by C. S. Harris
“That’s right. You know him?”
“We were at Eton together.” Sebastian remembered Sir Peter Prescott as an ebullient, good-natured boy with ruddy cheeks and a ready laugh that hid a quiet streak of mule-headed obstinacy. Aloud, he said, “At exactly what time did Reverend Earnshaw reach London with news of the discovery in the crypt?”
“Reverend Earnshaw arrived shortly after five. But as he was closeted with the Bishop in private, the details of his conversation with the Bishop were unknown to us.” The Chaplain’s thin nose quivered with indignation at what he obviously considered a personal slight. “Even when the Bishop ordered his carriage for later that evening, he remained uncharacteristically secretive as to the exact nature of his errand.”
Sebastian frowned. “When did Earnshaw leave?”
“Some twenty minutes after his arrival.”
“Yet the Bishop himself didn’t set out for Tanfield Hill until—what? Seven?” Tanfield Hill lay an hour’s drive to the west of London. “Why the delay?”
The Chaplain sniffed. “Again, the Bishop did not take me into his confidence. I do know he had an important appointment scheduled for six. Presumably, he was reluctant to cancel it.”
There was a simple opening cut into the wall beside the hearth. Going to stand in the doorway, Sebastian saw that it led to a small bedchamber, unexpectedly plain, almost Spartan, the bed narrow and hard. He said, “It seems a strange thing for Earnshaw to have done, to involve the Bishop of London, personally, in the discovery of a decades-old murder in a rural parish church.”
The Chaplain cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, the Bishop provided us with little information before his departure. Only that there was an incident in Tanfield Hill requiring his attention, and that he might not return before midnight.”
“He didn’t mention the murder?”
“No.”
Sebastian cast one last glance around the rooms, then turned toward the stairs, the Chaplain following at a noticeable distance. As they reached the first floor, Sebastian said, “How long have you served as Prescott’s chaplain?”
“Four years now.”
“So you knew him well.”
The Chaplain gave a slight bow. “Quite well, yes.”
“Did he have many enemies?”
Sebastian expected a quick, automatic denial. Instead, the Chaplain said, “The Bishop was not a man to back away from taking an unpopular stance. Unfortunately, such men do make enemies. Many enemies.”
“What kind of unpopular stances are we talking about?”
“Catholic emancipation. The need for child labor laws. Slavery ...”
“Prescott was an abolitionist?”
“It was his principal cause. The Bishop of London is responsible for the spiritual welfare of the Colonies, and Bishop Prescott took that aspect of his duties very seriously. As far as he was concerned, seeing the Slave Trade Act passed a few years ago was only the beginning. He was determined to get a Slavery Abolition Act through Parliament.”
“That’s definitely a good way to make enemies,” said Sebastian. Some very powerful men in England had fortunes sunk in the West Indies; the loss of the islands’ slave labor would ruin them. “Ever hear anyone wish the Bishop harm?”
“You mean, threaten him?” The Chaplain paused at the base of the staircase, his brow furrowing as if he were in thought. But he only shook his head and said, “No. I don’t think so.”
Sebastian studied the cleric’s lean, acerbic face. The man was a terrible liar. “I’d be interested to see a list of the Bishop’s appointments for the past several weeks.”
The Chaplain sniffed. “I will check with the Archbishop. If he has no objection, I’ll direct the diary secretary to make you a copy of the Bishop’s schedule.” He nodded to a hovering footman to open the front door. “You’re actually the second person today to ask for that information.”
“Oh? Who was the first?” said Sebastian, pausing at the top of the front steps to look back. “One of the Bow Street magistrates?”
“No. Miss Hero Jarvis.” The Chaplain raised his handkerchief to his nose. “Good day, my lord.” He threw a speaking glance at the footman, who quietly shut the door between them.
Sebastian stood for a moment, staring out over the wide square, with its vast central reflecting pool and statue of King Charles. Then he raised the cuff of his coat to his nose and sniffed.
Chapter 9
His face crinkled in a pantomime of distaste, Sebastian’s valet lifted the discarded coat of dark superfine on one carefully curled finger and held it at arm’s length.
“I know,” said Sebastian, not looking up from the serious business of tying a fresh cravat. “Do what you can to get the smell out. But if it doesn’t work, burn it.”
Jules Calhoun drew back in mock astonishment. “What? You mean to say you don’t fancy walking around London smelling like a hundred-year-old cadaver?”
“A hundred years might be all right. It’s the in-between stages that are the smelliest.”
The valet gave a soft laugh. A small, slim gentleman’s gentleman in his thirties, Calhoun had started life in one of the most notorious flash houses in London—a beginning that had left him with an undeniable flair and a variety of useful connections to the city’s underworld.
Assembling the rest of Sebastian’s discarded raiment, Calhoun bundled the offending clothes together and said, “Are you likely to be returning to St. Margaret’s?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I suggest we keep these.”
Sebastian smoothed the folds of his cravat. “Good point.”
The valet watched Sebastian slide a slim dagger into the sheath hidden inside his right boot. “Expecting trouble?”
Sebastian straightened his cuffs. “When I’m dealing with the Jarvises? Always.”
