St. Cyr 01 - What Angels Fear

  What Angels Fear

  C.S. Harris

  A New American Library Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2005 by The Two Talers, LLC

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

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  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  ISBN: 0-7865-6079-7

  A NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY BOOK®

  New American Library Books first published by The New American Library Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY and the “NAL” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: October, 2005

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  For my husband,

  Steven Ray Harris,

  for more reasons than I could name

  No place so sacred from such fops is barred,

  Nor is Paul’s Church more safe than Paul’s Churchyard;

  Nay fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead,

  For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

  —Alexander Pope,

  An Essay on Criticism

  Prologue

  Tuesday, 29 January 1811

  She blamed the fog. She wasn’t normally this nervous. This afraid.

  It was such a foul, creeping thing, the yellow fog of London. Even without the fog it would have been dark at this hour. Dark, and January- cold. But the murky vapor made it worse, wrapping around her lantern in wraithlike drifts that had Rachel stumbling as she cut across the churchyard.

  A loose stone rolled beneath the delicate sole of one kid half-boot, the clatter sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night. Pausing, Rachel threw a quick glance over her shoulder, her gaze raking the faint, mist-shrouded outlines of the graveyard’s scattered monuments and tombstones. From the distance came a clacking rattle and the fog-muffled voice of the charley, calling out the time. Rachel drew in a deep breath of frosty air tinged with the scent of wet earth and leaves and a stale, musty hint of old death, and hurried on.

  The heavy stone bulk of St. Matthew of the Fields loomed before her. Rachel clutched the satin-lined velvet folds of her evening cloak more closely about her. She should have told him to meet her at half past eight, she decided. Nine at the latest. It was the usual time, half past eight.

  Only, this wasn’t a usual transaction.

  She hadn’t expected to be so edgy. It was a sensation she didn’t like. Being nervous made her feel like a victim, and Rachel York refused to play the role of victim. Never again. It was a promise she’d made to herself at the age of fifteen, and in the three years that had passed since that fateful night when she’d seized control of her own life, it was a promise she’d never broken. She wasn’t about to break it now.

  At the steps leading up to the north transept door, she paused again. Beneath the deep round arch of the side portal, the darkness was nearly complete. Lifting the lantern high, she let the narrowed beam of light play over the door’s weathered old oak. Through the thin kid of her gloves the iron key felt cold and heavy in her hand. To her annoyance, her fingers shook when she thrust the toothed end into the lock.

  With one twist, the mechanism clicked smoothly and the door swung silently inward before her on oiled hinges. The Reverend McDermott was careful about such things. But then, he needed to be.

  Rachel pushed the door open wider, one artfully curled lock of golden hair fluttering against her cheek in the sudden outward gush of air. Familiar church smells engulfed her, the scent of beeswax and damp stone and ancient wood. She whisked herself inside, carefully closing the door behind her. She did not lock it.

  She dropped the key into her reticule, felt its weight heavy and solid against her thigh as she crossed the transept. The cold silence of the church closed around her, the light from her lantern wavering over candle-blackened stone walls and the scattered, recumbent figures of entombed ladies and long-dead knights lying still and cold in the empty hush.

  They said it was close on to eight hundred years old, St. Matthew of the Fields, with molded sandstone arches that sprang from thick, cylindrical piers, and small high windows that now showed only blackness beyond. Rachel’s father had been interested in such things. Once, he had taken her to see the cathedral in Worchester and talked to her for hours about arcades and triforiums and rood screens. But her father was long dead; Rachel shut her mind against the memory, unsure what had brought such a thought to her now.

  The Lady Chapel lay at the far end of the apse, a tiny fourteenth-century jewel of white marble and slender columns and delicately carved screenwork. Rachel set her lantern on the steps before the altar. She was early; he would not be here for another twenty minutes or more. The emptiness of the ancient church seemed to press in upon her, cold and dark. She found her gaze returning, again and again, to the blessed candles clustered together on the snowy linen of the altar cloth. For a moment longer, she hesitated. Then, kindling a taper, she began to light the candles, one after the other, their golden flames leaping up warm and bright until they seemed to merge into one comforting glow.

  Rachel gazed up at the massive canvas that hung above the altar, a darkly swirled depiction of the Virgin Mother ascending gloriously into the heavens against a background of triumphant angels. Once, Rachel might have murmured a soft prayer.

  Not now.

  She didn’t hear the transept door open and close, only the faint echo of stealthy footsteps along the choir. He was early. She hadn’t expected it of him.

  Turning, she shoved back the hood of her cloak and forced her lips into a practiced smile, ready to play her role.

  She could see him now, a faint shadow, the outline of his greatcoat and top hat just visible through the Lady Chapel’s intricately carved stone screen.

  Then he moved into the candlelight.

