by C. S. Harris
“She was shot and killed before we reached the street. Fortunately, I’d left my maid in the carriage—she’s so sour and censorious she tends to discourage the women from talking. Otherwise, I’ve no doubt she would have been killed, as well.”
Sebastian stared off across the park, considering this. It was an unfashionable hour for a drive; except for a middle-aged man in a shabby gig teaching a half-grown boy to drive, the gravel road lay deserted in the fitful morning sunshine.
After a moment, Sebastian said, “You’ll have to forgive me, Miss Jarvis, if I find all this rather difficult to believe. You see, it seems to me that if anyone had dared take a shot at Lord Jarvis’s daughter last night, every magistrate and constable in England would be out, even as we speak, scouring the back alleys and flash houses of the city until those responsible were brought to justice.”
She twitched her parasol back and forth in short, sharp jerks, a tinge of angry color touching her cheeks. “My father was disconcerted at the prospect my presence at the Magdalene House might become public knowledge—”
“Disconcerted?” said Sebastian, arching one eyebrow.
“Disconcerted,” she said again, with emphasis.
“Given Lord Jarvis’s attitude toward social reform, I suspect dismayed might be a more fitting description.”
“My father understands that my politics are different from his.”
Sebastian simply smiled.
“He has requested Sir William Hadley personally take charge of the investigation,” she said.
“Then you may rest easy. As the chief magistrate of Bow Street, Sir William has proved himself to be crude, ruthless, and very effective.”
“I fear I haven’t made myself clear. Sir William has been ordered to make certain that there is no official investigation, as any such inquiries would inevitably lead to my name being bandied about in connection with the incident. Instead, my father intends to take care of the men responsible himself. He wants it done quietly. Very quietly.”
“Lord Jarvis is highly effective at ‘taking care’ of people quietly,” said Sebastian. “I don’t think you need concern yourself with the matter any further.”
“My father’s sole interest is in killing those who endangered my life.”
“And that’s not sufficient?”
She turned toward him, her gray eyes as intelligent—and inscrutable—as her father’s. “One of the women I interviewed last night was called Rose. Rose Jones. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, tall and slender, with brown hair and green eyes. I would swear she was wellborn. Very wellborn.”
“She may have been. Unfortunately, Miss Jarvis, gently born women are frequently reduced by circumstances to prostitution.” Sebastian completed his second circuit of the park in silence, then turned back toward the Strand. “Clergymen’s daughters, daughters of impoverished solicitors and doctors, the widows and orphans of officers killed in the war . . . all are far more common in Covent Garden than you obviously imagine.”
“That may be. But when we first heard those men breaking into the Magdalene House last night, Rose said to me, ‘Oh, God. They’ve found me. They’re here to kill me.’ Then, later, I heard the men say, ‘She’s not here,’ and, ‘She must be upstairs.’ I believe Rose Jones is the reason those women were killed. I want to know who she was and why those men were after her.”
“Why?”
“Why?” The question appeared to surprise her.
“Yes. Why do you want to know? Vulgar curiosity?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
She was silent for a moment, the damp breeze ruffling her plain brown hair as she stared off across the misty parkland. She drew in a deep breath that flared her nostrils, then said, “I held that woman in my arms as she was dying. It could so easily have been me. I suppose I feel I owe her something.”
It was a heartfelt performance, and if it had been delivered by anyone other than Jarvis’s daughter, Sebastian probably would have believed it. He said, “So why, precisely, have you sought me out?”
She turned to face him, the hint of humanity he thought he’d momentarily glimpsed now gone. “It’s the oddest thing, but I’ve realized that none of my acquaintances have much experience with murder. So naturally I thought of you.”
Sebastian was startled into letting out a sharp laugh.
Something unpleasant gleamed in her eyes. “I amuse you, my lord?”
If truth were told, Hero Jarvis scared the hell out of him. Sebastian shook his head. But all he said was, “I may have been involved in several investigations in the past, Miss Jarvis, but apprehending murderers is not my hobby.”
