What Angels Fear sscm-1

by C. S. Harris

“I don’t think that’s exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for,” said Donatelli, starting forward.

  Sebastian held him off with one outflung hand. He was looking at a painting of Rachel York. Not a portrait of Rachel, the actress, but a depiction of Rachel as Venus, rising naked and utterly desirable from the sea, her flesh flowing and contoured and so realistically depicted that one saw the sensuality of a woman rather than the idealized goddess of the myth.

  “No, but I do like this. It’s so very . . .” Sebastian paused. Erotic, was the word that came to mind. He changed it to, “Evocative.”

  Donatelli, who’d been watching him with anxious eyes, relaxed.

  “Hold on,” said Sebastian with a sudden, pronounced start. He leaned forward, as if to study the painting more closely. “Goodness gracious, isn’t she that actress—the one who was recently killed?”

  “Yes.” The word came hissing out on a pained exhalation of air.

  “Sad business, that.” Sebastian shook his head and tut-tutted in the manner of old Mr. Blackadder, the apothecary his father used to call in whenever one of the servants took ill. “Very sad. One has to wonder what the world is coming to these days.” He shifted the canvas to one side and found himself staring, again, at Rachel York, this time as a Turkish odalisque with one toe dipped in a bath, her only covering a wisp of scarlet satin twining in and out of her bare arms.

  “I say, here’s another painting of her. And another,” said Sebastian, shifting more canvases. “And another. She modeled for you frequently, did she?”

  “Yes.”

  “A remarkably beautiful woman,” said Sebastian.

  Donatelli reached out one hand, his fingers hovering just above that vibrant, painted face, as if he might caress the cheek of the living, breathing woman herself. His hand shook. And Sebastian, watching him, thought, Ah, so he cared for her.

  But how much? Enough to kill her in a rage of passion?

  “She was more than beautiful,” whispered Donatelli, his fingers curling into a fist as he let his hand fall to his side.

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the woman on the canvas. This particular painting was different from the others, the colors a swirling golden riot of greens and blues, with something of Tiepolo’s use of sharp shadow accents painted with vigorous gaiety against a wide, sunlit sky. Here, she sat upon a hillside bathed in the bright, vibrant light of spring. She had her legs drawn up beneath a flounce of petticoats, her posture almost childlike, her head thrown back, smiling, as if caught in the instant before an outburst of carefree laughter.

  Sebastian looked down at the image of that vibrant, vital young woman, and he knew an unexpected stirring that was part sadness, and part outrage. “She was so young,” he said. “So young and full of life.” His gaze lifted again to the man beside him. “It seems difficult to imagine how anyone could want her dead.”

  A quiver of emotion, dark and painful to see, passed over the man’s handsome, tormented face. “It’s an ugly world. An ugly world, with ugly people in it.”

  “At least the police seem to know who did it. Some earl’s son, is it not? A Lord Devlin?”

  Donatelli’s lips twisted in a savage grimace of hate and bitter, useless rage. “May he rot in hell for all eternity.”

  “She knew him, did she?”

  The painter shook his head. “Not that I was aware of. When I first heard what had happened to her, I thought it was that other one.”

  “That other one?”

  Donatelli sucked in a shuddering breath that lifted his chest and flared his nostrils wide. “He’s been following her for weeks—months maybe. Hanging around outside the theater door. Waiting across the street, whenever she came here. Watching her. Everywhere she went, he was there.”

  “She didn’t report him?”

  Donatelli shook his head. “I wanted her to go to the authorities, but she said it wouldn’t do any good. You know what they’re like, these aristos. To them, we are little better than animals. Things to be used and thrown away.”

  The vehemence of his words took Sebastian by surprise. He was remembering what Hugh Gordon had said, about heads on pikes and blood running in the gutters. And he wondered if perhaps Gordon was wrong, that Rachel hadn’t abandoned her more radical ideas after all. Ideas Donatelli obviously shared.

  “What’s his name, this nobleman?” Sebastian asked.

  He thought for a moment that the artist wasn’t going to answer him. Then Donatelli shrugged, his jaw thrust forward in a determined effort to control his emotions.

