What Angels Fear Page 34
From his position near the door, the Earl of Hendon slipped a watch from his waistcoat pocket and frowned. The Privy Council had already been kept waiting for an hour. But then, everyone at Court was accustomed to waiting for the Prince. There was no reason to expect his installation as Regent to be any different.
The Prince was breathing better now, but Jarvis shook his head at the Earl of Hendon and pressed a glass of wine into the Prince’s trembling hands.
It hadn’t been an easy thing, shepherding the Prince toward his new position as Regent while simultaneously maneuvering to keep the Whigs out of government. That girl’s murder coupled with the apparent involvement of Hendon’s son had come perilously close to scuttling the entire scheme. But in the end all had come off as planned. The Whigs had been discredited, Perceval and the Tories would remain in power, and the war would continue until the French were finally, irrevocably crushed. Soon, there would be no one left in all the world to challenge British supremacy. Unconquerable and all-powerful, Britannia would take her divinely ordained position as the New and Final Rome. It was to be the happy fate of Jarvis’s own generation of Englishmen to witness the final inauguration of an empire that would last a thousand years and more into the future.
“Jarvis?” The Prince’s voice rose in a peevish whine. “Where is Jarvis?
“Here,” said Jarvis, easing the wineglass from his prince’s plump fingers. “Shall we go, Your Highness? England and your destiny await you.”
Author’s Note
Although it would not have been recognized in the early nineteenth century, the unusual abilities displayed by Sebastian St. Cyr are characteristic of Bithil Syndrome, a little-known but very real genetic mutation found in certain families of Welsh descent.
Bithil Syndrome is marked by astonishingly acute eyesight and hearing, and an abnormal sensitivity to light that allows those with this genetic variation to see clearly in the dark. Other characteristics of the syndrome include extraordinarily quick reflexes, a misshapen vertebra in the lower back, and yellow eyes, the eye color being recessive to both blue and brown.
Although rare, Bithil Syndrome is nevertheless quite ancient, having been discovered in at least one individual known to have died in Wales some ten thousand years ago. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, immigrant Welsh families carried this mutation to North America, where it can be found today, particularly in the southeastern United States amongst families of mixed Cherokee and Welsh descent.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65