Page 56 of What Angels Fear

“She could have had another purpose, you know. If it were to become known that you were buying incriminating documents from a French spy, you’d be ruined.”

Hendon stuck the stem of his pipe in his mouth and bit down on it hard. “It won’t become known.” Lighting a taper, he held it to the pipe’s bowl, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked hard, then blew out a stream of thin blue smoke. “You asked me to look into Pierrepont’s activities last Tuesday night.”

“And?”

“He did have a dinner party at his house that night. It was arranged hastily, for he’d only just returned from the country that morning.”

“So he couldn’t have killed Rachel.”

“Not necessarily. According to one of the guests, Pierrepont excused himself and was absent for a considerable period of time somewhere around nine or ten.”

“Long enough to get to Westminster and back?”

“Perhaps.”

Sebastian swore softly and crudely. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this affidavit from the very beginning?”

“I thought it irrelevant. I still think it irrelevant. What does it matter why Rachel York was in that church? Some brute simply happened upon her there, alone, and took advantage of it. He raped her and then he killed her. It happens all too frequently these days.”

“Except that she was raped after she was killed.”

Hendon’s mouth went slack around the stem of his pipe. “Good heavens. What manner of man would do such a thing?”

“Someone who enjoys killing,” said Sebastian.

He made his way back to the Rose and Crown through crooked byways filled with sparkling white snow that scrunched audibly beneath each step. A few stray flakes still floated down, lazy and peaceful in the night. It was as if, between them, the darkness and the snow hid all that was ugly, all that was horrible and dangerous about the city, so that he was aware suddenly of the beauty of the row of ancient stone arches fronting a nearby shop, and the intricate fretwork of the old timber-framed Tudor house beside it. And he wondered, which was more real, the ugliness or the beauty?

He let out a soft sigh, his breath white in the cold air as he turned over and over in his mind what he’d learned that night, about his father, and about Leo Pierrepont and Rachel York. He wondered why a woman like Rachel York would have allowed herself to be drawn into the dangerous shadow world occupied by men such as Leo Pierrepont. What had driven her? Political convictions? Greed? Or had she somehow been coerced into acting against her will?

Whatever her original motive, something had obviously gone badly wrong in Rachel York’s life. According to her neighbor, Rachel had been packing to leave London. The money she had hinted at, obviously, was to have come from Hendon. But it wouldn’t have been enough to lure away a woman on the threshold of a promising stage career. There was obviously something in Rachel’s life Sebastian was missing. Something important.

He had nearly reached the Rose and Crown. As he had done so many times in the past, during the war, Sebastian paused just down the street, every sense alert to the subtle differences that could tell him his hiding place had been discovered. But all lay peaceful and quiet in the gently falling snow.

He entered the inn’s public room, warm with the piney scent of fire and the murmur of sleepy voices, and made his way to the back of the inn and up the stairs to his chamber. What he needed, he decided, was to come to a better understanding of Rachel York’s life. In the morning, he would visit the foundling hospital where she’d volunteered once a week. And if Tom could find that maid, Mary Grant...

Sebastian paused in the dim, drafty hall outside his door. He couldn’t say what had warned him. Some faint, lingering scent, perhaps. Or perhaps it was simply a vestige of the primitive instinct that alerts an animal returning to its lair that all is not entirely as he left it. Whatever it was, something told Sebastian even before he fit the key into the lock of his door that she was there.

He hesitated for the briefest instant. Then he pushed open the door and walked into his past.

Chapter 35

She sat in the battered old chair beside the hearth, her head tipped back so that the firelight played over the elegant curve of her long, graceful neck and brought out the hint of auburn in her dark hair. She had worn a cherry red velvet opera cloak that now lay discarded on a nearby table, but she had come to him still dressed in the costume of her character, Rosalind.

“You picked the lock, I suppose.” Sebastian closed the door behind him and leaned back against it.

“It’s a very old lock,” said Kat Boleyn, the barest hint of a smile touching the edges of her lips.

He pushed away from the door and walked toward her. “Why did you come?”

“You left your clothes at the theater. I brought them.”

He didn’t bother to ask how she had found him here, at the Rose and Crown. She would have her ways, as he had his. It was a danger he had both acknowledged and accepted when he first decided to approach her.

“You’re hurt,” she said when he came to stand before her, close enough that his legs almost touched hers, but not quite.

“I went through a window.”

“Leo found you, did he?”

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