by C. S. Harris
“Show him in,” said Jarvis, very much aware of Lord Frederick’s presence. It would be interesting to see if the man had heard of Rachel York’s death. Interesting, indeed. “Well, what is it?” Jarvis asked, his voice gravelly with a deliberate show of impatience when the magistrate appeared.
Sir Henry cast an inquiring glance toward Lord Frederick and hesitated.
“You may speak frankly,” said Jarvis, waving a vague hand in Lord Frederick’s direction. “I assume this is about Lord Devlin?”
“Yes, my lord.” The magistrate paused again, and something about his manner told Jarvis he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear. “He’s escaped.”
Jarvis never allowed himself the luxury of losing his temper, although he did at times express anger for effect, to inspire fear and to spur men on in their determination to please him. Now he allowed several calculated heartbeats to pass, then said, his tone icy with a nice mingling of incredulity and righteous indignation, “Escaped, Sir Henry? Did you say escaped?”
“Yes, my lord. He stabbed one of my constables and stole a hackney carriage, which he then—”
Jarvis pressed the thumb and index finger of one hand to the bridge of his nose and momentarily closed his eyes. “Spare me the details.” Jarvis sighed, and let his hand fall. “I trust you’ve discovered Devlin’s destination?”
A faint flush colored the little man’s cheeks. There was nothing like a subtle hint of incompetence to make a man feel, well, incompetent. “Not yet, my lord.”
From his seat near the fireplace, Lord Frederick rose to stare at them. “Do I understand you to say you’ve attempted to arrest the son of the Earl of Hendon? On what charges?”
“Murder,” said Jarvis blandly.
“Murder? Good God. But . . . I thought Talbot’s wound more embarrassing than life threatening. Has he indeed died?”
It was Sir Henry who answered, with another of those bobbing little bows he affected. “Lord Devlin’s most recent affair of honor was not, as I understand it, fatal. However, he has been implicated in the death of a young woman whose body was discovered this morning in St. Matthew of the Fields, near the Abbey. An actress by the name of Rachel York.”
Jarvis watched with interest as Lord Frederick’s jaw went slack. The man was usually better at maintaining his composure. “You’ve arrested Viscount Devlin for Rachel’s murder?”
Sir Henry blinked. “You knew her, my lord?”
“I wouldn’t say I knew her, exactly. I mean, I’ve seen her, of course, at Covent Garden. And I’d heard she’d been killed, of course. But I had no idea that Devlin . . . ” Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, Lord Frederick pressed the delicate linen to his lips. “Excuse me,” he said, and hurried from the room.
A faint frown deepening a line between his eyes, Sir Henry’s gaze followed Lord Frederick’s retreating figure.
“I want every available man put on Devlin’s capture,” Jarvis said, recalling the magistrate’s attention.
Sir Henry bowed. “Yes, my lord.”
“You’ve sent to have the ports watched, of course?”
Another bow. “Yes, my lord. Although the Viscount wouldn’t exactly be welcome on the Continent these days.”
“There’s always America.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The little man was beginning to bore him. Jarvis reached for his snuffbox. “I trust I’ll receive a more satisfactory report on this matter in the morning.”
“Let us hope, my lord,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy, and bowed himself out.
Yet after he left, Jarvis stood for a time at the rain-splattered window, his snuffbox held forgotten in his hand as he stared out at the darkness. The fog had finally cleared so that from here he could see the Mall, its wet pavement shining in the flickering golden light thrown by the streetlamps and the lanterns of the passing carriages.
He hadn’t cared, before, whether Devlin was responsible for the death of that actress or not. He still didn’t care. All that mattered was that official inquiries into Rachel York’s murder be ended as quickly as possible and that the young Viscount’s notoriety be prevented from damaging the government at such a critical juncture. If necessary, the Viscount’s father, the Earl of Hendon, could be eased out of the government.
