What Angels Fear (45 page)

“I did what I thought was right at the time,” Hendon said, his voice brusque. “I still think it was right. Such a marriage would have ruined your life. Thank God she finally saw that herself.”

“How much, precisely, did you offer her?” Sebastian asked, his voice low and dangerous.

“Twenty thousand pounds. There aren’t many women who’d turn down a chance at that kind of money.”

“She turned you down?”

“Why, yes. You mean, she
didn’t
tell you?”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

Kat came awake slowly. The fiery pain she remembered from the night before had gone, leaving a dull ache that throbbed down her side.

The room with its dusky blue silken hangings and gilded furniture was unfamiliar, but she recognized the man in doeskin breeches and top boots who sat, arms crossed at his chest, in a tapestry-covered chair beside the bed. He must have sensed her gaze upon him because he turned, his hand reaching to cover hers on the counterpane.

“I knew you’d come for me,” she said, surprised to discover her throat raw, her voice husky from the fire.

Devlin’s hand tightened around hers. “
Kat
. Dear God. I am so sorry.”

She smiled, because it was so like him to blame himself for what had happened to her, to blame himself for having involved her in his struggle to make sense of Rachel’s death. And then her smile faded because he didn’t know—she hoped he would never know—how deeply she had been involved in the events surrounding Rachel’s death even before he came to her for help.

“I had a long talk with Hendon last night,” he said, his brows drawing together, his jaw held unexpectedly tight. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Which truth is that?” She kept her voice even, although her heart had begun to thud uncomfortably in her chest. “There are many truths, more than a few of which are best not told.”

“The truth about what happened six years ago.”

“Ah. That one.” She laughed softly, hoping to turn away any more questions. But he continued to stare at her in that compelling way of his, and she knew he would demand an answer. She sought to frame it in the lightest terms possible. “Telling you would have been counterproductive. That sort of noble sacrifice only achieves its object when masked.”

One corner of his mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile. “You need to curb this unfortunate predilection of yours for martyrdom.”

Her hand twisted beneath his, held him tight. “He was right, you know. Your father. He said if I really loved you, I wouldn’t marry you.”

His eyes had always fascinated her. Wild and fiercely intelligent, they glittered now with anger and hurt. “And so you lied to me. For my own good.”

“Yes.”

“Damn you.” He pushed up from the chair and swung away, only to turn again, nostrils flaring, chest jerking with the passion of his breathing. “I would have made you my
wife
. You had no right to make that kind of decision without me.”

She struggled to sit up, her shaky hand sinking into the featherbed beneath her. “Oh, Sebastian. Don’t you see? I’m the only one who could.”

A silence fell between them, taut and sad. She could hear the cry of a vendor hawking his wares in the street outside, and, nearer, the soft fall of ash on the hearth. She let her gaze rove over the man before her, over the familiar, proud bones of his face, the lean, beautiful length of his body. And because she loved him so much, because she would always love him, she forced herself to say what needed to be said, although the words tore open every old bleeding wound she’d hidden away so deep within her. “And I would do it again,” she whispered, “because you are who you are, while I am . . . what I am.”

His head jerked back, his lips pulling into a thin, hard line. “I can change what you are.”

“By making me the future Lady Hendon?” Kat shook her head. “That would only change my name, not what I
am
—what people would see when they looked at me.”

“You think I give a damn about other people?”

“No. But I care. I care what other people think of you. Nothing you can do would ever raise me up to your level, Sebastian; I would only drag you down to mine. And that I refuse to do.”

He stared at her, his strange yellow eyes fierce and hard. Then he sucked in a quick breath and for a moment she saw a flash of his soul, a hint of the vulnerability she knew he kept hidden deep within him, and it ripped at her heart. “You could have said that six years ago, instead of driving me away with a lie.”

“Oh, Sebastian. Don’t you see? I had to drive you away. I knew if I told you the truth, you’d try to change my mind, that you wouldn’t accept it. And I knew, too, that I wouldn’t have the strength to hold out against you.”

He came to stand beside her. It wasn’t until he gently touched her cheek and she saw the sheen of wetness on his fingertips that she realized she was crying. “I’m not accepting it now,” he said.

She shook her head, although she couldn’t quite stop herself from bringing up her hand to cradle his palm against her cheek. “I’ll not be changing my mind.”

He smiled then, the smile she loved, the one that made him look both boyish and a little bit wicked. “I can be patient.”

“The mantle should be of silk-trimmed paramatta, I think,” said Amanda, holding the pattern card so that it caught the weak morning light streaming in her drawing room windows. “With crepe.” She handed the card back to her dressmaker and reached for the next design. “But on this one we’ll have the bodice covered with crepe, with cuffs and collar of deep lawn.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Amanda sighed. It was always such a bother, this business of assembling the accouterments of deep mourning. Black petticoats and stockings, handkerchiefs with black borders in cambric and silk . . . The list seemed endless. All the servants would need to be outfitted as well, of course, although Amanda intended to look into dyeing some of their existing clothing black. She’d heard Indian logwood worked quite well. Thank heavens Stephanie would be out of mourning before she was due to be presented at Court the following Season. Amanda herself, of course, would be in half mourning for another year or two beyond that.

