Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 4

Sebastian arrived at his house in Brook Street to find his father, Alistair St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon, just turning away from the door. Hendon’s own town house was in Grosvenor Square. He seldom visited his son’s residence, and never without a reason.

The Earl was a big man, taller than Sebastian and more solidly built, with a barrellike chest and a massive, bull-like head. His hair was white now, but once it had been dark, nearly as dark as Sebastian’s own. “Well,” said Hendon, his gaze traveling from Sebastian’s unshaven face to his less-than-impeccable cravat, “I thought to catch you before you went out. I see that instead I’ve come too early, before you arrived home.”

Sebastian felt his lips twitch up into a reluctant smile. “Join me for breakfast?” he asked, leading the way into the dining room.

“Thank you, but I breakfasted hours ago. I’ll take some ale, though.”

Sebastian caught the eye of his majordomo, Morey, who bowed discreetly.

“Your sister tells me you’ve instituted a search for your mother,” said Hendon, pulling out a chair beside the table.

Sebastian paused in the act of spooning eggs from the sideboard dish onto his plate. “Dear Amanda. However did she come to hear of that?”

“So it’s true, is it?”

Sebastian brought his plate to the table. “It’s true.”

Hendon waited until Morey set the ale before him and withdrew. Then he leaned forward, his arms on the table, his vivid blue gaze hard on Sebastian’s face. “Why, Sebastian? Why are you doing this?”

“Why? Because she’s my mother. When I first found out the truth about what happened in Brighton that summer, I was angry. With you. With her. Maybe even with myself for believing all the lies I was told. I’m still angry, but I’ve also realized there are things I’d like to ask her.”

“But she’s on the Continent.”

“That’s where I’m looking.”

Hendon’s bushy white eyebrows drew together in a frown. “There’s still a war on, you know.”

“It’s a complication, I admit, but not an insurmountable obstacle.”

Hendon grunted and reached for his ale. The relationship between father and son had never been an easy one, even before Kat, even before the revelations of last June. The marriage of the Earl of Hendon and his gay, beautiful countess, Sophia, had produced four children: the eldest child, a girl named Amanda, and three sons, Richard, Cecil, and Sebastian. Of them all, it was Sebastian, the youngest, who had been the least like his father. Yet for most of Sebastian’s childhood, the Earl had been content to let his youngest son go his own way, secure in the knowledge that the strange boy with the feral eyes and a fascination for poetry and music would never be called upon to inherit the estates and the exalted position that went with them.

Then death had taken first Richard St. Cyr, then Cecil, and Sebastian had found himself the new Viscount Devlin. There had been times, particularly during the long, hot summer of Cecil’s death and Lady Hendon’s mysterious disappearance, that it had seemed Hendon hated his youngest son. Hated him for living when both his brothers had died.

“Your aunt Henrietta tells me you’ve refused her invitation to this ball she’s giving tomorrow night,” said Hendon, his heavy jaw jutting forward in that way it did when he knew he was about to start a fight.

“I have a previous engagement.”

Hendon gave a scornful laugh. “Where? At Covent Garden Theater?”

Sebastian took a deep breath and let his father’s barb slide past. “If Aunt Henrietta is particularly desirous that I attend her ball, it’s because some acquaintance of hers has a marriageable daughter she’s determined to fling in my path.” The remark might have sounded arrogant, but it wasn’t. Sebastian knew well that if he were still the youngest of three sons, no ambitious mother in London would let him anywhere near her daughter.

“You need someone casting marriageable young females in your path,” said Hendon tartly. “You’ll be nine-and-twenty in a month.”

“The last eligible female my dear aunt inflicted upon me did nothing but prate endlessly about Alcibiades and the Sicilian Expedition.”

“That’s because when she introduced you to the Duke of Bisley’s daughter, you described the girl as a pretty widgeon with more hair than sense.” Hendon cleared his throat. “I hear the young woman Henrietta has in mind this time is quite out of the common.”

Sebastian laid down his fork. “I already have a woman in my life, as well you know.”

“A man can have both a mistress and a wife, for God’s sake.”

Sebastian met his father’s fierce gaze and held it. “Not this man.”

Hendon growled a crude oath and pushed up from his chair. He was nearly at the door when Sebastian stopped him by saying, “Rather than wasting your time trying to find me a wife, I wish you’d bend your purpose instead to finding me a new valet.”

Hendon swung around. “What? I thought you just hired a new man last summer.”

“I did. He quit.”

“Quit? Why?”

Sebastian hesitated. In actual fact, the valet had quit because he’d spied Sebastian’s tiger teaching the second footman how to pick pockets, but Sebastian wasn’t about to tell Hendon that. Instead he said, “Do you know of anyone?”

“I’ll have my man look into it.”

After his father left, Sebastian tried again to apply himself to his breakfast, but soon gave it up. He thought about going over the stack of valets’ credentials in his library, or perhaps applying himself to some overdue correspondence. But he knew he wasn’t going to do either of those things.

He was going to the City to hear what Dr. Paul Gibson could tell him about the death of young Mr. Dominic Stanton.