  And told him.

  “You’re lookin’ mortal queer,” said Tom when they met up at the local tavern for a pint of ale and steak and kidney pies. “What’d this Italian cove have to tell you, then?”

  “It seems Rachel York used to model for him.” Sebastian pushed through the crowd around the bar and led the way to an empty table in a quiet corner. “So, how did you go on?”

  Slipping into the opposite bench, Tom wrapped his hands around one of the pies and twitched his shoulder in a careless shrug. “ ’E’s a foreigner. People around ’ere don’t seem to ’ave much to do with ’im. Although they noticed the girl, all right. She musta been some looker, that Rachel.”

  “She was.” Sebastian ate silently for a moment, then said, “Any other women visit his studio frequently?”

  “Not so’s anyone noticed.” Tom took a large bite of pie, and spoke around it. “Think ’e was tupping her?”

  “Possibly, but I’m not sure. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  Tom swallowed, hard, his eyes widening with the effort. “So we didn’t learn nothin’ from all this?”

  “Oh, we learned something.” Sebastian took a deep drought of ale and leaned his shoulders back against the wall. “According to our painter friend, a man was following Rachel about for months. A gentleman, to be precise.”

  Tom polished off the last of his pie and set about licking his fingers clean. “Did he tell you this cove’s name?”

  “Yes. His name is Bayard Wilcox.”

  Something in Sebastian’s tone caused the boy to stop with his last finger halfway to his mouth. “Know the bloke, do you?”

  Sebastian drained his tankard and stood up abruptly. “Quite well, as a matter of fact. Bayard is my nephew.”

  Chapter 24

  Charles, Lord Jarvis, paused in the doorway of the princely dressing room and watched His Royal Highness, George, the Prince of Wales, pivot first one way, then the other as he studied his reflection in the series of ornate, gilt-framed looking glasses that lined the room’s silk-covered walls. Several of the Prince’s boon companions, Lord Frederick Fairchild among them, lounged at their ease about the cavernous, crimson and gold room, their discussions ranging from the use of champagne in boot polish to the newest opera dancers to catch their fancy. A dozen ruined cravats lay scattered across the chamber’s richly hued Turkey carpet, while the Prince’s man hovered at the ready with another armload of starched white linen neckcloths, should the Prince’s present endeavor be no more successful than the last. Prince George might require the assistance of two footmen to shove his corpulent body into his coat, and a mechanical contrivance to hoist him into the saddle, but he always insisted on tying his own cravats.

  “Ah, there you are, Jarvis,” said the Prince, looking up.

  Jarvis, who had spent the past half hour trying to soothe the wounded dignity of the Russian ambassador, simply bowed and said, “Sir?”

  “What’s this Lord Frederick is telling me about Spencer Perceval and his damned Tory government pushing for restrictions on our regency?” The Prince’s full, petulant mouth puckered into a frown. “Restrictions? What restrictions?”

  Jarvis shifted a crumpled shirt and torn satin waistcoat from a gilded chair shaped like a lotus blossom, and sat down. “A temporary restriction only,” he said blandly, “to be lifted after one year.”

  “A year!”

  “The doctors insist the King continues to i
mprove,” said Lord Frederick, his voice tight with worry. It was the Whigs’ greatest fear that mad old King George III might recover before they were able to return to power. “There are those in the Commons who are saying a regency may not be necessary after all.”

  “What do you think?” said George, whirling to face his friends. It took Jarvis a moment to realize that the question referred not to his father’s health, but to the Prince’s latest attempt at executing a complicated new knot for his cravat.

  Sir John Bethany, an aging roué with full, ruddy cheeks and a girth to rival the Prince’s, hauled out his quizzing glass and subjected his friend to a long, thorough inspection while the Prince waited in an agony of suspense. “Brummell himself could do no better,” said Bethany at last, letting the quizzing glass fall.

  The Prince’s face broke into a wide smile that collapsed almost at once. “You’re just saying that.” With an impatient oath, he ripped off his latest creation and began again, one eye cocking back toward Jarvis. “Our powers will be the same as the King’s, of course?”

