What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

drawn circle of schoolroom and lessons and walks in the park with Nurse. She listened in shocked silence to Richard’s excitedly whispered tales of the revolting thing men did to women, about how they came together in a shameful, naked coupling of bodies. And then, while she was still retching in horror at the thought she might someday be forced to endure just such a vile invasion of her own body, Robert told her of the rumors he’d heard about their mother. About how the Countess of Hendon did that with other men besides her husband, Amanda’s father.
    Amanda hadn’t believed Richard, of course. Oh, she’d seen enough activity amongst the estate’s farm animals to realize that that part of his information, at least, was probably correct. But she refused to believe what he said about their mother, about how the beautiful, laughing Countess did that with everyone from royal dukes to common footmen. Amanda hadn’t believed a word of it. Not a word.
    But suggestions can have an insidious way of worming into a body’s soul and eating away at it. As summer stretched into autumn, Amandafound herself watching their mother. Watching the look that crept into the Countess’s sparkling blue eyes whenever a handsome man walked into the room. The way she tilted her pretty blond head and laughed when a man spoke to her. The way her lips could part and her breath catch when he took her hand.
    And then one rare sunny day in September, when the Countess and her children were rusticating down in Cornwall and the Earl danced attendance, as usual, upon the King, Amanda escaped the schoolroom and went for a walk. The air was crisp and sweet with the earthy scent of plowed fields and sun-warmed pine needles, and she walked farther than she’d meant, farther than she was allowed. A restlessness had been building within her lately, an unsettled yearning that led her to leave the trim terraces of the gardens and the neatly hedged-in fields of the home farm behind, and penetrate deep into the wild tangle of forest that stretched away toward the sea.
    It was there that she found them, in a sun-soaked hollow sheltered by a rocky outcropping from the brisk winds blowing off the white-capped water. The man lay on his back, his naked, sweat-slicked body stretched out long and lean, his neck arching in what seemed at first an agony. A woman sat astride him, her soft white lady’s hands holding his larger, darker ones cupped over her breasts, her lower lip gripped between her teeth, her eyes squeezing shut in ecstasy as she rode him. Rode him .
    In the months that had passed since Richard’s visit, Amanda had sought to picture this vile thing that he had told her about. But never had she imagined—never could she have imagined anything like this.
    Drawn by a sick combination of horror and fascination, she crept closer, her heart pounding painfully within her, her stomach acids backing up hot and sick into her throat. But it wasn’t until her fascination had drawn her, trembling and nauseous, ever closer, that Amanda realized the truth. That the woman whose breath came in such harsh, ragged gasps was her own mother, Sophia Hendon. And that the man whose naked pelvis thrust up again and again in a savage, pounding rhythm, who buried his body deeper and deeper inside hers, was her ladyship’s groom.
    Amanda never told Richard what she had seen that day, although sheknew from the bitter remarks her brother occasionally let fall that he blamed their father for the things their mother did, blamed Hendon for devoting all his time to King and country, and neglecting his lonely, lovely wife. But Amanda knew the truth, for she had seen the hunger in their mother’s beautiful, sunlit face. The shameful, insatiable hunger.

     
    It had been dark for some time now, the fog swallowing the last glimmers of daylight before sliding away imperceptibly into night. The maid, Emily, had come at one point to draw the drapes and lay fresh coals upon the fire, but Amanda had sent her away.
    Shaking off the long-ago memories, Amanda went now to turn up the flame of the oil lamp that filled the dressing room with a sweetly scented glow, and to close the heavy brocade drapes against the cold radiating off the long windows overlooking the square.
    Crossing the room to her writing desk, she paused, her head raised as she listened. But the house lay silent around her, and after a moment she slid back the discreet latch that opened the desk’s hidden compartment,