What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

Why? For the same reason she had kept her appointment book hidden?
    Conspicuously absent from Rachel’s days was the name of the man who had been paying the rent on her rooms, Leo Pierrepont. If neither Pierrepont nor “F” had been Rachel York’s lover, then who had been? Sebastian found it difficult to believe that such a woman had not had one. Except, then, why didn’t the lover’s name appear in her book? Because she took his regular appearances for granted? Or because his visits were so erratic, she never knew when he might appear?
    A wind had come up, rattling the shutters on the window and causing the flame of the candle to flare, then almost die in a sudden, cold draft. A distant burst of laughter sounded, muffled, from the common room below. Out in the hall, a board creaked.
    Rising quietly from his chair, Sebastian snuffed the candle flame between thumb and forefinger, plunging the room into darkness. Slipping the small French pistol he’d bought that afternoon in the Strand from his greatcoat pocket, he flattened himself against the wall, then reached out to turn the handle and throw open the door to the hall.
    “ ’Oly ’ell!” yelped Tom, looking up, wide-eyed, from where he sat cross-legged on the bare floorboards opposite Sebastian’s door. “Don’t shoot me.”
    Sebastian lowered the pistol. “What the devil are you doing here?”
    In the dim light cast by the oil lamp dangling from a chain at the top of the stairs, the boy’s face looked pinched, cold. “Fer such a sharp cove, you can be mortal wet, at times. It’s watchin’ yer back, I am.”
    “My back,” said Sebastian.
    Tom shrugged. “Well, yer door, at any rate.”
    “Why?”
    The boy’s jaw tightened. “You paid me fer a week, you did. I’m earning me wages.”
    Sebastian dropped the flintlock into his coat pocket. “Let me get this straight. You don’t see a problem in lifting a stranger’s purse, but you refuse to be given wages you don’t feel you’ve earned?”
    “That’s right,” said Tom, obviously glad to be understood. “I gots me pride.”
    “And a highly original set of principles,” said Sebastian.
    The boy simply looked up at him, puzzled.
    A gust of wind slammed against the inn, whistling through the eaves and sending an icy drought sluicing down the corridor. Tom shivered, his thin arms creeping around his legs, hugging them closer to his body.
    Sebastian sighed. “It’s a bit drafty out here for conversation. You’d best come in.”
    For a brief instant, Tom hesitated. Then he scrambled to his feet.
    “How did you find me, anyway?” Sebastian asked, closing the door against the cold as the boy scooted across the room to the fire.
    One bony shoulder lifted in a shrug. “ ’Twern’t difficult. All’s I did was ask around ’til I cottoned on to a young mort named Kat.”
    “You followed me here from Covent Garden?”
    Tom stretched his chilblain-covered hands out to the glowing coals. A residual shiver racked his thin, ragged frame. “Aye.”
    Sebastian studied the boy’s half-averted profile. He was bright and resourceful, and determined, it seemed, to earn his “wages.” Sebastian thought about all the names and appointments in that little red book, and an idea began to form in his mind.
    Opening the door to the room’s ancient wardrobe, he rummaged around and came up with a quilt and an extra pillow. “Here,” he said, tossing the bedding toward the boy. “You can sleep by the fire. Tomorrow we’ll see about getting you a room over the stables.”
    Tom caught first the pillow, then the quilt. “You mean yer keeping me on?”
    “I’ve decided I can use an associate of your talents.”
    A wide, toothy smile broke across the boy’s face. “You won’t be sorry, gov’nor. There won’t be any bung-nappers getting their dibs on yer cly or foggles whilst I’m around, I can tell you that. Nor any tripper-ups nor rampsmen thinkin’ yer easy pickin’s.”
    “Get some sleep,” said Sebastian, turning away with a smile. “I have an early assignment for you tomorrow. I’d like you to discover the address of a certain Italian gentleman.”
    “An Italian ,” said Tom, in exactly the same tone of voice he might have used had Sebastian divulged a friendship with a cockroach.
    “That’s right. An Italian.” Sebastian slipped the pistol from his pocket and placed it, along with his pocketbook, beneath his pillow. “A painter, to be exact. A man by the name of Giorgio