What Angels Fear

Chapter 57

Amanda was eleven the year her brother Richard told her the truth about their mother.

He’d been home from Eton that summer, ten years old and very full of himself. Amanda might have been a year his senior, but she was only a girl, after all, her world a tightly drawn circle of schoolroom and lessons and walks in the park with Nurse. She listened in shocked silence to Richard’s excitedly whispered tales of the revolting thing men did to women, about how they came together in a shameful, naked coupling of bodies. And then, while she was still retching in horror at the thought she might someday be forced to endure just such a vile invasion of her own body, Robert told her of the rumors he’d heard about their mother. About how the Countess of Hendon did that with other men besides her husband, Amanda’s father.

Amanda hadn’t believed Richard, of course. Oh, she’d seen enough activity amongst the estate’s farm animals to realize that that part of his information, at least, was probably correct. But she refused to believe what he said about their mother, about how the beautiful, laughing Countess did that with everyone from royal dukes to common footmen. Amanda hadn’t believed a word of it. Not a word.

But suggestions can have an insidious way of worming into a body’s soul and eating away at it. As summer stretched into autumn, Amanda found herself watching their mother. Watching the look that crept into the Countess’s sparkling blue eyes whenever a handsome man walked into the room. The way she tilted her pretty blond head and laughed when a man spoke to her. The way her lips could part and her breath catch when he took her hand.

And then one rare sunny day in September, when the Countess and her children were rusticating down in Cornwall and the Earl danced attendance, as usual, upon the King, Amanda escaped the schoolroom and went for a walk. The air was crisp and sweet with the earthy scent of plowed fields and sun-warmed pine needles, and she walked farther than she’d meant, farther than she was allowed. A restlessness had been building within her lately, an unsettled yearning that led her to leave the trim terraces of the gardens and the neatly hedged-in fields of the home farm behind, and penetrate deep into the wild tangle of forest that stretched away toward the sea.

It was there that she found them, in a sun-soaked hollow sheltered by a rocky outcropping from the brisk winds blowing off the white-capped water. The man lay on his back, his naked, sweat-slicked body stretched out long and lean, his neck arching in what seemed at first an agony. A woman sat astride him, her soft white lady’s hands holding his larger, darker ones cupped over her breasts, her lower lip gripped between her teeth, her eyes squeezing shut in ecstasy as she rode him. Rode him.

In the months that had passed since Richard’s visit, Amanda had sought to picture this vile thing that he had told her about. But never had she imagined—never could she have imagined anything like this.

Drawn by a sick combination of horror and fascination, she crept closer, her heart pounding painfully within her, her stomach acids backing up hot and sick into her throat. But it wasn’t until her fascination had drawn her, trembling and nauseous, ever closer, that Amanda realized the truth. That the woman whose breath came in such harsh, ragged gasps was her own mother, Sophia Hendon. And that the man whose naked pelvis thrust up again and again in a savage, pounding rhythm, who buried his body deeper and deeper inside hers, was her ladyship’s groom.

Amanda never told Richard what she had seen that day, although she knew from the bitter remarks her brother occasionally let fall that he blamed their father for the things their mother did, blamed Hendon for devoting all his time to King and country, and neglecting his lonely, lovely wife. But Amanda knew the truth, for she had seen the hunger in their mother’s beautiful, sunlit face. The shameful, insatiable hunger.

It had been dark for some time now, the fog swallowing the last glimmers of daylight before sliding away imperceptibly into night. The maid, Emily, had come at one point to draw the drapes and lay fresh coals upon the fire, but Amanda had sent her away.

Shaking off the long-ago memories, Amanda went now to turn up the flame of the oil lamp that filled the dressing room with a sweetly scented glow, and to close the heavy brocade drapes against the cold radiating off the long windows overlooking the square.

Crossing the room to her writing desk, she paused, her head raised as she listened. But the house lay silent around her, and after a moment she slid back the discreet latch that opened the desk’s hidden compartment, and drew forth the single piece of parchment from within.

