Regent, are you?”
“Oh, the Prince of Wales will be made Regent, make no mistake about that. It’s only a question now of form, and timing. But he’ll find he runs up against stiff opposition if he attempts to circumvent the Tories and resurrect the Ministry of All Talents. Or something worse.”
“Not so stiff as you might wish, obviously, if you’re trying to recruit me as a candidate.”
The Earl lowered his gaze to his own glass, turning it slowly in his palm so that the cut facets reflected the light from the lamps that burned even now, at midday, against the foggy gloom. “One might consider it a duty, in such perilous times as these, to join right-thinking men in defense of national interest, property, and privilege.”
“I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you that if I were in Parliament, I might actually choose to challenge the sacred traditions of property and privilege, and champion instead the heresies of Jacobinism, atheism, and democracy?”
Lord Hendon swallowed the remainder of his brandy in one long gulp and set the glass aside. “Even you wouldn’t be such a fool.” Without bothering to ring for the footman, he strode to the door, only pausing with his hand on the knob to glance back and say, “Think about it.”
Sebastian stood at the window, one hand holding aside the heavy green velvet as he watched his father’s powerful, familiar figure disappear into the swirling fog. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or an effect of the mists, but his father suddenly looked older and more tired than Sebastian remembered him being. And he knew a twist of regret, an urge to reach out and stop his father, to somehow make things right between them. Except that things could never really be right between them because Sebastian could never be what his father wanted him to be, and they both knew it.
He was reminded again of that long-ago, laughter-filled morning on the slopes above the cove. Alistair St. Cyr hadn’t been there that summer. Even in those days, the Earl had spent most of his time in London. But he’d come home the next day, his face tight with grief, to hold the pale, lifeless body of his eldest son and heir clutched in his arms.
With Richard dead, the title of Viscount Devlin, like the position of heir apparent, had passed to the second son, Cecil. Only Cecil had died, too, just four years later. Then all of Alistair St. Cyr’s hopes, all his ambitions and dreams had fallen on the boy who’d never been meant to be the heir, the youngest and least like his father of them all.
With a shrug, Sebastian let the curtain drop and turned toward the stairs.
He’d made it almost to his bedroom when his majordomo came hurrying down the hall. “My lord, I must speak with you. We’ve had the constables here this morn—”
“Not now, Morey.”
“But my lord—”
“Later,” said Sebastian, and firmly shut the door.
Chapter 5
The great man was at his desk, writing, when Lovejoy was ushered into his presence. He acknowledged Lovejoy’s existence with a curt motion of one plump, ringed hand, but he did not glance up or even invite Henry to sit. Henry hesitated just inside the threshold, then went to stand before the hearth. The fire was a small one, the room cavernously large and frigid. Henry held his numb hands out to the flames. From somewhere in the distance came the rhythmic rat-a-tat of a hammer and the clanging of what might be scaffolding. The Prince of Wales was always renovating, whether here at Carlton House or at his Pavilion in Brighton.
“Well?” said Jarvis at last, laying aside his pen and shifting in his chair so that he might regard his visitor. “What have you to report about this sorry business?”
Retracting his cold hands and turning, Lovejoy executed a neat bow, then launched into a precise description of the crime scene, the victim, and the evidence they’d collected so far.
“Yes, yes,” said Jarvis, thrusting up from his chair with an impatient gesture that cut Henry short. “I’ve heard all this from your constable. It’s obvious Lord Devlin must be arrested immediately. Indeed, I can’t conceive why a warrant hasn’t been issued already.”
Lovejoy watched his lordship fumble in his pocket for a delicate ivory snuffbox. He was an unusually large man, standing well over six feet in height and weighing some twenty to twenty-five stone. In his youth, he had been handsome. Beneath the ravages of indulgence and dissipation and the passing of the years, traces of those good looks could still be seen, in the fiercely intelligent gray eyes, the strong, aquiline thrust of the nose, the sensual curve of the mouth.
Lovejoy cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, my lord, I am not convinced the evidence is sufficient to justify such an action at this time.”
Jarvis’s head came up, his eyes narrowing, his fleshy face deepening in hue as he fixed Lovejoy with a hard stare. “
Lovejoy drew a steadying breath. “I admit the evidence implicating the Viscount appears on the surface quite damning, my lord. But we really know very little as yet about this woman. We don’t even have a clear idea as to what the killer’s motive might have been.”
Deftly flicking open his snuffbox with one fat finger, Lord Jarvis lifted a pinch to his nostrils, and sniffed. “She was raped, was she not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“So there’s your motive.”
“Perhaps, my lord. Although the violence of the attack suggests a level of anger, of instability even, which goes beyond simple sexual hunger.”
Jarvis closed the box with a snap and sighed. “Unfortunately, such outbursts of violence are not unknown amongst young gentlemen who have served King and country in war. As I understand it, Devlin has killed on at least two other occasions since his return from the Continent.”
“Affairs of honor, my lord. And his opponents were wounded. Not killed.”
“Nevertheless, the tendency is obviously there.”
His lordship walked away to stand for a moment at a window overlooking the terrace below, his hands clasped behind his back, his profile carefully composed, as if in deep thought. It was a moment before he spoke. “You’re a sophisticated man, Sir Henry. Surely I’ve no need to explain to you what it means, to have the son of a prominent peer—a member of the government, for God’s sake—implicated in such a crime. If we are seen to hesitate”—he swept one well-tailored arm in an expansive gesture toward the streets—“if the crowds out there believe that being born to a position of privilege is enough to allow an Englishman to get away with rape and murder, with sacrilege—” Jarvis broke off, his arm falling back to his side, his voice dropping to a deep, solemn hush. “I was in Paris, you know, in 1789. I’ll never forget it. The sight of blood running in the gutters. Of men’s severed heads, stuck on pikes. Of gentlewomen snatched from their carriages and torn limb from limb by the howling mobs.” He paused, his gaze sharpening suddenly on Lovejoy’s face. “Is that what you want to see here, in London?”
“No. Of course not, my lord,” Lovejoy said hastily. He knew he was being manipulated, knew there were undercurrents to all this that he, a simple magistrate, could never hope to understand. He knew it, yet that didn’t stop the chill that touched his soul, the sick dread that clutched at his vitals. It was every Englishman’s worst fear, that the endless, rampant, mindless carnage of the French Revolution might someday spread across the Channel and destroy everything he held most dear.
“If Lord Devlin is indeed innocent of this terrible crime,” Jarvis was saying, “he will in due course be exonerated and freed. The important thing is to be seen acting now. These are perilous times in which we live, sir.
