What Angels Fear

Chapter 44

That evening, Lady Amanda attended a soiree given at the home of the Duchess of Carlyle.

The signs of looming social disaster were subtle, but there—in the furtive looks cast in Amanda’s direction, the whispered conversations that broke off abruptly when she drew too near. Amanda felt a cold anger hardening her heart as she moved with easy determination amidst the steely-eyed matrons and turbaned dowagers. She was Lady Amanda, wife of the Prince’s boon companion Lord Wilcox and daughter of the Earl of Hendon, Chancellor of the Exchequer. They would offend her at their peril.

Midway through the evening, she was surprised to see her own husband approaching her through the throng. Having no taste for the whirl of social functions or visits to the theater and opera that occupied his wife’s time, Wilcox normally retreated after dinner either to an evening session of the House of Lords or to one of his clubs.

“Something wrong, dear?” she said in a smiling aside as she lifted a glass of champagne from a passing servant’s silver tray. “Has Sebastian’s latest exploit resulted in your being blackballed from White’s? Or has Boney landed at Dover?”

Wilcox’s habitual placid smile was firmly in place, but his eyes were grave. “Bayard tells me his uncle paid you a visit this afternoon.” Even as he spoke, he kept his gaze moving casually over the glittering crowd. “Is that wise, my dear?”

“Really, Martin. Do you seriously think I had extended Devlin an invitation? Suggested he might want to hide out in the carriage house, or perhaps pose as one of our footmen?”

“No. I suppose not.” For one telling moment, Wilcox’s smile slipped. “Where the devil is he hiding, anyway?”

“He didn’t happen to mention it. But unless I miss my guess, he’s taken refuge with that light skirt he made such a fool of himself over when he first came down from Oxford.”

Wilcox swung his head to stare at her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, but I am.” Amanda set aside her glass. “Ah, there’s Lady Bainbridge. Do excuse me, dear.” And she left him then, to make use of the information or not, as he chose.

Sebastian watched Leo Pierrepont rein in before the open door of his carriage house. Night came early to the streets of London in February; by four, the mews and the gardens leading up to the house were already dark. “Giles!” the Frenchman shouted, his voice echoing hollowly in the cold stillness. “Giles? Où est tu?” He waited expectantly. “Charles?”

Swearing to himself, he swung from the saddle to lead the tired chestnut into the stables. He lit the lamp suspended from the rafters, glanced around the softly lit area, then said, “Merde,” under his breath and reached to unbuckle his cinch.

From the shadows of an empty stall at the end of the row, Sebastian waited, listening to the muttered grunts of a man unused to the task of unsaddling and grooming his own horse. The smell of warming oil mingled with the scents of hay and oats and horseflesh. In a nearby stall, one of Pierrepont’s carriage horses moved restlessly.

Slipping the flintlock pistol from his pocket, Sebastian crept to where the Frenchman, still grumbling, crouched to run a currycomb over his chestnut’s wet belly. Sebastian held out the pistol until the muzzle was scant inches from Pierrepont’s ear. At the sound of the hammer being pulled back, Pierrepont froze.

“Move very carefully, Monsieur Pierrepont.”

Pierrepont turned his head, his gaze focusing on the pistol before lifting to Sebastian’s face. “Where are my groom and coachman?”

“Someplace where we don’t need to worry about them disturbing us.”

The Frenchman straightened slowly. “What do you want?”

“I thought I’d tell you a story.”

Pierrepont’s eyebrows lifted. “A story.”

“A story.” Sebastian settled back against the edge of a bale of hay, the pistol still held, loosely, in his hand. “It goes something like this: Once upon a time, in a place we’ll call Windsor Castle, there lived a mad old King.”

“How original.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Anyway, while our King slips deeper and deeper into his own mad world, his houses of Parliament in nearby Londontown are busy negotiating the details of a bill that will make the King’s eldest son Regent, meaning he will rule in his father’s place.”

“This is fascinating.” Pierrepont leaned against a nearby wooden post and crossed his arms at his chest. “I do hope there’s a point to it.”

“I’m getting there. The story has a villain, you see. A man named Napoleon.”

“Of course. The villain is always a Frenchman.”

Sebastian smiled. “Napoleon’s country has been fighting a war against our old mad King for close onto twenty years, so naturally Napoleon takes an interest in these negotiations. He realizes this Regency might be a good thing for France.”

“And how’s that?”

“Well, you see, the King has always aligned himself with a group of men in Parliament we’ll call the Tories. Like the old King, the Tories don’t like change. They think the way to keep their country strong is to keep the old institutions such as the monarchy and the church strong. And because they’re making a tidy profit out of the war, the last thing they want is any kind of peace treaty with our villain, Napoleon.”

