Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,24
cheerfully when her butler, Humphrey, showed him in. “Why? It’s barely past nine.”
The Duchess groaned and brought up one hand to shade her eyes. “Don’t remind me, you unnatural child.”
He laughed and came to take the seat opposite her. “Never tell me you’re planning to join in the day’s festivities for the Allied Sovereigns? What’s on the schedule for today? A visit to the Tower? A balloon ascension? Or just another grand reception or two or three?”
She gave a faint shudder. “I’ve no idea. But whatever it is, I haven’t the slightest interest in attending. The way Prinny boasts and struts around in his ridiculous uniforms, you’d think all the credit for defeating Bonaparte is personally his and his alone, when everyone knows he’s never been anywhere near a battle in his life. It’s beyond mortifying. And nauseating.”
“So why are you up?”
“Emily. Her latest is being christened. You’d think at her age she’d be done with breeding, but she keeps popping them out. Claiborne says I’m being indelicate to speak of such things, but I’ve no patience with these modern missish ways. Calling breeches ‘unmentionables’ and blushing at the mere mention of a chicken thigh. What next?”
Claiborne was Aunt Henrietta’s middle-aged, straitlaced son and the current Duke, while Emily was her youngest child, forever in disgrace for having, as her mother always put it, “married badly.” Last time Sebastian counted, his cousin was the proud mother of thirteen offspring—and happily adored them all.
“Then I suppose I should be grateful to Emily’s fertility for saving me a scold.”
The Dowager gave a faint harrumph. “Hendon tells me you’ve involved yourself in another murder. He’s most put out, you know.”
“Yes, I do know.”
“Is that why you’re here? To ask me about Nicholas Hayes? I’m afraid I scarcely knew the young man—they packed him off to Botany Bay barely a year after he came down from Oxford. And all I know about that French countess’s murder is what was in the papers.”
“So tell me about the heiress Hayes was said to have abducted.”
Henrietta leaned back in her chair. “Oh, that.”
“It actually happened?”
“Well, yes and no. The bit about the ‘abduction’ was just a ridiculous tale put about to save the girl’s reputation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They eloped, of course.”
“Ah. Who was she?”
The Duchess gave him a fierce look. “I trust you to use whatever information I give you discreetly.”
“Of course.”
“Very well. It was Theo Brownbeck’s daughter, Katherine.”
“Good Lord.” Few in London were unfamiliar with Theodore Brownbeck, a banker who’d made a vast fortune through adroit investments. He was still a powerful figure in the financial affairs of the City, but lately he’d taken to devoting more and more of his time to producing an endless outpouring of works on religion, morality, crime, and the poor. The theme that ran through them all was the conviction that any attempt to educate or improve the living standards of the lower classes was a crime against God and nature. According to Brownbeck, what he sneeringly called “the good intentions of the feebleminded” would only result in inculcating a “sense of entitlement and lethargy” amongst a class ordained by their Creator to be worthy of nothing more than a life of hard work and an early death. Unsurprisingly, he had a passionate and long-running feud with Hero, who had challenged the validity of both his statistics and his harsh prescriptions to cure society’s ills.
Sebastian stood up to fetch a teacup from the sideboard. “Why did they need to elope? Why couldn’t they simply have married?”
“Because they were under twenty-one, and their fathers refused to countenance the match.”
“Seaforth and Brownbeck both opposed the marriage?”
“That’s right. The old Earl was a pompous, arrogant ass who thought a Cit’s daughter—even a wealthy Cit’s daughter—wasn’t good enough for an earl’s son, even an earl’s youngest son. And Theodore Brownbeck had no intention of allowing his only child and sole heir to throw herself away on the untitled offspring of an upstart Irish peer and spend her life following the drum.”
Sebastian looked up from pouring himself a cup of tea. “Nicholas Hayes was in the Army?”
“No, but he was planning to buy a pair of colors. Of course, that became impossible when his father cut him off without a penny.”
“So what happened?”
“Once they realized there was no changing their parents’ minds, the young couple ran off. A foolish, woefully improper thing to do, of course, but it was no abduction. Didn’t make it halfway to Scotland before the old Earl caught up with them.”