Who Speaks for the Damned (Sebastian St. Cyr #15) - C. S. Harris Page 0,34
false walls and hidden passages that enabled those wanted by the authorities to simply disappear. “But he wouldn’t do it?”
“No. Said he hadn’t done nothing wrong. Said he wasn’t gonna hide like he had.”
“How was he caught?”
“His cousin—him that’s now the Earl of Seaforth. He told on him. Constables picked Nick up near Smithfield Market.”
Nick, noted Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Seaforth betrayed him?”
“That’s right. Only, he weren’t the Earl of Seaforth then. He was just Mr. Ethan Hayes, son of a younger son and lookin’ at a humdrum life spent as a simple barrister. But he’s sure enough an earl now, ain’t he?”
Chapter 21
E than Hayes, the Third Earl of Seaforth, sat sipping a glass of fine brandy in the Reading Room of White’s, his eyes narrowed in a squint as he leafed through the latest copy of an arch-Tory publication called The Anti-Jacobin Review.
Sebastian settled in the red bucket chair beside him and said, “Good evening.”
Seaforth scowled and cast a quick glance around, as if to ascertain who might be near enough to overhear them. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“As it happens, I am a member.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Ah. Well, you see, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Here?”
“That’s a problem? Have something you don’t want to get around, do you?”
A faint flush darkened the other man’s cheeks. “Of course not.”
Sebastian signaled for a brandy. “I’ve been trying to get a better picture of what happened eighteen years ago, when Nicholas Hayes was accused of killing Chantal de LaRivière.”
“He wasn’t simply ‘accused’ of killing her. He did kill her.”
“So certain?”
“He was convicted.”
“Innocent men have been found guilty before.”
“Not this time. You didn’t know Nicholas. I did.”
Sebastian settled more comfortably in his seat. “So tell me about him.”
Seaforth continued to hold his journal open in both hands in a not-too-subtle expression of his attitude toward this interruption. “What is there to tell? He was wild and reckless to a fault, quick-tempered and heedless of all conventions and norms, and utterly lacking in either the virtues of his class or any semblance of Christian morality.”
“Is that why you informed on him?”
Seaforth was silent, his nostrils flaring on a quick intake of air. Then he said, “Who told you that?”
“So you did, didn’t you? How did you even know where he was?”
“Crispin had told me some months before. Not the exact inn, but that it was near Smithfield Market. That was enough.”
“Your cousin Crispin must not have known you well.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Rather than answer, Sebastian said, “I understand Crispin and Nicholas were close.”
“They were.”
“How long before Chantal de LaRivière’s murder did Crispin die?”
“A day or two. Something like that. Why?”
“He drowned?”
“That’s right.”
“In the Thames?”
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Crispin? Nothing like Nicholas, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Yet they were close?”
“They were. I could never understand it. Crispin was everything Nicholas wasn’t—sober and responsible and upright in every way.”
“I’m told Nicholas was planning a military career.”
“He was, yes. He was always army mad, from the time we were boys.”
“From the sound of things, I suspect he’d have made a fine officer.”
Seaforth stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“But I am.”
Seaforth shook his head and reached to take a sip of his brandy.
Sebastian said, “Tell me about the older brother, Lucas. I take it he and Nicholas were not close?”
“No. But then, there were eight or nine years between them. And Lucas was always sickly. If I remember correctly, by that time he was virtually bedridden.”
“He died—when?”
“Ten or twelve years ago, at least. Before his father.”
“He never married?”
“No. To be honest, no one expected him to live as long as he did. Consumption, you know.”
“So at the time you informed on your cousin Nicholas, his eldest brother was known to be dying and the second brother was already dead.”
Seaforth stiffened. “I take leave to tell you I resent the implication of that statement.”
“You mean the implication that you informed on Nicholas because you had ambitions of inheriting his father’s titles and estates in his stead? You have my leave to resent the implication as much as you like. It’s rather glaringly obvious, you know.”
“You would have had me do what instead? Shelter a murderer?”
“You weren’t exactly hiding him in your basement.”
Seaforth sat up straighter in his chair and adjusted his cravat. “I behaved as any honorable man would have done.”
“Somehow I doubt Nicholas saw it that way.”
“What difference does it make how Nicholas saw it? As if I care what the scoundrel thought of me.”