What Angels Fear (40 page)

“Where is he?” Sebastian demanded in a taut, menacing voice. “Where’s Wilcox?”

“You seem to make it a habit of entering other people’s houses uninvited,” she said, ignoring the question.

He pushed away from the door frame and came at her, his terrible amber eyes on her face. “You know, don’t you? For how long? How long have you known?”

In spite of herself, Amanda took a step back. “Known what?”

“I thought it was Bayard,” he continued, as if she had said nothing. “I was remembering all those nasty little incidents from when he was a boy. The time he set fire to the henhouse at Hendon Hall, just so he could have the fun of watching it burn. All the unmentionable things he used to do to any stray animal unlucky enough to fall into his clutches.”

He drew up before her, close enough that she could smell the acrid wet of the fog that had seeped into his rough, workingman’s clothes. “I used to wonder where it came from, that utter lack of empathy for the suffering of others, that streak of cruelty bordering on madness. I even wondered if perhaps it ran hidden within me, too. And then one day I saw Wilcox laugh at the sight of a cotter’s child being torn apart by a pack of hounds, and I knew. I knew where it came from.”

“You’re the one who is mad.”

“Am I?” He swung away. “You’ve heard the news, I suppose? About Leo Pierrepont?”

“Pierrepont?” Amanda shook her head. “What has he to do with anything?”

“Dear Amanda. Can it be that you really don’t know? Hendon told me something a few days ago, something that should have piqued my curiosity, except that I missed it. He said the government has known about Pierrepont’s ties to Napoleon for the better part of a year now, ever since a certain gentleman he called Mr. Smith found himself under pressure from Pierrepont to provide information of value to the French government. It seems Hendon and Lord Jarvis decided between them to simply sit on the revelations about Pierrepont, and use this compromised gentleman as a sort of double agent.”

“So?” said Amanda.

“So, the curious thing is that while Father and Jarvis both serve the King, on a personal level the two men can barely tolerate each other. Which tells me that the only reason Jarvis discussed the situation with Hendon is because the compromised gentleman had come to
Hendon
for help. And the only man I can think of who would do that is your husband. Wilcox.”

Amanda stood very still, watching her brother prowl restlessly about her dressing room. She hadn’t known this about Wilcox, that he’d been careless enough to allow himself to fall into a French trap. She gripped her hands together, shaken by an onrush of cold rage directed not just at Martin but at this man, her brother, who had come here to taunt her with her husband’s stupidity.

“What did they have on him, I wonder?” Sebastian said, pausing to fiddle with the quill she’d left lying on the leather-covered writing surface of her desk. “Something more, I suspect, than a mere sexual indiscretion. Whatever it was, Rachel must have found evidence of it when she helped herself to a cache of sensitive documents in Pierrepont’s possession. A fatal mistake, poor girl, since she must then have offered to sell the incriminating evidence to Wilcox. She didn’t know the kind of man she was dealing with.” He swung suddenly to face her. “But you did.”

“You’re mad,” Amanda said again, her hands gripping together tighter and tighter.

“Am I? That day I came here to confront Bayard, you knew then. It’s why you were so careful to tell me the exact time Wilcox had encountered Bayard. Only, he didn’t bring the lad straight home, did he?”

“The girl was a whore,” said Amanda suddenly, the words a harsh, angry tear ripped from a tightly constricted throat. “A whore, and a traitor.”

A strange light shone in her brother’s uncanny, alien eyes. “So that makes it all right, does it, what Wilcox did to her? What about the maid, Mary Grant? Or is that all right, too, because she was just a common servant and not a very honest one at that?”

His words fell into a silence Amanda had no intention of breaking. From outside came the fog-muffled clip-clop of hooves, and, nearer at hand, the clatter of a bucket followed by a giggle from one of the housemaids.

In the end it was Sebastian who broke the silence, the anger in his voice having been replaced by a kind of urgency. “Wilcox has developed a taste for it now, Amanda. You do realize that, don’t you? He’s going to keep doing it. And one day, he will be caught.”

