“She was anxious to get away from her stepmother? The new Lady Fairchild?”
Ramsey gave a surprised laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. The woman’s a cipher, a shadow.”
“What about her father? How did Rachel get along with him?”
“Lord Fairchild?” Ramsey shrugged. “I don’t think she saw much of him, frankly. From what I understand he’s pretty much devoted himself to affairs of state. At least, since his first wife’s death.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s pale, haggard face. “It’s curious, don’t you think, that a gently born woman would flee her home and seek refuge in Covent Garden, only to run away again in fear less than a year later?”
“What makes you think she ran away in fear?”
It struck Sebastian as a curious question. “Can you think of another reason she would run away? Twice?”
“I told you. I don’t know.” His gaze drifted back to the ballroom. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I promised my sister this lemonade,” he said, and brushed past Sebastian into the ballroom without a backward glance.
Chapter 25
It was when Sebastian was leaving Almack’s Assembly Rooms that he fell in with a small party that included Mr. Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister. “Devlin,” said the Prime Minister, excusing himself from his party. “Walk with me a ways. I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”
The night was cold and clear, the bells of the city’s churches chiming the hour as the two men turned their steps toward St. James’s. In his fiftieth year, the Prime Minister was a small, slender man with a thin, smiling mouth, protuberant light eyes, and a rapidly receding hairline. “I’m concerned about your father,” he said. “He doesn’t look well these days.”
“Hendon eats too much, drinks too much, and smokes too much,” said Sebastian, wondering how many times in one day he could have this same conversation.
Perceval laughed. “Don’t we all.”
Sebastian kept his peace, although in truth, Spencer Perceval was a temperate family man who spent whatever free time the affairs of state left him either playing games with his children or searching the Bible for prophecies that he then wrote up and published in a series of religious pamphlets. “And how is Lady Perceval? And the children?” Sebastian asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Lady Perceval is well, thank you. And as for the children . . . well, they’re growing up too fast,” said the Prime Minister with that special smile that always lit his face when he spoke of his six sons and six daughters. “My eldest son will be heading off for Trinity College in the autumn.”
Sebastian eyed the tattered hackney carriage that had pulled in close to the curb ahead of them. A man wearing an evening cloak stepped down, but the hackney didn’t move on and the man stayed in the shadows. “I remember when Spence was off to Harrow.”
The Prime Minister smiled. “Makes one feel one’s age, does it not?” The smile faded, and he worked his square jaw back and forth in a way that reminded Sebastian of Hendon. “My Jane tells me I’m worse than a nosy old woman, but here it is. I don’t know what’s happened between you and Hendon, but I do know it grieves him. Grieves him badly. There. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Just thought you ought to know. Before it’s too late.”
Sebastian swallowed a spurt of annoyance and said evenly, “I understand you dined with Sir William Hadley on Monday.”
“That’s right. At Long’s,” said the Prime Minister with a rush of heartiness, as if this time he were thankful for the shift in topic. “The food was appalling. I’ve a good mind to quit going there.”
“What time did the evening break up?”
“Not until midnight at least. You know how it is. A roomful of men with a steady supply of port and a dozen different opinions as to why the country is going to rack and ruin.”
“Ah. I thought I saw Sir William that evening at Covent Garden, but I must have been mistaken.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Perceval. “You might have. Sir William arrived late—close on to nine o’clock, if I remember correctly. Said something about—” He broke off as a man lurched toward them from out of the shadow of the waiting hackney.
“There you are!” said the gentleman, planting himself in the center of the footpath with his hands clenched into fists at his side, the light from the nearest streetlamp limning the side of his face. “Thought to avoid me again, did you?”
A spasm of embarrassment passed over the Prime Minister’s features. Like all well-bred Englishmen, Perceval found public scenes mortifying. “Mr. Bellingham, I did not attend Almack’s Assembly in an effort to avoid you.”
The man was small and dark haired, with a long face that looked prematurely aged. He might have been fifty or sixty, but the blackness of his hair suggested an age nearer to forty. “All I demand is what is the birthright and privilege of every English-man,” said Bellingham, shoving his face up against Perceval’s. “How would your wife and family feel if you were torn from them for years? Robbed of all your property and everything that makes life valuable?”
Perceval drew back, putting distance between them again. “You still have your wife and family, sir. And that is what makes life valuable.”
“Easy for you to say,” sneered Bellingham, pivoting as Perceval brushed past him. “You haven’t been robbed of your liberty for years. Years!”
“My good man.” Perceval swung to face him again. “I am sorry for your predicament. But it is not the place of the government to compensate you. Bring suit against this Israelite if you will, but your business with me is done.”
Perceval turned on his heel and continued walking, Sebastian at his side. Bellingham shouted after them, “You think you can shelter behind the imagined security of your status, but you can’t. Do you hear me? You can’t!”
Perceval kept walking, his lips pressed into a tight line, the click of their bootheels on the flagstones sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden stillness of the night.
Sebastian said, “Who the devil was that?”
“John Bellingham.” Perceval drew his handkerchief and pressed the neatly folded cloth against his upper lip with a hand that was not quite steady. “The poor man was imprisoned for years under the most dreadful conditions in Archangel. He had accused a shyster by the name of Solomon Van Brieman of insurance fraud over a scuttled ship, and Van Brieman retaliated by scheming to have the Russians ruin him. Truly, the poor man has been most grievously wronged, but he seems to think he’s entitled to a hundred thousand pounds’ compensation from His Majesty’s government, and that he is not.”
“He sounds mad.”
“He may very well be. I fear his sufferings have turned his mind.”
“You would do well to be careful,” said Sebastian.
Perceval huffed a laugh. “Of Bellingham? I deal with his ilk most every day.”
Sebastian threw a glance over his shoulder. Bellingham still stood in the center of the footpath, his small body rigid with rage and frustration, his dark head thrown back against the soft glow of the nearest oil lamp. “He might attempt to do you harm.”