What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

name?”
    “Danford.”
    “That’s right. Danford I could understand. There are some insults a gentleman can’t be expected to allow to pass unchallenged. But Talbot? My God. You were screwing the man’s wife . There’d have been hell to pay if you’d killed him, I can tell you that.”
    Sebastian drained his brandy in one long pull and tried to swallow twenty-eight years’ worth of raw, conflicting emotions with it. He hadn’t, in point of fact, been screwing Melanie Talbot. But even if Sebastian had been inclined to explain himself, there would have been no point: the idea of simple friendship between a man and a woman was something Hendon could neither believe nor understand. Any more than he’d understand why Sebastian would care if a man such as Captain John Talbot should choose to beat his gentle young wife.
    “The man wants killing,” Sebastian said simply.
    “Why? So you can have his wife?”
    Turning away, Sebastian went to splash himself another drink. “That was never my intention.”
    “What you need is a wife of your own.”
    Sebastian froze, then carefully lowered the brandy carafe. “So we’re back to that, are we?”
    “If you’re going to insist upon continuing this dissolute lifestyle of yours, the least you can do is have the courtesy to ensure the succession before you drink yourself into a decline. Or go out some morning and get yourself shot.”
    “You underestimate me.”
    He turned to find his father studying the gash across Sebastian’s forehead through narrowed, troubled eyes. “This one was close.”
    “I told you, the man wants killing.”
    The Earl’s jaw hardened. “You’re eight-and-twenty. It’s past time you settled down.”
    “To do what? Take over management of the estates?” Sebastian laughed at the spasm of alarm that crossed his father’s features, lifted the brandy in a mock toast and murmured, “Touché.”
    “The seat for Upper Walford is empty.”
    Sebastian choked on his drink. “You can’t be serious.” His father continued to stare at him. Sebastian lowered his glass. “Good God. You are serious.”
    “Why not? It would give you something to do besides drinking and gaming and sleeping with other men’s wives. And we could use a man of your abilities in the Commons.”
    Sebastian subjected his father to a long study. “Afraid Prinny means to bring in the Whigs if he’s made Regent, are you?”
    “Oh, the Prince of Wales will be made Regent, make no mistake about that. It’s only a question now of form, and timing. But he’ll find he runs up against stiff opposition if he attempts to circumvent the Tories and resurrect the Ministry of All Talents. Or something worse.”
    “Not so stiff as you might wish, obviously, if you’re trying to recruit me as a candidate.”
    The Earl lowered his gaze to his own glass, turning it slowly in his palm so that the cut facets reflected the light from the lamps that burned even now, at midday, against the foggy gloom. “One might consider it a duty, in such perilous times as these, to join right-thinking men in defense of national interest, property, and privilege.”
    “I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you that if I were in Parliament, I might actually choose to challenge the sacred traditions of property and privilege, and champion instead the heresies of Jacobinism, atheism, and democracy?”
    Lord Hendon swallowed the remainder of his brandy in one long gulp and set the glass aside. “Even you wouldn’t be such a fool.” Without bothering to ring for the footman, he strode to the door, only pausing with his hand on the knob to glance back and say, “Think about it.”
    Sebastian stood at the window, one hand holding aside the heavy green velvet as he watched his father’s powerful, familiar figure disappear into the swirling fog. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or an effect of the mists, but his father suddenly looked older and more tired than Sebastian remembered him being. And he knew a twist of regret, an urge to reach out and stop his father, to somehow make things right between them. Except that things could never really be right between them because Sebastian could never be what his father wanted him to be, and they both knew it.
    He was reminded again of that long-ago, laughter-filled morning on the slopes above the cove. Alistair St. Cyr hadn’t been there that summer. Even in those days, the Earl had spent most of his time in London. But he’d come home the