Jarvis’s immense power did not derive from his kinship with the King, which was distant. It was his peerless blend of stunning intelligence and unswerving dedication to the preservation of the monarchy combined with a cold, unblinking ruthlessness that had made him indispensable first to George III, then to the Prince Regent. For thirty years, Jarvis had maneuvered from the shadows, deftly blunting the inevitable repercussions of a dangerous combination of royal weakness and incompetence complicated by a hereditary tendency toward insanity. If not for Jarvis’s capable stewardship, the English monarchy might well have gone the way of the French, and the Hanovers knew it.
“Any idea who is responsible for this outrage?” demanded the Prince.
“Not yet, my lord.”
They were in the Circular Room of Carlton House, where George had been hosting a musical evening when some fool carelessly dropped the news of the murder of Daniel Eisler within the Prince’s hearing.
They’d had to clear the room quickly.
The Regent continued pacing, his movements surprisingly quick and energetic for a man of his girth. Once, he’d been a handsome prince, beloved by his people and welcomed with cheers wherever he went. But those days were long gone. The Prince of Wales-or Prinny, as he was often called-was now in his fiftieth year, grown fat with self-indulgence and dissipation, and despised by the nation for his spiraling debts, his endless extravagant building projects, and his increasing fondness for expensive jeweled trinkets.
“I’ve already commissioned Belmont to design a special piece around it,” said the Prince. “And now you’re telling me the diamond is gone? Vanished? Where am I to find another blue diamond of such size and brilliance? You tell me that! Hmm?”
“When the murderer is apprehended, the diamond will presumably be recovered,” said Jarvis as the Prince’s physician reentered the room, a small vial in his hand. Behind the doctor came one of Jarvis’s own men, a tall, mustachioed ex-military officer of the type with whom Jarvis liked to surround himself.
“Well?” Jarvis demanded of his henchman.
“They’ve nabbed the murderer,” said the officer, leaning for-
ward to whisper in Jarvis’s ear. “I think you’ll find his identity interesting.”
“Oh?” Jarvis kept his gaze on the Prince, who was obediently swallowing his doctor’s potion. “And why is that?”
“It’s Yates. Russell Yates.”
Jarvis tipped back his head and laughed.
Jarvis held a scented pomander to his nose, the heels of his dress shoes clicking on the worn paving stones as he strode down the frigid, rush-lit prison corridor. Normally, he ordered prisoners brought to his chambers at the Palace. But under the circumstances, seeing this man in his cell seemed more. . delectable.
The stocky turnkey paused outside a thick, nail-studded door, the heavy iron key raised, one bushy eyebrow cocked in a wordless question.
“Well, go on, then; open it,” said Jarvis, breathing in the scent of cloves and rue.
The man fit the key in the large lock and turned it with a click.
The feeble light of a single smoking tallow candle filled the narrow room beyond with dark shadows. A man standing beside the cell’s barred window turned abruptly, chains clanking, as the draft of the opening door caused the flame to flicker and almost go out. He was a young man, in his thirties, his body powerful and well muscled, his handsome face filled with an expression of anticipation that faded when his gaze fell on his visitor.
Jarvis wondered whom the man had been expecting. His lovely wife, perhaps? The thought made Jarvis smile.
The two men regarded each other from across the width of the small room. Then Jarvis drew a jeweled snuffbox from his pocket and said, “We need to talk.”
Chapter 3
Monday, 21 September
The morning dawned dull and overcast, the air crisp with an unseasonably sharp reminder of winter days to come. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, drew up on the verge of the carriageway, the breath of his elegant, highbred chestnuts showing frosty white as they snorted and hung their heads. It was nearly seven, and they’d been out all night.
For a moment, Sebastian paused, his gaze narrowing as he studied the cluster of constables near the bank of the canal. They were on the southwestern edge of Hyde Park, far from the carefully groomed fashionable rides and promenades favored by the residents of Mayfair. Here, the grass grew rough, brush choked the clusters of trees, and what few paths existed were narrow and seldom traveled.
He handed the reins to his tiger, a half-grown groom named Tom who scrambled forward from his perch at the rear of the curricle. “Best walk ’em,” said Sebastian, dropping lightly to the ground. “There’s a nasty bite to that wind, and they’re tired.”
“Aye, gov’nor.” Tom’s scattering of freckles stood out stark against his pale skin. He had a sharp-featured face, held tight now with exhaustion and suppressed emotion. He was thirteen years old, a onetime street urchin and pickpocket who had been with Sebastian for nearly two years. They were master and servant, but they were also more than that, which was why Tom felt compelled to add, “I’m sorry ’bout your friend.”
Sebastian nodded and turned to cut across the meadow, the soles of his Hessian boots leaving a faint trail of crushed grass behind him. He had spent the past ten hours in an increasingly concerned search for his missing friend, a devil-may-care, charming scapegrace of a Taffy named Major Rhys Wilkinson. At first, Sebastian had wondered if Wilkinson’s wife might be overreacting when she asked for his help; he’d suspected Rhys simply popped in for a pint someplace, fell in with old friends, and forgot the time. But Annie Wilkinson kept insisting Rhys would never do that. And as night bled slowly into dawn, Sebastian himself had become convinced that something was terribly wrong.
As he approached the stand of oaks near the canal, a familiar middle-aged man, small and bespectacled and wrapped in a great-
coat more suited to the dead of winter than a chilly September morning, broke off his conversation with one of the constables and walked forward to meet him.
“Sir Henry,” said Sebastian. “Thank you for sending me word.”
“Sorry news, I’m afraid,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. Once of Queen Square’s public office, Sir Henry was the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, a man who undertook his responsibilities with a seriousness born of his own personal tragedies and a dour religious outlook. He and Sebastian might be unlikely friends, but friends they were.
Sebastian gazed beyond the magistrate, to where the lifeless body of a tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties lay curled on its side next to a rustic bench. “What happened to him?”
“Unfortunately, that’s not readily apparent,” said Lovejoy as they walked toward the body. “There are no discernable signs of violence. He was found lying much as you see him. It’s as if he sat down to rest and then collapsed. I understand he has been ill for some time?”
Sebastian nodded. “Walcheren fever. He fought it as long as he could, but in the end he was invalided out of the service.”
The magistrate tut-tutted softly. “Ah, yes; terrible business, that. Terrible.” The 1809 assault on the Dutch island of Walcheren was the kind of military debacle most Englishmen tried to forget. The largest British expeditionary force ever assembled up to that time had embarked with the ambitious aim of taking first Flushing and then Antwerp, in preparation for a march on Paris. Instead, they’d been forced to withdraw from the island after only a few months, in the grip of a medical disaster. In the end, more than a quarter of the forty thousand men involved succumbed to a mysterious disease from which few ever recovered.
Sebastian hunkered down beside his friend’s body. The two men had met nearly ten years before as subalterns, when Sebastian bought his first commission as a raw cornet and Wilkinson had just won promotion to the same rank. The son of a poor vicar who’d served with the common soldiers as a “gentleman volunteer” for three long years before a vacancy opened up, Wilkinson made no attempt to hide his good-humored scorn for the young Earl’s heir, whose wealth enabled him to step straight into a rank Wilkinson himself had had to fight to earn. Sebastian won the older man’s respect only slowly; friendship between them had taken even longer. But it had come.