Where Shadows Dance

Chapter 14

Sebastian returned to Brook Street to find a response from Jarvis House awaiting him. He hesitated a moment, then broke the seal to spread open the single sheet with its terse message.

It is convenient.

He stared at the bold, almost masculine handwriting, aware of an odd, heavy sensation in his chest. He knew he should feel something. Relief, surely, combined perhaps with a pang of loss as the future he’d once envisioned slipped forever from his grasp. Instead, he felt dead inside.

He became aware of his majordomo, Morey, hovering nearby, and looked up.

Morey cleared his throat. “Tom has been awaiting your return, my lord.”

“Ah.” Sebastian thrust the note into his pocket. “In the library?”

“Actually, I believe I last saw him headed toward the kitchens. Shall I send him—”

A loud thump sounded from the depths of the house, followed by the clatter of running footsteps and a crash as the baize-covered door flew open. Tom catapulted into the hall. Morey hissed. The boy skidded to a halt, one hand coming up to straighten his hat.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, gov’nor.”

Sebastian’s lips twitched. “Well? Any luck?”

“Aye, gov’nor. I swear, ʹe never knowed I was behind ’im at all.”

Sebastian turned toward the stairs. “So where did Sir Hyde go?”

“Carlton ’Ouse, my lord.”

Sebastian paused with his foot on the first step. Since the institution of the Regency some eighteen months before, the center of power in the monarchy had naturally shifted from the Palace of St. James’s to the residence of the Prince. There was no reason to assume—

“I ’ung around,” Tom was saying, “ ‘oping ’e’d come out again. And ’e did, not more’n ten minutes later. You’ll never guess who was with ’im.”

“Lord Jarvis?”

Tom’s grin fell. “You already knew?”

Sebastian shook his head. “A lucky guess.” He glanced at the tall clock that stood near the library door. “I’ve another assignment for you: I want you to discover what you can about a Swedish merchant named Carl Lindquist.”

“A Swede?” Tom pulled a face. The tiger did not hold a high opinion of foreigners.

“A Swede. That’s all I know about him.”

Tom swallowed his revulsion. “I’ll find ʹim, gov’nor; ne’er you fear.”

To Morey, Sebastian said, “Have Giles bring my grays around in half an hour. And Tom—”

The boy had started to run off. But at Sebastian’s voice he turned, his head cocked in inquiry.

“Lindquist could well be something more than a mere merchant. Something considerably more ... dangerous. Be careful.”

Charles, Lord Jarvis was striding up Pall Mall when Sebastian came upon him.

Guiding his grays in close to the curb, Sebastian called out, “If I might have a word with you, my lord?”

The Baron kept walking. “If you wish to see me, make an appointment with my secretary.”

“This won’t wait.”

“Unfortunate, since it will simply have to.” Without breaking stride, Jarvis turned onto Cockspur Street.

Sebastian followed along beside him, the grays held to a walk. “What I have to tell you can be said here, if you insist. But I think you’ll find it’s not the sort of thing you’d care to have shouted in the streets.”

Jarvis drew up abruptly and swung to face him.

Sebastian reined in and nodded to his middle-aged groom, Giles, who hopped off his rear perch and took a step back to await Sebastian on the footpath.

“My lord?” said Sebastian to Jarvis.

With unexpected agility, the big man leapt up into the curricle to take the seat beside Sebastian. “Very well. You may drop me at the Admiralty. Now, what the devil is it?”

Sebastian gave his horses the office to start, his attention all for the task of guiding the grays back out into traffic. “Miss Hero Jarvis has consented to become my wife.”

Jarvis remained silent. Then he said, his voice calm, “I take it this is some sort of a jest. A vulgar wager, perhaps, or—”

“You know it is not,” said Sebastian, turning onto Whitehall.

“You would have me believe that Hero has agreed to this? Hero?”

“Yes.”

“Preposterous.”

“Ask her.”

Jarvis’s large fist tightened around the seat’s iron railing. “And if I refuse my consent?”

Glancing sideways, Sebastian studied the older man’s florid, closed face. The thought of having Lord Jarvis as his father-in-law alarmed him almost as much as the concept of taking Hero Jarvis to wife. He said, “I assume you know your daughter better than that. She is determined to wed, with or without your approval.”

Jarvis let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “Why are you doing this?”

Sebastian met Jarvis’s fierce stare. He tried to remind himself the man was a father, with a father’s concerns. “Believe me when I say that my motives are nothing except honorable.”

Jarvis turned his head away. “Pull up here.”

Sebastian reined in his horses and waited while the Baron clambered down from the high seat. “The Archbishop’s chapel in Lambeth. Thursday. Eleven o’clock. Be there or not, as you choose,” he said, and drove off to retrieve his groom.