What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

behind the floundering man’s back. With a straight arm, Sebastian reached out and grasped the back of Wilcox’s collar. It was a standard lifesaving maneuver; Sebastian had only to pull the man in close, wrap a bent elbow beneath Wilcox’s chin to keep his head above water, and swim toward the dock.
    He could hear in the distance the roar of the flames consuming the warehouse and, more distant still, the frantic clang-clang of the fire bell. Sebastian tightened his grip on the back of Wilcox’s coat. But he kept his arm straight.
    It all comes down to choices , the man had said. And the choice Sebastian now faced lay dark and murky before him. Because Wilcox was right: there was no proof of what the man had done, nothing linking him to the twisted slaying of those two women, nothing to stop him from doing it again, and again.
    Other considerations whispered to his conscience: if saved from the water, Wilcox might still somehow manage to best Sebastian and attack Kat. But Sebastian knew that wasn’t the real issue. He had learned long ago that the line between right and wrong, between good and evil, isn’t always sharply drawn. But he still believed that the line existed, nonetheless. He’d set out, barely a week ago, to prove himself unjustly accused of a heinous crime. Only gradually had his purpose shifted. And he knew that while he might never be able to prove his own innocence, he could at least fulfill a promise made to a woman too long dead to hear.
    From somewhere near at hand came the sound of a man’s shout. But it didn’t matter. Sebastian had made his choice. Opening his hand, he let the coat of Bath superfine slip through his fingers.

Chapter 63
     
     
    F rom where he stood at the edge of the dock, Sir Henry Lovejoy watched the Viscount climb the rough ladder from the water below. As he reached the top, Devlin looked up, his uncanny eyes gleaming yellow in the reflected fire’s light.
    The two men stared at each other, Devlin’s breath coming so hard and fast that the coarse cloth of his water-soaked, bloodstained shirt shuddered with each lifting of his chest. It was Devlin who spoke first.
    “The boy, Tom? Where is he?”
    “Quite safe. I intercepted him just outside your father’s house in Grosvenor Square. That’s right,” he added, when Devlin’s eyebrows twitched together. “I overheard your instructions to the lad back at the Rose and Crown.”
    “And?”
    Lovejoy cleared his throat. “I found Wilcox’s note in his pocket.”
    “The note was unsigned.”
    “Yes. I admit I initially found it difficult to credence the lad’s rather long and tangled tale. But he’d had the forethought to liberate his lordship’s pocketbook, which lent considerable weight to his story.”
    Levering himself up onto the dock, his wet clothes clinging to his lean frame, the Viscount went to crouch beside the crumpled, bloody form of the woman. Lovejoy didn’t move. “Is she . . .”
    “No.” Her blood streaming over his hands, Devlin lifted the woman gently into his arms. The wind caught her long dark hair, blowing it loose across his face. She stirred, her voice a hoarse murmur, and he nuzzled his lips against her ear, whispering reassurances.
    Then his gaze lifted, again, to meet Lovejoy’s. “How much did you overhear? Just now.”
    And Sir Henry Lovejoy, that hardheaded stickler for the processes of the law and the sanctity of truth, who had arrived at the basin’s edge only in time to watch Wilcox’s head first disappear beneath the black waters, smiled tightly and said, “Enough.”

Chapter 64
     
     
    S ebastian watched Kat breathe, watched the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath lace-trimmed sheets, watched the flicker of golden candlelight over the pale skin of her eyelids, closed now in gentle sleep.
    He stood beside the bed, his dressing gown thrown casually over his shoulders. Around them, the Brook Street house settled into the hush of the night. It seemed oddly strange, to be here again in his own house, to be wearing freshly laundered linen and fine silk. He was here, and safe, and yet the coiled sense of alertness, the driving restlessness remained.
    “She’s going to be fine, Sebastian,” said Paul Gibson, coming to stand beside him. “I’ll stay with her. But you need to get some rest. You’ve lost a fair amount of blood yourself.”
    Sebastian nodded. Beneath the bandages, his shoulder and leg throbbed with a fiery ache that seemed to radiate out