“War can be quite lucrative.”

“For some. But our future Regent, the Prince, has surrounded himself with men who adhere to another party. Let’s call them the Whigs, shall we? Now these Whigs, they tend to look to the future, rather than the past. They believe that if their country is to prosper and remain strong, there must be changes. They see that while this long, costly war has made some men very, very rich, the common people of the country have suffered. Terribly. So they say, ‘Why are we fighting this war? Napoleon is over there in his country, we’re over here in ours. We’re the ones who declared war on him. Why don’t we simply end this madness and have peace’?”

“Why not, indeed,” said Pierrepont with a tight smile.

“Now our villain, Napoleon, he’s not particularly anxious to continue this war, either. He’s looking forward to negotiating a peace treaty with the Whigs when they come to power. But because he’s a clever man, he decides it would be a good idea to increase his bargaining position. It occurs to him that one way to do that would be to have some kind of leverage with the gentleman everyone assumes will become Prime Minister when our Prince forms his new government.” Sebastian paused. “Let’s call this Whiggish gentleman Lord F, shall we?”

The faintest hint of surprise flickered across the Frenchman’s face. “Go on.”

“Now Napoleon, he has a secret supporter in Londontown, an individual we’ll call the Lion.”

Pierrepont huffed a laugh. “Surely you can do better than that, monsieur?”

“Sorry. Anyway, Napoleon instructs the Lion to discover Lord F’s weakness. All men have weaknesses, and it doesn’t take the Lion long to discover that Lord F has a preference for handsome young men. So the Lion comes up with a plan. He lures Lord F into an affair with a handsome young clerk in a sensitive position—let’s say the Foreign Office, shall we? And he arranges it so that the compromising rendezvous take place at the rooms of one of the Lion’s assistants, a passionate young revolutionary we’ll call . . .” Sebastian hesitated. “Let’s call her Rachel, shall we?”

“It’s your story.”

“So it is. The way I see it, the handsome young clerk entices Lord F to write some very compromising love letters, which find their way into the Lion’s possession. The trap is now set. All our villains need do is wait for Lord F to become Prime Minister.”

“You are going someplace with this, I trust.”

“Almost there,” said Sebastian, shifting his weight. “You see, as clever as this plan is, something goes wrong. Something frightens Rachel, and she decides to flee Londontown. She gets the bright idea that if she steals Lord Frederick’s incriminating letters—along with a few other valuable documents which the Lion has collected—and sells them to the interested parties, she can make a tidy sum with which to start a new life. She waits until the Lion is out of town, steals the documents, and sets about selling them.”

Pierrepont kept his face blank. “Go on.”

“Unfortunately for Rachel, the Lion has a change of plans. He comes home early from his country house party. He finds the documents missing, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out who has them. He follows Rachel to a meeting she has set up at St. Matthew of the Fields, and he kills her there in a very, very nasty way—as a warning, perhaps, to his other assistants, lest they be inclined to get similar bright ideas in the future.”

Pierrepont let his arms dangle loosely at his sides. “It’s an entertaining story, monsieur le vicomte. You ought to consider writing for the stage. Or for children. But a story is all you have. You’ve no proof. And no idea at all of what you’re really caught up in. You’re a fool. You should have left London days ago, while you still could.”

Sebastian’s lips pulled back into a hard smile. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand. My mother’s affidavit—which I gather Rachel also stole from you; why did you have it? To put pressure on my father?”

Pierrepont assumed an exaggerated expression of consternation. “Alors. Is there something in your father’s past that would make him vulnerable to pressure?”

“Now who’s being the fool?” Sebastian raised the pistol and leveled it at the other man’s chest. “What was it for?”

Pierrepont shrugged. “Evidence of dirty little secrets in the lives of important men are always useful.” He glanced toward the darkness beyond the open carriage house doors. But Sebastian had heard it long before—the sound of stealthy footfalls, coming through the garden. Fast.

He slid off the bale, moving behind the Frenchman to catch him around the neck with one forearm and press the pistol’s muzzle against his temple.

“Tell them to pull back,” Sebastian whispered. Then added, “Now!” when Pierrepont hesitated.

“Restez-en là,” called Pierrepont. The footsteps stopped.

“It might be a good idea to let them know we’re coming out. And don’t even think of trying anything,” Sebastian added, as Pierrepont called out again.

“You’re wrong, you know,” said Pierrepont over his shoulder as Sebastian dragged him toward the entrance.

“About what?”

To his surprise, Pierrepont laughed. “About the rest of it, I won’t say. But you’re wrong in this,” he said, as Sebastian let him go and stepped back into the night. “I didn’t kill Rachel York.”