by C. S. Harris
“Aye, gov’nor.” Tom’s scattering of freckles stood out stark against his pale skin. He had a sharp-featured face, held tight now with exhaustion and suppressed emotion. He was thirteen years old, a onetime street urchin and pickpocket who had been with Sebastian for nearly two years. They were master and servant, but they were also more than that, which was why Tom felt compelled to add, “I’m sorry ’bout your friend.”
Sebastian nodded and turned to cut across the meadow, the soles of his Hessian boots leaving a faint trail of crushed grass behind him. He had spent the past ten hours in an increasingly concerned search for his missing friend, a devil-may-care, charming scapegrace of a Taffy named Major Rhys Wilkinson. At first, Sebastian had wondered if Wilkinson’s wife might be overreacting when she asked for his help; he’d suspected Rhys simply popped in for a pint someplace, fell in with old friends, and forgot the time. But Annie Wilkinson kept insisting Rhys would never do that. And as night bled slowly into dawn, Sebastian himself had become convinced that something was terribly wrong.
As he approached the stand of oaks near the canal, a familiar middle-aged man, small and bespectacled and wrapped in a great-
coat more suited to the dead of winter than a chilly September morning, broke off his conversation with one of the constables and walked forward to meet him.
“Sir Henry,” said Sebastian. “Thank you for sending me word.”
“Sorry news, I’m afraid,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. Once of Queen Square’s public office, Sir Henry was the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, a man who undertook his responsibilities with a seriousness born of his own personal tragedies and a dour religious outlook. He and Sebastian might be unlikely friends, but friends they were.
Sebastian gazed beyond the magistrate, to where the lifeless body of a tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties lay curled on its side next to a rustic bench. “What happened to him?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not readily apparent,” said Lovejoy as they walked toward the body. “There are no discernable signs of violence. He was found lying much as you see him. It’s as if he sat down to rest and then collapsed. I understand he has been ill for some time?”
Sebastian nodded. “Walcheren fever. He fought it as long as he could, but in the end he was invalided out of the service.”
The magistrate tut-tutted softly. “Ah, yes; terrible business, that. Terrible.” The 1809 assault on the Dutch island of Walcheren was the kind of military debacle most Englishmen tried to forget. The largest British expeditionary force ever assembled up to that time had embarked with the ambitious aim of taking first Flushing and then Antwerp, in preparation for a march on Paris. Instead, they’d been forced to withdraw from the island after only a few months, in the grip of a medical disaster. In the end, more than a quarter of the forty thousand men involved succumbed to a mysterious disease from which few ever recovered.
Sebastian hunkered down beside his friend’s body. The two men had met nearly ten years before as subalterns, when Sebastian bought his first commission as a raw cornet and Wilkinson had just won promotion to the same rank. The son of a poor vicar who’d served with the common soldiers as a “gentleman volunteer” for three long years before a vacancy opened up, Wilkinson made no attempt to hide his good-humored scorn for the young Earl’s heir, whose wealth enabled him to step straight into a rank Wilkinson himself had had to fight to earn. Sebastian won the older man’s respect only slowly; friendship between them had taken even longer. But it had come.
Wilkinson still wore the proud swooping mustache of a cavalry officer. But his clothes were those of a gentleman down on his luck, the cuffs of his shirt neatly darned at the edges, his coat showing the effects of one too many brushings. Once, he’d been a strapping officer, tanned dark by the sun and full of life. But years of illness had wasted his once powerful body and left his skin sallow and sunken. Reaching out, Sebastian touched his friend’s cheek, then brought his hand back to rest on his own thigh, fingers curled. “He’s stone-cold. He must have been here all night.”
“So it would seem. Hopefully Paul Gibson will be able to tell us for certain after the postmortem.”
Like Sebastian and Wilkinson, Gibson had once worn the King’s colors. A regimental surgeon, he’d honed his craft on the charnel-house battlefields of Europe. No one was better at ferreting out the secrets a dead body might have to tell—which was why Gibson was the last person Sebastian wanted examining this body.
He swiped one hand across his beard-roughened face. “Is that necessary? I mean, if he died of the fever . . .”
Lovejoy looked vaguely surprised. Normally, Sebastian was a vocal proponent of the still relatively new and highly controversial practice of autopsying the bodies of victims of murder or suspicious death. “Still best to be certain—wouldn’t you say, my lord? Although I don’t doubt you’re right. From the looks of things, he sat down on the bench to rest and suffered a seizure of some sort. Poor man. One wonders what possessed him to push himself by walking so far. And at night, after the park was closed.”
Sebastian was afraid he knew only too well why Wilkinson had chosen to lose himself in the farthest reaches of the park, after hours. But he felt no need to share that fear with Lovejoy.
He pushed to his feet. “How’s his wife taking it?”
Lovejoy cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Badly, I’m afraid. I understand he also leaves a child?”
“Emma. She’s only just turned four.”
“Tragic.”
“Yes.” Sebastian was suddenly aware of an intense exhaustion combined with an urgent need to hold his own wife in his arms and simply bury his face in the soft fragrance of her dark hair. He was a man who had been married less than six weeks, and he’d just spent the entire night away from his wife’s bed.
