What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

because he didn’t know—she hoped he would never know—how deeply she hadbeen 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 deepwithin 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,