Most daughters of the Upper Ten Thousand spent their days shopping on Bond Street, or attending a dizzying round of picnics, Venetian breakfasts, and morning visits. Not Miss Hero Jarvis.
When Sebastian tracked her down, she was at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. A vast redbrick complex designed by Sir Christopher Wren and clustered around several wide court-yards, the hospital had been established by Charles II for the relief of the nation’s wounded and aged war veterans back in the seventeenth century. But after decades of continuous war, the facility was now grossly underfunded and overcrowded.
He’d heard that Miss Jarvis had made the improvement of the hospital one of her projects. As he crossed the sun-drenched main courtyard, he saw her step out of the chapel in the company of a stout gentleman with a swooping auburn mustache and the officious air of a physician. She was dressed in an emerald green walking gown ruched at the hem and finished with darker piping at the neck and sleeves, and carried a delicate silk parasol in a matching shade of green that she tipped at just the right angle to shade her face. A gray-gowned maid, fists clutching the strings of her reticule, hovered at a respectable distance.
“Ah, there you are, Miss Jarvis,” said Sebastian, walking up to her. “If I might have a word with you?”
She swung her head to look at him, her lips parting on a quickly indrawn breath. She was a striking woman, with her father’s aquiline nose and intelligent gray stare. Now in her twenty-fifth year, she had medium brown hair she usually wore scraped back in an unbecoming fashion better suited to a governess. But lately she’d taken to having a few wisps cut so that they fell artfully about her forehead. The effect was one of unexpected, misleading softness. None knew better than Sebastian that there was little that was soft about Hero Jarvis.
She might be disconcerted to see him, but she recovered almost immediately. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, “but Dr. McCain here has most graciously offered to escort me on a tour of the facilities, and I wouldn’t want to inconvenience—”
“I’m convinced the good doctor will excuse us for a moment,” said Sebastian, giving the stout physician a smile that bared his teeth.
&nb
sp; “Of course,” said the doctor, withdrawing immediately with a polite bow.
“My efforts here are important,” she told Sebastian in a low voice as they turned to stroll together across the paved courtyard. “It is beyond shameful for a nation of our wealth and grandeur to ask men to risk life and limb in war, and then abandon them to poverty and neglect when they return home wounded and infirm.”
“Believe me, Miss Jarvis, I have nothing but admiration for what you’re trying to accomplish. I won’t delay you long.” He studied her classical profile. She looked thinner and paler than he remembered. Once, just two months before, Sebastian had held this woman in his arms, tasted the salt of her tears, felt the shudders rack her unexpectedly yielding body. But that had been a moment out of time, when they’d thought they faced certain death together.
Instead, they had survived. Now, those shared moments of weakness had become a source of embarrassment and regret that could have profound repercussions for them both. He’d known her to shoot a highwayman at point-blank range, to confront certain death with a rare and clearheaded fortitude. But for a young gentlewoman to face the potential shame and ostracism of an unwed birth was something else entirely, and he had no intention of allowing her to suffer alone for what they had done together. The problem was, he wasn’t convinced she would tell him if there were, in fact, repercussions from that fateful afternoon.
“Are you well?” he asked.
She knew precisely what he meant. “I am quite well, thank you.” She kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, her step never faltering. “You’ve no need to concern yourself.”
He wanted to believe her, but couldn’t. She’d already given him her forthright opinion of marriage; when he’d offered her the protection of his name after their rescue that day, her answer had been swift and unequivocal. Studying the self-possessed features of the woman beside him now, he could find no trace of the vulnerable creature who’d given herself to him in the cold, dark vaults beneath Somerset House. Yet it had happened.
He said, “The Archbishop of Canterbury has asked me to look into the murder of Bishop Prescott.”
For an instant, the hand holding the parasol clenched so hard Sebastian heard the delicate bamboo crack. But the calm self-control of her voice never slipped. “Bishop Prescott?” she said airily. “And what, pray tell, does his death have to do with me?”
“I don’t know. Which is why I was curious when I heard you had requested a copy of Prescott’s most recent appointments.”
She stared off across the courtyard, to where an emaciated man with one leg hobbled on a single crutch. “Ah,” she said softly. “And now you’re wondering why, are you?”
“Yes.”
She kept her gaze on the wounded soldier in his gay, old-fashioned uniform. “In point of fact, it’s my belief the Bishop was being blackmailed.”
“Blackmailed?” Whatever Sebastian had been expecting her to say, it wasn’t that.
“Yes.”
“And precisely what, Miss Jarvis, led you to this conclusion?”
“When I met with the Bishop yesterday evening, I found him quite disturbed.”
“You had a meeting with Prescott?”
She glanced sideways at him. “You hadn’t discovered that yet?”
“No, I had not. At what time did you meet with him?”
“Six.”
“So you were the important appointment the Bishop was reluctant to cancel. Do you mind if I ask why you were meeting with the Bishop of London?”
She twitched her parasol back and forth in short, sharp jerks. “You may ask, if you wish, my lord. But I have no intention of answering your question. Believe me, it is not at all relevant to your investigation.”
“Perhaps,” he said quietly. “But I will find out, you know.”