The commotion in the hall below surprised her. Then she heard her father’s voice, and understood.

“Send the woman away,” said Hendon, appearing in the entrance to the morning room.

Amanda nodded to the dressmaker, who collected her pattern cards and samples, and scampered out the doorway.

“Where is it?” Hendon demanded the instant the door shut behind the dressmaker.

Amanda settled back against the damask cushions of her chair and stared up at her father with a placid, well-composed face. “Where is what?”

“Don’t play me for a fool. Your mother’s affidavit. Wilcox thought Sebastian had taken it. And since I disremember hearing of your having any break-ins recently, the conclusion is obvious.”

Amanda held herself quite still. “Is it?”

Hendon stared at her from across the room, dark color suffusing his face, his chest rising and falling with his agitated breathing. It was a moment before he spoke. His voice was crisp, but surprisingly calm and even. “So that’s the way we’re going to play it, is it? Very well. But mark my words.” He raised one hand to jab a thick finger into the air between them. “If I can hush up your precious husband’s nasty little activities, I can also lay them bare to the world. And I don’t think the consequences of that would be pleasant—for either you or for your children.”

Amanda surged to her feet, rage thrumming through her so hard and fast she was trembling with it. “You would do that? You would do that to your own grandchildren?”

Hendon stared back at her, his jaw set. “I would do anything to protect the succession. Do you understand? Anything.”

“Yes. Well.” She gave a torn laugh. “We’ve already seen that, haven’t we?”

Chapter 65

A
t the hour appointed for the installation of the Prince of Wales as Regent, the sun broke through the clouds that had been shrouding the city and a light wind blew the dirty remnants of the fog away.

Restless and still technically a fugitive from justice for the attack on Constable Simplot, Sebastian pushed through the rabble massing in the streets. He was crossing Piccadilly when Sir Henry Lovejoy haled him from the open window of a passing hackney. “If I might have a word, my lord?”

Nodding, Sebastian waited while the little magistrate paid off the jarvey. Together, they entered the park and turned toward the lagoon to walk along in silence until the crowds thinned around them.

Lovejoy said, “I thought you should know that Constable Simplot regained consciousness last night. His fever has broken and the doctors say the prognosis for his recovery is quite promising.”

“The man must have the constitution of an ox.”

An unexpected smile played about the magistrate’s thin lips. “That is roughly the opinion of his doctors.” The smile faded. “He’s told us what happened that afternoon, on Brook Street. Needless to say, Chief Constable Maitland has been dismissed from his duties.”

Sebastian nodded. He supposed he should feel relieved that the young constable had survived to give witness to the truth. Perhaps in time, Sebastian thought, he would feel relief. But at the moment he simply felt numb, as if it had all happened long ago in someone else’s lifetime.

“I was most impressed,” Sir Henry was saying, “by the way you went about the task of discovering the true identity of the killer. Your investigative abilities are quite remarkable, my lord. If you weren’t a nobleman, you’d make a fine detective.”

Sebastian laughed.

“Some cases, of course, are more difficult for our office to deal with than others,” said Lovejoy. “Particularly those cases involving the royal family or members of the nobility.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and squinted off into the distance. “I was wondering . . . given your talents and abilities, if you might be interested in occasionally cooperating with our office on such exceptional cases? On a purely unofficial basis, of course.”

“No,” said Sebastian baldly.

Lovejoy nodded, his chin held tight against his chest. “Yes, of course. I understand. It’s a passion not many feel, that driving need to see justice done in this world. To stand on the side of the weak and disadvantaged against the influential and powerful, and fight to right a terrible wrong. It’s such a pervasive, grinding thing, injustice. And unfortunately all too common. I suppose the only way most people can tolerate it is by simply shrugging their shoulders and ignoring it, and going on living their own lives. Unless, of course, the injustice falls on them, or those they love.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” said Sebastian. “But you are wrong about me. What I did was motivated by self-interest. Nothing more.”

“Of course.” They had reached the lagoon now. Lovejoy paused, his eyes narrowing as he stared out over the wind-ruffled water. “I looked into the records of your service in Portugal,” he said after a moment. “I know why you sold out.”

Beside them, a drake lifted off the water. Sebastian narrowed his eyes, watching it rise up, its outstretched wings beating against the blue winter sky. “You read too much into that.”

“Do I?”

Sebastian swung his head to look at the man beside him. “I killed him. You know that, don’t you?” They both understood it was Wilcox of whom they now spoke.

“You let him die. There is a difference. We are taught that to take another life is wrong, yet the state does it, and calls it justice. Soldiers on the battlefield kill, and are named heroes.” The little magistrate turned up his collar against the cold wind blowing off the sunlit waters. “What you did was wrong. But it’s a sin we both share, and a choice that I, for one, am glad you made.”

Choices
, the man had said.
It all comes down to choices
. . . .

In the distance, a cannon boomed, and another. Then they heard a roar as tens of thousands of voices raised together in a cheer.

“So,” said Sir Henry Lovejoy. “The Regency begins.”