What Angels Fear Read online

  Women, in Jarvis’s opinion, were generally even more profoundly brainless and foolish than most men. True, there were some exceptions—females with astonishingly rational, quick minds who tended to be either embittered and sour, or sarcastic and irreverent, and who irritated him even more than their empty-headed sisters. His deep and abiding hatred of the French notwithstanding, Jarvis had to agree with Napoleon in this, if nothing else: the only two things women were good for were recreation and reproduction.

  Which was a thought that brought him back, as it often did, to Annabelle, his wife.

  She’d been a fey, pretty little thing when he’d married her, a thin slip of a girl with sparkling blue eyes and a merry laugh and a handsome dowry. But she’d proved a severe disappointment. She’d managed to produce only one living daughter and a sickly, weak son before succumbing to a series of yearly miscarriages and stillbirths that the doctors claimed had ruined her health and overset the balance of her delicate mind. Jarvis knew better. Annabelle’s mind had never been balanced. But whatever hopes he might have had that her precarious health would soon carry her off proved misplaced. She lived on, year after year, forbidden by her doctors from providing him with the release his body still occasionally craved and unable to produce the son he needed to replace David, lying now in a watery, unknown grave.

  Yet of all the women in his life, it was his daughter, Hero, who tended to cause Jarvis the most grief. A stubborn, wrongheaded creature, she had dedicated her life, nauseatingly, to good works, while spouting any number of alarming sentiments gleaned from her reading of the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Marquis of Condorcet. Worse, having stubbornly resisted his efforts to contract for her any number of advantageous matches, she was now nearly twenty-five, and well on her way to becoming a spinster for life. Never the pretty, taking little thing her mother had been, whatever good looks she might once have had were in danger of fading fast.

  She was off right now, inspecting a workhouse, of all things. Just the thought of it brought a sour burn to his chest so that he was in no good humor when, midway through the afternoon, that fool magistrate, Lovejoy, was finally ushered into his presence.

  “You wished to see me, my lord?” said the little man, bowing.

  “It’s about time,” groused Jarvis from the sofa beside the fire, where he had set up a kind of temporary office. “I hear Devlin has killed again.”

  “We don’t actually know—”

  “He was seen there, wasn’t he?”

  The little man pressed his lips together and sighed. “Yes, my lord.”

  “The Prince is greatly displeased by this entire affair. There are whispers on the streets. Alarming talk. They’re saying it’s reached the point that noblemen in this country can kill with impunity, that common folks’ women are no longer safe even in their own homes. It’s the last thing the Prince needs, with his installation as Regent just two days away.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “The Prince wants Devlin brought in—or dead—within forty-eight hours. Or Queen Square will be looking for a new magistrate. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Lovejoy, and bowed himself out.

  Chapter 41

  It was just past noon when Sebastian reached his sister’s townhouse on St. James’s Square.

  “My lord,” said Amanda’s butler, his eyes widening in surprise and fear when he answered the door to Sebastian’s preemptory knock.

  “Bayard’s still at home, I presume?” said Sebastian, brushing past the man and heading for the stairs.

  “I believe Mr. Wilcox is in his dressing room, my lord. If you care to wait in the—My lord,” bleated the butler, but Sebastian was already taking the stairs two at a time.

  Sebastian flung open the dressing room door without warning to find Bayard in his shirtsleeves, his neck craning back at an awkward angle as he struggled with one of the monstrously wide cravats he affected. He spun about, his jaw going slack, his eyes opening wide. “Devlin.”

  Sebastian caught him in an angry rush that sent a chair flying and took the two men across the room to slam Bayard’s back up against the wall, hard enough to drive the air out of him in a painful huff.

  “You lied to me,” said Sebastian, pulling his nephew away from the wall, then slamming him back against it a second time. “You said you’d never gone near Rachel York. Now I hear you threatened to kill her at Steven’s in Bond Street.”

  Bayard’s voice wheezed, his chest jerking with the effort to draw breath. “I was foxed! I didn’t know what I was doing, let alone what I was saying.”