“Hopefully not until after they’ve hanged you.”

His face went suddenly, satisfyingly blank. “I’ve always known you disliked me,” he said after a pause. “But I don’t think I realized until now just how much you hate me.”

“Of course I hate you,” she said, practically spitting the words at him. “Why wouldn’t I? You, Viscount Devlin, the precious, pampered heir to everything. Everything that should have been mine.” She thumped her fist against her chest. “
Mine
. I was my father’s firstborn child. While you—” She cut herself off just in time, clenching her teeth together.

“I didn’t invent the laws of male primogeniture,” he said, his voice a quiet counterpart to hers, his brows drawing together as if in puzzlement as he searched her face, “even if I have benefited from them.”

She watched, confused, as a strange smile touched his lips, then faded. “It’s funny, but my first thought when it finally all came together was to rush over here and warn you—warn you about how dangerous the man you were married to has become. It wasn’t until I started thinking about what you’d said, about how Bayard had passed out before nine when the police have everyone thinking the murder took place between five and eight, that I realized you knew the truth.” He drew in a deep breath then let it out in a harsh expulsion of air. “I’m not going to swing for you, Amanda. And I’m not going to let that sick bastard who is your husband keep butchering women.”

“You have no proof,” she said, as he turned toward the door.

He paused to glance back at her over his shoulder. “I’ll find something.” His mouth curved into a tight smile, harder and far meaner than the last. “Even if I have to make it up.”

Outside the churchyard of St. Matthew of the Fields, Sir Henry Lovejoy found the streets of Westminster deserted. Peering hopefully into the murky darkness, he turned up his collar against the creeping, insidious cold and wished he’d had the forethought to tell his hackney driver to wait.

He thought about that girl, Rachel York, coming here alone on a night such as this. He wondered at the kind of courage that must have taken—courage, or a passionately held conviction, or maybe a large dose of both. Yet there was nothing he had discovered yet in this case that suggested a reason for either.

The Reverend McDermott had been shocked at the discovery that such a woman had possessed a key to his church and baffled as to how she might have obtained it. Yet she had obtained it, and used it to meet the Earl of Hendon here at ten o’clock, just as Hendon had claimed. It was why Jem Cummings had seen the bloody footprints of two men—the first set belonging to Rachel York’s murderer, the second set left, later, by Hendon.

It was always dangerous, Lovejoy knew, to assume a fact is true simply because it appears obvious. Yet it was a mistake all too often made—a mistake he had made. And because of it, they’d spent the last week chasing an innocent man.

The rattle of carriage wheels over rough cobbles brought Lovejoy’s head around as a dark, rawboned job horse and hackney emerged from the gloom. There was a shout, and the jarvey pulled up.

The carriage’s near door flew open. “Sir Henry. There you are.” Edward Maitland appeared in the open doorway. “I was hoping to catch you before you left the church. We’ve a report that Viscount Devlin has been staying at an inn near Tothill Fields. A place called the Rose and Crown. I’ve sent some lads to watch the place, but I thought you’d like to be there when the arrest is made.”

Lovejoy scrambled up into the carriage’s musty interior. “There’ve been some new developments in the case,” he said as the carriage took off again with a jerk. He gave the constable a quick summary of his meeting with the sexton and the Reverend McDermott. “What it means, of course,” he said, wrapping up, “is that in all likelihood Rachel York wasn’t killed until sometime after eight—probably more like ten o’clock. And since we know Lord Devlin arrived at his club shortly before nine, his lordship couldn’t possibly have had enough time to kill the girl here in Westminster, rush home to Brook Street, change his clothes, and still appear in St. James’s Street when he did.”

The swinging carriage lamp threw irregular patterns of light and shadow over the set features of the constable’s face. “Just because we don’t see how he could have done it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” said Maitland. “Besides, you’re forgetting what he did to Constable Simplot.”

