Page 70 of What Angels Fear

“Pleasuring a young clerk from the Foreign Office named Wesley Davis.”

Fairchild sat silent. He managed to keep his features composed, but the fear was there, like a shadow darkening his soft gray eyes.

“It’s the reason you never remarried, isn’t it?” said Sebastian. “Because while you might enjoy chatting with the ladies about gardens and furniture design and the latest sonata, you’ve never had the least interest in taking any of them to bed.”

For a moment, Sebastian thought the man meant to continue denying it. Then his shoulders sagged, the skin around his eyes tightening as if in a wince, and he said softly, “Who else knows?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.” Sebastian considered the sword. It was double edged and very, very sharp. “Rachel was blackmailing you, was she? Her silence, in exchange for whatever little secrets the French might be interested in getting their hands on.”

Fairchild’s head jerked back. “What? Good God. I would never do such a thing.” He sucked in a deep, angry breath that flared his nostrils. “What do you think? That because I favor peace with the French that makes me a traitor? I’m against this war because it is destroying our country, not because I sympathize with Napoleon.” He flung out one arm in an expansive sweep that encompassed the East End of London, his voice taking on the stentorian tones of a speaker in Parliament. “Look around you. Children are dying of starvation in our streets. Men by the tens of thousands have been thrown off the land their families worked for generations, while women who once made a decent living are now reduced to selling themselves in alleyways and under bridges. The price of a pound of bread has doubled in the last twenty years, while a typical working man’s wages have fallen to almost half what they once were. And for what? So that a handful of industrialists and merchants can grow rich by lending their money to the government and equipping the armies that will be used to put the old crowned tyrants of Europe back on their thrones?”

It could have been an act, a performance intended to deceive, but Sebastian didn’t think so. The man’s entire being was practically throbbing with indignation and the fierce determination of the hopeless idealist. “Are you telling me Rachel York never asked you to pass her sensitive information?”

Fairchild stared back at him, eyes widening with a horrified kind of revelation. “Good God. What is it you think? That I killed her? That she was threatening to blackmail me, so I shut her up?”

“I might,” said Sebastian, still playing with the sword, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Whoever killed her, raped her.”

“Heavens.” Fairchild clasped his hands together between his knees, and stared down at them for a moment. “I didn’t know. Poor Rachel.”

He said it as if she had been his friend. And it came to Sebastian that, in some strange way, they probably were friends, this gentle, troubled nobleman and the woman who had gone every Monday afternoon to sing to the babies in St. Jude’s Foundling Home.

After a moment, Fairchild looked up and said, “Are you quite certain she was working for the French?”

“No. But everything I’ve found seems to point in that direction.”

Fairchild pursed his lips and pushed out a long, troubled breath. “A few weeks ago, Wesley’s rooms were broken into. He had these letters I’d written him—probably something like half a dozen of them. ” A faint hint of color tinged his cheeks. “It was a foolish thing to have done, I know that now.”

“The letters were taken?” said Sebastian, wondering if this Wesley Davis had also played a part in setting up Lord Frederick for blackmail.

Fairchild nodded. “I was sick with worry. Rachel and I talked about it. She promised she’d deny everything if someone tried to use the letters against me, although we both knew it would do precious little good if it did come to that. Then last Friday, she came to me. She said she’d discovered who had the letters and she knew someone who could get them back for me. Steal them, actually.”

“For how much?”

“Three thousand pounds.”

It was less than what she’d demanded from Hendon. And it came to Sebastian that there might very well have been others she’d approached; other rich, powerful men, one of whom might have decided to kill rather than pay for the secrets she had to offer.

He studied the man who sat slumped on the bench, lost in his own thoughts. “Do you think she’s the one who took the letters from Davis’s rooms in the first place?”

“Rachel?” Lord Frederick considered this a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Although the last few weeks, she seemed afraid of something. I don’t know what. She talked about going away, starting over someplace else.”

It fit with what the others had told him, Hugh Gordon and the Reverend Finley at St. Jude’s. “When were you supposed to meet her? Tuesday?”

Fairchild’s chest lifted with a weighty sigh. “I only wish I had. It’s what she wanted, but it wasn’t easy for me to raise that kind of money. I asked her to give me until Wednesday.” He scrubbed one hand across his face, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I was still getting the money together when I heard she’d been killed.”

“So who has the letters now?”

His hand fell back to his side. He looked haggard. Frightened. “I wish I knew. As soon as I heard what had happened to Rachel, I went past the lodging house where she kept her rooms. I had some notion of going up and looking for them, but the constables were there. I didn’t dare stop.”

Sebastian nodded. So Fairchild had gone to Dorset Court that day. But if he hadn’t gone up to search Rachel’s rooms, then who had?

Fairchild jerked up from the bench and took an agitated step away before whirling back around. “If those letters are made public, I’ll be ruined. Absolutely ruined.”

Sebastian studied him dispassionately. “Did Rachel tell you who had the letters?”

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