The Birth of Blue Satan by Patricia Wynn Page B

ears. He tried to speak more clearly. “Mustn’t be frightened, Isabella.”
    “My lord, you should sit down.” Mrs. Kean’s calm voice came as if from far away. “You have suffered a grave shock.”
    A shock? Oh, yes, Tate had come to tell him—something that had upset him. His father—his father couldn’t be dead.
    Gideon wished the humming that filled his head would cease, so he could make sense of it all, but the noise only increased.
    “You said my father has been murdered?”
    “Yes, my lord.” There was an odd note in Sir Joshua’s voice. “He was killed by a man who was himself injured in the attack.”
    It made no sense to Gideon that Sir Joshua should be the one to inform him of his father’s death. Lord Hawkhurst had detested this man and his Puritanical ways.
    “What brings you here? What attack?”
    “My lord—” that quieter, gentler voice urged him to calm— “my Lord St. Mars, you must be seated. You are weak.”
    From another direction Mrs. Mayfield’s harsher tones sliced through. “Come away from there, Hester. Isabella can tend to my Lord St. Mars—Lord Hawkhurst, I should say.”
    Gideon ignored the murmuring voices about him, the worried glances and the shuffling feet. This was all too confusing, though he thought he heard a whispered protest from Isabella among her mother’s forceful remarks. Of Mrs. Kean’s calm tones, he heard nothing more.
    The room was spinning. Hands reached out to grasp him. He was pushed into a chair.
    “I am sorry.” He tried to form words, but his tongue was heavy as if he had bitten it. The sounds that came out of his mouth, he hardly recognized as his. “Tate, please tell me again what you said.”
    Sir Joshua repeated the horrible news. Still unchanged; still unbelievable. Gideon pictured his father so full of life, purple with rage the last time they had met.
    When had that been?
    He tried to think, but he could hardly form a cohesive thought. “I was with him—this morning I think. We had a quarrel.”
    “So I was given to understand, my lord.”
    Some of the hum that confused him came to a sudden halt. Even over the ringing in his ears, Gideon heard the silence that had come over the room.
    Why had everyone stopped whispering? His brain was refusing to think, or to tell him what to do. Was it shock? He had thought himself almost recovered from his injury until Tate had come, though Mrs. Kean, observant girl, had noticed his growing fever.
    “Lord St. Mars—” Sir Joshua spoke again— “I suggest that you come with me. I will take your statement at Hawkhurst House.”
    His statement? Gideon’s eyes flew open and he sought the justice’s face. What the devil did he mean?
    He peered out at the hazy room and saw the crowd of guests, frozen in place, their horrified stares surrounding him. Lady Eppington was leaning on a gentleman’s arm, being fanned by her black page.
    “Yes, we must go.” Gideon tried to pull himself together for the sake of his hostess. He should try not to spoil her ball. He only wished he could hold on to Isabella but she was nowhere near.
     
    From a distance, feeling as powerless as a mother whose son was going off to war, Hester watched St. Mars depart with Sir Joshua Tate and Sir Harrowby Fitzsimmons. A few gentlemen moved together to speak, closing the gap behind them before they, too, left the ballroom. Those who remained seemed strangely tight-lipped, their faces worried and drawn. And no wonder. St. Mars had stated that he had quarreled with his father before Lord Hawkhurst had been found murdered. They had seen his blood and heard the justice of the peace state that the earl’s attacker had been wounded.
    The shock on their faces told Hester exactly what they thought, though knowing St. Mars only this short while, she could not credit their suspicions. No means on earth would convince her that St. Mars had done his father harm.
    He had no sooner left the room than it became a buzz of speculation. No one