What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

yet, and the smell of her blood hung thick in the air. He was glad he hadn’t had a chance to eat his supper yet.
    “There’s no doubt this time as to who did it,” said Edward Maitland.
    Lovejoy glanced back at his constable. “There’s not?”
    “We have a witness.” Maitland flipped open his notebook and turned it toward the golden pool of light cast by one of the oil lamps they’d lit. “A Mrs. Charles Lavery. She saw Lord Devlin leaving the building this afternoon.”
    “She’s sure it was Devlin?”
    “Said she knows the Viscount. Her husband served with Devlin in Spain.” Maitland closed his notebook with a snap. “No doubt he’s our man, sir.”
    Lovejoy crouched down beside the dead woman and studied her face. She was young, but not particularly attractive. Nothing like Rachel York. “Why this woman? Why go through all the bother of tracking her down?”
    “She knew Rachel York had gone to St. Matthew’s that night to meet him.” Maitland shrugged his expensively tailored shoulders. “So he kills her to shut her up.”
    “But she’d already told us about that.” Lovejoy’s gaze drifted around the disordered room. “What else did she know, I wonder? And what do you suppose he was looking for?”
    “Money,” Maitland suggested. “Or something to sell. Jewelry perhaps.”
    “We’re dealing with the heir to an earldom here. Not some petty thief.”
    “Still, he must be getting short of the ready by now, for all that. A man’s gotta eat.”
    “Hmm. Perhaps. Yet Rachel York’s reticule had also been searched, if you’ll remember.” Lovejoy pushed to his feet, his knees creaking. “I wonder,” he said, half to himself. “I wonder . . .”

     
    There was something peculiarly soothing about the sight and sound of a fire. Kat Boleyn sat with her feet curled up beneath her, her head tipped back against the silk upholstery of her drawing room sofa, her gaze on the flickering flames before her as she listened to the voice of the man she’d once loved telling her about his visit to St. Jude’s Foundling Home.
    And about Mary Grant.
    “It’s not your fault,” Kat said when Devlin had finished and fell silent beside her. “It’s not your fault that he got to her first.”
    “No. I know it’s not,” he said, his gaze on the fire.
    “In a way, you’re this killer’s victim, too.”
    “I know it’s not my fault,” he said again.
    “But you’re still feeling guilty.”
    He looked up to meet her gaze. A hint of a wry smile touched his lips, then faded as he sucked in a deep breath. “I suppose because in some way I can’t begin to understand, this all has to do with me. I keep circling around it, catching glimpses of it, but I can’t seem to grasp it. And in the meantime, these women are dying.”
    She touched his shoulder and he turned toward her, his fingers digging into her arm as he buried his face against her breasts. She felt a shudder rip through him, then he lay still.
    Disturbed by the tumult of her own feelings, she touched her hand, lightly, to his hair, just above the nape of his neck. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” shesaid quietly. “All those years Rachel went every Monday afternoon to St. Jude’s, and I never knew about it.”
    He shifted so that his cheek lay against the bare flesh of her chest where it showed above the bodice of her gown, and his hand rested high on her stomach. “She was with child. Did you know?”
    Kat’s fingers stilled in his hair. “No. I didn’t know. It happens sometimes. Even when one is careful.”
    The tip of his finger traced a delicate pattern against the thin silk of her gown, spreading a warm glow that seemed to start from deep within her. And she marveled at the effect this man’s touch could have on her. Even when she didn’t want it to. Even when she tried to steel herself against it.
    He said, “The Reverend Finley seems to think she was in love with someone.”
    Kat’s hand closed over his, stopping that slow, seductive motion. “You think she was killed because of the baby?”
    “Perhaps. But it doesn’t explain the rape. Or what was done to Mary Grant.” He lifted his head to look at her. “How well do you know Lord Frederick?”
    As a friend of the Prince of Wales, Lord Frederick was a frequent guest at the kind of functions to which women like Kat were invited. She supposed she probably knew the man better than Devlin, who wasn’t of that set and had spent so many years out of the country