What Angels Fear: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

continued about the room, studying the various canvases propped against the walls, looking for something that would tie all the strange, disparate threads of Rachel’s life and death together.
    He stopped suddenly before a haunting painting of a young girl, her wrists tied together over her head, her naked body twisted in agony, her eyes cast heavenward as if to beseech her god for mercy. As he looked closer, Sebastian realized that the girl was Rachel, only younger. Much younger. “That’s Rachel York, isn’t it? As a child.”
    Giorgio Donatelli was looking, not at the painting, but at him. “You’re the merchant who was here on Friday. You look different, but the features are the same.” His brows drew together in a troubled frown. “You asked about Rachel then, too. Why?”
    There were probably half a dozen things Sebastian could have said.He decided to use the truth. “Because I’m trying to find out who killed her.”
    “They say they know who did it. A viscount named Devlin.”
    “I am Devlin.”
    Sebastian wasn’t sure how he expected the other man to react. Donatelli glanced down at the pistol Sebastian still held in his hand, then away, and nodded once, as if he’d somehow come to this conclusion himself.
    “Rachel used to talk to me sometimes,” he said, jerking his chin toward the canvas, “when I was painting her. She’d tell me about her life, about when she first came to London. And before. It’s what gave me the idea for this painting.”
    “Her life in Worcestershire?”
    Donatelli’s eyes shone dark and fierce. “She was only thirteen when her father died. Her mother was already dead and she had no relatives willing to take her in, so she was thrown on the parish. They sold her as a housemaid.” He sucked in a deep breath that flared his nostrils and expanded his chest. “They do that here, you know. You English, you talk so fine, looking down your noses at the Americans and prosing on about the sin and inhumanity of their African trade. And yet you sell your own children into slavery.”
    He paused. “They sold her to a fat old merchant and his wife. She was mad, that woman. Sick in her head. She used to tie Rachel to a post in the cellar and lay her bare back open with a whip.”
    Sebastian stared down at the naked, frightened girl in the painting. He was remembering the thin, crisscrossing bands of white lines Paul Gibson had found on Rachel’s back, and the scars on her wrists.
    “But what the merchant did to her was even worse.” Donatelli’s voice trembled with emotion. “He used Rachel as his whore. A thirteen-year-old girl child, and he bent her over his desk and took her from behind like a dog.”
    “A woman who’s been through something like that, I wouldn’t think she’d have much use for men,” said Sebastian softly.
    “She learned to do what she needed to survive.”
    “Did you know she was planning to leave London?”
    Donatelli’s gaze shifted away. “No. She never mentioned it.”
    “But you knew she was with child.”
    It was said as a statement, not a question. To Sebastian’s surprise, Donatelli’s eyes went wide, his lips parting as if on a sudden gasp of fear. “How do you know that?”
    “I know. Who was the father? You?”
    “No!”
    “Who then? Lord Frederick?”
    “Lord Frederick?” Donatelli gave a short, sharp laugh. “Hardly. The man’s a Bulgarus.”
    It was an old term, Bulgarus ; an old term for a man with certain tendencies that were as old as time. Sebastian’s first inclination was to reject the accusation out of hand. Except that Donatelli was too passionate, too transparent to be much of a liar. And it didn’t sound like a lie. “If that’s true, then why was he involved with Rachel?”
    “He wasn’t. She was his—how do you say it? His cover. He paid her for the use of her rooms so that he could meet his lover there. A young clerk.”
    It was a common enough ruse, especially amongst those in espionage and government: cover up one secret by disguising it as another, a secret so spicy and naughty that if anyone should happen to discover it, they’d never think to look beyond it to the real, more dangerous truth it was intended to disguise. Thus, if Lord Frederick’s visits to Rachel York’s rooms were to become known, people would automatically assume that he’d set up the young actress as his mistress. Shocking, of course, but a common enough activity for a man of his age and wealth. Society would titter