That evening Alistair James St. Cyr, the Fifth Earl of Hendon and the man known to the world as Sebastian’s father, paid a visit to Brook Street.
He came to wish young Simon a happy birthday and to present the boy with a mechanical turtle, which the child adored. Afterward, Sebastian set up the chessboard on a table by the library fire and the two men sipped fine brandy while an icy wind howled around the house. There’d been a time not so long ago when Sebastian had believed the breach between them would never be healed. But things were easier these days. Not exactly the way they had been before, but easier.
It didn’t take Sebastian long to realize that the Earl’s mind was not on his game. After Hendon lost first a rook, then his queen in careless moves, Sebastian said, “Somehow I don’t think you came here simply to see Simon and play a game of chess.”
The Earl drew his pipe from his pocket and leaned back in his chair as he began to fill the bowl. He was a big man, with thinning white hair and a heavy-featured, jowly face. Lately he’d begun to shrink as his shoulders rounded. But as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was still a force to be reckoned with in the government. Like Jarvis, he was a strong Tory. He was also one of the few men in London sometimes willing to stand up to the King’s powerful cousin.
“Stephanie came to visit me yesterday,” said the Earl, tamping down the tobacco with his thumb.
Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of his brandy and felt it burn all the way down. Stephanie was one of Hendon’s two grandchildren by his firstborn child, Amanda. The nineteen-year-old’s marriage the previous September to the handsome, dissolute, and deadly Viscount Ashworth had troubled everyone who had the girl’s best interests at heart. “And?”
Hendon sighed. “Officially her child is due in June. But anyone who sees her must surely know she’ll be lucky to make it to March.”
“She’ll hardly be the first.”
“True.” Hendon bit down on the stem of his pipe and thrust up from his seat to reach for a spill. He sucked on the pipe, then cast the spill into the fire. “She had a bruise on the side of her face. Claims she did it falling on the ice, but you and I both know better.”
The two men were silent for a moment. Sebastian said, “I can try talking to him. But the man doesn’t frighten easily. And the truth is, short of killing him, I’m not sure what I can do.”
Hendon sighed. “I know. It’s just so damnably frustrating. She’ll never leave him, no matter what he does to her. She can’t. You know the law—if she did, she’d have to leave the child with its father.”
“Yes.”
Hendon sank back into his chair. He stared at the chessboard for a moment, then struck out with his arm to sweep the pieces from the board with an explosive “Bloody hell!”
It was a startlingly uncharacteristic display of frustration and temper. He looked at the scattered pieces sheepishly. “I beg your pardon.”
“It’s quite all right.”
Hendon rubbed a big blunt-fingered hand down over his face. “I hear you’ve involved yourself in the death of this pianist.”
“Yes,” said Sebastian.
Hendon had spent the last three years complaining about his son’s participation in murder investigations. But now he simply shook his head and said, “It’s troublesome.”
Sebastian rose with the Earl’s empty glass and went to refill it. “Why? What do you know?”
The Earl’s jaw tightened. “You’ve heard of the Orange alliance Jarvis and the Prince are pushing?”
“I have. Are you suggesting it could have something to do with Jane Ambrose’s death?”
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting. But she is the niece of Richard Sheridan.”
Sebastian paused with the brandy carafe suspended above the Earl’s glass and swung around to look at him. “She is?”
Richard Sheridan was best known as a brilliant playwright and poet, and the former owner and manager of both Covent Garden Theater and Drury Lane. But he was also until recently a longtime member of Parliament and a fiercely vocal reform-minded Whig. Although no longer in office, he had not been silent about his opposition to the idea of an alliance with the House of Orange. And along with Whigs like Henry Brougham and Lord Wallace, he was a well-known ally of the Princess of Wales in her struggles against the Regent.
“By marriage at any rate,” Hendon was saying. “His first wife was one of Thomas Linley’s daughters, as was Jane Ambrose’s mother.” Thomas Linley had been a famous tenor, music teacher, and composer whose numerous musical children were legendary.
Sebastian set the carafe aside. “That throws an entirely different light on everything.”
Hendon met his gaze. He was not smiling. “Yes, I rather thought it might.”