by C. S. Harris
He hurried into the breakfast parlor, still wrapped in his street coat and hat and bringing with him an unpleasant medley of smells, of freezing rain and coal smoke-choked fog. His fleshy face was haggard, his mouth slack, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy. He fixed her with a desperate stare and demanded without preamble, “Has he contacted you? Has he?”
“If you mean Sebastian,” said Amanda, pausing to take a calm sip of her tea, “I should rather think not.”
Hendon swung away, one hand coming up to shield his eyes, such a great sigh rumbling from his chest that she was embarrassed for him. “My God. Where is he? Why hasn’t he sought help from any of his friends or family?”
Amanda folded the paper and set it to one side. “Presumably because he knows his family.”
He turned to face her again, his hand falling slowly to his side. “I would do anything within my power to help him.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
His fierce blue gaze met hers, and held it. “He is my son.”
Amanda was the first to look away. “Of course,” she said dryly. “There is that.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “The only redeeming feature I can see to all of this is that since he was bound to disgrace us eventually, at least he had the courtesy to do it this year. Hopefully the worst of the scandal will have died down by next Season, when Stephanie makes her come out.”
“Is that all you can think of?”
“Stephanie is my daughter. What else should I be thinking of?”
He regarded her thoughtfully for a long, intense moment. “I always knew you and Sebastian weren’t close. I suppose that was inevitable, given the number of years between you. But I don’t think I realized until now just how much you hate him.”
“You know why,” she said, her voice a harsh tear.
“Yes. But if I can see my way to forget it, then why in the name of God can’t you?” He turned away. “Give my best to my grandchildren,” he said over his shoulder, and left.
Amanda waited until she heard the front door close behind her father. Then she picked up the morning’s edition of the Post and went upstairs to her husband’s dressing room.
The Wilcox family was an ancient one, older even than the St. Cyrs, and long known for their staid respectability. Far from squandering his wealth on the turf or at cards in the manner of so many of his peers, Martin, the Twelfth Baron Wilcox, had taken what had once been merely a comfortable, land-based inheritance and, by judicial investments in a trading company and various other profitable wartime speculations, turned it into a sizable fortune.
Some women might have been appalled by their noble husband’s dabbling in commerce; not Amanda. The Earl of Hendon’s daughter understood well that while one’s claim to gentility would always come from land, financial security and the future of wealth lay elsewhere. Amanda had married Lord Wilcox at the end of her second Season. She’d rarely had cause to regret her decision.
She found him seated before his dressing table, engaged in the very serious business of tying his cravat. Martin Wilcox might be just shy of fifty, with gray threading his receding brown hair, and heavy jowls framing his thin lips, but like most members of the Prince’s set, he was a very careful dresser. After one look at his wife’s face, he dismissed his valet with a curt nod.
She tossed the opened Post onto the dressing table before him. “You might have told me.”
Wilcox kept his gaze on his reflection in the glass. “You had retired for the evening,” he said, as if that were the only explanation required, and indeed it was, for it had been some fifteen years since Amanda had allowed Wilcox past the door to her bedchamber. Not that he could complain that she hadn’t done her duty by him. In the first six years of their marriage she had presented him with first Bayard, then a daughter and a second son. It was only then, having produced the requisite heir and a spare, that Amanda had barred her husband from her bed.
The youngest child had died in its seventh year, but Amanda hadn’t been inclined to reverse her decision, and Wilcox—never one to make excessive demands upon his wife—had forborne to press her. Bayard was healthy enough . . . in body, at least, if not in mind.
“My father was here this morning,” she said, going to stand in the center of the room, her arms crossed at her chest.
“And?” Leaning forward to study his image in the mirror, Wilcox began to make careful adjustments to the folds of his neckcloth with his fingers. “Does he know where Devlin is?”
“No. He thought I might.”
