What Remains of Heaven (9 page)

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Authors: C. S. Harris

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

BOOK: What Remains of Heaven
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Franklin smiled. “I knew your father many years ago—although I doubt he ever told you of our acquaintance.”
“No. He didn’t.”
Franklin’s head turned as he followed his granddaughter’s progress across the park. “We shared a ship’s voyage together, once. Lord Hendon had been visiting the Colonies, while I . . . I was beginning my life of exile.”
He was silent a moment. The humor that had briefly animated his features had gone, leaving his face bleak and sorrowful. “I’d just lost my first wife. She died while I was being held in a rebel prison.” He let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “I must beg your pardon for sounding maudlin. The older I get, the more the memory of those days lies heavily upon my heart.”
They stood together, heads thrown back as they watched the kite dip and soar above them. After a moment, Franklin said, “You’re here because of Bishop Prescott, I assume?”
Sebastian glanced over at him. “How did you know?”
Franklin tapped one snuff-stained finger against his temple. “I’m not in my dotage yet. You might have a passing interest in science, but your real passion is murder. It’s not difficult to infer that someone told you I exchanged heated words with the Bishop of London recently.”
“It’s true then?”
“Oh, yes. Just because I’m not in my dotage doesn’t mean I can’t be foolish.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I run an informal school for some local children—nothing fancy, just a small group of lads who gather in my parlor for an hour or so in the evening to learn the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Ever since my Mary died, I’ve been finding it more and more difficult to keep the sessions going. I knew Prescott was an advocate of education for the poor, so I was hoping he might be able to find a place for a couple of the brighter boys in one of the city’s charity schools.” His lips tightened into a thin line. “I should have known better.”
“He refused?”
“He wouldn’t even hear me out. Became abusive, really—as I’ve no doubt you’ve heard.”
They turned to walk together down the hill. “Ironic, isn’t it?” said Franklin. “My own father disowned me as a traitor because I chose to remain loyal to the king he raised me to serve. But Prescott? As far as he was concerned, my father’s loyalty to the land of his birth makes me a traitor.”
Sebastian was silent, trying to reconcile two seemingly ir reconcilable portraits of the Bishop: the dedicated philanthro pist, and the narrow-minded bigot.
A faint smile rekindled in the depths of the American’s eyes. “I see by your expression you don’t believe me. You think, How could a man who fought for everyone from the poor slaves of the West Indies to the downtrodden Catholics of Ireland be so unreasonable in his dealings with an old man?”
“I suppose we all have our prejudices,” said Sebastian.
“We do indeed. Prescott may have been a reformer, but he was no radical. As far as he was concerned, France and America were ungodly places, united by revolution and a dangerous philosophy he considered a threat to the future of civilization.”
“But your own loyalty to England never wavered.”
“It didn’t matter. Prescott looked at me, and he saw my father. For him, that was enough.”
“The war with America ended nearly thirty years ago.”
Franklin shrugged. “For some, the passage of time means little.” He swung to face Sebastian again, his pale, watery eyes blinking in the bright sunlight. “If you want my advice, my lord, you’ll look at more than the past few days if you want to find out who killed the Bishop of London. Some men keep their friends for a lifetime. But Francis Prescott, he preserved his enemies. Forever.”
“Do you have any idea who some of those enemies might have been?”
“Me? No.”
Franklin’s granddaughter was beginning to reel in her kite, the crimson silk dancing against the clear blue sky. He watched it, eyes squinted against the light, his features set in troubled lines. After a moment, he said, “There is one rather curious aspect of my meeting with the Bishop.”
“Yes?”
“When I arrived at London House, I found the Bishop paused on the footpath in conversation with a tradesman. A butcher. Prescott said the man was simply there over an account, but . . .”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“When was the last time you dealt with your butcher over an account?”
Sebastian smiled. “I daresay I wouldn’t recognize the man if I passed him on the street.”
“Precisely.”
“Had you ever seen the man before?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I recognized him. He’s a fellow by the name of Slade. Jack Slade. He has a shop near Smithfield.”
“Smithfield?”
Franklin nodded. “Near the cathedral, although I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you his exact direction. I remembered the incident because it was obvious the encounter troubled the Bishop. Deeply troubled him. I suspect it does much to explain why he reacted so angrily to my own request.”
The wind gusted up, then suddenly died. Tipping back his head, Sebastian watched the kite falter, red wings vivid against the blue sky. Ellen Franklin let out a squeal as the kite plummeted downward, silk flapping, to land upside down in the branches of an elm tee, a torn scarlet splash against a sea of green.
 