She swung to face him, her jaw set, her eyes icy with dislike. “Very well, if you insist. The Bishop asked for my assistance in preparing the speech he was to give before the House of Lords this Thursday.”
Sebastian studied the smooth line of her cheek, the dark sweep of lashes that half hid her eyes as she looked away. She was a very good liar. But not quite good enough. He said, “The speech on abolition.”
“That’s right.”
Sebastian shifted his gaze to the statue of Charles II, decked out like a Roman emperor, that stood in the center of the court. If his understanding of the events of that evening were correct, then Miss Jarvis would have arrived at London House not long after the Reverend Malcolm Earnshaw’s meeting with the Bishop. But Sebastian found it difficult to understand how there could have been anything in the discovery of a decades-old corpse in a small village church to rattle a man as powerful and worldly as the Bishop of London.
He said, “Did Prescott tell you he was being blackmailed?”
“Not in so many words.”
“So what precisely did he say that led you to such an unlikely conclusion?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”
“You—” He caught himself up short, took a deep breath, and said more calmly, “Miss Jarvis, do I need to remind you that a man is dead?”
She held herself very still. “Obviously not, my lord Devlin. But Francis Prescott was my friend. He told me what he did in strictest confidence, and I do not believe that a man’s death relieves his friends of their responsibility to respect his desire for privacy.”
He stared at her. “You would respect the Bishop’s confidence even if it meant letting his killer go free?”
Her nostrils flared on a quickly indrawn breath. “No. But if I can preserve the Bishop’s confidence by making some preliminary inquiries myself, then would you not agree that it is incumbent upon me to do so? If I should discover that the information I have is relevant to his death, then I shall of course disclose it to you.”
“Hence your request for the list of the Bishop’s appointments?”
“Yes.”
He watched her glance away again. She might be telling him the truth, but he had a nasty suspicion it was only a half-truth. He said, “Blackmailers don’t necessarily make appointments, you know.”
Her nostrils flared. “That had occurred to me.”
“And were you looking for anyone’s name in particular on that list?”
“In point of fact, I have not yet received the list.”
Sebastian tightened his jaw. “And when you do receive the list, Miss Jarvis, whose name do you anticipate finding upon it?”
He didn’t expect her to answer him. But to his surprise, a faint, unpleasant smile curled her lips, and she said, “Lord Quillian’s.”
“Quillian? Surely you don’t suspect Lord Quillian of murdering the Bishop?”
One eyebrow arched. “You find that so improbable?”
“The man is a fop. He wears his shirt points so high he can barely turn his head, and his coats are so tight I swear the seams would split if he tried to bludgeon anyone to death.”
“You might think so. Yet he has fought two duels—”
“Twenty years ago.”
“—and he is an outspoken opponent of abolition.”
“As are any number of other men in London.”
“True. Yet how many of those men went so far as to actually threaten the Bishop?”
Sebastian frowned. “Quillian threatened the Bishop? Did Prescott tell you so?”
She shook her head. “He had no need. I was walking with the Bishop in Hyde Park on Saturday when Lord Quillian accosted him.”
“Accosted?”
“Yes, accosted. He warned the Bishop specifically to give up his support of the Slavery Abolition Act, saying that men who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“That might not necessarily have been a threat.”
“Perhaps. Except he followed it up by saying, ‘Beware lest your own house should shatter, my lord Bishop.’ ”
Sebastian glanced over to where Tom was walking the grays up and down the lane near the overgrown
entrance to the old Ranelagh Gardens. “You know, of course, that I shall now accost Lord Quillian.”
“I should sincerely hope so. Why else do you suppose I told you?”
He grunted. “You don’t actually believe that aging exquisite has anything to do with the Bishop’s death, do you?”
“On the contrary, I do,” she said, and turned to walk back toward the chapel.
He fell into step beside her again. “You say the Bishop was your friend?”
“He was.”
“So tell me about him.”
She stared off across the court, to where the stout, mustachioed physician waited patiently with his hands clasped behind his back. Studying her face, Sebastian saw her features contort with an unmistakable pinch of grief. “How do you reduce such a vital, complex man to just a few words? He was . . . he was the most intensely compassionate, caring man I have ever known.”
“I’ve heard he was an advocate for reform.”
A strange, sad smile hovered about her lips. “I am an advocate for reform. Francis Prescott was that, and so much more. I’ve seen him give his own coat to a woman he found freezing in the street, and stop his carriage to personally take into his arms the filthy, starving child someone had abandoned at the side of the road.”
“He sounds like a veritable saint.”
“A saint?” She thought about it. “No, not a saint. He was a man, like anyone else.”
“So he had faults.”
“We all have faults, my lord Devlin.”
“And what were Bishop Prescott’s faults?”
She looked vaguely troubled. “I suppose he could at times be accused of behaving uncharitably toward those of French or American origins.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Because of those two countries’ revolutions? But . . . I thought Prescott was an advocate of reform?”
“Reform, yes; revolution, no. The violence of the French and American revolutions horrified him. Although I think there was more to it than that. He lost three of his own brothers in the wars of the last century—one fighting the French in Canada, one fighting the French in India, and the third fighting the American rebels.”