Wilcox grunted. “If your brother has any sense, he’s fled the country by now. Nasty piece of work, this, from the sounds of it. I always knew Devlin could be violent, but”—he paused, tilting his head this way and that as he studied his reflection—“I must say, I never expected something like this. The scandals he’s forced us to endure in the past were nothing compared to this.”
Amanda let out a scornful huff. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sebastian didn’t murder that woman.”
He glanced up, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror, his habitual faint smile curving his lips. “So certain, my dear?”
“You do realize who this dead actress was, don’t you?”
Opening a Chinese lacquered jewel box, Wilcox considered its contents, then selected a diamond and two gold fobs. Martin always wore too much jewelry. “Should I?” he said, hanging one of the fobs from his watch chain.
“You might, if you paid more attention to your son and heir. Rachel York is the woman Bayard has been making such an exhibition of himself over since before Christmas.”
Wilcox slipped the ring on his finger. “So?”
“So, what if the case against Sebastian falls apart and the authorities start investigating this woman’s death? What then?”
“So?” he said again. “There’s no harm in a healthy young man admiring a beautiful woman—especially when the woman in question trades on that beauty, and uses it to entice, and to entrap. If the authorities are going to suspect every London buck who ever lusted after that woman, believe me, they’ll have a very long list.”
Amanda started to say something, then didn’t.
“Besides,” he continued, “if anyone asks, I have only to tell them that Bayard was with me Tuesday night.”
Amanda stared at her husband’s bland, untroubled face. “And if he really did do it, Martin? You’re worried about the scandal my brother has caused; what if it turns out to be Bayard?”
Wilcox stood up, his jowly face slowly darkening. “What precisely are you saying? That you think your own twenty-one-year-old son capable of a crime you don’t believe your rakehell of a brother could have committed?”
Amanda met his angry gaze, her own jaw tight. “You and I both know what Bayard is like.”
“I told you,” said Wilcox, with more force than usual. “Bayard was with me.”
“Well. What a relief. We’ve nothing to worry about, then,” she said dryly, and left the room.
Chapter 16
He possessed a knack, Sebastian had discovered during his years in the army, for playacting, for accents and mimicry and all the subtle nuances of behavior and attitude that could be used to impersonate and deceive. He also knew that, in general, people saw what they expected to see, that men looking for an absconding nobleman would not peer too closely at a humble vicar, or an honest shopkeeper in cheap linen and a poorly cut, drab coat.
And so, after leaving Kat Boleyn’s elegant little townhouse, he made his way to the Rag Fair in Rosemary Lane, where he bought a set of secondhand clothes, a drab topcoat, and a rusty black round hat. He stopped at several small shops, where he made an assortment of other purchases. Then, wrapped in his new topcoat, with the round hat pulled low to hide his tawny eyes, he took a room at a respectable but simple inn called the Rose and Crown, and set about transforming himself into someone else entirely.
Sebastian tipped his head first one way, then the other, surveying his reflection in the small mirror above the washstand
. Mr. Simon Taylor, he thought he’d be called. He had little sense of style, Mr. Taylor, with his badly cut hair, old-fashioned coat, and poorly tied cravat.
With practiced care, Sebastian used chalk dust to add a few streaks of gray to his dark, newly chopped hair. After months of drifting aimlessly, of living a life at once privileged and predictable and always, inevitably, unbearably boring, he was conscious of a faint stirring of interest, of excitement such as he hadn’t known since he’d left the army ten months before.
He found Hugh Gordon in a corner booth of the crumbling old redbrick pub known as The Green Man that had been popular with the theatrical crowd since the days when Elizabeth was queen.
The actor was alone; a tall, elegant man drinking a pint of ale and eating a simple plowman’s lunch. His entire posture spoke of self possession and arrogance and a pronounced desire to be left alone.
Shuffling up to the table, Sebastian pulled off his hat and held it, awkwardly, humbly even, before his breast. “Mr. Hugh Gordon?”
