What Remains of Heaven

Chapter 29

A thousand recollections rode with Sebastian through the howling wind and driving rain. Raw memories of a disap proving father whose harshest words had always been reserved for his youngest child, the son so unlike all the others, the son who grew tall and lean when his brothers were built solid and big boned, and whose eyes were a strange amber in place of the vivid St. Cyr blue. The son with the preternatural hearing and vision, the quick reflexes and uncanny ability to see in the dark. The son who by some cruel twist of fate had lived to become Hendon’s heir when both his brothers died.

He remembered snatches of hushed conversations the child he’d once been was never meant to overhear. Voices raised in anger and in pleading. Words that had made no sense, until now.

The white blur of a tollgate loomed out of the mist. Sebastian reined in hard, fists clenching with impatience, the mare’s hooves churning the mud while he waited for the grumbling attendant to lumber from his cottage, head bent and shoulders hunched against the downpour. Reaching down to hand the toll to the attendant, Sebastian realized he was shaking. Shaking with pain and denial.

Yet as the gate swung open and he set his spurs to the Arab’s flanks, Sebastian was aware of a small spark of hope fed by a burning rage. Because if Alistair St. Cyr were not, in truth, Sebastian’s father, then the horror of incest that had driven him from Kat Boleyn was all a mistake. No, not a mistake: a lie.

One more lie in a long string of deceptions stretching back nearly thirty years.

Still booted and spurred from the ride back to town, Sebastian went straight to the great St. Cyr pile on Grosvenor Square. But he found Hendon out and the painfully proper butler unable to say where the Earl had gone or when he would be back. Drawing the same blank at Hendon’s clubs, Sebastian was on Cockspur Street, striding toward Whitehall, when he heard a man calling his name.

“Lord Devlin.”

Sebastian kept walking.

“I say, Lord Devlin!”

Turning, Sebastian was surprised to find Bishop Prescott’s chaplain weaving his way through the traffic, the hem of his cassock lifted clear of the droppings scattered across the wet pavement by a passing mule team.

“I’d formed the intention of seeking you out later this afternoon,” said the Chaplain, leaping nimbly onto the footpath, “so this meeting is quite fortuitous.”

“You wished to see me?” said Sebastian, holding himself still with effort.

The Chaplain had been smiling faintly. But whatever he saw in Sebastian’s face as he walked up to him caused the smile to slip, his forehead puckering. “Are you all right, my lord?”

Sebastian found he had to draw in a breath, then another, before he could speak. “Yes, of course. Did you have something for me?”

The Chaplain held out a folded square of paper. “You may have noticed there was a gap in the Bishop’s itinerary on Monday afternoon.”

“Yes. I’d assumed he had official duties scheduled at that time.”

The Chaplain shook his head. “In fact Bishop Prescott paid a call upon a family in Chelsea. I was originally hesitant to pass the information on to you, but I’ve discussed the situation with the Archbishop, who assures me we can rely upon your discretion. It may not be relevant, of course, but I’ve written down the information for you.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian, barely glancing at the scrawled name and address before tucking the paper into his waistcoat pocket.

The Chaplain cleared his throat. “Word reached London House last night about Reverend Earnshaw. A troublesome development. Deeply troublesome.”

Sebastian studied the cleric’s pale, pinched face and noticed for the first time the fear that widened the man’s eyes and flattened his lips. So it was fear that had driven this normally persnickety, disapproving man to suddenly become more cooperative.

A new thought occurred to Sebastian. He said, “How much contact was there between Bishop Prescott and Malcolm Earnshaw? Before Tuesday night, I mean.”

The Chaplain looked blank. “None that I am aware of.”

“Yet the living is in the Prescotts’ gift, is it not?”

“In Sir Peter’s, yes.”

“Was Earnshaw related in some way to the Bishop?”

“A distant cousin of some sort, I believe. Why do you ask?”

“He recognized Sir Nigel’s ring, which means he must have known the man.”

“I can make inquiries into the exact relationship, if you’d like.”

“That would help,” said Sebastian, already turning away. “Thank you.”

Drawing a blank at the Admiralty, Sebastian extended his search for Hendon to the Horse Guards, and from there to Downing Street, all without success.

Leaving the Chancellor’s chambers, he stood for a moment outside Number Ten, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the heavy gray clouds bunching overhead.

Then he turned and strode rapidly toward the Mall and Carlton House.

Charles, Lord Jarvis, was reading through a set of dispatches at the table in his chambers at Carlton House when Viscount Devlin thrust aside Jarvis’s indignant, sputtering secretary and strode into the room.

“My lord!” protested the secretary. “You can’t go in there!”

The Viscount paused just inside the entrance to the chambers, bringing with him the scent of fresh country air and warm horseflesh. He was dressed in a riding coat of blue superfine, with buff-colored buckskin breeches and high-topped riding boots splashed with mud. His strange amber eyes glittered dangerously.

