Page 19 of What Angels Fear

“Obviously not,” he said dryly, and turned away. “How well did you know Rachel?”

“I was probably closer to her than anyone, but even I didn’t know her all that well.” Kat paused, struggling to put some of what he needed to know into words. “Rachel might have been only eighteen, but life had scarred her. Toughened her. There was a calculating side to her. She could be cold—ruthless even, if she had to be.”

“You two had much in common, did you not?”

The stab of hurt his words brought was so swift and unexpected, it nearly stole Kat’s breath. She hadn’t thought he still possessed the power to touch her heart—hadn’t thought that anyone did. She glanced toward the hall. The house was silent, the hush broken only by the clatter of a horse’s hooves on the street outside and the mingling cries of the street vendors: Chairs to mend, and, Buy my trap. Buy a rattrap. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

He smiled then, a faint narrowing gleam of the eyes that she remembered only too well. “What’s the matter? Afraid Lord Stoneleigh will awaken and find you gone? I shouldn’t think he’ll stir for another hour or more.”

“How did you know—”

“That he’s here? I saw his walking stick and top hat in the entry.”

The walking stick and top hat might have told Devlin she had company, but it wouldn’t have given him the name of the man in her bed. That information, she knew, he must have acquired beforehand. It shouldn’t have mattered. She told herself she didn’t care. And yet, disconcertingly, she did.

“So you came via the entry, did you?” she said, keeping her voice light.

He had a habit, she was noticing, of answering her questions with one of his own. “Where did Rachel keep her rooms?”

“Dorset Court. But you can’t go there,” she added quickly, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why not? If this maid is saying Rachel went to St. Matthew’s to meet me, I need to know why.”

“The authorities are watching the house.”

He tilted his head, his puzzled gaze searching her face. “How do you know that?”

She knew that because Leo had come to the theater last night, after the performance, and told her. Under the circumstances it wouldn’t be prudent, he’d said, for him to be seen there. And so he had come to Kat with a request, framed as a suggestion: that Kat might have her own reasons for making certain that Rachel had left behind nothing incriminating.

“It’s known.” She paused, then said with studied casualness, “I could go there myself. Talk to the maid. Perhaps even look around and see what I can find. Rachel kept an appointment book. That might tell us something.”

He came to stand before her. “You?”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze. It had occurred to Kat that in Devlin she just might have found a potentially valuable ally, someone who had even more interest than she in tracking down the man who had met Rachel in that church. The trick would be in seeing that he learned what was needed to catch Rachel’s killer, but nothing more. “You know I can do it,” she said.

He knew. He knew about the years she had spent as a young girl in one of London’s most notorious rookeries, training as a pickpocket and a thief. And a whore.

She thought he might refuse. Instead he said, “All right. Although I can’t help but wonder why.”

“For auld lang syne?” she suggested.

“Maybe. And maybe because you’re scared. Even if you won’t say why.”

She thought for a moment that this time he would touch her. Then a faint thump from overhead drew her gaze toward the hall. “You must go,” she said quickly. “Come by tomorrow morning, early. I’ll tell you then what I’ve learned.”

“Uh-uh.” A hint of amusement deepened the lines beside his mouth. “I’ll find you.”

She let a slow smile spread across her face. “Why? Don’t you trust me?”

“Would you?”

Kat’s smile faded. Once, she had told him she loved him more than life itself and would never, ever let him go.

And then she’d told him it was all a lie, and hurt him so badly it had torn a hole in her own heart.

“No,” she said, and turned toward the stairs, leaving him standing alone in the cold morning light.

Chapter 14

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