Page 8 of What Angels Fear

“Perhaps, my lord. Although the violence of the attack suggests a level of anger, of instability even, which goes beyond simple sexual hunger.”

Jarvis closed the box with a snap and sighed. “Unfortunately, such outbursts of violence are not unknown amongst young gentlemen who have served King and country in war. As I understand it, Devlin has killed on at least two other occasions since his return from the Continent.”

“Affairs of honor, my lord. And his opponents were wounded. Not killed.”

“Nevertheless, the tendency is obviously there.”

His lordship walked away to stand for a moment at a window overlooking the terrace below, his hands clasped behind his back, his profile carefully composed, as if in deep thought. It was a moment before he spoke. “You’re a sophisticated man, Sir Henry. Surely I’ve no need to explain to you what it means, to have the son of a prominent peer—a member of the government, for God’s sake—implicated in such a crime. If we are seen to hesitate”—he swept one well-tailored arm in an expansive gesture toward the streets—“if the crowds out there believe that being born to a position of privilege is enough to allow an Englishman to get away with rape and murder, with sacrilege—” Jarvis broke off, his arm falling back to his side, his voice dropping to a deep, solemn hush. “I was in Paris, you know, in 1789. I’ll never forget it. The sight of blood running in the gutters. Of men’s severed heads, stuck on pikes. Of gentlewomen snatched from their carriages and torn limb from limb by the howling mobs.” He paused, his gaze sharpening suddenly on Lovejoy’s face. “Is that what you want to see here, in London?”

“No. Of course not, my lord,” Lovejoy said hastily. He knew he was being manipulated, knew there were undercurrents to all this that he, a simple magistrate, could never hope to understand. He knew it, yet that didn’t stop the chill that touched his soul, the sick dread that clutched at his vitals. It was every Englishman’s worst fear, that the endless, rampant, mindless carnage of the French Revolution might someday spread across the Channel and destroy everything he held most dear.

“If Lord Devlin is indeed innocent of this terrible crime,” Jarvis was saying, “he will in due course be exonerated and freed. The important thing is to be seen acting now. These are perilous times in which we live, sir. The news from the war is not good. The masses are discontented and sullen, and easily stirred up by radicals. With His Majesty’s health unlikely to improve and a Regency bill even now before Parliament, the very stability of the realm could be at stake. This is no time to be seen to hesitate, to dither and delay. The Prince of Wales wants Devlin arrested, and he wants it done before nightfall.” Jarvis paused. “I trust I can rely upon you to handle the situation with the tact and discretion required.”

It was never easy, bringing a member of the aristocracy to justice. Yet it did happen. It wasn’t so many years since the Fourth Earl Ferrers had been arrested for the murder of his steward, tried before the House of Lords, and hanged. As heir to the Earl of Hendon, Sebastian St. Cyr carried the title of Viscount Devlin as a courtesy title only. “Lord” he might be called, but otherwise the title conveyed upon him none of the legal rights of an actual peerage. Until the day he became Earl of Hendon in his father’s stead, Devlin would not, technically, be a peer. And so he would be tried before the King’s Bench, like any other common criminal, rather than in the House of Lords.

If it came to that, of course.

Lovejoy bowed sharply. “Yes, my lord. I’ll see to it personally.”

An unexpectedly winning, almost gentle smile spread across Lord Jarvis’s face. “Good man. I knew I could count on you.”

His hat gripped tightly before him, Lovejoy bowed himself out of the great man’s presence. But as he turned to walk down that long, ornate corridor, his footsteps echoing hollowly, his heart feeling strangely heavy in his chest, Sir Henry Lovejoy became aware of a growing conviction that he was being used.

Chapter 6

Sometimes, dreams of the war still came to him. Dreams haunted by dying children, dark eyes filled with pain and fear and bewilderment, and golden-skinned women, swollen pregnant bellies ripped open by soldiers’ bayonets. Once it had mattered to him which soldiers’ bayonets, French or English? It had mattered desperately. That had been before he’d understood it was irrelevant, that it was only a factor of time and geography, that soldiers of all nations did these things. Once, he’d thought England a nation anointed by God, a favored land blessed and divinely protected, a force of good, battling enemies who must therefore be the forces of evil. Once, he had believed that there were such things as just wars and righteous causes. Once.