  “You were foxed the night she died, too. How do you know what you did then?”

  “I would never hurt her! I loved her.”

  “You said you were going to rip her head off, Bayard. Then a few days later, someone comes bloody close to doing exactly that. I still remember the turtles, Bayard.”

  Bayard’s mouth sagged, his eyes opening wide with horror. “Is that what happened to her? How do you know that? Oh, God, it’s not true, is it?”

  Sebastian tightened his hold on his nephew’s arms, lifting him up until his feet barely touched the floor, and holding him there. “What about the other one, Bayard? Mary Grant. Why did you go after her, too?”

  The mystification on Bayard’s face was so complete that Sebastian knew a moment of misgivings. “Other one? Who the devil is Mary Grant?”

  A woman’s voice cut through the sudden, thick silence. “Let him go,” said Amanda. “Let him go or I swear to God, Sebastian, I’ll bring the constables down on you.”

  Sebastian swung his head to stare at his sister. She stood in the doorway, a tall, middle-aged woman with the inescapably proud bearing of an Earl’s daughter. She had their mother’s coloring and slim, graceful stature, but enough of their father’s blunt, heavy features that, by the age of forty, she resembled the Earl far more than the beautiful, ethereal woman who had once been the Countess of Hendon.

  Sebastian hesitated, then eased his grip on Bayard’s arms to let the boy slump against the wall.

  Bayard stayed where he was, his shoulders pressed against the paneling, his mouth slack, his breath coming hard and fast.

  “You knew, didn’t you,” said Sebastian. “You knew he killed that girl.”

  Bayard wiped a shaky hand across his loose, wet lips. “I didn’t! Why won’t you believe me?”

  Sebastian kept his gaze on his sister’s face. “You knew, and yet you kept quiet about it. And now he’s killed again.”

  “I tell you, I didn’t kill her,” said Bayard. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Amanda’s gaze shifted to her son, her face set so cold and hard that for a moment, Sebastian knew a stirring of sympathy for his nephew. She had always looked at him this way, even when he was a little boy, pathetic in his hunger for her love. “Leave us.”

  “But I swear to you, I didn’t kill anyone!”

  “Leave us now, Bayard.”

  Bayard’s throat bulged with the effort of swallowing. He hesitated a moment, his mouth working as if he were trying to say something. Then he ducked his head and pushed away from the wall, brushing past his mother in an awkward, ungainly rush from the room.

  Amanda watched him stumble toward the stairs, then brought her gaze back to Sebastian. “The incident in Bond Street means nothing,” she said. “A boy’s wild talk, that’s all.”

  “Is that all it was? You know what he’s like, Amanda. You’ve always known, even if you didn’t want to admit it.”

  “You make too much of a schoolboy’s wild ways.”

  “A schoolboy?”

  Amanda walked over to right the chair that had been knocked sideways in the struggle. “Know this, Sebastian: I will not allow my son to be destroyed as a result of the inconsequential death of some worthless little bit of muslin who deserved everything she was given.”

  “My God, Amanda. We’re talking about a human life.”

  Amanda’s lip curled in disdain. �
��We don’t all have such a mewling weakness for the dregs of society. One would think you’d have learned your lesson after your experience with that light-skirt who used you for such a fool six years ago. What was her name? Anne Boleyn? No wait, that was another man’s whore. Yours was named—”

  “Don’t,” said Sebastian, taking a hasty step toward his sister before drawing himself up short. “Don’t start on Kat.”

  “Good heavens.” Amanda’s eyes widened with wonder as she searched her brother’s face. “You’re still in love with her.”

  Sebastian simply stared back at her, a faint, betraying line of color heating his cheeks.

  “You’re seeing her again, are you?” She gave a shrill laugh. “You never learn. What does she think is in it for her this time, I wonder? A chance to play the grieving widow at your hanging?”

  “I won’t die for your son, Amanda.”

  The amusement faded from Amanda’s face. “I tell you, Bayard had nothing to do with that light-skirt’s death. He was with his friends until nine o’clock, when Wilcox picked him up and brought him home. He never went out again.”