Gordon looked up, his dark brows drawing together into a frown. Even offstage, his manner was theatrical, his voice stentorian. “Yes?”
Sebastian tightened his hold on his hat brim. “Pardon me for being so bold as to introduce myself, but I am Taylor. Mr. Simon Taylor?” Sebastian brought the inflection of his voice up at the end, in the manner of one so unsure of himself that even simple sentences come out sounding like questions. “From Worcestershire? They said at the theater I might find you here.”
Reaching out, Gordon took a slow sip of his ale. “So?”
Sebastian swallowed, working his Adam’s apple visibly up and down. “I’m endeavoring to locate a young relative of my mother’s, a Miss Rachel York. I was hoping you might be able to provide me with her direction.”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t heard?” The timbre of his voice was deep and rich, the intonation flawless. If Gordon hadn’t been born a gentleman, he’d certainly done a good job of cultivating both the image and accent.
Sebastian looked confused. “I beg your pardon?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Sebastian staggered as if reeling beneath the shock, and sat down on the bench opposite the actor. “Good heavens. I had no idea. When did this happen?”
“They found her in an old church off Great Peter Street, near the Abbey. Yesterday morning. Someone’d slit her pretty little throat.”
There was no sorrow in the statement, only a faint lingering of animosity that Sebastian noted with interest, although he was careful to keep all trace of the observation off his face. “But this is dreadful. Any idea who did it?”
“Some nob.” Gordon stuffed a forkful of beef in his mouth, and spoke around it. “Or so they say.”
“I am so sorry. This must be very hard for you.”
Gordon paused with another forkful halfway to his face. “For me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was under the impression that you and Rachel were . . .” Sebastian cleared his throat. “Well, you know.”
Gordon grunted. “Your information is out of date, my friend. There’ve been any number of gentlemen who’ve visited her pleasure palace since me, I can tell you that.”
It was a crude and decidedly unloverlike expression. Sebastian drew a deep breath, his chest lifting in a soulful sigh. “My mother always feared the girl would end up as common Haymarket ware.”
Gordon snorted. “Nothing common about Rachel. Hell, a man would need to be a lord or a bloody nabob at least, to get past her ivory gates these days.”
And there, thought Sebastian, lay the source of at least some of this man’s resentment toward his former mistress. When she’d been young and just starting out in the theatrical world, Gordon’s status as one of the titans of the stage must have made him seem powerful, even godlike to her. But once Rachel had established a reputation of her own and attracted the attention of some of London’s wealthiest noblemen, she’d obviously decided she could do better than a common actor. Especially one with a tendency to use his fists on her.
Gordon took a long, deep drink from his tankard. “She used to talk about the day their noble heads would end up on pikes, and how London’s gutters were going to run with their precious blue blood.” He gave a low, mirthless laugh. “She changed her tune quick enough, didn’t she, when they started buying her silks and pearls?”
So Rachel York had sympathized with the aims of the French Revolution. Interesting, thought Sebastian. He shook his head soulfully. “And now one of these noblemen has murdered her?”
“So they say. Although if you ask me, the authorities ought to be taking a closer look at that bloody Frenchman.”
“She had a French lover?”
“Lover?” Gordon shoved the last of his bread in his mouth, chewed once or twice, and swallowed hard. “I don’t know if I’d call him that. Although the man was paying the rent on her rooms, all right.”
“What man is this?”
“One of those bloody émigrés. Claims to be the son of a count or some such nonsense.” The flawless accent slipped for a moment, allowing a hint of Geordie to peek through. Pushing away his plate, the actor leaned back and dusted the crumbs off his fingers. “Man by the name of Pierrepont. Leo Pierrepont.”
Chapter 17
Sir Henry Lovejoy had two passions left in his life. One was for justice and the law. The other was for science.
Whenever he could, he attended the public lectures given at the Royal Scientific Society; he read the Scientific Quarterly, and he tried very, very hard to apply the scientific method to his investigations and legal deliberations. But every once in a while, Lovejoy went with his instincts, and played a hunch.