Sebastian opened his eyes, his breath coming short and fast, his clenched hands clammy with sweat. The gloom of his velvet-shrouded bedchamber gave no indication of time, and it was a moment before he remembered where he was, and why. He hadn’t meant to sleep, had only intended to rest. Slowly, he squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. But the memory of the images remained, dark and haunting and indelible.

Sir Henry Lovejoy decided to take Senior Constable Edward Maitland with him to Brook Street, along with another, younger constable named Simplot, whom Maitland suggested. It wasn’t that Lovejoy expected a man of Devlin’s position in Society to resist arrest. But Lovejoy had to admit to a certain, secret fear that, minus the two constables’ weighty presence, the Viscount might not take Lovejoy seriously. One heard tales of this viscount, of his irreverent, unconventional ways. Lovejoy could imagine such a man simply laughing in the face of an arresting magistrate. Perhaps if Lovejoy had stood taller than four-foot-eleven in his boots, he’d have felt more confident. At any rate, he was quietly pleased to discover that Simplot was even taller than Maitland, and satisfyingly broad shouldered.

“Wait for us,” Lovejoy told the driver of their hackney as they drew up before Devlin’s Mayfair residence. The townhouse was an elegant structure with a neat bay window and beautifully proportioned ionic portico, but it couldn’t begin to compare with St. Cyr House, that massive granite pile on Grosvenor Square that would someday belong to Devlin along with his father’s titles, the estates in Cornwall and Devon and Lincolnshire, the interests in mining and shipping and banking. Lovejoy stared up at the townhouse’s neat, stuccoed façade, and wondered what it said about relations between the Earl of Hendon and his only son and heir, that Devlin chose to reside here, in Brook Street, rather than beneath that palatial paternal roof.

“His lordship’ll be finding the lodgings at Newgate a far cry from this,” Maitland said in a quiet aside as a stony-faced majordomo bowed them into the hall. “A far cry indeed,” he added, his handsome blond head craning this way and that in an attempt to glimpse more of that gleaming expanse of black and white marble, the procession of gilt-framed paintings marching up the sweeping staircase that curved out of sight to the first floor.

“You move ahead of the courts, Constable,” hissed Lovejoy as the majordomo’s discreet knock upon the library door elicited the Viscount’s permission to enter.

“My lord,” said the majordomo. “The persons who were here to see you this morning have returned. With another.”

Viscount Devlin stood with one buckskin-clad hip resting on the edge of his desk, a shade of annoyance crossing his finely chiseled features as he glanced up from the sheaf of papers he held in his hands. He was built long and lean, with dark hair and a high forehead across which something—or someone—had recently left a nasty gash. “Yes?” he said. “What is it?”

Lovejoy waited for the majordomo to withdraw, then executed a neat bow and said, “I am Sir Henry Lovejoy, chief magistrate at Queen Square. A warrant has been issued in your name, my lord. For the murder of Rachel York.”

Lovejoy couldn’t have said what sort of reaction he’d been expecting: a flush of guilt, perhaps, or a passionate protestation of innocence. At the very least one might have anticipated expressions of shock and sorrow over the death of a beautiful woman Devlin must surely have admired. But the young man’s face remained impassive, unmoved by any emotion except for a faint quiver of what looked very much like boredom.

He set aside the papers. “What is this? Some sort of jest?”

“No jest, my lord. You have been implicated both by evidence found at the scene of Miss York’s death and by the testimony of witnesses.”

The Viscount crossed his arms at his chest and shifted his weight so that he could thrust his long legs out in front of him. “Really? That’s interesting. What evidence? And who are these witnesses?”

Lovejoy returned the younger man’s stare. He had uncanny eyes, as hard and yellow as a noonday sun. It was with effort that Lovejoy kept his voice steady. “I must ask you, first of all, if you can account for your whereabouts between the hours of five and eight yesterday evening?”

The Viscount blinked. “I was out.”

“Out?” said Edward Maitland, his jaw thrust aggressively forward. “Out? Out where?”

The Viscount swung his head to subject the senior constable to a long, cool stare. “Out... walking.”

---