The Prime Minister spun to face him. “You have infiltrated the movement?”
“Did you think I would sit idly by while masked ruffians hamper the industrial production of this country and gather at night on the moors to practice drills and maneuvers like a bunch of bloodthirsty French revolutionaries? We have more troops fighting the Luddites here in England than we have against Napoleon in Iberia. I understand that the Prince is reluctant to move against his own people, but the time has come to put a stop to this nonsense.”
“It’s not just in Yorkshire,” said Perceval. “There are also indications that some of the workers in Lancashire—”
Jarvis made a rough noise deep in his throat. “Execute a dozen of these Yorkshire lads and transport a few hundred to Botany Bay, and your Lancashire louts will think twice before they go smashing any more machines.”
The Prime Minister looked troubled. “Yes. I suppose so. Still, agents provocateurs . . .”
“It’s on my conscience, not yours,” said Jarvis drily. “And if you are worried it will distress the Prince, we simply won’t tell him.”
“Yes, that might be for the best.”
Jarvis turned back to the papers spread across his desk. “If there’s nothing else?”
“What? Oh, no. Good day, my lord,” said the Prime Minister, and bowed himself out.
Jarvis stood beside his desk, his thoughts drifting away from the Prime Minister and the Prince and the Luddites, to matters of a more personal nature. The descendant of an old and powerful family, Jarvis owned a large and prosperous estate, as well as a comfortable townhouse on Berkeley Square. But he generally avoided his own houses as much as possible, passing most of his time either in his clubs or in the chambers kept both here at Carlton House and in St. James’s Palace. The Berkeley Square house was overrun with females, and Jarvis had little patience for members of the fair sex, least of all his half-witted wife or his grasping harridan of a mother. Once, Jarvis had had a son, David. The boy had seemed a disappointment at the time, although Jarvis had since come to realize he might have been able to make something of David had he lived. Instead, Jarvis had been left with only his daughter, Hero. The mere thought of her now was enough to bring a sour burn to his chest.
If she’d been born a boy, then he would have been proud of her, proud of her powerful will and her undeniable intelligence. But he’d left her too much in the care of her half-mad mother, who had exercised no control over the girl whatsoever. As a result, she’d grown up with a collection of ideas that could only be described as radical. As for this latest start of hers . . . well, at least she’d had the sense to come to him first, rather than bolting straight to Bow Street. He could handle Sir William. All that remained was to tidy up the loose ends.
Jarvis was very good at tidying up loose ends.
Jarvis might have owed his introduction to Court to his distant kinship to George III. But it was his incomparable intellect combined with the formidable strength of his will and his cunning that had made him indispensable first to the King, then to the Regent. The position of prime minister could have been his in an instant, had he wanted it. He did not want it, being content to leave the nominal governance of the country to men such as Spencer Perceval and the Earl of Hendon. None understood better than Jarvis the limitations of power politics. He found it far more satisfying—and lucrative—to exercise power from the shadows. There was no one more powerful in all of England than Jarvis. But then, there was no one in England more fiercely devoted to his King and his country. For the sake of England and the dynasty that ruled her, Jarvis would do anything.
A scratching at the door brought his head around. A pale-faced clerk bowed and said, “Colonel Bryce Epson- Smith to see you, my lord.”
“Send him in.”
Hat in hand, the Colonel advanced halfway into the room and sketched a low bow. “You wished to see me, sir?”
The Colonel was a tall man. Not quite as tall as Jarvis, but superbly muscled, with dark hair and gray eyes. A former cavalry officer, Epson-Smith had now served Jarvis for more than three years. Of all Jarvis’s agents, he was the most intelligent and the most ruthless.
Jarvis drew an enameled snuffbox from his pocket and opened it with one flick of his finger. “Last night, someone killed a half dozen whores at a house of refuge run by the Society of Friends near Covent Garden. I want you to find out who did it and kill them.”
A flicker of surprise passed across the Colonel’s normally impassive features. “The Regent has an interest in the incident?”
Jarvis lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “It’s a personal matter.”
Colonel Epson-Smith inclined his head. “I’ll get on it right away, sir.”
“Discreetly, of course.”
“Of course.” Epson-Smith bowed again and withdrew.
Chapter 5
Long before he reached what was left of the Magdalene House in Covent Garden, Sebastian could smell the fetid odor of old smoke hanging heavy in the cool air.
The house had collapsed in on itself, leaving only a smoldering, burned-out husk of blackened bricks and charred timbers. Three men with dampened hides wrapped around their boots and cloths covering the lower part of their faces were carefully raking their way through the ruins. A small crowd of ragged women and children had gathered at a nearby corner to watch, their faces drawn and solemn. Even the baker’s boy was silent, his tray of cooling buns hanging forgotten from its band around his neck.
Sebastian spotted Paul Gibson crouched awkwardly beside a small body in a ripped, stained gown of yellow cotton. Six more bodies lay in a neat row along the footpath. Four of the bodies looked badly burned, their skin blistered and black, their faces charred beyond identification. But a couple of the women had obviously been sheltered by falling debris, their bodies battered and scorched but still recognizable.