She’d read it perhaps a hundred times already, but now she read it again, drawn by something she didn’t care to define, to this strange recital of that long-ago sin, written in Sophia Hendon’s own hand. Amanda couldn’t begin to guess what had driven her mother to set it all down in such stark, bare sentences, and then swear to it before witnesses. Nor did Amanda know how that harlot, Rachel York, had come by such a curious document, or for what purpose it had been intended. But Amanda had no doubt that the document had come from the actress.

Her blood still stained one corner.

It was Coachman Ned who’d first let slip the truth about that Tuesday night—or at least, the truth as he knew it. It had taken some time—and a few carefully worded threats—but eventually Amanda had drawn from him a curious tale, of how his lordship had been on his way to Westminster when he’d come upon Master Bayard, insensible with drink, on the footpath in front of Cribb’s Parlor. They’d taken the boy up into the carriage, of course. Only, they hadn’t brought him straight home. On his lordship’s orders, Coachman Ned had continued on to Great Peter Street, in Westminster, where his lordship had left the boy in the servants’ care.

It was not a servant’s place, of course, to question his master’s movements, although Coachman Ned admitted he’d been worried, watching Lord Wilcox disappear alone and on foot into that stinking fog. And his worst fears had been confirmed when, some twenty or thirty minutes later, Lord Wilcox had been set upon by thieves. He came staggering back to the carriage, his assailants’ blood drenching the front of his overcoat and still dripping from the sword stick he’d used to fight them off. He’d given Coachman Ned strict instructions that her ladyship was not to be told of the incident, lest it overset her nerves. He’d used the same line, Amanda eventually learned, to keep his valet, Downing, mum as well.

Bayard had snored insensible through it all. But Amanda wondered at the two servants, who surely knew her to be impervious to the kind of nervous spasms that troubled so many of the ladies of her station. She wondered, too, how they could have remained so unquestioningly believing when the gory details of what had happened that night in the Lady Chapel of St. Matthew of the Fields were on everyone’s lips. But then, perhaps neither Coachman Ned nor Downing had ever noticed the way his lordship’s face could draw taut with sexual excitement at the sight of a harlot being whipped through the streets. Perhaps they didn’t know about the string of housemaids he’d forced over the years, or the one he’d cut when she tried to refuse him. But Amanda had known, and pondered, and eventually been driven to ferret out the truth.

Refolding the parchment, Amanda carefully tucked it away and slid the secret compartment home. She wondered what Wilcox had thought, when he’d discovered the document missing. It was only by chance that Amanda had come upon it when she went looking for something—anything—that might confirm what in her heart of hearts she already knew to be the truth. The other papers she’d found with the affidavit—love letters from Lord Frederick to someone named Wesley and an interesting royal birth certificate—she left where she had found them, for they were of no significance to her. But her mother’s confession Amanda had taken without hesitation. A document of that nature was too volatile, too potentially valuable to be left in the hands of someone such as Martin.

She was so lost in thought that she missed the sound of the door quietly opening. It was only the change in the atmosphere of the room that told her, suddenly, that she was no longer alone. Turning her head, she found Sebastian leaning against the doorjamb.

She knew a moment of consternation at the thought he had seen her with their mother’s affidavit. Then she realized he was looking at her, not the writing desk, and she knew he had not.

“Where is he?” Sebastian demanded in a taut, menacing voice. “Where’s Wilcox?”

“You seem to make it a habit of entering other people’s houses uninvited,” she said, ignoring the question.

He pushed away from the door frame and came at her, his terrible amber eyes on her face. “You know, don’t you? For how long? How long have you known?”

In spite of herself, Amanda took a step back. “Known what?”

“I thought it was Bayard,” he continued, as if she had said nothing. “I was remembering all those nasty little incidents from when he was a boy. The time he set fire to the henhouse at Hendon Hall, just so he could have the fun of watching it burn. All the unmentionable things he used to do to any stray animal unlucky enough to fall into his clutches.”

He drew up before her, close enough that she could smell the acrid wet of the fog that had seeped into his rough, workingman’s clothes. “I used to wonder where it came from, that utter lack of empathy for the suffering of others, that streak of cruelty bordering on madness. I even wondered if perhaps it ran hidden within me, too. And then one day I saw Wilcox laugh at the sight of a cotter’s child being torn apart by a pack of hounds, and I knew. I knew where it came from.”