Nodding to the magistrate, he turned toward his waiting curricle. The larks in the nearby elms were in full throat, the light strengthening, the mist beginning to lift. But as he crossed the meadow, he noticed a familiar figure walking toward him with a dark top hat and greatcoat glistening from the morning dew.
Tall and barrel-chested, with a big head and blunt features, Alistair St. Cyr, Fifth Earl of Hendon and Chancellor of the Exchequer, was in his late sixties now. Once, Hendon had boasted of three strong sons. Then death had taken the eldest, Richard, and the middle son, Cecil, leaving Hendon with only the youngest, Sebastian—the son who was least like the Earl and who had always seemed to confuse and dismay him.
The son who was not, in fact, Hendon’s child, although that was a truth only lately and disastrously revealed.
Sebastian was still the Earl’s heir and, as far as the world knew, his son. The few who knew otherwise had their own reasons for keeping quiet. But since the truth’s painful revelations that May, Sebastian and Hendon had publicly exchanged only the most formal and brief of greetings. In private, they had not spoken at all. For Hendon to seek Sebastian out now could only mean trouble. Sebastian’s thoughts flew, inevitably, to his new wife and the child she carried within her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded without preamble as the men came up to each other.
Hendon swiped one meaty palm across his lower face, and Sebastian realized with shock that, like Sebastian, the Earl had yet to shave that morning. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Russell Yates has been committed to Newgate to stand trial for murder.”
Sebastian exhaled a long breath and stared out over the nearby, breeze-ruffled treetops. He had only a passing acquaintance with Yates, a flamboyant and somewhat enigmatic ex-privateer who’d taken London society by storm. But Yates’s wife . . .
The beautiful, talented, vital woman who was Yates’s wife had once been the love of Sebastian’s life—until he lost her to Hendon’s twisted trail of lies and half-truths
and soul-shattering revelations.
“Murder?” said Sebastian. “Of whom?”
“A diamond merchant by the name of Daniel Eisler.”
“Never heard of him.”
Hendon shifted his lower jaw from side to side in that way he had when considering a problem or when dealing with something or someone who violated his carefully drawn moral codes. “In that, you are fortunate. The man was vile.”
“Have you seen Kat?”
Hendon nodded. “She came to me at once, hoping that I could somehow use my influence to intervene. But this is beyond me, I’m afraid.” He paused, as if considering his next words carefully. “I’ve never claimed to understand this marriage of hers to Yates. But I do know she has become exceedingly close to the man this past year. She’s . . . worried.”
“Kat?” Kat Boleyn was not a woman who frightened easily.
Hendon said, “I realize that in the past I have been critical—perhaps even dismissive—of your obsession with murder and justice. All of which makes it rather hypocritical of me to be asking for your help in this now. But from what I’ve been able to discover, the case against Yates is strong. There’ll be a coroner’s inquest sometime this week, but there’s no doubt but what they’ll support the magistrate’s findings.”
“Are you certain he didn’t actually do it?”
“Kat insists he is innocent. Although from the looks of things, the only hope he has of escaping the hangman’s noose is if you can somehow manage to figure out who the real killer is.” Hendon cleared his throat uncomfortably, his voice tense. “Will you do it?”
“I’d do anything for Kat. You know that.”
For Kat. Not for you. The unsaid words hung in the air between them.
Hendon’s vivid blue eyes blinked. St. Cyr eyes, they called them, for they had been the hallmark of the family for generations. Kat had eyes like that.
Sebastian’s own eyes were a strange, feral-like yellow.
Hendon said, “I must make it clear that she did not want me to ask you to do this.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You know why.”
Sebastian met the Earl’s frank gaze. He knew it wasn’t simply Sebastian’s own recent marriage that had given Kat pause; it was a matter of whom he had married.
And it troubled him profoundly to realize that the woman he’d loved for most of his adult life had felt she couldn’t come to him when she needed him the most.
Chapter 4
R
ussell Yates was one of those rare men who defied both the expectations and the conventions of his world and yet somehow still managed to prosper.
He had been born to a life of ease and luxury, the son of an East Anglian nobleman. But one frosted, wretched night in the winter of his fourteenth year, Yates stole from his father’s high-walled, sprawling home and ran away to sea. When asked the reason for such a bold but undeniably rash impulse, Yates typically laughed and cautioned his listeners against the dangers of allowing impressionable young lads to read too many stirring tales of high adventure. But Sebastian had long suspected that the true reasons were much darker and could at times be glimpsed lurking behind the laughter in the man’s mocking hazel eyes, like the shadowy ghosts of childhood’s worst nightmares.
No one knew all that had occurred during the man’s years at sea. There were whispered tales of shipwrecks and pirates and daggers stained with the blood of both innocent and evil men. All that could be said with certainty was that Yates had risen from his precarious beginnings as a cabin boy to become captain of a privateer that terrorized the shipping of England’s enemies from the Spanish Main to the East Indies. By the time he returned to take his place in London society, he was a wealthy man.
