear beneath a tide of pain and disappointment that was all too easy to read.

“So?” said the Earl now. “Did you kill him?”

“Talbot?” Sebastian swung off his caped driving coat and tossed it over one of the cane chairs by the bowed front window. His hat and gloves followed. “Unfortunately, no.”

“You’re damned cool about it.”

Sebastian walked to the side table and poured himself a glass of brandy. “You would wish me otherwise?”

The Earl’s jaw worked furiously back and forth. “What I wish is that you curb this propensity to try to put a period to the existence of your fellow men. This makes three meetings in the six months you’ve been back in England.”

“Actually, it’s been some ten months since I sold out.”

“Damn your impertinence.” Hendon surged to his feet. “The last one—what was his name?”

“Danford.”

“That’s right. Danford I could understand. There are some insults a gentleman can’t be expected to allow to pass unchallenged. But Talbot? My God. You were screwing the man’s wife. There’d have been hell to pay if you’d killed him, I can tell you that.”

Sebastian drained his brandy in one long pull and tried to swallow twenty-eight years’ worth of raw, conflicting emotions with it. He hadn’t, in point of fact, been screwing Melanie Talbot. But even if Sebastian had been inclined to explain himself, there would have been no point: the idea of simple friendship between a man and a woman was something Hendon could neither believe nor understand. Any more than he’d understand why Sebastian would care if a man such as Captain John Talbot should choose to beat his gentle young wife.

“The man wants killing,” Sebastian said simply.

“Why? So you can have his wife?”

Turning away, Sebastian went to splash himself another drink. “That was never my intention.”

“What you need is a wife of your own.”

Sebastian froze, then carefully lowered the brandy carafe. “So we’re back to that, are we?”

“If you’re going to insist upon continuing this dissolute lifestyle of yours, the least you can do is have the courtesy to ensure the succession before you drink yourself into a decline. Or go out some morning and get yourself shot.”

“You underestimate me.”

He turned to find his father studying the gash across Sebastian’s forehead through narrowed, troubled eyes. “This one was close.”

“I told you, the man wants killing.”

The Earl’s jaw hardened. “You’re eight-and-twenty. It’s past time you settled down.”

“To do what? Take over management of the estates?” Sebastian laughed at the spasm of alarm that crossed his father’s features, lifted the brandy in a mock toast and murmured, “Touche.”

“The seat for Upper Walford is empty.”

Sebastian choked on his drink. “You can’t be serious.” His father continued to stare at him. Sebastian lowered his glass. “Good God. You are serious.”

“Why not? It would give you something to do besides drinking and gaming and sleeping with other men’s wives. And we could use a man of your abilities in the Commons.”

Sebastian subjected his father to a long study. “Afraid Prinny means to bring in the Whigs if he’s made