  Jarvis cleared his throat. “Not quite, sir. But you will be allowed to form a government—”

  “I should rather think so,” interjected the Prince.

  “Although it will need to be announced before you are sworn in by the Privy Council.”

  The Prince so often played the buffoon that one tended to forget that the blood of a host of kings—French and Spanish, English and Scottish, from William the Conqueror and Charlemagne to Henry II and Mary Queen of Scots—flowed through this man’s veins. He could strike a decidedly kingly pose, when he so chose. “Don’t start, Jarvis,” said George, suddenly every inch the prince.

  Jarvis inclined his head in a wordless bow.

  The regal manner faded almost instantly. George sighed. “If only Fox were still with us. Dashed inconsiderate thing to do, dying like that.”

  “Just so,” said Jarvis. He waited a moment, then added, “Although Perceval thought perhaps—”

  “The devil fly away with Perceval,” said the Prince in a explosion of warmth. “It’s enough to give a man palpitations.” He stopped suddenly, the fingers of one hand going anxiously to his opposite wrist. “Our pulse is galloping. The next thing you know, we’ll be having abdominal spasms.”

  Jarvis rather thought the Prince’s abdominal spasms could be traced to the mountain of buttered crab he’d consumed the evening before, and the two bottles of port with which it had been washed down, but he kept the observation to himself.

  “It’s really far too early in the day for such discussions,” said the Prince, his hand shifting to the royal belly, a spasm of distress contorting his fleshy features. “It’s dangerous for the digestion. I will lie down for a spell.”

  “And your appointment with the Russian ambassador, sir?”

  The Prince looked genuinely puzzled. “What appointment?”

  “The one scheduled for half an hour ago. He’s still waiting.”

  “Cancel it,” said the Prince, one hand coming up to shade his eyes as if the light had suddenly become too much. He tottered toward a nearby divan shaped like a crocodile padded with crimson satin. “Do close the drapes, someone. And bring my laudanum. Dr. Heberden says I must have a dose whenever I feel anxious, to avoid any danger of agitation of the blood.”

  His thoughts kept carefully to himself, Jarvis personally went to draw the drapes. Short of the old mad King effecting a miraculous recovery, sometime in the next week the Regency Bill would pass and this indolent, pleasure-loving, spendthrift prince would be sworn in as Regent. But as much as the Prince of Wales might find the image of himself as Regent flattering, his experience with the squabbles and intrigues of politics was as limited as his interest. Jarvis was confident that in the end—and given the right set of circumstances—the Prince would be only too happy to be guided by others’ wisdom.

  Solicitously turning down the lamps, Jarvis ushered the Prince’s companions from the room and quietly closed the door. The Whigs might think their long years of political exile were about to end, but men like Lord Frederick Fairchild were too idealistic to anticipate the lengths to which their opponents were willing to go to keep them out of power, and too mealymouthed to ever be ruthless themselves.

  In government, one needed to be ruthless. Ruthless, and very, very clever.

  Sir Henry Lovejoy was looking over case reports at his battered old desk when the Earl of Hendon, a polished walnut box tucked under one arm, walked into Lovejoy’s office at Queen Square.

  Behind him came the sweating, bald-headed clerk, his normally squinty little eyes big and round over the spectacles he wore pushed down to the end of his nose. “I tried to announce him, Sir Henry, truly I did—”

  Lovejoy waved the man away. “That’s all right, Collins.” Lovejoy had been expecting an angry confrontation with his fugitive’s powerful father. The magistrate had already decided how he would behave: deferential, polite, and respectful, but firm. Standing, he extended one hand toward a nearby chair with worn, brown leather upholstery. “Please have a seat, my lord. What may I do for you?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Setting the small wooden case on Lovejoy’s desk, he stood with his feet planted wide, his hands clasped behind his back. “I’ve come to turn myself in.”

  “Turn yourself in, my lord?” Lovejoy shook his head in confusion. “For what?”

  Hendon looked at him with withering contempt. “Don’t be a bloody idiot. For the murder of that actress, Rachel York, of course. I did it. I killed her.”

