St. Cyr 01 - What Angels Fear Page 4

  The Viscount blinked. “I was out.”

  “Out?” said Edward Maitland, his jaw thrust aggressively forward. “Out? Out where?”

  The Viscount swung his head to subject the senior constable to a long, cool stare. “Out . . . walking.”

  An angry flush darkened Maitland’s cheeks. It had been a miscalculation after all, Lovejoy now realized, to bring the constables. Maitland was far too pugnacious and aggressive, too abrasive and hotheaded, to deal well with a man of Devlin’s ilk. Lovejoy cast his subordinate a warning look and said quietly, “You forget yourself, Constable.” To Devlin he said, “Can anyone vouch for you, my lord?”

  The Viscount brought his gaze back to Lovejoy. They were inhuman, really, those eyes. Wild and feral, like something one might see gleaming out of the darkness of a wolves’ den. “No.”

  Lovejoy knew a flicker of disappointment. How much simpler it would have been for them all if the Viscount had spent those fatal hours dining with friends, or at a pugilistic match. “Then I fear I must request you to accompany us to Queen Square, my lord.”

  Those disconcerting yellow eyes narrowed. “I wonder, am I allowed to send a servant to fetch a greatcoat and other foul-weather accouterments? I understand it can be rather chilly this time of year in”—he swung to fix Edward Maitland with a bland, ironic gaze—“Newgate, didn’t you say?”

  Lovejoy felt a quick shiver run up his spine. There was no way the Viscount could have heard the senior constable’s whispered remark, earlier, in the hall. It was impossible. And yet . . . Lovejoy remembered hearing tales, near-legendary accounts he had always dismissed, of this young man’s disconcertingly acute eyesight and hearing, of lethal reflexes and a catlike ability to see in the dark. Invaluable abilities he’d exercised to such deadly effect against the French in the Peninsula before he’d come home for reasons shrouded in rumor and innuendo.

  “You may, of course, fortify yourself against the cold with whatever vestments you require,” Lovejoy said hastily.

  An unexpected gleam of amusement flared in those terrible yellow eyes, then died. “Thank you,” said Viscount Devlin. And for the second time that day, Sir Henry Lovejoy was left with the perplexing impression that, beneath the surface, all was not precisely as it seemed.

  Chapter 7

  A half hour later, Sebastian paused at the top of his front steps, one hand resting lightly on the rail. The temperature was falling rapidly with the approach of evening, the fog thinning down to dirty wisps that hugged the pavement and curled around the unlit lampposts. He drew a cold, acrid breath of air deep into his lungs and let it out slowly.

  He wasn’t particularly worried. His acquaintance with Rachel York had been both casual and decidedly noncarnal in nature. Whatever evidence might seem to implicate him in her death would surely be quickly discredited—even if he did have no intention of telling anyone where, precisely, he had been between the hours of five and eight the previous evening.

  And yet as he started down the steps, Sebastian felt an odd sense of heightened awareness, a prickle of premonition. He was acutely conscious of the slow, ponderous movements of the big young constable behind him and the queer, high-pitched voice of the magistrate, Lovejoy, as he hesitated beside the open door of the waiting hackney and said something to the jarvey.

  The hackney was an old one, an ancient landau with a low, rounded roof and sagging leather straps and a musty, stale odor. The senior constable, the one named Maitland, swung around suddenly to catch Sebastian’s arm in a rough grip and lean in close. “I daresay it’s quite a comedown from your usual mode of transportation,” said Maitland, his lips pulled back in a smile, his eyes hard. “Isn’t that right?” The man’s smile widened enough to show his clenched teeth, his fingers digging in hard. “My lord.”

  Sebastian met the constable’s challenging blue stare with a tight smile of his own. “You’ll wrinkle my coat,” he said, one hand coming up to close around the constable’s wrist. It was a simple maneuver he’d learned in the mountains of Portugal, a trick of pressure applied at precisely the proper points. The constable sucked in a painful breath, his hand losing its hold on the coat as he took an unwary step back.

  Days of stinking fog had left the stone steps slippery with a combination of coal soot and freezing condensation. One foot shooting off the edge of the first step, the constable spun around, his back slamming against the iron handrail as he scrambled to catch himself, missed, and went down on one knee on the second step. His top hat landed beside him.