In fact, the more he considered it, the more Jarvis thought that some good might come of this tangle after all. While his staunch Tory sentiments made Hendon more palatable to Jarvis than a man of, say, Fairchild’s stripe, the fact remained that Hendon had never been one of Jarvis’s supporters. The old fool actually believed that politics could be conducted by the same rules of sportsmanship and fair play as a cricket match on the fields of Eton. If Jarvis could finally get rid of Hendon, managing the Prince would be that much easier.
Besides, Devlin’s precipitous flight from justice and his presumably fatal attack upon an officer of the law certainly suggested an unexpected degree of guilt. The young man needed to be caught soon. Or killed. Jarvis flicked open his snuffbox, lifted a pinch to one nostril, and inhaled deeply. Yes, he rather thought it would be better if Devlin were killed.
Chapter 9
The sounds of pursuit had long since faded into the distance.
Sebastian slowed the gray to a walk. Darkness was falling fast, the rain easing to a fine mist as the wind rose. Turning up the collar of his greatcoat against the cold and the wet, Sebastian had time to regret the loss of his hat and to consider his future course of action.
Even here, away from the more fashionable neighborhoods of Mayfair, heads swiveled to follow his passing, and fingers pointed. Sebastian was acutely aware of his missing neckcloth, his mud-splattered boots, the bloodstains on his greatcoat and gloves. His immediate need, he decided, was to remove himself to an area in which his disheveled appearance would occasion less remark. In the back alleys and byways of someplace like Covent Garden or St. Giles, no one would look twice at a hatless man with a torn greatcoat and blood on his gloves.
Beneath the folds of his greatcoat Sebastian felt the weight of his pocketbook and knew a moment of thankfulness for the forethought that had led him to slip the purse into his pocket before leaving the house. He would find an inn, he decided; someplace humble, but warm and dry. And then he would set about contacting those who could—
Sebastian’s head came up, his attention caught by a faint sound, barely discernable above the racket of wooden wheels rattling over ruts and the interminable patter of the rain.
He was in a poorer quarter now, a neighborhood of narrow streets with aging houses and small shops, their dirty windows protected by iron grates. There were no fine carriages here, only heavy lumbering wagons and dogcarts winding their way through a growing throng of sturdy working folk, coopers and ferriers, laundresses and piemen, their voices raised in a singsong chorus of Pies. Rare hot pies. But he could hear it now, quite plainly: the steady thunder of hooves coming up fast and a boy’s voice, shouting, “If’n yer lookin’ for that rum cove on a gray, he went that way!”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Sebastian, and urged his purloined mount forward into the night.
He abandoned the gray in a warm stall on the edges of St. Giles. It was a notorious district, St. Giles, into which pursuing constables had been known simply to disappear forever. London’s authorities avoided it.
The Black Hart Inn lay at the end of a mean little lane known as Pudding Row, in an area of crooked streets and rickety old medieval buildings that seemed to lean against one another for support, their upper floors jutting out over unpaved passages running foul with open gutters. A low, half-timbered relic, the inn had leaded front windows through which only a faint glow of light spilled out into the night. Sebastian paused in the shadow of the doorway, his head turning as he listened.
The rain had stopped, but with the coming of darkness the temperature had plummeted, sending most of London’s residents scurrying indoors. He could hear the distant screech of iron-rimmed wheels and the dull monotony of a churc
h bell sounding someone’s death knell, and nothing more. Pushing open the door, he went inside.
A heavy medley of smells washed over him, of ale and tobacco, of bitter coal smoke and hot grease and rank, stale sweat. The common room was dark, the guttering dips casting only a dim light that flickered over walls and low beamed ceilings blackened with age. Men in fustian and corduroy stood with elbows propped on the counter or lounged about scarred tables and benches. They looked up as Sebastian entered, the roar of their talk and laughter ebbing, their sunken eyes suspicious, watchful. He was a stranger here, and strangers in such places were never welcome.
Pushing his way to the counter, he bought a tankard of ale and ordered dinner. The bread would be adulterated with chalk and alum, the beef rancid and gristly, but he would find little better in this district and he’d eaten nothing since the breakfast he’d shared that morning with Christopher at a public house not far from the Heath.
