What Remains of Heaven (27 page)

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Authors: C. S. Harris

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: What Remains of Heaven
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A cool gust of wind fluttered the lapels of Sebastian’s evening coat and buffeted him with the odors of the city, the pungent scents of wet paving and hot lamp oil mixing with a faint, inescapable whiff of sewage. He stood for a moment watching the sedan-chair bearers heft their burden and start off at a trot.
Then he turned toward Brook Street, his solitary footsteps echoing in the stillness of the night.
 
TUESDAY, 14 JULY 1812
 
 
The next morning, Hero was in the library, surrounded by piles of books and papers, when her father walked in the door.
“Good God. At it again, are you?” He picked up a bound copy of dispatches and frowned. “What’s this?”
She set aside her pen. “I’m compiling a list of all the men who were in the Foreign Office or close to the King thirty years ago.”
Jarvis’s eyes narrowed with amusement. “Looking for Alcibiades, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Think he murdered your Bishop, as well as the Bishop’s brother?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“Really? I think he’s dead.”
“Because you never found him?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you think Francis Prescott was murdered in the same crypt as his brother?”
“Maybe someone has a sense of humor.”
“I don’t see anything the least bit funny about it,” said Hero indignantly.
Jarvis frowned. “I know. That’s what worries me.”
 
 
Sebastian was looking over a report from his estate agent when a polite knock sounded at his front door. The day had dawned fine and clear, and he’d thrown open the windows to a warm breeze and the scent of fresh bread baking in the shop down the street. He heard a murmur of voices in the entry, and a moment later Morey ushered Sir Henry Lovejoy into his presence.
“Sir Henry,” said Sebastian, rising to his feet. “An unexpected pleasure. Please have a seat.”
His round hat gripped tightly in both hands, the little magistrate gave a jerky bow and cleared his throat. “Thank you, but no. I can’t stay long.”
Sebastian watched Sir Henry reach into an inner pocket and withdraw a packet of worn, yellowing papers. And he knew, from the little magistrate’s somber demeanor, that his world was about to change forever.
“I visited the Board of Trade yesterday,” said Sir Henry. “No ship named the
Albatross
sailed from Portsmouth in either January or February of 1782. However, an
Albatross
did set forth from London on the twentieth of December, 1781, bound for New York.” Lovejoy laid the packet on the edge of Sebastian’s desk. The two men’s gazes met. Lovejoy looked away first.
A heavy silence fell. Sebastian reached to take up the
Albatross
’s passenger list, the ancient parchment crackling as he spread it open. A quick glance through the names of the passengers was all it took.
Charles, Lord Jarvis. Sir Nigel Prescott. A. St. Cyr, the Earl of Hendon.
He looked up. “This is the original passenger list.”
Lovejoy cleared his throat again. “Yes. I seem to have carried it away with me somehow. I trust I can leave it to you to see that it is kept safe?”
Sebastian nodded, his jaw clenched tight. There was no doubt in his mind that Lovejoy had understood immediately the significance of what he had found. It was a moment before Sebastian managed to say, “Thank you.”
The magistrate gave another of his awkward bows. “My lord,” he said, and turned away.
He paused at the door to glance back, as if intending to say something more. Then he must have reconsidered, for he merely settled his hat on his baldhead and kept walking.
Chapter 35
 
In his memories, Sebastian’s mother was always laughing. A beautiful woman with silken gold hair and sparkling green eyes, she had set out for a few hours’ sailing one brilliant summer’s day the year Sebastian was eleven. She’d kissed him good-bye and teased him gently, the way she so often did. When her friends’ yacht pulled away from the dock, he’d stood and watched her, smiling as the sunlight gleamed for one last moment on the strange blue stone-and-silver necklace she wore so often around her neck.
He had never seen her again.
Drowned
, they said. But Sebastian hadn’t believed them. Day after day he’d climbed to the cliffs south of town to stare out over the churning waves of the Channel and watch, waiting for her to come back. Not until seventeen years later did he learn he’d been right that summer. Sophia, the Countess of Hendon, hadn’t drowned. She’d simply sailed away, leaving a husband, a married daughter, the graves of her two dead sons . . . and Sebastian.
For seventeen years he’d lived with the lie of her death. Now he found himself wondering,
How many lies can there be?
How many lies could obscure the fundamental truths of one man’s existence?
After Lovejoy left, Sebastian stood for a time fingering the
Albatross
’s passenger list. He poured himself a drink, raised the glass to his lips. Only, rather than taste it, he turned and hurled the glass at the cold hearth in a savage shattering of crystal and pungent, spilled brandy.
Then he went in search of his mother’s husband.
 
 
He found the Earl of Hendon in the chambers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Downing Street. He was standing beside a bookcase, head bowed, a heavy tome open in his hands as if he were looking something up.
“We need to talk,” said Sebastian.
Hendon raised his head, jaw set with annoyance at the interruption. “Really, Devlin; if you—”
Sebastian sent the
Albatross
’s passenger list spinning through the air to land with a soft thump on the open pages of Hendon’s book. “Now.”
Setting aside the volume he held, Hendon unfolded the packet, the aged pages crackling in his hands. He studied it for a moment, then carefully folded the papers again with a hand that was no longer steady. “I’ll get my hat,” he said, and turned away.
 