  She took a quick step back. “You,” she whispered, and knew she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, 30 January 1811

  Sebastian could hear the tolling of the city’s church bells, counting out the hour; dull echoes of sound muffled by distance and the acrid fog that, even here, hugged the open ground and shrouded the bare, reaching branches of the stand of elms that grew at the edge of the field. Dawn had come, but it brought little warmth or light. Sebastian Alistair St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, only surviving son and heir to the Earl of Hendon, propped his shoulders against the high side of his curricle, crossed his arms at his chest, and thought about his bed.

  It had been a long night, a night of brandy fumes and cigar smoke, of faro and vingt-et-un and a promise made to a sad-eyed woman—a promise that he would not kill, however much the man he had come here to meet might deserve killing. Sebastian tipped back his head and closed his eyes. He could hear the sweet call of a lark at the far end of the field and, nearer, the steady swish, swish of wet grass as his second, Sir Christopher Farrell, paced back and forth in the roadside’s verge. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped.

  “Maybe he won’t show,” said Sir Christopher.

  Sebastian kept his eyes closed. “He’ll show.”

  The pacing resumed. Back and forth, boot heels squelching in the damp earth.

  “If you’re not careful,” said Sebastian, “you’re going to get mud on your boots.”

  “To hell with my boots. Are you certain Talbot is bringing a doctor? How good of a doctor? Maybe we should have brought our own doctor.”

  Sebastian lowered his head and opened his eyes. “I don’t intend to get shot.”

  Sir Christopher swung about, his fair hair curling wildly in the damp mist, his normally soft gray eyes dilated. “Right. Well, that’s reassuring. Doubtless Lord Firth had every intention of not getting shot when he stood up against Maynard last month. Pity, of course, that the bullet went through his neck.”

  Sebastian smiled.

  “I’m delighted to see I’m amusing you. This is another of those advantages of having gone to war, is it? Staring with calm disdain into the face of death? Ranks right up there with being rendered irresistibly fascinating to members of the fair sex.”

  Sebastian laughed out loud.

  Christopher smiled himself, then resumed his silent pacing, a slim, flawlessly tailored figure in buckskins and high-gloss top boots and well-laundered linen. After another moment, he said, “I still don’t understand why you didn’t choose swords. Less chance of someone accidentally getting killed with swords.” Lifting his left arm in a fencer’s pose, he pantomimed a quick thrust against the cold, misty air. “A neat little pink through the shoulder, a bloody scratch on the arm, and honor is satisfied.”

  “Talbot int
ends to kill me.”

  Christopher let his arms fall to his sides. “So you’re just going to stand there and let him take a shot at you?”

  “Talbot couldn’t hit a ship of the line at twenty-five paces.” Sebastian yawned. “I’m surprised he chose it.” It was the Code Duello: as the challenged party, Sebastian selected the weapons. But the choice of distance then fell to the challenger.

  Christopher scrubbed an open hand across his face. “I’ve heard rumors—”

  “Here he comes,” said Sebastian. Straightening, he swung off his driving coat and slung it over the high seat of the curricle.

  Christopher turned to stare into the opaque distance. “Bloody hell. Even you can’t see in this fog.”

  “No. But I have ears.”

  “So do I. And I don’t hear a thing. I swear, Sebastian, you must be part bat. It’s unnatural.”

  A minute or two later, a carriage appeared out of the gloom, a pair of showy blacks pulling a high-perch phaeton containing two men and followed at a discreet distance by a simple gig. The doctor.

  A tall, lanky man with straight, thinning brown hair and an aquiline nose jumped down from the phaeton’s high seat. Across the mist-blown field, Captain John Talbot’s gaze met and held Sebastian’s for one long moment. Then he turned away to strip off his coat and gloves.

  “Right then,” called the captain’s second, a mustachioed military man who clapped his hands together in a false show of heartiness. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

  “Those rumors I mentioned?” Christopher said in an undertone as he and Sebastian moved forward. “They say the last time Talbot fought a duel, he chose twenty-five paces, then turned and fired after twelve. Killed the man. Of course, Talbot and his second swore the distance had been settled at twelve paces all along.”

  “And his rival’s second?”

  “Shut up about it when Talbot threatened to call him out—for naming Talbot a liar.”

  Sebastian gave his friend a slow smile. “Then if Talbot should have occasion to call you out for a similar reason, I suggest you choose swords.”

  “You’ve the pistols?” said Talbot’s second, as Sir Christopher walked up to him.

  A brace of pistols in a blue velvet-lined walnut box was produced, inspected, and loaded by the seconds. Talbot made his choice. Sebastian took the other pistol in his hand, felt the cool, familiar weight against his palm, the deadly hardness of steel against his curled finger.

  “Ready, gentlemen?”

  Back-to-back they stood, then began to walk, each step measured to the steady drone of the counted paces.

  “One, two . . .”

  The doctor ostentatiously turned his back, but Christopher stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and watchful, his face pale, anxious. Sebastian knew his friend wasn’t only worried about Talbot’s intentions, that Christopher had other misgivings. Christopher didn’t understand that there was a fine line between seeking death and being indifferent to its occurrence. A line Sebastian had yet to cross.

