What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

shallow and fast, Kat left the fireplace and walked up to Leo, her gaze searching his face.
    “That’s it.” He gave her a wide-eyed look and she knew he was playing with her, had recalled Sebastian’s name all along. “Ah. I remember now,” he said, his head tipping to one side as he smiled up at her. “Devlin was one of your protectors, once. Is that not so? Before he went off to the wars to fight for King and country against the forces of evil and the Emperor Napoleon.”
    “It was a long time ago.” Kat swung away and reached for her pelisse. She felt a sudden need to get away. To be alone.
    Pushing back his chair, Leo came to his feet in one smooth motion, his hand reaching out to close on her upper arm, stopping her, forcing her back around so that he could look searchingly into her face. He was so languid, so slender and effete-looking, that one sometimes forgot both how swiftly he could move and what strength those long, thin fingers possessed.
    She stared blandly back at him, calling upon all her training as an actress to keep her features inscrutable and willing the rapid, betraying beat of her heart to calm.
    But he knew her well, Leo. He knew her talents and he knew, too, this one weakness she refused to admit, even to herself. A wry smile twitched one corner of his lips, then stilled. “When you’re only twenty-three,” he whispered, his hand coming up to touch her cheek in a movement that was not quite a caress, “nothing in your life was so long ago.”

Chapter 11
     
     
    S ebastian spent what was left of the night in a small chamber above the Black Hart’s rear court. After one glance at the bed, he took off his boots, spread his greatcoat on a narrow wooden bench, and lay down upon it. He’d known worse, in the war: watchful nights spent on a cold, stony ground or listening to the scuttling of cockroaches across a dirt floor.
    He did not sleep.
    When dawn came, he rose from his makeshift bed and crossed to the window overlooking the rubbish-strewn yard below. The morning was raw and bitter cold, but he swung the casement open wide and drew the acrid air deep into his lungs, his thoughts on the events of the evening before.
    It had always seemed to Sebastian that such moments came in every man’s life; pivotal instants when a chance occurrence or seemingly trifling decision could wrench a man away from what had appeared to be an inevitable future and send him hurtling in a different direction entirely. Yet it was difficult now to determine precisely when that moment in Sebastian’s life had come. With his own flash of quick anger and the constable’s misstep? Or had it come before that, the night before, with a promise given to a frantic, fearful woman?
    Sebastian pursed his lips and blew out a long sigh. Despiteeverything that had happened, he couldn’t regret that promise, nor could he betray the woman to whom it had been made.
    Drawing a small notebook from his pocket, he tore out a sheet of paper and scrawled quickly, Please give Melanie my assurances I shan’t betray her. No matter what happens, she mustn’t say anything to give herself away. Her life depends upon it. D. Folding the page once, twice, he wrote the name and address of Melanie’s sister on the outside, then thrust the note deep into a pocket.
    He had calmly considered, during the long night, the options now open to him and decided these came down to three. He could surrender himself to Sir Henry Lovejoy at Queen Square and place his faith in a system better known for delivering summary judgments than for ferreting out the truth. He could flee abroad, hoping someone might clear his name in his absence but resigning himself to a life in exile if that failed to happen.
    Or he could lose himself in the shadows of the city and set to work discovering, on his own, who had killed Rachel York.
    She’d been an unusually attractive woman, Rachel. He’d seen her often at the city’s various theaters—both on stage and at those select gatherings attended exclusively by such women and the wealthy, highborn men they sought to attract. He’d seen her and, he had to admit, admired her. But he’d never taken her as his mistress, never even sampled what she had, on several occasions, made more than obvious she was willing to give.
    He couldn’t begin to fathom why or how he had come to be named as her murderer. Yet he could place no reliance on the authorities bothering to discover the truth behind what had happened.