 
Sebastian barely waited until they’d reached the deserted paths and flower beds of the old Privy Garden before demanding explosively, “
Why?
Why did you do it?”
He’d been afraid the Earl meant to persist in his lies. But even Hendon must have realized the time for denials was past. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his chin sunk low between his shoulders. He looked suddenly older than Sebastian remembered him being, and very tired. “You mean, why didn’t I repudiate you when you were born? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yes.”
“And proclaim myself a cuckold to the world? Not bloody likely.” Hendon squinted up at the spreading branches of the ash trees lining the avenue, pale green leaves trembling against a clear blue sky. His jaw hardened. “I was enraged; I won’t deny it. What man would not be? But I agreed to raise you as my own. I had two strong, healthy sons. No one ever expected you to be in a position to inherit.”
No one ever expected you to inherit
.
Sebastian knew a bitter welling of disbelief, fed by rage and a disconcerting sense of being a stranger to himself. “And my real father . . . Who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
Sebastian stared at the Earl’s familiar, craggy profile and wondered if it was a lie. One more lie, piled atop so many others. “What about Amanda? Does she know who he was?”
Hendon threw him a quick, sideways glance. “She may. I don’t know. We’ve never spoken of it. Although it’s always been my suspicion she knew far more than a girl her age should of her mother’s activities.”
“She does know I’m not your son?”
“Yes.”
“So the two of you . . . You
both
knew Kat and I were not sister and brother. Yet you let us think—” Sebastian choked, and it was a moment before he could continue. “
In the name of God
, how
could
you?”
Hendon swiped the air with one big hand, his features hardening into a mask of stubborn determination. “I’ve spent the last twenty-nine years of my life hiding the truth from you. Do you seriously think I would suddenly give it all away? So that you could ruin yourself by contracting a disastrous marriage with a woman of the stage?”
Sebastian threw back his head, his harsh laugh startling a nearby pigeon that rose up with a cry of alarm, wings beating the air in a frantic whirl. “My God, that’s rich. Kat is your
daughter
, while I . . . I’m just the illegitimate son of God only knows who. One would think you’d actually
encourage
the match. Then my sons really would be your grandsons—only through Kat, rather than me.”
A muscle jumped along Hendon’s clenched jaw. “You are my son in the eyes of the world and before the law. I named you that nearly thirty years ago.
Pater est quem nuptiae demonstrant
. Nothing has changed.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Sebastian, the shells of the walk crunching beneath his boots as he drew up abruptly. “Everything has changed. Everything.”
And he turned and walked off into the trees.
 
 
Sebastian sat in one of the high-backed pews that crowded the round nave of the Temple, his eyes half closed as he studied the mail-clad effigy of a medieval knight on the pavement before him. Once, when he was twenty-one and Kat but sixteen, they had come here, to the ancient church of the Knights Templar and pledged their love to each other forever.
He heard the whisper of the door quietly opening and closing, heard her footsteps cross the pavement toward him, breathed in the sweet scent of her as Kat slipped into the seat beside him.
He said, “How did you know where to find me?”
A soft smile touched her lips. “I’ll admit this isn’t the first place I looked.”
The urge to take her into his arms was so overwhelming he had to clench his fists around the back of the pew before him. He said, “You talked to Hendon?”
“He came to see me.” She rested her own hand atop one of his. “I’m so sorry, Sebastian.”
He let his head fall back, his throat stretching tight as he looked up at the whitewashed plaster ceiling. “I’ll not deny it’s a bit of a shock, learning I’m not exactly who I’ve always thought I was, but—”
“Sebastian . . . No.” She shifted so that she could grip his right hand between both of hers. “You’re still the same man you have always been. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. And one day you will be the Earl of Hendon.”
“I don’t think so,” he said evenly.
Her lips parted as she drew in a quick breath. “What are you saying? You wouldn’t—Oh, God, Sebastian . . . You wouldn’t go away?”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“You couldn’t do that to Hendon.”
He brought his gaze to her face. “Oh, really?”
“He loves you—”
Sebastian made a deprecating gesture with his free hand.
“No,” she said. “You know it’s true. I don’t think he wanted to love you. But how many of us can will our affections?”
When he simply continued to stare at her, she said, “You know it’s true, Sebastian. Hendon could have told you the truth at any time these last eighteen years. But he didn’t, for your sake. He knew what it would do to you.”
“What it would do to me?” Sebastian repeated. “How about what his lies did to me—did to us both? If he had told the truth ten months ago, you would never have married Yates and I would never have—” He broke off abruptly.
Her brows drew together in a frown and she shook her head, not understanding. “Never . . . what, Sebastian?”
Freeing his hand from her grip, he brought it up to touch her face, his fingertips sliding across her wet cheek. He hadn’t realized she was crying, the silent teardrops falling one after another down her face.
He wanted to say,
Come away with me, Kat. I love you and need you like I have never needed you before. Come away with me to a new land, a land where our pasts do not define us, where we can both be whoever we make ourselves
. Except . . .
Except that nine months ago she had made a promise to Russell Yates, a promise she would not go back on now, simply to grasp at her own happiness. While he had obligations of his own, to Hero Jarvis, and to the child they may have conceived in those moments of terror and impending death beneath the ruined gardens of Somerset House.
He felt it again, that gut-churning surge of despair and rage. “I will never forgive him. Never.”
“You must, Sebastian.” She brought his hand to her mouth, pressed a kiss against his palm. “Not just for his sake, but for your own.”
He drew her to him, her tears wetting his neck, his fingers tangling in the dark, familiar fall of her hair. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”
Chapter 36
 

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