“You’re the one who is mad.”

“Am I?” He swung away. “You’ve heard the news, I suppose? About Leo Pierrepont?”

“Pierrepont?” Amanda shook her head. “What has he to do with anything?”

“Dear Amanda. Can it be that you really don’t know? Hendon told me something a few days ago, something that should have piqued my curiosity, except that I missed it. He said the government has known about Pierrepont’s ties to Napoleon for the better part of a year now, ever since a certain gentleman he called Mr. Smith found himself under pressure from Pierrepont to provide information of value to the French government. It seems Hendon and Lord Jarvis decided between them to simply sit on the revelations about Pierrepont, and use this compromised gentleman as a sort of double agent.”

“So?” said Amanda.

“So, the curious thing is that while Father and Jarvis both serve the King, on a personal level the two men can barely tolerate each other. Which tells me that the only reason Jarvis discussed the situation with Hendon is because the compromised gentleman had come to Hendon for help. And the only man I can think of who would do that is your husband. Wilcox.”

Amanda stood very still, watching her brother prowl restlessly about her dressing room. She hadn’t known this about Wilcox, that he’d been careless enough to allow himself to fall into a French trap. She gripped her hands together, shaken by an onrush of cold rage directed not just at Martin but at this man, her brother, who had come here to taunt her with her husband’s stupidity.

“What did they have on him, I wonder?” Sebastian said, pausing to fiddle with the quill she’d left lying on the leather-covered writing surface of her desk. “Something more, I suspect, than a mere sexual indiscretion. Whatever it was, Rachel must have found evidence of it when she helped herself to a cache of sensitive documents in Pierrepont’s possession. A fatal mistake, poor girl, since she must then have offered to sell the incriminating evidence to Wilcox. She didn’t know the kind of man she was dealing with.” He swung suddenly to face her. “But you did.”

“You’re mad,” Amanda said again, her hands gripping together tighter and tighter.

“Am I? That day I came here to confront Bayard, you knew then. It’s why you were so careful to tell me the exact time Wilcox had encountered Bayard. Only, he didn’t bring the lad straight home, did he?”

“The girl was a whore,” said Amanda suddenly, the words a harsh, angry tear ripped from a tightly constricted throat. “A whore, and a traitor.”

A strange light shone in her brother’s uncanny, alien eyes. “So that makes it all right, does it, what Wilcox did to her? What about the maid, Mary Grant? Or is that all right, too, because she was just a common servant and not a very honest one at that?”

His words fell into a silence Amanda had no intention of breaking. From outside came the fog-muffled clip-clop of hooves, and, nearer at hand, the clatter of a bucket followed by a giggle from one of the housemaids.

In the end it was Sebastian who broke the silence, the anger in his voice having been replaced by a kind of urgency. “Wilcox has developed a taste for it now, Amanda. You do realize that, don’t you? He’s going to keep doing it. And one day, he will be caught.”

“Hopefully not until after they’ve hanged you.”

His face went suddenly, satisfyingly blank. “I’ve always known you disliked me,” he said after a pause. “But I don’t think I realized until now just how much you hate me.”

“Of course I hate you,” she said, practically spitting the words at him. “Why wouldn’t I? You, Viscount Devlin, the precious, pampered heir to everything. Everything that should have been mine.” She thumped her fist against her chest. “Mine. I was my father’s firstborn child. While you—” She cut herself off just in time, clenching her teeth together.

“I didn’t invent the laws of male primogeniture,” he said, his voice a quiet counterpart to hers, his brows drawing together as if in puzzlement as he searched her face, “even if I have benefited from them.”

She watched, confused, as a strange smile touched his lips, then faded. “It’s funny, but my first thought when it finally all came together was to rush over here and warn you—warn you about how dangerous the man you were married to has become. It wasn’t until I started thinking about what you’d said, about how Bayard had passed out before nine when the police have everyone thinking the murder took place between five and eight, that I realized you knew the truth.” He drew in a deep breath then let it out in a harsh expulsion of air. “I’m not going to swing for you, Amanda. And I’m not going to let that sick bastard who is your husband keep butchering women.”