  He had pretensions to dandyism, this constable, with his artfully tousled blond curls and high shirt points and intricately arranged cravat. Clapping the hat back on his head, he straightened slowly, a dirty tear running down one leg of his expensive buff-colored breeches.

  “Why, you bloody bastard.” Maitland’s jaw tightened, his nostrils flaring. But it was his hands Sebastian was watching. London constables didn’t usually to carry knives, although some of the more aggressive ones did. Maitland’s knife was a small, wicked thing, with a honed blade that shone even in the faint light of a dull afternoon. The constable smiled. “Try something like that again and you won’t live long enough to hang. My lord.”

  It was all for bluster and effect; Sebastian knew that. But the younger constable—the one with the open face and big, oxlike body—threw a quick, worried glance toward the street, where Lovejoy stood with his back turned and one foot on the hackney step. “Good God, Maitland. Put that thing away before Sir Henry sees.”

  He lurched forward, intending perhaps to shield the knife from the magistrate’s view. But he was big and clumsy, the wet granite steps treacherous. His feet slid out from beneath him in turn. With a startled cry, he pitched forward, straight into Maitland’s blade.

  Sebastian watched the young man’s eyes widen with surprise, his face go slack.

  “Jesus Christ.” Maitland let go of the knife’s hilt, his own features twisting with horror.

  The young constable wavered on his feet, his gaze caught by the knife still protruding from his chest. A thin trickle of blood spilled from his mouth. “You’ve killed me,” he whispered, his gaze lifting to Maitland’s, his legs buckling beneath him.

  Sebastian caught the young man as he fell. Blood spilled over Sebastian’s hands, down the front of his greatcoat. Lowering the gasping constable to the footpath, Sebastian ripped off his own neckcloth, pressed it to the bubbling wound in the constable’s chest. The fine linen turned red and sodden in his hand.

  “Good God,” whispered Maitland, staggering down the last step, his face ashen.

  “Get a doctor. Quickly,” snapped Sebastian.

  Maitland stood with one arm wrapped around the area railing as if for support, his eyes wide and staring.

  “Bloody hell. Sir Henry, if you would—”

  Sebastian pivoted on one knee to find Lovejoy standing on the hackney’s steps, his little face pinched with shock. “My lord,” said the magistrate. “What have you done?”

  “What have I done?” said Sebastian.

  Still grasping the railing, Constable Maitland’s wide-eyed gaze lifted from Simplot to the magistrate. “He stabbed him,” Maitland suddenly shouted. “He stabbed Simplot!”

  Sebastian stared down at the man in his arms. A cold, misty rain had begun to fall, bringing a dark sheen to the paving stones and dampening the graying face of the dying man. Sebastian had seen enough death, from Italy and the West Indies, to Portugal, to recognize the signs when he saw them. The man would die, and Sebastian would be blamed for this death, just as he was already being blamed for the murder of a West End actress he had barely known.

  He had considered that a misunderstanding, an inconvenience simply dealt with. Not so simple now, he thought. Easing his hands from beneath the constable’s shoulders, Sebastian rose to his feet.

  Brook Street, once empty, now resounded with the tramp of approaching footsteps as two Inns of Court Volunteers, dressed in scarlet with yellow facings, white waistcoats and breeches, and black gaiters, appeared around the corner from Davies Street. “You men,” shouted Sir Henry Lovejoy from the carriage’s open doorway, one trembling hand extended to point, damningly, at Sebastian. “Seize that gentleman. Constable Maitland. Snap out of it.”

  Shaking his head as if to clear it, Maitland pushed away from the railing in a clumsy rush. Sebastian stopped him with a right hook that caught the constable under the chin and sent him reeling back to slam against the stucco wall.

  The rain was falling harder now. Someone shouted. The footsteps broke into a run. Sebastian spun around. Calculating the distance to the hackney’s box, he leapt, landing beside the startled jarvey with a force that set the old landau rocking on its sagging straps.

  “ ’Ere, ’ere!” said the jarvey, his bloodshot eyes opening wide in a gnarled, gray-whiskered face. “You ain’t allowed up ’ere with me.”