Hopping ineffectually from one foot to the other, Jarvis’s secretary wrung his hands in despair. “I do most humbly beg your pardon, my lord Jarvis. I did try to—”

“Leave us,” snapped Jarvis.

“Yes, my lord.” The secretary bowed and withdrew.

“I trust you have a good reason for this intrusion?” said Jarvis, leaning back in his seat.

Devlin prowled the room, the spurs on his boots clinking. “Thirty years ago, you formed part of a mission sent by the King to the American Colonies. The other two members of that mission were my father and Sir Nigel Prescott.”

Jarvis set aside his dispatches and smiled. This promised to be an interesting conversation. An interesting conversation, indeed. “That’s right.”

“While the mission was in America, a woman provided Sir Nigel with evidence of treason at the highest levels of government—evidence in the form of a collection of letters written to a member of the Confederation Congress by someone styling himself ‘Alcibiades.’ Someone who was obviously in the Foreign Office or close to the King, given the sensitive nature of the information the letters contained.”

Jarvis reached for the gold snuffbox he kept in his pocket.

The Viscount watched him, his jaw set hard. When Jarvis remained silent, Devlin said, “You know all this, I gather?”

“Of course.”

“Sir Nigel told you?”

Jarvis flicked open the lid of his snuffbox with one artful finger. “I have my own sources of information.”

“And was the identity of the traitor known to you, as well?”

Jarvis lifted a thumbnail full of snuff to one nostril and sniffed. “Unfortunately, no.”

The Viscount came to press his palms flat on the surface of the table and lean into them. “You never discovered who this ‘Alcibiades’ was?”

“No.”

Devlin shoved away from the table in disgust. “You seriously expect me to believe that?”

Jarvis raised one eyebrow. “Whether you believe it or not is of no consequence to me.”

“What happened to the letters?”

“They disappeared. Along with Sir Nigel.”

“And you found none of this cause for concern?”

Jarvis closed his snuffbox with a snap. “Of course it was cause for concern. Lord Grantham—the Foreign Secretary—and I contrived several clever stratagems to lure the individual involved into revealing himself. Unfortunately, none worked. A preliminary peace agreement with the Americans was negotiated later that year and signed not long thereafter. Alcibiades was never revealed.”

“When Sir Nigel disappeared so soon after your return from America, did you not suspect that his death might in some way be connected to those letters?”

“Obviously,” said Jarvis dryly. “We saw no reason to advertise that fact, however.”

“How many people knew of your mission to America?”

“In point of fact, the information was very tightly held.”

“But surely your absence from London would have been remarked upon?”

Jarvis put his fingertips together, wondering how much the Viscount knew, and how much he merely suspected. “Not really. It’s easy to lose track of the movements of one’s acquaintances, is it not? What with house parties and weeks of seclusion in hunting lodges and the need to attend to one’s estates.”

A muscle bunched along the Viscount’s jaw, but he said nothing.

“In Sir Nigel’s case, of course, things were a bit more difficult,” Jarvis continued, “owing to the proximity of his estate to London. I believe he gave it out he was traveling in Ireland.”

There was a tense pause. Jarvis waited for the inevitable query to come. But either Devlin already knew the truth, or he couldn’t bring himself to pose such a question to Jarvis, because all he said was, “Given your opposition to Francis Prescott’s translation to Canterbury, I find your previous association with his dead brother . . .” Devlin hesitated, as if searching for the right word. “Shall we say, suggestive?”

Jarvis pushed to his feet. “I wouldn’t refine too much on it, if I were you. I hardly see how what happened to Sir Nigel thirty years ago could have any bearing on the Bishop’s more recent demise—even if the two men did meet their fate in the same somewhat bizarre locale.”

The Viscount smiled sardonically. “Men whom you oppose do have an unfortunate tendency to turn up dead.”

“True. But I had no quarrel with Sir Nigel.”

“You considered him bad ton.”

“Believe me, if I went around removing men simply because they happened to be bad ton, London would soon be very thin of company.”

“Yet you did oppose Francis Prescott’s translation to Canterbury.”

“True again. However, the situation hardly called for drastic measures. Do you seriously think the Prince would make such an important appointment without consulting me?”

“There’s a difference between consultation and capitulation.”

“You underestimate my powers of persuasion.”

Devlin went to stand at the window overlooking the Mall, his eyes narrowing as he watched the traffic below.

Jarvis studied the younger man’s strained profile. “I hear the priest in residence at St. Margaret’s has been slain, as well,” said Jarvis. “I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that you are allowing a penchant for high drama to cause you to read too much into all this? That perhaps someone in the neighborhood of Tanfield Hill simply does not like priests?”

Devlin glanced over at him, a hint of amusement touching his lips. “And Sir Nigel’s thirty-year-old corpse mummifying in the church’s crypt?”

“Could well be irrelevant to the current murders. Curious, but irrelevant.”

“It could be,” agreed Devlin, pushing away from the window.

“But you don’t believe it is?”

“No,” said Devlin, turning toward the door. “No, I don’t.”