It was his instincts that kept nagging at him over this latest killing, whispering to him that there had to be more to Rachel York’s murder in the Lady Chapel of St. Matthew of the Fields than Constable Edward Maitland had so far discovered. And so late that Thursday afternoon, Lovejoy sought out Viscount Devlin’s friend and erstwhile second, Sir Christopher Farrell, in Brooks’s Club on St. James’s and set about finding out more about the Earl of Hendon’s infamous, rakehell son, Sebastian.
“Tell me about yesterday morning’s duel between Lord Devlin and Captain John Talbot,” said Lovejoy when Sir Christopher joined him in the discreet little room tucked away at the top of the stairs that the club had provided for them.
He was an unexpectedly open-faced man, Sir Christopher, with clear gray eyes and an easy manner. Nothing at all like what Lovejoy would have expected in a friend of someone as dark and saturnine as Devlin. At Lovejoy’s question, he opened his eyes wide in a studied parody of innocence. “Duel? What duel?”
The room contained a large mahogany table surrounded by some half-dozen chairs upholstered in the same blue brocade as the walls. Lovejoy stood with the table between them, his gaze fixed on the other man’s face. “You do your friend no favor, Sir Christopher. I have little interest at the moment in enforcing the codes against dueling. But two days ago, a young woman named Rachel York was brutally assaulted and murdered, and certain evidence combined with accounts from a witness have implicated Lord Devlin. Therefore, the more we know about his lordship’s movements these last few days, the closer we will be to understanding the truth of this matter. If you have any information which is pertinent, it would behoove you to provide it. So I ask you again, who was the challenger? Lord Devlin?”
Sir Christopher hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “No. Talbot.”
“When and where precisely was this challenge issued?”
Farrell went to look out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. It was a moment before he answered, his words coming out jerkily, as if he begrudged the magistrate each and every one. “Tuesday afternoon. At White’s. Sebastian was standing near the entrance to the gaming room, holding a glass of wine. Talbot jostled him in such a way that wine from Sebastian’s glass splashed onto Talbot’s boots. He demanded satisfaction.”
/> Lovejoy nodded in understanding. “That was the public justification for the duel. Now tell me the real reason.”
Farrell swung around, one eyebrow arching in aristocratic affront. “I beg your pardon?”
Lovejoy returned only a tight, bland smile. “There are those who say Lord Devlin was having an affair with Captain Talbot’s wife.”
Sir Christopher met Lovejoy’s questioning gaze. And Lovejoy thought, the man must be hopeless at the gaming tables. Everything he considered, everything he felt, showed on his face. Lovejoy knew the precise moment when Farrell decided to let go of his resistance. Blowing out his breath in a long sigh, he came to sit in one of the chairs ringing the center table. “Talbot certainly thought so,” he said, propping his elbows on the table and sinking his chin into his hands. “But it wasn’t true. Devlin’s relationship with Melanie Talbot never went beyond friendship.”
“You believe that?
Sir Christopher nodded glumly. “Last spring, at a ball at Devonshire House, Sebastian heard someone crying in the garden. He’s got the damnest hearing a body could ever imagine, you know. Anyway, he went to investigate and found Talbot’s wife. The bastard had taken exception to the way she was looking at one of the violin players and worked her over pretty bad before storming off in a fit. Sebastian took her home.”
“But that wasn’t the end of it.”
Farrell dropped his hands into his lap and sat back. “No. She needed a friend, and Devlin became one. I always thought she was more than half in love with him, but Devlin’s not the kind of man to take advantage of another person’s vulnerability.”
Lovejoy eyed the other man consideringly. “How well do you know him?”
A slow, unexpectedly boyish smile spread across Sir Christopher’s face. “Better than I know either of my own two brothers. Sebastian and I were at Eton together. And Oxford after that.”
“But you didn’t join the army with him?”