What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

he called as he dashed away. “You hear?”

     
    Kat drew the folds of her black mantle more closely about her and hastened her step. The air was cold and damp, the gray clouds over the rooftops pressing down heavy and low. She should have called a hackney, she decided, just as a man’s darkly coated form loomed up before her. She let out a small gasp of surprise, quickly stifled.
    “This isn’t like you, Leo,” she said, keeping her voice light. “You must be nervous if you’ve taken to slinking around London.”
    Leo Pierrepont fell into step beside her. “Did you manage to get into Rachel’s rooms?”
    “Last night.”
    “And?”
    “As you said, there was nothing incriminating.”
    A narrow line appeared between the Frenchman’s brows. “You checked the compartment in the bedroom mantel?”
    “Of course. It contained Rachel’s appointment book. Nothing more.”
    “You’re quite certain? You searched everywhere?”
    “There was nothing else to search. Rachel’s maid cleaned the place out. Down to the walls.”
    “Her maid?” Something in Leo’s tone made Kat look over at him. “What’s the woman’s name?”
    “Mary Grant. Why? What did you think I might find there?”
    Instead of answering her, he said, “I had an unpleasant conversation last night with your young viscount. Somehow or other he’s found out I was paying for Rachel’s rooms.”
    “Hugh Gordon told him.”
    “Gordon? How the devil could he have known?”
    “One can only assume he heard it from Rachel.”
    Leo’s intense gray eyes narrowed as he searched Kat’s face. “He’s been in contact with you, has he? Devlin, I mean.”
    Kat shrugged and quickened her pace. “One could say he has a vested interest in discovering who killed Rachel.”
    “And you’re helping him?” Leo reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, stopping her. “Be careful, mon amie . He might find out some things you’d rather he didn’t learn.”
    Kat swung to look up at him. “I’m always careful.”
    A smile quirked up one side of the Frenchman’s thin, tight lips. “Except with your heart.”
    Kat stood very still. “ Especially with my heart.”

     
    There were only so many places a young man of Bayard’s crowd could be found in London on a cold, foggy January afternoon.
    Sebastian finally ran his nephew to ground at the Leather Bottle, a tavern near Islington that was popular with cutpurses and highwaymen, and the bored, rich young men who liked to rub shoulders with them and learn their thieves’ cant and make believe for a few, gin-soaked hours that their lives had, if not meaning, then at least excitement and challenge.
    It was early enough that the crowd in the tavern was still thin. A few of the men looked up at Sebastian’s entrance, but he had dressed for thepart, taking as his model the dashing young gentleman of the highway who had attempted some months back to hold up his carriage one night on Houndslow Heath.
    Bayard was at the bar, laughing and talking too loudly with two or three of the gangly, socially maladroit young men with whom he tended to associate. Bayard was very much his father’s son, brown haired and weak chinned and already inclined even at his young age to run to flesh.
    Ordering a glass of blue ruin, Sebastian leaned in close to his nephew and poked the muzzle of the Cassaignard between his ribs. Bayard froze.
    “That’s right,” whispered Sebastian, his voice pitched low and rough. “This is a pistol, and it will go off if you do anything—I repeat, anything —stupid.”
    Bayard’s eyes rolled frantically sideways.
    “No, don’t turn around. And stop looking like you just shit your pants or some such thing. We wouldn’t want to alarm your friends, now would we? You need to smile.”
    Bayard gave a sick giggle that came out sounding more like a half-choked hysterical sob. “Who are you? What do you want from me?”
    “We’re going to walk together, very slowly, to that table over there, near the far corner. You’re going to sit down first, and I’m going to sit opposite you, and we’re going to have a nice little chat.” Sebastian reached for his drink, but the muzzle never left Bayard’s side. “Walk, Bayard.”
    Bayard walked, his legs trembling and unsteady.
    “Now sit.”
    Bayard sat. Sebastian took the rickety, straight-backed chair opposite. The light in the tavern was murky, the few small windows obscured by grime, the tallow dips dim and foul smelling. A heavy odor of