What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

it.”
    Reaching out, Sebastian paused with his hand on the edge of the door and looked back at his friend. “No. But at least I’ll have tried.”
    Gibson met his gaze, his face unsmiling and drawn with worry. “You could still leave.”
    “And spend the rest of my life running?” Sebastian shook his head. “No. I’m going to clear my name, Paul. Even if I have to die trying.”
    “You could die trying, and still not succeed.”
    Sebastian settled his hat lower on his forehead and turned into the icy blast of the night. “It’s a chance I’m just going to have to take.”

Chapter 21
     
     
    S ebastian stood alone in the shadows and watched as Kat Boleyn separated herself from the knot of laughing, pretty women and hot-blooded, predatory males clustered around the stage door.
    Golden lamplight pooled on gleaming wet pavement. The wind gusted up, sharp and bitter, and brought with it a rush of smells, of fresh paint and sweat-dampened wool and the thick grease of cosmetics: theater scents evocative of a time long past, when he’d believed—really believed —in so many things, like truth and justice. And love.
    He’d been twenty-one that summer, not long down from Oxford and still drunk on the wonders of Plato and Aquinas and Descartes. She’d been barely seventeen, yet in her own way so much older and wiser than he. He’d fallen hopelessly, wildly in love with her. And he had believed, truly believed, that she loved him.
    Ah, how he had believed. She’d told him she’d love him until the end of time, and he had believed. Believed her and asked her to marry him. And she had said yes.
    It was still raining, but softly now. He watched her walk quickly toward him, the hood of her cloak raised against the drizzle, her gaze turned toward the hackney stand at the end of the street.
    “You should be more careful,” said Sebastian, falling into step beside her. “Now is not a good time to be out alone at night.”
    She gave no start of surprise, only glancing up at him from beneath the shadow of her hood. “I refuse to live my life in fear,” she said. “I should think you’d remember that about me. Besides”—a soft smile touched her lips—“do you think I didn’t know you were there?”
    He thought she probably had. He remembered that about her, too—that while most people were hopelessly, cripplingly blind in the dark, Kat’s night vision was unusually sharp. Not as good as Sebastian’s own, but sharp.
    She made a move toward the nearest hackney. He caught her arm, drawing her on up the street. “Let’s walk.”
    They turned their steps toward the West End, part of a crowd of playgoers straggling home through the lamp-lit darkness. Snatches of light and laughter tumbled from the quickly closed doors of taverns and coffeehouses, music halls and brothels. From a darkened, urine-drenched doorway, a streetwalker hissed at him, her eyes bold, desperate. Haunting. Sebastian looked away.
    “What can you tell me about Leo Pierrepont?” he asked.
    “Pierrepont?” The rain had stopped now. Kat pushed back her hood. “What has he to do with anything?”
    “He was paying the rent on Rachel’s rooms.”
    She was silent for a moment, and he remembered this about her, too, the way she carefully thought things through before speaking. “Who told you that?”
    “Hugh Gordon. Pierrepont didn’t deny it.”
    “You’ve spoken with him?”
    “We shared a hackney ride,” said Sebastian, and smiled softly at the familiar way her brows drew together in thought. “It’s a curious arrangement, don’t you think, for one man to be paying the rent on a woman’s rooms while knowing she continues to receive other male visitors? Unless, of course, he’s acting as her pimp.”
    Again that pause, as she thought through what he had said and considered her response. “Some men like to watch.”
    Sebastian knew a surge of unexpected and unpleasant emotions. He wanted to ask how she knew this about Pierrepont—if she, too, had entertained the Frenchman by allowing him to watch her make love to other men. Instead, he said, “Well, that’s certainly one alternative thathadn’t occurred to me. Your experience in such matters is more valuable than one might realize.”
    She halted abruptly, her chin jerking up, her eyes flashing. She would have swung away, back toward the theater, if he hadn’t caught her arm.
    “I’m sorry. That was an unforgivable thing to say.”
    She met his gaze. He couldn’t