Lovejoy bit back what he’d been about to say. It was true, he had been forgetting Simplot. Lovejoy sighed. “How is the lad?”

“Still out of his head with fever. They don’t think he’ll last the night. It’s a miracle he’s lived as long as he has.”

Lovejoy nodded, his thoughts running back over what had happened that Wednesday afternoon in Brook Street. Here was one aspect of the case he had yet to consider. Why would a privileged young nobleman from a powerful, wealthy family deliberately attack and attempt to kill a constable in order to escape arrest for a crime of which he knew himself to be innocent? It made no sense.

Yet when it came to the young Viscount’s arrest, Lovejoy realized with a sigh, it mattered as little as the sexton’s discovery of the key. For Lovejoy was also forgetting Charles, Lord Jarvis. As far as Lord Jarvis was concerned, Devlin’s innocence or guilt had never been an issue. The Viscount had been tried and found guilty by the press and the streets, and the shocked populous of London wanted him brought to justice.

For the son of a peer of the realm to be seen getting away with murder would have been a volatile situation, at any time. Now, with the King declared mad and the Prince about to be created Regent, the situation could become dangerous. And Jarvis had been more than clear about what was at stake: Devlin was to be brought in before tomorrow’s ceremony, or Lovejoy’s position as Queen Square magistrate would be forfeit.

Chapter 58

L
ife is full of scary things
, Kat Boleyn’s father used to tell her. Scary things, like the steadily approaching tramp of marching soldiers and the silhouette of a rope dangling against a misty morning sky. Or the dark muzzle of a gun, gripped in the hand of a smiling man.

“Why?” she said now, her gaze on the man before her. Life might be full of scary things, but she’d learned long ago to hide her fears behind a smooth face and a steady voice. “What do you want with me?”

He was one of those men whose lips seemed perpetually curved into a faint smile. But at her words the smile slipped, as if he’d anticipated meek obedience or fearful hysteria, and found the calm directness of her question disconcerting.

“All I need from you, my dear, is cooperation.” The smile was back in place now, serene, confident. He nodded toward Tom. “You know this lad, do you?”

Kat’s gaze met that of the boy who stood stiffly at her side. Tom stared back at her, his dark eyes alert. “Yes,” she said.

“Good. Then he can be trusted to deliver a message.” With his free hand, Wilcox retrieved a folded note from an inner pocket and held it out to Tom. “Take this to Viscount Devlin. The note will give him the particulars he needs, but I am relying on you to convey to his lordship the gravity of the situation. I trust I do make myself clear?”

Kat sucked in a quick gasp just as quickly stifled, for she understood all too clearly what Wilcox intended. He was setting a trap to catch Sebastian and she was to be the bait.

Fear welled within her, hot and trembling, but she forced it down. Fear interfered with one’s ability to think, and she needed to think clearly. It occurred to her that whatever Wilcox’s carefully arranged plan, she could destroy it in an instant simply by refusing to go with him. Except there was something in Wilcox’s eyes that gave her pause. A man like this could kill without second thoughts or remorse. Kat knew what it would do to Sebastian, if he felt himself responsible for her death. A man driven by that kind of rage and guilt could make mistakes. Fatal mistakes.

She drew in a deep, cold breath of the smoke-fouled night air, felt the acrid burn of it tear at her throat. It tasted bitter in her mouth, bitter as fear. As if he could smell her fear, Wilcox’s smile widened.

It was the smile that decided her—the smile, and the man’s self-assured confidence in the success of whatever strategy he had devised to ensnare Sebastian St. Cyr. He obviously thought his plan infallible. But Kat knew Sebastian, knew the uncanny, animal-like keenness of his senses and the swiftness of his reflexes. Sebastian might be walking into a trap, but at least he would know it.

And so for the second time that evening, she met Tom’s gaze and held it, and slowly nodded. She could only hope he understood.