Page 46 of What Angels Fear

“No. I told you, she had something to sell. Something I wanted to buy. We agreed upon a price, and she said she’d meet me at St. Matthew’s, in the Lady Chapel, at ten o’clock.”

“Why St. Matthew’s?”

“She said it was quiet. There’d be less chance of our being disturbed or discovered.” A round table with a gleaming, well-polished inlaid top stood at the foot of the massive bed, and Hendon went to seat himself in one of the nearby lyre-backed chairs. “That little cross-biting cully of a magistrate, that Lovejoy, he claims the church was locked at eight that night, but it wasn’t. The north transept door was open when I arrived there, just as she’d said it would be.”

“Did you see anyone else about?”

“No.” Hendon’s laced fingers tightened until the knuckles showed white. “No one. I thought we were alone. She’d lit all the candles on the chapel’s altar. I could see the flames flaring up together, like a warm golden glow as I walked toward the back of the church. Then I saw her.”

He rubbed one splayed hand across his eyes as if to wipe away the memory of what he’d seen. “It was ghastly, the way she’d been left lying there, on the altar steps with her legs spread....” His voice trailed away to a whisper. The effort it took him to push the words out was an almost palpable thing. “You could actually see the bloody imprints of his hands on the bare flesh of her thighs. So much blood, everywhere.”

Sebastian gazed across the room at his father’s ashen, troubled face. No one would ever describe the Earl of Hendon as a sensitive man. He was hard, irascible, phlegmatic; he could be brutal. But he’d never been to war, never seen the blackened, bloated bodies of children lying in the burned ruins of their home. Never seen what artillery—or even a couple of drunken soldiers—could do to the once soft, smooth flesh of a woman.

Sebastian kept his voice steady, dispassionate. “And this—this whatever it was you went there to buy. Did she have it on her?”

Hendon sucked in a deep breath that lifted his chest, then blew it out again through pursed lips and shook his head. “I looked for it.” He pressed a clenched fist against his lips, and Sebastian thought he knew what it must have cost his father to approach that bloodied, ravished body and systematically, ruthlessly search it. “That must have been when I dropped the pistol. I had hoped I’d left it in the pocket of my greatcoat. I threw it away, you know—the greatcoat, I mean. Stuffed it down one of the drains in Great Peter Street. There was so much blood on it I could never have explained it to Copeland. I washed off my boots as best I could, but I still had to invent some faradiddle about stopping to help the victims of a carriage accident.” His gaze seemed to come unfocused, as if he were seeing into the past. “So much blood.”

Sebastian walked over to stand on the far side of the table, his gaze studying his father’s face. “You must tell me what you went there to buy.”

Hendon leaned back in his chair, his jaw set hard. “I can’t.”

Sebastian slammed the open palm of one hand down on the table between them. “Whatever you went to St. Matthew’s to buy is very likely the reason Rachel York died. How the bloody hell am I to discover who killed her when you won’t even tell me what this is all about?”

“You’re wrong. My business with that woman has nothing to do with her murder.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can.”

Sebastian leaned his weight into the tabletop, then shoved himself away. “Bloody hell. Don’t you understand what’s at stake here?”

Hendon pushed to his feet, his face darkening. “You seem to forget who we are. Who I am. Do you seriously think I will allow a son of mine to be brought up on murder charges like some common criminal?”

Sebastian kept his voice steady. “You can’t fix this, Father. A woman is dead.”

“An inconsequential whore?” Hendon swiped at the air between them. “Her death I could have dealt with. What I want to know is what the hell you thought you were about, stabbing a constable and leading the authorities on a chase across London?”

“The man slipped and fell against another constable. It wasn’t even my knife.”

“That’s not what they’re saying.”

“They’re lying.”

Sebastian met his father’s gaze and held it. Hendon let out a long sigh. “The constable’s not dead yet, but from what I hear it’s only a matter of time. You’ll need to leave the country until I can sort all this out.”

Sebastian smiled. “And Jarvis? You can’t tell me the King’s very busy cousin isn’t behind the authorities’ haste to see me arrested.”

Sebastian knew from the way his father’s jaw worked that he was right. United the two men might be in their hatred of the French, republicanism, and Catholics, but Hendon was far too much a stickler for the preeminence of rules and propriety to ever find favor with a Machiavellian schemer like Jarvis. “I can take care of Jarvis.”

Sebastian pressed his lips together and said nothing.

“I’ve made arrangements,” Hendon said, pushing up from the table. “With the captain of a ship—”

“I’m not running.”

Hendon went to jerk open a small drawer in the bureau on the far side of the bed. “There is no shame in temporarily removing yourself from harm’s way.”

The big old house seemed to stretch out around them, painfully familiar and suddenly, unexpectedly dear in the hushed stillness of the night. “I’m not running,” Sebastian said again. “I’m going to stay here and find out who killed that woman. And why.”

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