“What would you call it, then? Your avocation?”
Kat Boleyn had once called it his passion, his obsession, his self-imposed penance for sins she only half understood. But that seemed a lifetime ago now, and he slammed his mind shut against the thought. He said, “I haven’t been involved in anything of that nature for a while now.”
“I have heard something of how you’ve been spending your time these past months,” she said drily. “Rest assured that I am not asking you to investigate personally. I am merely requesting guidance on how I should go about beginning such an investigation.”
“It’s your intention to investigate these murders yourself?”
“Are you implying that I am incapable?”
“I’m implying that women of your station generally hire Bow Street Runners to do their investigating.”
“That’s not possible in this situation.”
“Because of Sir William?”
“Not exactly.” A flush crept up her cheeks, and he wondered what she was not telling him. “I promised my father I would not approach the magistrates.”
He studied her carefully composed features. “Yet Lord Jarvis has no objection to you pursuing your own inquiries?”
She turned her head away to study a passing row of shops, and Sebastian gave a low laugh. “You haven’t told him, have you? He will find out.” Lord Jarvis maintained an extensive network of spies and agents, which had earned the man a well-deserved reputation for omniscience.
She said, “I have no intention of denying my activities.”
Sebastian knew a brief flicker of admiration. There weren’t many with the courage to cross the King’s powerful cousin. He said, “You also realize that I could use the information you’ve given me to hurt you.”
“You mean, to hurt my father through me.” She met his gaze and held it. “It has occurred to me. It’s a risk I’ve decided I am willing to take.”
“Discovering this woman’s identity is that important to you?”
“I don’t think anything has ever been this important to me,” she said simply.
A tense silence fell between them. He had a dozen good reasons for avoiding this woman and very few incentives to help her. Yes, the temptation to annoy Jarvis was powerful. Yet that in itself might not have been enough to tempt him if he hadn’t been aware of a vague, unexpected quickening of interest. He couldn’t think of anything that had intrigued him—really intrigued him—for eight months now.
He reined in beside her carriage and said, “If it were me, Miss Jarvis, I’d begin by talking to the authorities. See what they have discovered so far.”
For the first time since she had approached him that morning, he saw what looked like a slight faltering in her formidable composure. “But that’s the one thing I can’t do.”
“No. But I can.”
“You? But . . . why would you involve yourself in this?”
“You know why.”
She met his gaze. And in that moment he realized that she did, indeed, know why. She knew he would welcome any chance to discomfit her father. More than that: She had, in fact, been counting on it.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, allowing herself a slight smile as she turned to alight. “You will tell me if you discover anything?”
“Of
course,” said Sebastian, and went in search of his tiger.
Chapter 3
Sebastian found Tom waiting for him outside the cutler’s shop. A small scrap of a boy with brown hair, a gap-toothed smile, and a usefully forgettable face, Tom served Sebastian as both a groom and a willing participant in some of Sebastian’s less orthodox activities.
“She said I weren’t wanted,” the tiger exclaimed when Sebastian told him of Miss Jarvis’s deception. “ ’Ow was I to know a starchy gentlewoman like ’er was tellin’ a bouncer?”
“Miss Jarvis would argue that, technically, it wasn’t a bouncer, since she did not want your presence.”
Tom’s brows drew together in a dark frown that augured ill for any future encounters between the tiger and Lord Jarvis’s formidable daughter.
Hiding a smile, Sebastian gathered his reins. “I want you to take a message to Dr. Gibson for me. You’ll probably find him at the Chalk Street Almshouse—I think he volunteers there on Tuesday mornings. Ask him to meet me at the site of the Friends’ Magdalene House in Covent Garden. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve spoken to Sir Henry.”
“The Magdalene House?” Tom’s eyes danced with sudden interest. “Ain’t that the place what burned last night?”
“That’s right.”
“You think there’s somethin’ not quite right about that fire?”
“Miss Jarvis claims it was murder.”