“I want you to find someone for me,” Sebastian told his tiger. “A Smithfield butcher by the name of Jack Slade.”
Tom’s eyes brightened. “Aye, gov’nor. Any idea what part o’ the area ’e ’ails from?”
Sebastian gathered the gray’s reins. “No.”
Tom gave a cheery laugh and hopped down from his perch at the rear of the curricle. “I’ll find ’im, gov’nor. Ne’er you fear!”
Chapter 12
 
Hero spent what was left of the day prowling the big Jarvis townhouse on Berkeley Square and awaiting the arrival of Bishop Prescott’s appointment schedule from London House.
The discovery that the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked Viscount Devlin to investigate Prescott’s death filled her with a driving sense of urgency. She knew Devlin, which meant she knew it was only a matter of time before he discovered the truth behind her recent visits to the Bishop. And once he knew that, she had no doubt he would be relentless in his determination to “do the honorable thing” and marry her. Wild and unorthodox Devlin might be, but he was still an officer and a gentleman. And in affairs of this nature, the gentleman’s code was inflexible.
Of course, he could not
compel
her to marry him. Normally, Hero would have laughed at the suggestion that she might find it difficult to resist him. But she was discovering that pregnancy had the disconcerting effect of making even the strongest of females weak and—God help her—weepy. There were times, particularly in the dark, sleepless hours just before dawn, when she found herself actually considering such a solution. Which made it vitally important that the Bishop’s murder be solved. Quickly. Before it was too late.
That evening, when the papers from London House had still not arrived, she pleaded a headache (which was real enough) and stayed home from a dinner at the Austrian ambassador’s. She was convinced the schedule from the Bishop’s chaplain would arrive at any moment.
But it never did.
 
 
That night, Sebastian dressed in a white silk waistcoat, black tails and knee breeches, and silk stockings, and directed his carriage toward Covent Garden.
He arrived late, after the fashionable crush of chattering society members had settled in their private boxes, and after the less-than-fashionable stampede of those taking advantage of the theater’s practice of selling off all empty gallery seats at half price after the second interval.
For the better part of a year, Sebastian had carefully avoided the theater. Now, as he walked through the dim corridors and up the candlelit staircase, he breathed in the familiar scent of oranges and imagined for one painful moment that he caught the distant echo of a woman’s sweet laughter, like a ghost from the past.
There’d been a time when Kat Boleyn, the most famous actress of the London stage, had been Sebastian’s mistress and the love of his life. Then came the devastating revelations of the previous autumn, when Hendon rediscovered a previously unknown illegitimate daughter, and Sebastian . . . Sebastian lost forever the woman he’d hoped to make his wife.
He knew that painful truth should change the way he felt about Kat, and in many respects, it had. But over the last months he’d been forced to acknowledge that a part of his heart would forever be hers, no matter how damned that might make him in the eyes of God and man.
The boxes, although private, were as brilliantly lit as the stage, for one attended the theater to see and be seen as much as to actually watch the production below. He was aware of heads turning, of whispers behind raised fans as he slipped, alone, into his box. His many months’ absence from the theater had naturally been marked and speculated upon—coinciding as it did with the precipitous marriage of his longtime mistress to a gentleman of dubious reputation and questionable sexuality.
Sebastian kept his gaze on the stage below.
Resplendent in the red velvet robes of Portia in
The Merchant of Venice
, Kat was as beautiful as ever, her cheekbones exquisitely high and flaring, her dark hair touched with fire by the gleam of candlelight, her blue St. Cyr eyes flashing. He watched, his heart aching with need and want, late into the final act. Then he quietly left his seat and headed for the private dressing room he knew so well.
 
 
He was waiting for her when she swept in after the final curtain call, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed with triumph. Then she saw him and froze.
“I’m sorry for coming here,” he said, his shoulders braced against the far wall, his arms crossed at his chest. “But I couldn’t see presenting myself at your new husband’s house, and I need to talk to you.”
She had full, sensuous lips, a child’s nose, and slanting cat’s eyes she’d inherited from the woman who’d once stolen Hendon’s heart. Eyes she half hid with a downward sweep of her lashes as she closed the door quietly behind her. “You are always welcome there.”
Nine months before, she had married an ex-privateer named Russell Yates, a dashing nobleman’s son with long dark hair, a pirate’s gold hoop earring, and a flair for making himself the darling of the ton. But theirs was a marriage of convenience only, for Kat had made herself Jarvis’s enemy, and Yates had in his possession proof of a dirty little secret from the powerful man’s past. In exchange for protecting Kat from Jarvis, Yates received the cachet of being married to the most beautiful, desirable woman on the London stage. Which was important, given that Yardley’s sexual interests did not run to women.
When Sebastian returned no answer, Kat went to settle before her dressing table and began removing pins from her hair. “It must be important. You’ve been avoiding me for months now.”
“You know why.”
“Yes. I know why.”
He drew a deep breath, but it did nothing to ease the ache in his chest. He shouldn’t have come. He pushed away from the wall. “Last night, someone bashed in the head of the Bishop of London.”
Her hands stilled at their task. “And you’ve been drawn into the investigation of his murder?” Sebastian’s involvement in cases of murder had always troubled Kat. Of all the people in his life, she knew better than any—better even than Gibson—how much it cost him. “Oh, Sebastian.”
He gave a negligent shrug. “My aunt asked it of me.”
Her gaze met his in the mirror, her head tipping sideways. “You don’t seriously think I was in any way acquainted with the good Bishop, of all people?”
“No. But there is some suggestion he was vulnerable to blackmail. I thought you might know why.”
Once, she had labored to aid the country of her mother’s birth—Ireland—by passing sensitive information to the agents of England’s enemy, France. Ferreting out the secrets of the powerful and influential was an established technique in espionage. Which meant that if Bishop Prescott had indeed guarded a dangerous secret, then the representatives of Napoléon in London would have made it their business to know about it. Blackmail could be a powerful tool.

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