What Remains of Heaven by C. S. Harris

Sebastian, pausing at the top of the front steps to look back. “One of the Bow Street magistrates?”
    “No. Miss Hero Jarvis.” The Chaplain raised his handkerchief to his nose. “Good day, my lord.” He threw a speaking glance at the footman, who quietly shut the door between them.
    Sebastian stood for a moment, staring out over the wide square, with its vast central reflecting pool and statue of King Charles. Then he raised the cuff of his coat to his nose and sniffed.

Chapter 9
     
    His face crinkled in a pantomime of distaste, Sebastian’s valet lifted the discarded coat of dark superfine on one carefully curled finger and held it at arm’s length.
    “I know,” said Sebastian, not looking up from the serious business of tying a fresh cravat. “Do what you can to get the smell out. But if it doesn’t work, burn it.”
    Jules Calhoun drew back in mock astonishment. “What? You mean to say you don’t fancy walking around London smelling like a hundred-year-old cadaver?”
    “A hundred years might be all right. It’s the in-between stages that are the smelliest.”
    The valet gave a soft laugh. A small, slim gentleman’s gentleman in his thirties, Calhoun had started life in one of the most notorious flash houses in London—a beginning that had left him with an undeniable flair and a variety of useful connections to the city’s underworld.
    Assembling the rest of Sebastian’s discarded raiment, Calhoun bundled the offending clothes together and said, “Are you likely to be returning to St. Margaret’s?”
    “Possibly.”
    “Then I suggest we keep these.”
    Sebastian smoothed the folds of his cravat. “Good point.”
    The valet watched Sebastian slide a slim dagger into the sheath hidden inside his right boot. “Expecting trouble?”
    Sebastian straightened his cuffs. “When I’m dealing with the Jarvises? Always.”
     
     
    Most daughters of the Upper Ten Thousand spent their days shopping on Bond Street, or attending a dizzying round of picnics, Venetian breakfasts, and morning visits. Not Miss Hero Jarvis.
    When Sebastian tracked her down, she was at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. A vast redbrick complex designed by Sir Christopher Wren and clustered around several wide court-yards, the hospital had been established by Charles II for the relief of the nation’s wounded and aged war veterans back in the seventeenth century. But after decades of continuous war, the facility was now grossly underfunded and overcrowded.
    He’d heard that Miss Jarvis had made the improvement of the hospital one of her projects. As he crossed the sun-drenched main courtyard, he saw her step out of the chapel in the company of a stout gentleman with a swooping auburn mustache and the officious air of a physician. She was dressed in an emerald green walking gown ruched at the hem and finished with darker piping at the neck and sleeves, and carried a delicate silk parasol in a matching shade of green that she tipped at just the right angle to shade her face. A gray-gowned maid, fists clutching the strings of her reticule, hovered at a respectable distance.
    “Ah, there you are, Miss Jarvis,” said Sebastian, walking up to her. “If I might have a word with you?”
    She swung her head to look at him, her lips parting on a quickly indrawn breath. She was a striking woman, with her father’s aquiline nose and intelligent gray stare. Now in her twenty-fifth year, she had medium brown hair she usually wore scraped back in an unbecoming fashion better suited to a governess. But lately she’d taken to having a few wisps cut so that they fell artfully about her forehead. The effect was one of unexpected, misleading softness. None knew better than Sebastian that there was little that was soft about Hero Jarvis.
    She might be disconcerted to see him, but she recovered almost immediately. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, “but Dr. McCain here has most graciously offered to escort me on a tour of the facilities, and I