Sebastian found Sir Henry Lovejoy, Chief Magistrate at Queen Square Public Office, sitting at his desk reading the Hue and Cry. “My lord,” said Sir Henry, surging to his feet when the clerk, Collins, ushered Sebastian into the chamber. “Please, come in and sit down.”
A small man with a bald head and reading glasses, Sir Henry had been a merchant before the deaths of his wife and daughter shifted his interest to the law. They were unlikely friends, Sebastian and this earnest magistrate, with his serious demeanor and steadfast adherence to a rigid moral code worthy of a preacher. But friends they were.
“What can you tell me about last night’s fire at the Magdalene House?” Sebastian asked, taking the seat Sir Henry indicated.
Sir Henry peeled the small gold-framed spectacles from his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Terrible business, that. Last I heard, they’d already pulled four bodies from the rubble and there are probably more. According to the Quakers who run the place, seven soiled doves were staying at the establishment at the time of the tragedy, in addition to the woman in charge of the day-to-day operation of the house—a matron named Margaret Crowley. She apparently took refuge with the Friends some ten years ago herself and recently came back to help. She’s believed to be one of the victims.”
“Any sign the women might have been killed before the fire was set?”
“You mean, murdered?” Sir Henry had an almost comically high voice, and it now rose even higher. “Good heavens, no.”
Sebastian frowned. “How many survivors were there?”
“None that I know of.”
“You don’t find that strange? That none of the women managed to escape the fire? It was only—what?—five, six o’clock in the evening when the fire broke out.”
Sir Henry lifted his thin shoulders in a shrug. “The house was old and its timbers dry. It would have burned quickly. People frequently assume they have more time to get out than they actually do. They become disoriented and they perish.”
It was possible, Sebastian supposed. But he found it difficult to believe that none of those eight women had managed to stagger out of the smoke and flames into the night. “Bow Street is handling the investigation, I assume?” he asked casually.
Sir Henry nodded. “It’s not far from their offices, after all. I believe Lord Jarvis has requested Sir William take charge of the incident personally.”
“Lord Jarvis? What’s his interest in this?” Sebastian asked, curious to hear what the magistrate would say.
Sir Henry looked mildly surprised, as if the question hadn’t occurred to him. No one queried Lord Jarvis’s activities. “That I do not know.”
“And has Sir William ordered postmortems on the women?”
“I don’t believe so, no. Last I’d heard the bodies were to be turned over to the Friends for burial.” Sir Henry was looking troubled. After a moment, he said, “If I might be so bold as to inquire into your interest in this, my lord?”
Sebastian pushed to his feet. “I have no interest in it. I’m simply making inquiries on behalf of an acquaintance.” He turned toward the door, but paused to look back and ask, “You haven’t by any chance heard of a young prostitute named Rose Jones, have you? Eighteen, maybe nineteen years of age. Wellborn.”
Sir Henry thought a moment, then shook his head. “No. You think she was one of the victims?”
“She might have been.”
“Who was she?”
“That’s the problem,” said Sebastian. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 4
"We received reports this morning that the Luddites have burned another cotton mill in the West Riding,” said the Right Honorable Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A small, thin man with a perpetually earnest expression, the Prime Minister paced nervously across the carpeted floor of the Carlton House chambers kept by Charles, Lord Jarvis.
“So I had heard,” said Jarvis, going to stand beside the window overlooking the Mall. He was a big man in every sense of the word. Tall of stature and wide through the shoulders, he carried perhaps twice the weight of the Prime Minister. He was also easily twice as powerful and infinitely more cunning. The reports from Jarvis’s own agents in Yorkshire had reached his desk the previous evening.
“Fortunately,” continued Perceval, still pacing back and forth, “by some miracle the local militia arrived quickly enough to arrest some score or more of the participants. We believe they’re the same men involved in smashing frames last month.”
“It was no miracle. Merely the careful planting of agents provocateurs.”
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 d
isappointment 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.