Page 68 of What Angels Fear

Sebastian kept his gaze on his sister’s face. “You knew, and yet you kept quiet about it. And now he’s killed again.”

“I tell you, I didn’t kill her,” said Bayard. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Amanda’s gaze shifted to her son, her face set so cold and hard that for a moment, Sebastian knew a stirring of sympathy for his nephew. She had always looked at him this way, even when he was a little boy, pathetic in his hunger for her love. “Leave us.”

“But I swear to you, I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Leave us now, Bayard.”

Bayard’s throat bulged with the effort of swallowing. He hesitated a moment, his mouth working as if he were trying to say something. Then he ducked his head and pushed away from the wall, brushing past his mother in an awkward, ungainly rush from the room.

Amanda watched him stumble toward the stairs, then brought her gaze back to Sebastian. “The incident in Bond Street means nothing,” she said. “A boy’s wild talk, that’s all.”

“Is that all it was? You know what he’s like, Amanda. You’ve always known, even if you didn’t want to admit it.”

“You make too much of a schoolboy’s wild ways.”

“A schoolboy?”

Amanda walked over to right the chair that had been knocked sideways in the struggle. “Know this, Sebastian: I will not allow my son to be destroyed as a result of the inconsequential death of some worthless little bit of muslin who deserved everything she was given.”

“My God, Amanda. We’re talking about a human life.”

Amanda’s lip curled in disdain. “We don’t all have such a mewling weakness for the dregs of society. One would think you’d have learned your lesson after your experience with that light-skirt who used you for such a fool six years ago. What was her name? Anne Boleyn? No wait, that was another man’s whore. Yours was named—”

“Don’t,” said Sebastian, taking a hasty step toward his sister before drawing himself up short. “Don’t start on Kat.”

“Good heavens.” Amanda’s eyes widened with wonder as she searched her brother’s face. “You’re still in love with her.”

Sebastian simply stared back at her, a faint, betraying line of color heating his cheeks.

“You’re seeing her again, are you?” She gave a shrill laugh. “You never learn. What does she think is in it for her this time, I wonder? A chance to play the grieving widow at your hanging?”

“I won’t die for your son, Amanda.”

The amusement faded from Amanda’s face. “I tell you, Bayard had nothing to do with that light-skirt’s death. He was with his friends until nine o’clock, when Wilcox picked him up and brought him home. He never went out again.”

“That lie might satisfy the authorities this time. But he’ll do it again, Amanda. And then what? For how long do you think you can protect him?”

An angry flush darkened her cheeks and deepened the sparkle of animosity in the brilliant blue eyes that were so much like their father’s. “Get out of my house.”

The sound of loud knocking, followed by excited voices and a rough shout, echoed up the stairs. Sebastian turned toward the commotion, his lips pulling back into a hard smile. “You might not have called the constables, my dear sister, but it appears that Bayard did.”

Chapter 42

There were only two constables, both on the wrong side of forty, one tall and bone lean, the other slow and fleshy.

The first was halfway up the stairs when Sebastian’s fist caught him under the jaw with an audible smack that closed the man’s mouth and sent him arm-wheeling backward.

“I say,” blustered the second, just before Sebastian buried his fist in the man’s soft gut. His eyes widened, and he doubled over with a wheezing whooph.

Bayard was standing at the base of the stairs, his derisory, self-satisfied smile fading fast. “You little bastard,” said Sebastian, and punched him, too, just for the bloody hell of it, on his way out the door.

After that, Sebastian spent the next several hours attempting to disprove Bayard’s alibi, only to discover that Bayard and his two companions had indeed spent the afternoon and evening of the previous Tuesday getting conspicuously and roaringly drunk at the Leather Bottle in Islington. Their subsequent arrival at Cribb’s Parlor, followed by their hasty departure, had been equally spectacular and memorable. In fact, the doorman distinctly remembered helping to load the insensible young gentleman into his father’s carriage. He even remembered the time, for the city’s church bells had begun to toll nine o’clock just as the carriage pulled away.

Tom found Sebastian in a coffeehouse near the Rose and Crown, a tankard of ale cradled in his left hand, a bloodstained handkerchief wrapped around the knuckles of his right.

“What’d you do to yer hand?”

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