Page 18 of What Angels Fear

“There is someone....” Kat paused, then said the name in a rush. “Hugh Gordon.”

Devlin looked around in surprise. “Hugh Gordon?” A tall, darkly handsome man with a deep voice and the ability to move an audience to tears with a simple gesture, Hugh Gordon was London’s most popular male actor since John Kemble.

“Rachel caught his eye her first day at the theater. She was flattered, of course. He helped her career enormously when she was starting out. She may even have fallen in love with him, for all I know. There was talk at one point of marriage. But then he became more possessive. Controlling. More... violent.”

“You mean, he hit her.”

Kat nodded. “She left him after about a year.”

Devlin reached for the decanter. “I don’t imagine a man with Hugh Gordon’s amour propre would take kindly to that.”

“He threatened to kill her.”

“You think he could do a thing like this?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

He poured another drink, then simply stood there, regarding it thoughtfully. “What about the men in her life since Gordon?”

Beside her, the coals glowed red hot with warmth. Kat kept her gaze trained on the fire. “She’s had flirtations with a number of men, from Lord Grimes to Admiral Worth. But I don’t think any man has had her in his keeping.”

She was aware of his assessing gaze upon her. “Do you know what part of the country she was originally from?”

“Some village in Worcestershire. I don’t remember the name. Her father was the vicar there, but he died when she was about thirteen, and she was thrown onto the parish. They apprenticed her as a housemaid to a local merchant.”

Kat paused. It was one of the things the two women had in common, the similarity of their pasts. The shared memory of wheals left by a whip on bare, tender young flesh. Of rough hands bruising struggling, frantic wrists. The sharp thrust of pain, and the dull, endless ache of a humiliation and degradation that went on and on.

Kat set aside the fireplace tools with a clatter and stood up. “When she was fifteen, she ran away.”

He was watching Kat closely. He knew some of what had happened to her, after her mother and father had been killed. More than she’d ever told anyone else. “That’s when she came to London?”

“Of course,” said Kat, keeping her voice steady. “Like all young girls hoping to start a new life.”

It was an old story, of young women—sometimes girls as young as eight or nine—tricked into the flesh trade by the legion of procuresses who preyed on the innocent and vulnerable. Rachel had fallen into one’s clutches before she’d even left the stagecoach.

“You met her when she started at the theater?”

Kat shook her head, a soft, sad smile tugging at her lips. “We met on London Bridge. It was December, if I remember correctly. A few days before Christmas. I talked her out of jumping.”

“And found her work as an actress?”

Kat shrugged. “She was bright, with a good accent and exactly the kind of face and body men like. She was a natural.”

“So what was she doing at St. Matthew of the Fields on Tuesday night? Do you know?”

Kat shook her head. “I wouldn’t have said she was religious.”

He came toward her, those strange amber eyes fixed, uncomfortably, on her face. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Kat gave a soft, practiced laugh. “I can’t think what you mean.”

He reached out, his fingertips hovering just above her cheek, as if he’d meant to touch her, then thought better of it. “You’re afraid of something. What?”

She forced herself to stand very, very still. “Of course I’m afraid. Rachel and I share many of the same friends and associates.”

She watched his lips move as he spoke. “The Kat Boleyn I knew didn’t scare so easily.”

“Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did.”

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