Restless and still technically a fugitive from justice for the attack on Constable Simplot, Sebastian pushed through the rabble massing in the streets. He was crossing Piccadilly when Sir Henry Lovejoy haled him from the open window of a passing hackney. “If I might have a word, my lord?”
Nodding, Sebastian waited while the little magistrate paid off the jarvey. Together, they entered the park and turned toward the lagoon to walk along in silence until the crowds thinned around them.
Lovejoy said, “I thought you should know that Constable Simplot regained consciousness last night. His fever has broken and the doctors say the prognosis for his recovery is quite promising.”
“The man must have the constitution of an ox.”
An unexpected smile played about the magistrate’s thin lips. “That is roughly the opinion of his doctors.” The smile faded. “He’s told us what happened that afternoon, on Brook Street. Needless to say, Chief Constable Maitland has been dismissed from his duties.”
Sebastian nodded. He supposed he should feel relieved that the young constable had survived to give witness to the truth. Perhaps in time, Sebastian thought, he would feel relief. But at the moment he simply felt numb, as if it had all happened long ago in someone else’s lifetime.
“I was most impressed,” Sir Henry was saying, “by the way you went about the task of discovering the true identity of the killer. Your investigative abilities are quite remarkable, my lord. If you weren’t a nobleman, you’d make a fine detective.”
Sebastian laughed.
“Some cases, of course, are more difficult for our office to deal with than others,” said Lovejoy. “Particularly those cases involving the royal family or members of the nobility.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and squinted off into the distance. “I was wondering . . . given your talents and abilities, if you might be interested in occasionally cooperating with our office on such exceptional cases? On a purely unofficial basis, of course.”
“No,” said Sebastian baldly.
Lovejoy nodded, his chin held tight against his chest. “Yes, of course. I understand. It’s a passion not many feel, that driving need to see justice done in this world. To stand on the side of the weak and disadvantaged against the influential and powerful, and fight to right a terrible wrong. It’s such a pervasive, grinding thing, injustice. And unfortunately all too common. I suppose the only way most people can tolerate it is by simply shrugging their shoulders and ignoring it, and going on living their own lives. Unless, of course, the injustice falls on them, or those they love.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” said Sebastian. “But you are wrong about me. What I did was motivated by self-interest. Nothing more.”
“Of course.” They had reached the lagoon now. Lovejoy paused, his eyes narrowing as he stared out over the wind-ruffled water. “I looked into the records of your service in Portugal,” he said after a moment. “I know why you sold out.”
Beside them, a drake lifted off the water. Sebastian narrowed his eyes, watching it rise up, its outstretched wings beating against the blue winter sky. “You read too much into that.”
“Do I?”
Sebastian swung his head to look at the man beside him. “I killed him. You know that, don’t you?” They both understood it was Wilcox of whom they now spoke.
“You let him die. There is a difference. We are taught that to take another life is wrong, yet the state does it, and calls it justice. Soldiers on the battlefield kill, and are named heroes.” The little magistrate turned up his collar against the cold wind blowing off the sunlit waters. “What you did was wrong. But it’s a sin we both share, and a choice that I, for one, am glad you made.”
In the distance, a cannon boomed, and another. Then they heard a roar as tens of thousands of voices raised together in a cheer.
“So,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. “The Regency begins.”
“No, wait!” George, Prince of Wales and soon to be Prince Regent, sucked in a desperate gasp of air and flung out one fat, beringed hand to grasp the red lacquered back of a nearby chair. “I can’t go out there yet. I can’t breathe.
Charles, Lord Jarvis, wrenched the stopper from a vial of smelling salts and waved the pungent concoction back and forth beneath his prince’s pale nostrils. “Here, here, Your Royal Highness. You’ll be fine. An understandable attack of nerves, that’s all,” he said soothingly, then whispered in an urgent undertone to one of the Prince’s gentlemen, “Loosen his corset.”
From his position near the door, the Earl of Hendon slipped a watch from his waistcoat pocket and frowned. The Privy Council had already been kept waiting for an hour. But then, everyone at Court was accustomed to waiting for the Prince. There was no reason to expect his installation as Regent to be any different.
The Prince was breathing better now, but Jarvis shook his head at the Earl of Hendon and pressed a glass of wine into the Prince’s trembling hands.
It hadn’t been an easy thing, shepherding the Prince toward his new position as Regent while simultaneously maneuvering to keep the Whigs out of government. That girl’s murder coupled with the apparent involvement of Hendon’s son had come perilously close to scuttling the entire scheme. But in the end all had come off as planned. The Whigs had been discredited, Perceval and the Tories would remain in power, and the war would continue until the French were finally, irrevocably crushed. Soon, there would be no one left in all the world to challenge British supremacy. Unconquerable and all-powerful, Britannia would take her divinely ordained position as the New and Final Rome. It was to be the happy fate of Jarvis’s own generation of Englishmen to witness the final inauguration of an empire that would last a thousand years and more into the future.
“Jarvis?” The Prince’s voice rose in a peevish whine. “Where is Jarvis?
“Here,” said Jarvis, easing the wineglass from his prince’s plump fingers. “Shall we go, Your Highness? England and your destiny await you.”
Author’s Note
Bithil Syndrome is marked by astonishingly acute eyesight and hearing, and an abnormal sensitivity to light that allows those with this genetic variation to see clearly in the dark. Other characteristics of the syndrome include extraordinarily quick reflexes, a misshapen vertebra in the lower back, and yellow eyes, the eye color being recessive to both blue and brown.
Although rare, Bithil Syndrome is nevertheless quite ancient, having been discovered in at least one individual known to have died in Wales some ten thousand years ago. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, immigrant Welsh families carried this mutation to North America, where it can be found today, particularly in the southeastern United States amongst families of mixed Cherokee and Welsh descent.