  “Then I suggest you get down.” Seizing the reins, Sebastian tweaked the whip from the man’s slack grip and snapped the leather thong over the bays’ ears. The ancient carriage jerked forward.

  “ ’Oly ’ell,” gasped the jarvey, and dived for the footpath.

  Sebastian threw a quick glance behind him. The Inns of Court men had stopped to kneel beside the wounded constable. But Maitland was running in the carriage’s wake, his arms and legs pumping, his face twisted with determination. “Stop that hackney! The man’s a murderer.”

  “Shit,” said Sebastian, and spanked the reins hard against the bays’ flanks.

  Without checking at the corner, he swung onto New Bond Street, cutting between a wide-wheeled freight wagon and a high-wheeled gig driven by a fat man in a yellow coat. The yellow-coated man jerked on his reins, his chestnut rearing up.

  “You there!” Sebastian heard Maitland shout. Looking back, Sebastian saw the constable leap onto the gig’s high seat. “Give me those reins.”

  “I say, I say,” bleated Yellow Coat.

  “Get down,” snarled Maitland, bringing the snorting horse under control and pushing Yellow Coat off his perch.

  Up ahead, a crush of vehicles jammed the street. Sebastian collected his reins, his eyes narrowing against the steady downpour as he judged the distance between a stalled dowager’s barouche and the donkey cart making its slow, ponderous way up the street.

  “My lord!” shouted Sir Henry Lovejoy, his rain-lashed head and half his upper body protruding from the landau’s open window, his fist pounding against the ancient panels. “In the King’s name, I demand you stop this carriage at once.”

  Bloody hell, thought Sebastian. He’d forgotten about the magistrate. “Keep your head in,” he shouted, sparing Sir Henry one swift glance.

  “I said, I demand you—” Sir Henry broke off, his eyes widening as Sebastian swung around the barouche, nipping in so close that one of the carriage’s dangling lamps caught the brim of the magistrate’s hat.

  “Good God,” said the magistrate, jerking his bald head back inside the hackney.

  Hauling on the reins, Sebastian brought the landau careening in a sharp left onto Maddox Street. Behind them, the donkey brayed and kicked, upending its cart to spill a load of squawking, feather-ruffled chickens across the wet pavement.

  “Get that bloody donkey cart out of my way!” screamed Maitland, the gig at a standstill, the blowsy chestnut snorting and tossing its head as the constable jabbed at the ribbons.

  The bays were stretched full out now. Sebastian gave them their heads, plowing up Maddox Street past the dignified stone pile of St. George’s. A gentle tolling of church bells cut through the crisp evening air. Fashionable ladies in gaily colored gowns and gentlemen holding aloft umbrellas scattered before the charging hackney.

  “Stop this hackney,” shouted Lovejoy, banging his fist again as Sebastian swerved around the back of the church and onto Mill Street, “in the name of the King!”

  Sebastian threw a quick glance behind them, but the street was empty except for a lamplighter and his boy. Sebastian swung back around just as the bays erupted into the rain-washed expanse of Conduit Street and a big-boned black hack, ridden by a young lady struggling to bring her mount under control, reared up before them.

  He hauled on the reins, wrenching the bays sideways. The horses plunged, snorting, hooves striking sparks from the edge of the footpath. The joints of the old landau squealed. Wood snapped. The coach body crashed to the pavement, the box skewing sideways.

  “Devlin,” screamed Sir Henry, struggling to push open the hackney’s door.

  “Shit,” whispered Sebastian. Rain sluiced down his face; at some point, he realized, he’d lost his hat. Sliding off the box, he skidded on the wet paving blocks and dodged the young lady’s groom as the man scrambled off his own mount to grab the bridle of his mistress’s squealing, wide-eyed black.

  Well mannered and patient, the groom’s mount stood with its big-boned, gray head down, its reins trailing loose in the swirling gutter. Snatching up the wet leather, Sebastian vaulted into the saddle.

  “Hey! You there! Stop!” The white-faced groom swung around, his hands full with his mistress’s still-skittish hack. “Stop! Horse thief!”

