What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

throne , although how Jarvis had acquired that power and how he had maintained it through the course of King George’s long descent into madness, Lovejoy could never understand. He only knew that the Prince of Wales now depended on the man as much as the King ever had. And that when Jarvis summoned a magistrate, the magistrate went.
    Lovejoy swung back to his constable. “You’ve already sent him word of this?”
    “I thought he’d want to know right away. Devlin’s father being so close to the Prime Minister and all.”
    Lovejoy blew out a long, tense breath that turned into a frosty mist in the cold air. “You do realize the delicacy of the situation?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Lovejoy’s gaze narrowed as he studied the constable’s impassive face. Odd that it had never occurred to Lovejoy to wonder until now about Edward Maitland’s politics. But then it had never really mattered, until now. Lovejoy tried to tell himself it still didn’t matter, that their job began and ended with the need to investigate and solve this murder, and punish the malefactor. And yet . . .
    And yet the Earl of Hendon, like Spencer Perceval and the other ministers in the King’s cabinet, was a Tory, whereas the Prince of Wales and the men with whom he surrounded himself were Whigs. At any time, for the son and heir of a prominent Tory to be accused of such a crime would have been explosive. For the accusation to come now, when the old King was about to be declared mad and the Prince made Regent, could have profoundly far-reaching implications. Not just for the composition of the government, but for the nature of the monarchy itself.

Chapter 4
     
     
    T he privileged inhabitants of fashionable London were just leaving their beds when Sebastian climbed the short flight of steps to his Brook Street home. Only the distant, fog-muffled rumble of traffic from New Bond Street and the squeals of children playing chasey in the charge of nursemaids in nearby Hanover Square disturbed the noonday silence.
    There was a kind of sweet oblivion in exhaustion, a blessed numbness, and Sebastian felt it now. Morey, his majordomo, met him in the hall, an unusually anxious look drawing the man’s features together into a frown. “My lord—” he began.
    Sebastian’s gaze fell on a familiar cane and top hat resting on the hall table. He was suddenly, intensely aware of his crumpled cravat and the blood-encrusted graze across the side of his forehead and the inevitable toll taken by all the brandy-tinged hours that had passed since last he’d slept. “I take it my father’s here?”
    “Yes, my lord. The Earl awaits you in the library. But I believe it imperative that you first be made aware of an incident which occurred this morn—”
    “Later,” said Sebastian, and crossed the hall to open the library door.
    Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, sat in a leather armchair near the fire, a glass of Sebastian’s brandy cradled in the hand that rested on one knee. At his son’s entrance the Earl looked up, his jaw working back and forth as it had a tendency to do when his emotions werearoused. At sixty-five, he was still a powerful man, with a barrel chest and a thick shock of white hair above a heavily featured face. He had the most startling, deep blue eyes Sebastian had ever seen. For as long as he could remember, Sebastian had watched those brilliant eyes flare with an emotion he could never quite identify each time Hendon’s gaze came to rest upon his only surviving son. And for the past fifteen years or more, Sebastian had watched that blaze of emotion quickly disappear beneath a tide of pain and disappointment that was all too easy to read.
    “So?” said the Earl now. “Did you kill him?”
    “Talbot?” Sebastian swung off his caped driving coat and tossed it over one of the cane chairs by the bowed front window. His hat and gloves followed. “Unfortunately, no.”
    “You’re damned cool about it.”
    Sebastian walked to the side table and poured himself a glass of brandy. “You would wish me otherwise?”
    The Earl’s jaw worked furiously back and forth. “What I wish is that you curb this propensity to try to put a period to the existence of your fellow men. This makes three meetings in the six months you’ve been back in England.”
    “Actually, it’s been some ten months since I sold out.”
    “ Damn your impertinence.” Hendon surged to his feet. “The last one—what was his