  “That lie might satisfy the authorities this time. But he’ll do it again, Amanda. And then what? For how long do you think you can protect him?”

  An angry flush darkened her cheeks and deepened the sparkle of animosity in the brilliant blue eyes that were so much like their father’s. “Get out of my house.”

  The sound of loud knocking, followed by excited voices and a rough shout, echoed up the stairs. Sebastian turned toward the commotion, his lips pulling back into a hard smile. “You might not have called the constables, my dear sister, but it appears that Bayard did.”

  Chapter 42

  There were only two constables, both on the wrong side of forty, one tall and bone lean, the other slow and fleshy.

  The first was halfway up the stairs when Sebastian’s fist caught him under the jaw with an audible smack that closed the man’s mouth and sent him arm-wheeling backward.

  “I say,” blustered the second, just before Sebastian buried his fist in the man’s soft gut. His eyes widened, and he doubled over with a wheezing whooph.

  Bayard was standing at the base of the stairs, his derisory, self-satisfied smile fading fast. “You little bastard,” said Sebastian, and punched him, too, just for the bloody hell of it, on his way out the door.

  After that, Sebastian spent the next several hours attempting to disprove Bayard’s alibi, only to discover that Bayard and his two companions had indeed spent the afternoon and evening of the previous Tuesday getting conspicuously and roaringly drunk at the Leather Bottle in Islington. Their subsequent arrival at Cribb’s Parlor, followed by their hasty departure, had been equally spectacular and memorable. In fact, the doorman distinctly remembered helping to load the insensible young gentleman into his father’s carriage. He even remembered the time, for the city’s church bells had begun to toll nine o’clock just as the carriage pulled away.

  Tom found Sebastian in a coffeehouse near the Rose and Crown, a tankard of ale cradled in his left hand, a bloodstained handkerchief wrapped around the knuckles of his right.

  “What’d you do to yer hand?”

  “I hit something.”

  “A bone box, you mean?” Tom said with a grin, and slid onto the opposite bench, a paper-wrapped Cornish pasty clutched in one fist. “Find out something on yer nevy?”

  Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of ale. “That he has an ironclad alibi.”

  Tom looked up from tearing the paper off his pasty. “A what?”

  “An alibi. Verifiable proof that he was somewhere else at the time of the crime. In this instance, passed out insensible in his father’s arms.” Sebastian stretched back on the bench. “My pool of suspects is rapidly diminishing. Bayard had the motive and means but not, apparently, the opportunity to commit murder. Georgio Donatelli had the opportunity but no motive that I can see—apart from the fact that nothing we’ve learned about the man suggests he’s capable of such extreme violence. Lord Frederick claims he was with the Prince of Wales at the time of the killings, and while I haven’t had a chance to verify that, I would assume at any rate that a man of his inclinations would be unlikely to indulge in our killer’s particular form of necrophilia.”

  “Necro-what?”

  Sebastian glanced over at the boy’s open, inquisitive face. “Never mind that one.”

  “There’s still the Frenchman,” said Tom. He paused to take a bite of his pasty, but swallowed quickly before continuing. “And that actor, Hugh Gordon. All you got is ’is word for it that ’e was ’ome studyin’ his lines that night.”

  “A love affair that went bad two years ago seems an unlikely motive for murder, but you’re right, it wouldn’t hurt to look into his movements that night. Why don’t you ask around, see if any of his neighbors remember seeing him that night.”

  Tom nodded and swallowed the last of his pasty. “I got somethin’ interesting on yer Lord Frederick. ’E went to see a friend last night. A young friend what ’as rooms in Stratton Street, over Marylebone way.”

  Sebastian drained his tankard and pushed it aside. “Who is he?”

  “Folks around there didn’t seem to know—I take it ’e ’asna lived there long. So I followed ’im this morning.”

  “And?”

  “ ’Is name is Davis. Wesley Davis. Turns out ’e’s a clerk. At the Foreign Office.”