“You have no proof,” she said, as he turned toward the door.

He paused to glance back at her over his shoulder. “I’ll find something.” His mouth curved into a tight smile, harder and far meaner than the last. “Even if I have to make it up.”

Outside the churchyard of St. Matthew of the Fields, Sir Henry Lovejoy found the streets of Westminster deserted. Peering hopefully into the murky darkness, he turned up his collar against the creeping, insidious cold and wished he’d had the forethought to tell his hackney driver to wait.

He thought about that girl, Rachel York, coming here alone on a night such as this. He wondered at the kind of courage that must have taken—courage, or a passionately held conviction, or maybe a large dose of both. Yet there was nothing he had discovered yet in this case that suggested a reason for either.

The Reverend McDermott had been shocked at the discovery that such a woman had possessed a key to his church and baffled as to how she might have obtained it. Yet she had obtained it, and used it to meet the Earl of Hendon here at ten o’clock, just as Hendon had claimed. It was why Jem Cummings had seen the bloody footprints of two men—the first set belonging to Rachel York’s murderer, the second set left, later, by Hendon.

It was always dangerous, Lovejoy knew, to assume a fact is true simply because it appears obvious. Yet it was a mistake all too often made—a mistake he had made. And because of it, they’d spent the last week chasing an innocent man.

The rattle of carriage wheels over rough cobbles brought Lovejoy’s head around as a dark, rawboned job horse and hackney emerged from the gloom. There was a shout, and the jarvey pulled up.

The carriage’s near door flew open. “Sir Henry. There you are.” Edward Maitland appeared in the open doorway. “I was hoping to catch you before you left the church. We’ve a report that Viscount Devlin has been staying at an inn near Tothill Fields. A place called the Rose and Crown. I’ve sent some lads to watch the place, but I thought you’d like to be there when the arrest is made.”

Lovejoy scrambled up into the carriage’s musty interior. “There’ve been some new developments in the case,” he said as the carriage took off again with a jerk. He gave the constable a quick summary of his meeting with the sexton and the Reverend McDermott. “What it means, of course,” he said, wrapping up, “is that in all likelihood Rachel York wasn’t killed until sometime after eight—probably more like ten o’clock. And since we know Lord Devlin arrived at his club shortly before nine, his lordship couldn’t possibly have had enough time to kill the girl here in Westminster, rush home to Brook Street, change his clothes, and still appear in St. James’s Street when he did.”

The swinging carriage lamp threw irregular patterns of light and shadow over the set features of the constable’s face. “Just because we don’t see how he could have done it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” said Maitland. “Besides, you’re forgetting what he did to Constable Simplot.”

Lovejoy bit back what he’d been about to say. It was true, he had been forgetting Simplot. Lovejoy sighed. “How is the lad?”

“Still out of his head with fever. They don’t think he’ll last the night. It’s a miracle he’s lived as long as he has.”

Lovejoy nodded, his thoughts running back over what had happened that Wednesday afternoon in Brook Street. Here was one aspect of the case he had yet to consider. Why would a privileged young nobleman from a powerful, wealthy family deliberately attack and attempt to kill a constable in order to escape arrest for a crime of which he knew himself to be innocent? It made no sense.

Yet when it came to the young Viscount’s arrest, Lovejoy realized with a sigh, it mattered as little as the sexton’s discovery of the key. For Lovejoy was also forgetting Charles, Lord Jarvis. As far as Lord Jarvis was concerned, Devlin’s innocence or guilt had never been an issue. The Viscount had been tried and found guilty by the press and the streets, and the shocked populous of London wanted him brought to justice.

For the son of a peer of the realm to be seen getting away with murder would have been a volatile situation, at any time. Now, with the King declared mad and the Prince about to be created Regent, the situation could become dangerous. And Jarvis had been more than clear about what was at stake: Devlin was to be brought in before tomorrow’s ceremony, or Lovejoy’s position as Queen Square magistrate would be forfeit.