What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

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
     
     
    C harles, 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 ofher 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.