There was a fire at one end of the room. Sebastian made his way toward it, his tankard in hand. The general swirl of noise had resumed, although he was aware of resentful eyes following him, of an air of tense wariness. Furtive shadows moved across the walls as two or three men sidled quietly from the room.
Sebastian was halfway across the sawdust-covered floor, winding his way between packed, unwashed bodies, when a boy of perhaps eight or ten brushed against him.
“A natty lad,” said Sebastian, his voice dangerously cheerful as he deftly retrieved his purse from the boy’s fist. The unexpected loss of his prize caused the young thief to hesitate so that, dropping the purse into an inner pocket, Sebastian managed to collar the lad and haul him back around, all without setting down the tankard or spilling a drop of ale. “But not a particularly skilled one, I’m afraid.”
Every eye in the room was trained upon them and Sebastian knew it. Yet the atmosphere was more one of watchful expectation than of hostility. A market beadle from Covent Garden, a big, ponderous man with a stained waistcoat and three chins, stood up from a nearby table to wipe the back of one meaty hand across his wet lips. “Aye, he’s an anabaptist, that one.” A low ripple of laughter traveled around the room, for it was a name given to young pickpockets who’d been caught in the act and subjected to the rough-and-ready punishment of being dumped in the nearest pond. “Want we should rechristen him?”
The lad kept his chin firm and his gaze steady, but Sebastian felt a shudder travel up the boy’s thin frame. For a homeless child, a dunking in a freezing pond on a night like this could mean death.
“I’ve no doubt he could use the ablution,” said Sebastian, his words greeted by more laughter. “But the boy’s done no real harm.” Opening his fist, Sebastian let the thin, ragged cloth of the urchin’s shirt slide through his fingers. “Go on,” he added, jerking his head toward the door when the boy hesitated. “Get out of here.”
Instead of running, the boy stood his ground, his dark, unexpectedly bright eyes traveling over Sebastian in open, thoughtful assessment. “On the lam, are you?”
Sebastian paused with his tankard halfway to his mouth. “I beg your pardon?”
The boy was older than Sebastian had first taken him to be—probably more like ten or twelve—and obviously observant enough to notice that beneath the mud and blood, Sebastian’s greatcoat was exquisitely tailored, and of a fine cloth that had been new just hours ago. “What’d you do? Lose all your blunt and bolt afore they could shut you up in the Never-Wag? Or did you kill a man in a duel?” One small, bony hand reached out to finger the dark, telltale stain on Sebastian’s chest. “Me, I think you killed somebody.”
Sebastian took a long, deep swallow of his ale. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Ho. And why else would such a swell cove be stopping at a dive like the Black ’Art? You answer me that.”
A prepubescent young girl with thin shoulders and a shank of straight, colorless hair appeared from the back rooms to dump the contents of her tray on the table in front of Sebastian. He stared at the small loaf of suspiciously white bread, the plate of unidentifiable meat awash in ladlefuls of congealing fat, and felt his appetite ebb.
“You should tuck that purse of yers somewhere out o’ sight and out o’ reach,” said the urchin as Sebastian seated himself at the table. “You know that, don’t you? It’s like an open invitation, bulgin’ out yer coat all obvious-like. In fact, it’s criminal, I’d say, to be temptin’ honest lads into mischief like that.”
Sebastian glanced up, his fork halted halfway to his mouth. “And when were you ever an honest lad?”
The boy laughed out loud. “I like you,” he said, his gaze drifting to the plate of food before Sebastian. A quiver passed over his features, a spasm of desperate want quickly hidden. “I tell you what: got a proposition for you, I do. If’n you’re agreeable, I could ’ire meself out to you for, say, ten pence a day? Show you the ropes o’ this part of town, I could. Be your general factotum. A fine gentleman like yerself shouldn’t be without a servant.”
“True.” Sebastian chewed a mouthful, swallowed. “But I’m the strangest creature. I have a decided aversion to being fleeced by those in my employ.”
The boy sniffed. “Well, if’n yer dead set on holdin’ that against me,” he said, his voice dripping reproach, his feet dragging as he turned away.
“Wait a minute.”