He bought a grand house in Mayfair and quickly set about scandalizing the more sanctimonious members of the ton. Broad shouldered and sun bronzed, his dark hair worn too long and with the wink of pirate’s gold in his left ear, Yates moved through London society like a sleek tiger on the prowl at a garden party. His well-muscled body kept toned and hard by regular workouts at Jackson’s Boxing Salon and Angelo’s fencing parlor, Yates exuded unabashed virility and an aggressive masculinity in a way that was rare amongst the sophisticated, mannered men of the ton. The high sticklers would always look askance at him, but London’s most popular hostesses loved him. He was wellborn but deliciously unique, endlessly amusing—and very, very rich.
Yet Sebastian sometimes found himself wondering what had brought Yates back to London after so many years. There was a coiled restlessness about the man, a recklessness born of a mingling of boredom and despair that Sebastian both recognized and understood. Was it boredom or an urge to self-destruction that drove Yates to risk everything for the transient, meaningless thrill of running rum and the odd French agent beneath the noses of His Majesty’s Navy? Sebastian could never decide. But whatever Yates’s reasons for dabbling in smuggling and espionage, his most dangerous activities were actually those of the boudoir. For the truth was that London’s most virile, most ostentatious Corinthian preferred the sexual pleasures to be found with those of his own gender.
It was an inclination more dangerous than smuggling, viewed by society and the law as a crime on par with treason. For in an age given over to vice and excess, love of one’s own kind remained the ultimate unforgivable sin, punishable by a hideous death.
It was his fear of that death—a fear increased by the enmity of the King’s powerful cousin, Lord Jarvis—that had driven Yates into a marriage of convenience with the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most sought-after actress of the London stage: Kat Boleyn, the woman Sebastian had loved, and lost.
Yates’s prison cell was small and stone-cold, the air thick with the pervasive stench of effluvia and rot. A tumult of raucous voices and laughter rose from the crowded yard below the room’s small barred window, but Yates himself sat silently on the edge of his narrow cot, elbows propped on splayed knees, bowed head clutched in his hands. He didn’t look up when, keys rattling, the turnkey pushed open the thick door.
“Jist bang on the door when ye need me, yer lordship,” said the turnkey with a sniff.
Sebastian slipped the man a coin. “Thank you.”
Yates lifted his head, his fingers raking through his long dark hair to link behind his neck. A day’s growth of beard shadowed the man’s dark, handsome face; his coat was torn, his cravat gone, his breeches and shirt smeared with blood and dirt. Yates obviously hadn’t come here without a struggle.
“So have you come to gloat too?” he said, his voice rough.
“Actually, I’m here to help.”
An indecipherable expression flitted across the man’s face before being carefully hidden away. “Did Kat ask you—”
Sebastian shook his head. “I haven’t seen her yet.” He pulled forward the room’s sole chair, a straight-backed spindly thing that swayed ominously when it took his weight. “Tell me what happened.”
Yates gave a bitter laugh. “You’re married to the daughter of my worst enemy. Give me one good reason why I should trust you.”
Sebastian shrugged and pushed to his feet. “Suit yourself. Although I will point out that Jarvis happens to be my worst enemy too. And from what I’m hearing, the way things stand now, I’m the only chance you have.”
For a long moment, Yates held his gaze. Then he blew out a painful breath and brought up a hand to shade his eyes. “Sit down. Please.”
Sebastian sat. “They tell me you were found bending over Eisler’s body. Is that true?”
“It is. But I swear to God, he was dead when I found him.” He scrubbed his hands down over his face. “How much do you know about Daniel Eisler?”
“Not a bloody thing.”
“He is—or I suppose I should say, he was one of the biggest diamond merchants in London. Prinny d
id business with him, as did most of the royal dukes. I’ve heard it said he even sold Napoléon the diamond necklace he presented to the Empress Marie Louise as a wedding present.”
“So he still traded with the French?”
“Of course he did. They all do, you know. The Continental System and the Orders in Council are inconveniences, but nothing more.” Yates summoned up a ghost of a smile. “That’s why God invented smugglers.”
“Which is where you come in, I presume?”
Yates nodded. “Most of Eisler’s diamonds came from Brazil, through a special arrangement he had with the Portuguese. But he also had agents buying up gems across Europe. A lot of once-wealthy people there are facing ruin, which means they’re looking to raise money any way they can.”
“Selling the family jewels being one of those ways?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s tired, strained face. “So what happened last night?”
“I went to Eisler’s house to finalize the details of an upcoming transaction. I’d just knocked on the door when I heard the sound of a pistol shot from inside the house. The door was off the latch, so I pushed it open and like a bloody fool went rushing in.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why put yourself at risk of being shot too?”
Yates stared back at him, his eyes narrowed, the muscles along his jaw working. “If you were standing on the steps of a business acquaintance’s house and heard the sound of a shot from inside, would you run away?”
Sebastian smiled. “No.”
“Exactly.”
“Where were Eisler’s servants while all this was going on?”
“The man was a bloody miser. He lived in a decrepit old Tudor house that was falling down around his ears and retained only an ancient couple who tottered off to bed every night after dinner. Campbell, I think their name is. As far as I know, they slept through the whole thing. I sure as hell never saw them.”