  Chapter 25

  “How old is this nevy of yers?” Tom asked.

  They were walking along Haymarket. The air was cold, the kind of damp, penetrating cold that sank bone deep. Wisps of dirty mist drifted across the cobblestones, wrapped around the half-dead plane trees in a small, nearby square. By nightfall, the yellow fog would be back, thick and pungent and bitter.

  “Twenty. Maybe twenty-one,” said Sebastian. “His mother is my elder sister.”

  Tom glanced up at him. “You don’t like ’im much, do you?”

  “He was the kind of little boy who got a kick out of tearing the heads off live turtles.” That, and worse. Sebastian shrugged. “I may be prejudiced. He could have grown out of it.”

  “They’d don’t, usually,” said Tom, his jaw set tight and hard, as if to ward off memories too savage to be recalled. And Sebastian wondered again at the life the boy must have led, before he’d tried to lift Sebastian’s purse in the common room of the Black Hart.

  A bath, a change of clothes, a few good nights’ sleep, and a consistently full belly had wrought a startling transformation in the boy. From what Sebastian had been able to gather, Tom had been alone on the streets for at least two years. Of his life before that, the boy seldom spoke.

  “Why?” Sebastian asked suddenly, his gaze on the boy’s sharp-featured, freckled face. “Why in God’s name have you decided to throw in your lot with a man in my situation? I can’t believe it’s for a shilling a day, when you could earn many times that by simply lodging information against me at Bow Street.”

  “I would never do that!”

  “Why not? Many would. Perhaps most.”

  The boy looked troubled. “There’s lots o’ bad things ’appen in this world. Lots o’ bad things what ’appen, and lots o’ folks what do bad things. But there’s good, too. Lots o’ good. Me mum, before they put her on that ship for Botany Bay, she told me never to forget that. She said that things like ’onor, and justice, and love are the most important things in the world and that it’s up to each and every one of us to always try to be the best person we can possibly be.” Tom looked up, his nearly lashless eyes wide and earnest. “I don’t think there’s many what really believes in that. But you do.”

  “I don’t believe in any of that,” Sebastian said, his voice harsh, his soul filled with terror by the admiration he saw shining in the young boy’s eyes.

  “Yes, you do. Only, you thinks you
shouldn’t. That’s all.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Sebastian, but the boy simply smiled and walked on.

  They turned onto Grange Street, each lost in his own thoughts. Sebastian kept turning over and over in his mind all that he had learned about the woman he stood accused of killing. It seemed to Sebastian that the essence of the woman who had been Rachel York continued to elude him. It was as if each of the men he’d spoken to so far—Gordon, Pierrepont, Donatelli—had shed light on a facet of her life only. Sebastian had caught glimpses of Rachel as a new young actress, full of passionate rhetoric about revolution and the rights of man; of Rachel as a mistress, seductive, compliant; of Rachel as an artist’s model, beautiful and yet, ultimately, two-dimensional, an image onto which the viewer could project his own fantasies and illusions.

  Only from Kat had Sebastian picked up a sense of anything beyond that famous face and sensuous body—the Rachel York who’d once been a young child, alone and afraid and abused by a society that had no care for its weaker or less fortunate members. And yet Kat’s rendering, too, had been blurred, incomplete, an image of Rachel as seen from a distance. He needed to see Rachel through the dispassionate eyes of someone who had known, intimately, all the various aspects of her life, the pattern of her days.

  What he needed, Sebastian decided, was to talk to that maid, Mary Grant.

  Stopping abruptly, he swung to face Tom. “I want you to find someone for me, a woman named Mary Grant. She used to be Rachel York’s maid. But she cleaned the place out right after her mistress died, so she’s probably living pretty high at the moment.”

  Tom nodded. “What’s she look like, this Mary Grant?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  The boy laughed, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. He wasn’t just good at this sort of thing, Sebastian was beginning to realize; Tom enjoyed it.

  “Right then,” he said, one hand coming up to anchor his hat to his head. “I’m off. But you watch yer back,” he called as he dashed away. “You hear?”