  “. . . three, four . . .”

  He had an unexpected memory, of a misty summer morning long ago, on a grassy slope near the Hall, when his two older brothers had still been alive, and his mother. The air had smelled of the fresh scones they’d brought for tea, and ferns, and the restless sea beating against the rocks in the cove far below. They’d played Drakes-and-Dragons that morning, the four of them, counting out the movements “. . . five, six . . .” as they wove in and out, even his mother, her head thrown back, laughing, the strengthening sun bright on her golden hair. Only his sister, Amanda, had sat aloof, as she always did. Aloof and disapproving and angry for reasons Sebastian never quite understood.

  “. . . eight, nine . . .”

  The metal of the pistol’s trigger felt cold and solid against Sebastian’s finger, the wind-swirled mist damp against his cheeks. He forced himself to focus on this moment, this place. The lark called again, from nearer the base of the hill. He could hear the gurgle of a distant stream, the clip-clop of a horse, ridden at a slow trot up the road.

  “. . . ten, eleven . . .”

  It was the hesitation in the other man’s stride between the tenth and eleventh count that warned him. That, and the whisper of cloth rubbing against cloth as Talbot turned.

  “. . . twelve—”

  Sebastian spun about and dropped into a crouch at the precise moment that John Talbot fired, so that the bullet intended for Sebastian’s heart grazed his forehead instead. Then, gun empty and dangling slack in his hand, Talbot had no choice but to stand, body turned sideways, jaw clenched tight, nostrils flaring with each indrawn breath as he waited for Sebastian’s shot.

  Calmly, purposefully, Sebastian raised his pistol, took aim, and fired. Captain Talbot let out a sharp cry and pitched forward.

  The doctor scrambled out of the gig and ran toward him.

  “Bloody hell, Sebastian,” said Christopher. “You’ve killed him.”

  “Hardly.” Sebastian let the pistol fall to his side. “But I imagine he’ll find it damned uncomfortable to sit down for a while.”

  “I say, I say, I say,” blustered Talbot’s second, his mustache working back and forth. “Most ungentlemanly conduct, this. Englishmen stand and fire weapons from their feet. Someone ought to fetch the constables. There’ll be murder charges brought for this, mark my words.”

  “Be quiet, man,” said the doctor, snapping open his case. “No one I’ve treated yet has died from being clipped across the arse.”

  Sir Christopher began to laugh, while Sebastian stretched to his feet and walked across the field to collect the other pistol. He’d promised Melanie he wouldn’t kill her husband.

  But she hadn’t said anything about not making the bastard suffer.

  Chapter 2

  It was in the retrochoir that Jem first noticed the blood.

  He’d known something was wrong before that, of course—known it as soon as he opened the north transept door. For thirty years now Jem Cummings had been sexton here at St. Matthew of the Fields. It was part of his job to see that the church was locked up tight every night and unlocked again the next morning.

  So Jem knew.

  They had a young rector what’d taken over the living three years ago—the Reverend McDermott, he was. McDermott hadn’t liked the idea of keeping the church locked at night. But then Jem had told him about that time back in ’92, when them bloodthirsty heathen Frogs had been rampaging across the Channel and the old reverend had come in one morning to find the high altar smashed and pigs’ blood splattered across the choir walls. When he heard about that, Reverend McDermott dropped his talk about leaving the church open real quick.

  It was the pigs’ blood that Jem was remembering now as he staggered toward the nave, his bum leg hurting bad in the damp cold, his eyes straining as he peered into the early morning gloom. Yet the peace of the church seemed undisturbed, the high altar pristine and untouched, the sacristy door protecting the church’s precious, consecrated vessels solid and locked. The pounding of Jem’s heart began to ease.

  Then he saw the blood.

  He didn’t know what it was at first. Only dark smudges, faint but growing more distinct, more discernibly in the shape of men’s shoe prints as he traced the trail across the worn paving slabs toward the Lady Chapel. The cold of the ancient stone walls seemed to seep into his very bones, his breath coming ragged in his tight chest as he crept forward, his body shaking so badly he had to clench his teeth to keep them from rattling.

  She lay on her back, sprawled in an obscene posture against the polished marble steps that led up to the chapel’s altar. He saw bare thighs, spread wide and gleaming white in the lamplight. A froth of lace edged what had once been a fine satin flounce, torn now, and stained with the same darkness that smeared her thighs. Eyes wide and glassy stared at him from beneath a head of golden curls tipped back at an unnatural angle. At first he thought the front of her gown was black, but as he inched closer, he saw the gaping gashes across her throat and he understood. He understood, too, where all the blood had come from. It was everywhere, the blood, worse even than that long-ago day when the Jacobin fanatic had thrown buckets of the stuff around the choir. Only, this wasn’t pigs’ blood. It was her blood.