What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

sweeping staircase. The back door stood half ajar and Sebastian slammed through it on a run. Leaping off the broken stoop, he crossed a small yard bordered on two sides by looming, high brick walls and strewn with broken tiles and staved-in barrels and molding, stinking piles of refuse. What had once been a coach house lay at the bottom of the yard, but when Sebastian pushed against its ironbound oak door, he found it locked.
    “ Bloody hell ,” he swore, pounding one fist against the stout panels. From the street on the far side of the house came shouts and the sudden, insistent ringing of the alarm bell. “Bloody hell,” he said again, swinging around, his shoulders pressing back against the door.
    Beside him, a set of outside steps curled up to the loft. Pushing off, he bolted up the stairs. The hutch door at the top was locked, too. Sebastian kicked out once, twice. Wood splintered beneath his boot and the door swung inward on creaking hinges.
    The loft was a crudely partitioned space. He crossed the room. Moldering piles of old hay crunched beneath his boots and sent up dust clouds to dance in the dim shaft of light filtering through the grime-and-cobweb-choked casement opposite. Throwing open the window, Sebastian swung first one leg, then the other over the sill and eased himself through the narrow space. The rain was coming down harder again, striking his bare face with cold, needlelike stabs. Lowering the weight of his body on his stretched arms, Sebastian sucked in a deep breath and let himself drop.
    He hit the slimy pavement below in a roll and came up at a run, his feet slipping and sliding on a sour-smelling sludge of rotten cabbage leaves and old straw and unidentifiable muck. Ahead, the broken arch of the old mews opened up onto a side lane, the crowd thin enough here that he could push his way through, heading away from the workhouseand Maitland and the Bow Street Horse Patrol. From somewhere behind him came a shout, then another, and the renewed ringing of the alarm bell. Sebastian ducked his head against the rain and walked on, just another ragged, wet, grime-smeared man, unremarkable except for his height and the lean good health of his frame.

Chapter 49
     
     
    C iorgio Donatelli hurried home through the early afternoon rain, a loaf of bread under one arm. Ducking beneath his front door’s shallow overhang, he was fumbling with his keys when Sebastian moved up behind him.
    “Here. Allow me,” said Sebastian, reaching past the stiffening Italian to push open the door.
    “Mother of God,” whispered Donatelli, his face paling as the bread started to slip from his grasp. “Not you again.”
    Sebastian caught the bread just before it hit the stoop, and gave the artist a wide smile. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

     
    “You didn’t tell me you and Rachel were lovers,” said Sebastian.
    Donatelli sat in a worn, tapestry-covered armchair beside the parlor fire, his elbows on his knees, his dark curly head sunk into his hands. He lifted his head slowly, his jaw hardening. “I know this country of yours, the way you English are about foreigners.”
    Sebastian stood on the far side of the room, his shoulders against the wall, his arms crossed at his chest. He knew his nation, too, knew its arrogance and its fears and its willingness to blame anyone foreign, without due process or anything even vaguely approaching rational thought.Donatelli was right; if the authorities had known the Italian was Rachel’s lover, it would have been Donatelli they’d have moved to arrest, however much the evidence might have pointed to Sebastian.
    “I’ve heard Rachel was planning to leave London,” said Sebastian. “Did you know?”
    Donatelli surged to his feet, his dark eyes flashing. “What are you suggesting? That she was planning to leave me ? That I flew into a jealous rage when I found out and killed her? Mother of God, of course I knew. She was carrying my baby!”
    Sebastian held himself very still. “So you were both planning to leave? Is that it? Why? After years of struggling you’re finally being offered more commissions than you can handle, while Rachel had a promising career ahead of her on the London stage. Why would either of you want to throw all that away?”
    Donatelli went to stand beside the hearth, one hand resting on the mantel, his gaze on the fire. After a moment, he let his breath out in a long sigh, and it was as if he let go all his rage with it. “We were