Tall and barrel-chested, with a big head and blunt features, Alistair St. Cyr, Fifth Earl of Hendon and Chancellor of the Exchequer, was in his late sixties now. Once, Hendon had boasted of three strong sons. Then death had taken the eldest, Richard, and the middle son, Cecil, leaving Hendon with only the youngest, Sebastian—the son who was least like the Earl and who had always seemed to confuse and dismay him.
The son who was not, in fact, Hendon’s child, although that was a truth only lately and disastrously revealed.
Sebastian was still the Earl’s heir and, as far as the world knew, his son. The few who knew otherwise had their own reasons for keeping quiet. But since the truth’s painful revelations that May, Sebastian and Hendon had publicly exchanged only the most formal and brief of greetings. In private, they had not spoken at all. For Hendon to seek Sebastian out now could only mean trouble. Sebastian’s thoughts flew, inevitably, to his new wife and the child she carried within her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded without preamble as the men came up to each other.
Hendon swiped one meaty palm across his lower face, and Sebastian realized with shock that, like Sebastian, the Earl had yet to shave that morning. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”
“What news?”
“Russell Yates has been committed to Newgate to stand trial for murder.”
Sebastian exhaled a long breath and stared out over the nearby, breeze-ruffled treetops. He had only a passing acquaintance with Yates, a flamboyant and somewhat enigmatic ex-privateer who’d taken London society by storm. But Yates’s wife . . .
The beautiful, talented, vital woman who was Yates’s wife had once been the love of Sebastian’s life—until he lost her to Hendon’s twisted trail of lies and half-truths and soul-shattering revelations.
“Murder?” said Sebastian. “Of whom?”
“A diamond merchant by the name of Daniel Eisler.”
“Never heard of him.”
Hendon shifted his lower jaw from side to side in that way he had when considering a problem or when dealing with something or someone who violated his carefully drawn moral codes. “In that, you are fortunate. The man was vile.”
“Have you seen Kat?”
Hendon nodded. “She came to me at once, hoping that I could somehow use my influence to intervene. But this is beyond me, I’m afraid.” He paused, as if considering his next words carefully. “I’ve never claimed to understand this marriage of hers to Yates. But I do know she has become exceedingly close to the man this past year. She’s . . . worried.”
“Kat?” Kat Boleyn was not a woman who frightened easily.
Hendon said, “I realize that in the past I have been critical—perhaps even dismissive—of your obsession with murder and justice. All of which makes it rather hypocritical of me to be asking for your help in this now. But from what I’ve been able to discover, the case against Yates is strong. There’ll be a coroner’s inquest sometime this week, but there’s no doubt but what they’ll support the magistrate’s findings.”
“Are you certain he didn’t actually do it?”
“Kat insists he is innocent. Although from the looks of things, the only hope he has of escaping the hangman’s noose is if you can somehow manage to figure out who the real killer is.” Hendon cleared his throat uncomfortably, his voice tense. “Will you do it?”
“I’d do anything for Kat. You know that.”
For Kat. Not for you. The unsaid words hung in the air between them.
Hendon’s vivid blue eyes blinked. St. Cyr eyes, they called them, for they had been the hallmark of the family for generations. Kat had eyes like that.
Sebastian’s own eyes were a strange, feral-like yellow.
Hendon said, “I must make it clear that she did not want me to ask you to do this.”
“Why the hell not?”
“You know why.”
Sebastian met the Earl’s frank gaze. He knew it wasn’t simply Sebastian’s own recent marriage that had given Kat pause; it was a matter of whom he had married.
And it troubled him profoundly to realize that the woman he’d loved for most of his adult life had felt she couldn’t come to him when she needed him the most.
Chapter 4
R
ussell Yates was one of those rare men who defied both the expectations and the conventions of his world and yet somehow still managed to prosper.