The boy swung back around.
“Here.” Picking up the hunk of bread, Sebastian tossed it to the boy, who caught the small loaf deftly with one hand. Sebastian grunted. “You’re a better catch than a foist. Now get going.”
Chapter 10
Kat Boleyn had first met Rachel York on the banks of the Thames, on a snowy December night just over three years ago. Rachel had been fifteen then, heartbreakingly young and full of despair. Kat had been all of twenty, but already the toast of London’s stage for several years, her own secrets and painful past hidden beneath fine jewels and practiced smiles.
And so it was to the Thames that Kat Boleyn went that Wednesday night, to toss a bunch of yellow roses from the center of London Bridge and watch dry-eyed as they drifted apart and slowly sank beneath the river’s black waves. Then she turned purposefully away.
The clouds still hung low over the city, but with the coming of night, the rain had eased off into a fine mist. When she was a little girl, Kat had loved the mist. She’d lived in Dublin then, in a whitewashed house facing an open green edged with chestnuts and giant oaks. One of the oaks, older than all the others, had great spreading branches that reached nearly down to the ground. Even before she started school, Kat’s father had taught her to climb that tree.
She always thought of him as her father, even though he wasn’t. But he was the only father she’d ever known, and he encouraged her to do things that sometimes frightened her mother.
“Life is full of scary things,” he used to tell Kat. “The trick is not to let your fears get in the way of your living. Whatever else you do, Katherine, don’t settle for a life half-lived.”
Kat had tried to tell herself that, the day the English soldiers came. The mist had been thick that morning, and heavy with the acrid scent of burning. She’d stood in the dim morning light and repeated her father’s words to herself over and over again as they dragged her mother kicking and screaming from that pretty little white house. They’d made Kat watch what they did to her mother that day, and they’d made Kat’s father watch, too. And then they’d hanged them, side by side, Kat’s mother and father both, from the oak at the edge of the green.
Those days belonged to a different lifetime, to a different person. The woman who now drove her phaeton and pair at a smart clip through London’s lamp-lit streets called herself Kat Boleyn, and she was one of the most acclaimed actresses of the London stage. The velvet pelisse she wore that evening was a bright cherry red, not a smoke-smudged gray, and she wore a string of pearls at her throat, rather than a black band of mourning.
But she still hated the mist.
Reining in
before the townhouse of Monsieur Léon Pierrepont, Kat handed the ribbons to her groom and stepped down, easily, from her high-perch seat. “Walk them, George.”
“Yes, miss.”
She paused on the footpath to stare up at the classical façade before her, lit softly by the gleam of flickering oil lamps. Like so much else about Leo Pierrepont, this house on Half Moon Street was carefully calculated to create just the right impression: large, but not too large, elegant, and with a touch of the faded grandeur to be expected from a proud nobleman now forced to live in exile. When one lived a life that was, essentially, a lie, appearances were everything.
She found him alone, in his dining room, just sitting down to a table laid for one with fine china and gleaming silver and the sparkle of old crystal. He was a slim, delicately built man upon whom the passing years, however difficult they might have been, nevertheless seemed to have rested easily. His face was largely unlined, his light brown hair barely touched with gray. Kat had never known his precise age, but given that he’d been almost thirty when driven from Paris by the Reign of Terror, she knew he must be in his late forties by now.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Leo said, his attention seemingly all for his soup.
Kat jerked off her gloves and tossed them with reticule, pelisse, and hat onto a nearby chair. “Whose reputation are you afraid will be compromised, Leo? Mine, or yours?”
He glanced up, gray eyes gleaming with a faint smile. “Mine, of course. You have no reputation left to lose.” He signaled for the servants to leave them, then sat back. The smile faded. “You’ve heard what happened to Rachel, I suppose?”
Kat pressed her flattened palms against the tabletop and leaned into them. Beneath the silk bodice of her gown, her heart thudded hard and fast, but she managed to keep her voice calm, steady. “Did you do it?”
If he had, he wouldn’t admit it; Kat knew that. But she wanted to watch his face while he denied it.