Page 71 of What Angels Fear

A faint flush touched the man’s high, aristocratic cheekbones. “Yes. Leo Pierrepont.”

“Of course,” said Sebastian. “I should have known.”

At the far end of the Row, a young blade on a showy, white-marked chestnut sent his mount cavorting. Sebastian lifted his head and watched the chestnut’s four white stockings flash in the thin winter sunlight. And he knew it again, that tantalizing sensation of a thought hovering somewhere on the edges of consciousness, just beyond his grasp.

“Exactly who had she found to steal the letters from Pierrepont? Did she say?”

The other man shook his head. “All I knew was that it had to be done while Pierrepont was out of town for the week, at Lord Edgeworth’s country house down in Hampshire. She was hoping to be gone by Thursday, before Pierrepont had a chance to come back and find the letters missing. I could be wrong, but had the impression...”

“Yes?”

“He’s the one she was afraid of. The one she was running away from.”

Sebastian glanced down at the gleaming blade in his hands. The sword stick was a common enough weapon amongst London’s noblemen. Sebastian’s own father carried one, while Leo Pierrepont was known to have an extensive collection.

Sebastian slid the blade back into its sheath with a quiet hiss. Lord Edgeworth had hosted a party at his Hampshire estate the week before, Sebastian knew; as a part of that set, Pierrepont had undoubtedly been invited. But if he’d been planning to spend the week, something must have changed his mind, for he’d come back in time to host a dinner party on Tuesday night.

The night Rachel York was killed.

Chapter 43

Sir Henry Lovejoy sat in the empty pit of the Stein and watched Hugh Gordon, decked out as Hamlet, rehearse his climatic sword fight with a significantly overweight Laertes.

The discovery of Mary Grant’s ravaged body should have removed whatever lingering doubts the magistrate might have had about Lord Devlin’s guilt. Lovejoy himself had interviewed their witness, Mrs. Charles Lavery, and he’d found her a solid, no-nonsense woman. If Mrs. Lavery said she’d seen Lord Devlin leaving the lodging house, then Lovejoy was inclined to believe the man had been there. And yet...

And yet, the doctor who examined Mary Grant’s body had given it as his opinion that she’d been killed earlier in the day, perhaps before noon. And while most people didn’t put much stock in such things, Lovejoy had too much respect for the scientific method to ignore the doctor’s report. Except that if Devlin hadn’t killed Mary Grant, then what was he doing there at her rooms? Why was he still in London at all?

Lovejoy shifted uncomfortably in his seat, remembering his interview with Charles, Lord Jarvis. If Henry’s wife, Julia, were still alive, she’d tell him he was being a stubborn fool, trying to understand Sebastian St. Cyr rather than simply concentrating on capturing him. And Henry, he’d tell her that he was doing everything in his power to bring the Viscount in. He just needed to tie up one or two loose ends, for his own satisfaction.

And then Lovejoy realized what he was doing, and heaved a soft sigh. His Julia had been gone from him for almost ten years now, but he still had these little conversations with her, imagining what she would say, what he would say in response.

A thump followed by a bustle of movement and laughing chatter drew his attention back to the stage. The scene had ended. Still wiping his hot face with a towel, Hugh Gordon ran lightly down the steps, to the pit.

“You wanted to speak with me?” he said. He was smiling, but Lovejoy noticed the wariness in his dark eyes, that cautious kind of watchfulness one saw often in the face of a man confronting a magistrate.

“That’s right.” Stiff with the cold, Lovejoy pushed to his feet. “I understand you and Rachel York were once...” He hesitated, searching for an expression that wouldn’t offend his moral sensibilities. But any irregular sexual liaison of that sort outraged Lovejoy’s strict Evangelical principles. He finally settled on the word, “involved.”

Gordon’s nostrils flared with a quickly indrawn breath. “Everyone knows who killed her. It’s that viscount, Lord Devlin. He did Rachel, and yesterday he got that other one over in Bloomsbury. So why are you here talking to me?”

The aggressiveness of the man’s tone took Lovejoy by surprise. “We’ve been doing some checking into your background, Mr. Gordon, and we’ve discovered a few things which disturbed us.”

“Such as?”

“Does the name Adelaide Hunt mean anything to you?”

The man hesitated, his jaw clenched as he considered his response. “You obviously know it does. I haven’t seen the woman in years. What’s she to do with anything?”

“I understand you cut her up once, quite badly. In fact, you almost killed her.”

“She tell you that?”

Lovejoy said nothing, just looked at the man expectantly.

A muscle bunched along the actor’s jaw. “I was defending myself. The bloody woman came at me with a bed warmer. Did she tell you that?”

“As I understand it, you flew into a rage when she attempted to break off the relationship. She wielded the bed warmer to defend herself.”

“No charges were ever pressed, now were they?”

---