Page 24 of What Angels Fear

Sir Christopher fell into a troubled silence, as if considering his next words. Then he said, “About a year after we came down from Oxford, Sebastian fell in love with a woman the Earl considered unsuitable. He threatened to cut Sebastian off without a penny, if he married the chit.”

“Lord Hendon objected to the lady’s birth?”

Farrell rubbed his nose. “She was a Cyprian.”

“Ah,” said Lovejoy. It was difficult to imagine the proud, arrogant young man he’d first met in the library at Brook Street doing anything so improper or foolish as to fall in love with an Incognita. But then, it must have all happened long ago. One wondered how much, if any, of that impetuous, romantic youth could still be found in the cool, hard man Lord Devlin was today.

“Sebastian swore he’d marry the girl anyway. Only, the lady in question had no interest in marrying a pauper. Once she realized Hendon meant what he’d said, she broke it off.”

“So Devlin went to war to get himself killed.”

“I’m not sure it was as dramatic as all that. Let’s just say he was anxious to get away from England for a spell.”

“Understandable,” said Lovejoy smoothly. “Yet I gather he volunteered for some rather dangerous assignments.”

“He was in intelligence, if that’s what you mean. He was good at it.”

Lovejoy made a noncommittal humming sound. “So I’ve heard. Yet I understand he left the service last year under something of a cloud. What was that about, I wonder?”

Sir Christopher returned Lovejoy’s questioning look with a mulish stare. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said, and on this, it seemed, Sir Christopher would not be drawn.

Lovejoy shifted his approach. “Did you see Lord Devlin this last Tuesday evening?”

“Of course.” Sir Christopher’s eyes remained narrowed. The man might be easygoing, Lovejoy thought, but he was no fool. He knew to what end Lovejoy was circling back around. “We were at Watier’s all night—until dawn the next morning, when we drove out to Chalk Heath.”

Lovejoy gave a tight smile. “Yes. But you see, it’s his lordship’s movements earlier in the evening we’re interested in. According to our information, Lord Devlin didn’t arrive at Watier’s until shortly after nine o’clock, although he left his house some four hours earlier, at approximately five. His lordship claims he spent the intervening four hours simply walking the streets of London. But unfortunately, he says he was alone.”

Sir Christopher set his jaw and glared back at Lovejoy. “If Devlin says he was out walking, then that’s where he was.”

The man had too open a face and too natural a disposition toward honesty, Lovejoy thought, to ever be anything other than a terrible liar. The magistrate spent the next ten minutes pressing Sir Christopher for the truth. But in the end, Lovejoy gave it up.

He’d have better luck, he decided, with the unhappily married Melanie Talbot.

Chapter 18

Rachel York had kept rooms on the first floor of a neat little lodging house in Dorset Court, not far from Kat’s own townhouse. But it was midafternoon by the time Kat was able to get rid of Lord Stoneleigh and make her way there. Already, the light was fading from the day. As she climbed the long flight of stairs from the ground floor, a hard sleet began to fall, striking the window at the end of the wide hall like a flurry of small pebbles.

“You won’t find anyone there, I can tell you that,” said a querulous female voice floating down from the second floor just as Kat raised her hand to knock.

Crossing the hall, Kat stuck her head over the banister and looked up. “Excuse me?”

She found a small face, deeply wrinkled by time and surrounded by a halo of white hair, peering down at her from the gloom of the second floor. “She’s dead. Murdered in a church, God rest her soul.”

“Actually, it was her maid, Mary Grant, I was interested in seeing. I thought I might like to hire her, if she’s in need of a new position.”

“Huh. She’s long gone, that one. Cleaned the place out first thing this morning, she did.”

Kat was starting to get a crick in her neck. She shifted around to a more comfortable position. She could see the woman better now, so small she had to stand on tiptoe to rest her arms on the top of the upper banister. Her purple satin gown was of a style one might have seen in the previous century, although it looked new. Just like the ropes of pearls and emeralds and rubies draping her neck and thin wrists looked real—at least in this light, and from this angle. “Cleaned it out?”

“Took everything,” said the elderly woman, her inflection betraying lingering traces of a Highland accent. “Carried it right off. Easy enough to do, I suppose, seeing as how her mistress already had most everything packed.”

“Rachel was moving to new lodgings?” It was news to Kat.

“Huh. Leaving London, more like, if you ask me.”

“Leaving?”

“That’s what I thought, although she wasn’t exactly what I’d call forthcoming, that girl. All atwitter this week, she was—up in the trees one minute, scared of her shadow the next. She’d found some way to get her hands on some money, was what I thought.” The old woman expelled her breath in a little hmm. “Lot of good it did her, in the end.”

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