  It was the hour of the fashionable promenade in Hyde Park, the hour when everyone with pretensions to being anyone was careful to be seen there, walking, trotting sedately along the Row on a showy hack, or bowling up the avenue in a suitably stylish curricle, phaeton, or barouche. The weather hadn’t been particularly favorable lately, but that morning’s bleak sunshine had melted what was left of the snow, helped along by a stiff wind that was still blowing hard enough to keep away the stinking, yellow London fog. Society’s finest were out in droves, bundled up to their stiff upper lips against the cold.

  Sebastian kept his hat pulled low and his scarf wrapped about his lower face, but his scruffy appearance still attracted more attention than he would have liked as he waited patiently beside the footpath, some twenty yards away from where Lord Frederick had paused to speak to a fawning matron and her blushing young daughter.

  He might be nearly fifty and a younger son, but Lord Frederick was still considered quite a catch, for all that. His first wife had, unfortunately, left most of her considerable fortune tied up in trust for their daughter, but everyone knew that the chances were more than even that the man would be made prime minister in just a few days’ time. True, he’d shown no disposition to remarry in all the years since his wife’s tragic death, but the recent marriage of his dearly loved only daughter had raised hopes in the bosoms of the Metropolis’s mamas—as well as among more than a few of Society’s more attractive widows. Surely, they reasoned, the need for female companionship would at long last inspire Lord Frederick to look about him for a wife—especially when one considered the pressing need for someone to play the part of his political hostess.

  Of course, they didn’t know about the existence of one Mr. Wesley Davis of Stratton Street.

  Smiling smoothly, Lord Frederick extricated himself from the clutches of the two ambitious ladies, tipped his hat, bowed, and continued up the footpath. He wore buff-colored doeskin breeches and a many-caped Garrick, and carried an ivory-handled ebony walking stick that swung idly in one hand as he headed toward Park Lane.

  Sebastian fell into step beside him. “I’ve a flintlock in me pocket big enough to blow a hole in yer gut the size o’ a dinner plate, so don’t ye be getting any fancy ideas about hollerin’ out, or tryin’ to skewer me with the fancy little sword ye got hidden in that cane o’ yers,” Sebastian added when the man’s fist tightened around his walking stick.

  Fairchild relaxed his hold on the stick’s ivory handle, but his expression remained calm and defiant. “Surely you don’t expect to get away with armed ro
bbery in broad daylight in the middle of Hyde Park?”

  “I don’t want yer boung and geegaws. All’s I wants is for us to have us a little chat. Over there.” Sebastian nodded toward a wooden bench set back amongst the shrubbery. “Beneath that chestnut tree.”

  Lord Frederick hesitated a moment, then stepped off the footpath into the long wet grass.

  “Sit down real easy-like,” said Sebastian, when Fairchild reached the bench and turned to look back expectantly. “And drop that walking stick. That’s right. Now kick it over here.”

  Keeping a watchful eye on the man on the bench, Sebastian reached for the cane at his feet. The mechanism that released the ivory handle from the ebony shaft was easy enough to find. The shaft fell away with a well-oiled hiss, revealing a gleaming, two-edged blade. “Nasty little piece of work, this,” he said, in his own voice and diction.

  Lord Frederick set his handsome, square jaw. “The streets are dangerous places these days.”

  Sebastian laughed and loosed the scarf from about his lower face. “You’ve no idea how dangerous.”

  A mingling of recognition and shock sagged the other man’s face. “Oh, God. You’re Devlin, aren’t you?” He swallowed, a new kind of wariness narrowing his eyes, replacing the initial slackness of surprise. “What do you want from me?”

  “The truth would be nice. For a change.” Sebastian played with the sword stick in his hand, learning the weight of it, testing the balance. “I’ll save us some time, shall I, by telling you what I already know? For instance, I know that whatever else you were doing with Rachel York, you weren’t tupping her.”

  Lord Frederick gave a sharp laugh. “Don’t be absurd. What do you think I was doing in her rooms twice a week?”

  “Pleasuring a young clerk from the Foreign Office named Wesley Davis.”

  Fairchild sat silent. He managed to keep his features composed, but the fear was there, like a shadow darkening his soft gray eyes.