  Sebastian kneed the gray into a flat-out gallop that carried them down the rain darkened street, toward Covent Garden and the shadowy underworld of St. Giles beyond.

  Chapter 8

  Charles, Lord Jarvis, couldn’t remember precisely when he’d become aware of the level of incredible stupidity that characterized the vast majority of his fellow beings. He supposed the realization must have come upon him gradually over the years as he observed the behavior and thought processes of the housemaids and grooms, solicitors and physicians and country squires who populated his childhood world. But Jarvis knew exactly when he’d understood the strength of his own intellect, and the power it gave him.

  He’d been ten years old at the time and suffering under one of that long line of tutors his mother had insisted on hiring to teach her dead husband’s only son and heir, rather than expose his fragile health (and her own position as the heir’s mother) to the potentially deadly rigors of Eton. Mr. Hammer, this particular vicar had been called, and he’d considered himself quite a scholar. Only vulgar necessity had induced Mr. Hammer to accept such an inferior position as tutor to a young boy, and he lost no opportunity to impress upon his pupil the magnitude of Jarvis’s relative ignorance and mental incompetence. And then one day he set for Jarvis what was intended to be an impossible task: a mathematical problem that had taken Hammer himself, as an undergraduate at Oxford, a month to decipher.

  Jarvis completed the assignment in two hours.

  Jarvis’s success so enraged his tutor that the man soon found an excuse to punish the boy with a severe beating. But it had been worth it, because in that moment of sweet triumph, Jarvis had understood. He’d understood that most men, even those who were gently born and well educated, had minds that limped and plodded and tied themselves into knots. And that his own ability to think clearly and quickly, to analyze and discern patterns, and to devise intricate strategies and solutions was not only rare. It was also, potentially, a very powerful tool.

  At first he had expected things in London to be different. But it hadn’t taken Jarvis long to learn that essentially the same degrees of imbecility and incompetence existed at the highest echelons of society and government as were to be found, say, at a meeting of the hounds in Middlesex.

  The man Jarvis was dealing with now, Lord Frederick Fairchild, was typical. He was a Duke’s son, Lord Frederick, but only a younger son, which meant he’d had to make his own way in life. He’d succeeded fairly well by his society’s standards, although a stubborn adherence to Whiggish principles had limited his access to power under the old King George III. Now, with the Prince of Wales about to be named Regent, Lord Frederick had expectations that his years of loyal adherence to Prinny were finally to be rewarded. He’d come here, to the chambers the Prince kept set aside for Jarvis’s use at Carlton House, in a rather transparent attempt to ferret out which position, exactly, would be his. That he had aspirations of perhaps even being named Prime Minister was an open secret known to everyone in London.

  “The representatives from the Lords and Commons are to have a conference next Tuesday,” Lord Frederick was saying, his gentle gray eyes wide and watchful. “If a compromise on the wording can be reached, I see no reason the swearing in of the Prince as Regent should not take place on the sixth.” He paused and looked at Jarvis expectantly.

  Despite his two-score-and-ten years, he was still considered a handsome man, Lord Frederick: tall and broad shouldered, with a trim waist and an enviably thick, wavy mass of silver hair. A widower, he was quite a favorite with the ladies. He could always be counted on to squire an unescorted matron down to supper, or to solicitously turn the pages of her music when she played. His amiability and social skills kept him amply supplied with invitations to country house parties and the usual whirls of the London Season. But Lord Frederick had expensive habits—dangerously expensive habits, which added a hint of urgency to his voice as he cleared his throat and asked with studied casualness, “Has the Prince made any decisions yet on the disposition of offices for the new government he’ll be forming?”

  The question was delicately phrased. Everyone knew the Prince of Wales made few decisions on his own outside such pressing matters as choosing the color of the new silk hangings for his drawing rooms, or selecting an architect to undertake his latest renovation project. From his position near the window, Jarvis simply smiled. “No. Not yet.”

  A spasm of disappointment, quickly veiled, passed over Lord Frederick’s features. The man was atypically nervous today. He even jumped when one of Jarvis’s secretaries knocked softly at the door and announced, “A Sir Henry Lovejoy to see you, my lord. He says it’s important.”