What Angels Fear

“Get some sleep,” said Sebastian, turning away with a smile. “I have an early assignment for you tomorrow. I’d like you to discover the address of a certain Italian gentleman.”

“An Italian,” said Tom, in exactly the same tone of voice he might have used had Sebastian divulged a friendship with a cockroach.

“That’s right. An Italian.” Sebastian slipped the pistol from his pocket and placed it, along with his pocketbook, beneath his pillow. “A painter, to be exact. A man by the name of Giorgio Donatelli.”

The dreams are rarely the same. Sleep and time distort memory; events become disjointed. Fleetingly glimpsed faces and haunting images recombine with unrelated incidents to torture and taunt. In a mist- shrouded mountain village, simple stone walls rise up scorched and shattered. Reaching out, Sebastian turns over a woman’s flyblown body to find Kat’s lifeless blue eyes staring up at him. He cries out, and fresh red blood seeps from her gashed neck. Her lips move. “Aidez-moi,” she says: Help me. “Je suis mort.” I am dead. But the knife is in his hand and he is the one slashing, he is the one killing, and the bloodlust runs hot and sweet through his veins—

“Oie, gov’nor. You right there?”

Sebastian opened his eyes to find the boy, Tom, sitting up, his thin body silhouetted against the glowing embers of the fire.

“I’m fine. I was just . . . It was just a bad dream.” Sebastian rolled onto his back, one bent arm coming up to cover his eyes. “Go back to sleep.”

Chapter 23

The following morning, Sebastian sent the boy off with a full stomach and a suit of warm clothes that included a topcoat and new boots. He half expected the urchin to disappear back into the seething slums from which he’d come. But less than three hours later, Tom was back at the Rose and Crown with information that an Italian painter by the name of Giorgio Donatelli could be found at Number Thirty-two, Almonry Terrace, Westminster.

“What’s this, then?” said Tom, eyeing Sebastian as he wound a roll of padding around and around his torso.

Sebastian, who had made another visit that morning to Rosemary Lane and a variety of small shops, pinned the end of the padding and reached for his new, considerably larger shirt. “Today, I am Mr. Silas Beaumont, a plump, prosperous, but not particularly well-bred merchant from Hans Town who is interested in having his daughter’s portrait painted. While I am discussing the possibility of engaging Mr. Donatelli for this all-important task, you will poke around the area and discover what his neighbors have to say about our friend Giorgio.” He balanced a set of spectacles on the end of his nose, and affected an earnest, if somewhat vapid, look. “All in the most discreet fashion possible, of course.”

Tom sniffed. “Take me for a flat, do you?”

“Hardly.” By winding two cravats around his neck, Sebastian managed to make his neck look twice its normal size. His hair was as gray as an old man’s, and the judicious application of theatrical cosmetics had deepened the lines of age on his face. “While you’re at it, you might see what you can find out about a woman who used to visit Mr. Donatelli fairly regularly. A young, attractive woman with golden hair. Her name was Rachel York.”

Tom regarded him through narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “You mean, the mort what was cut up in St. Matthew’s Church a few nights back?”

Sebastian glanced over at the boy in surprise. “That’s right.”

“She the one the bolly dogs think you pushed off?”

“If by that impenetrable sentence you’re asking if she’s the woman the authorities have accused me of killing, then the answer is yes.” Sebastian shrugged into his new, very large coat.

“You think this Italian cove is the one what did for ’er?”

“I don’t know. He might be. Or he might be able to give me some idea as to where else to look.”

“That’s yer lay, is it? You figure if you cotton on to the one what did do for this Rachel, then the beaks’ll quit ’oundin’ you?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“So who else you thinkin’ mighta done for her?”

Sebastian, who was rapidly developing a healthy respect for Tom’s abilities and powers of perception, gave him a quick rundown of his conversations with Leo Pierrepont and Hugh Gordon.

“Huh,” said Tom, when Sebastian had finished. “Me, I’d put me money on one of them foreigners.”

“You might be right,” said Sebastian, reaching for his new walking stick. “But I think it best to keep an open mind.”

The neat, two-story brick building at Number Thirty-two, Almonry Terrace, didn’t fit Sebastian’s image of a struggling artist’s garret. The living quarters occupied the ground floor, while a small hand-lettered sign beside an external stair pointed upward to the studio. Donatelli was doing well indeed for a man who had been painting theatrical scenes just the year before.

Sebastian took the stairs with the ponderous effort one might expect of a fat, self-indulgent merchant. At the top of the steps, a door set with uncurtained small panes of glass showed him a large room lit with an unexpected flood of light by an abundance of large windows all, likewise, uncurtained. In the center of the room stood a young man, palette and brush in hand, his posture one of studied thought as he stared at a large canvas on an easel before him.

Sebastian knocked, then knocked again when the young man continued to stare at his canvas. After a third knock, Sebastian simply opened the door and walked into a blast of warm, turpentine- and oil-scented air.

“Hallooo there,” he said with hearty vulgarity, clapping his hands together in the manner of men coming in from the cold. “I did knock, but nobody answered.”

The young man swung around, a lock of dark hair falling across his brow as he looked up, distracted. “Yes?”

Romantic, Kat had called him. Sebastian had thought it an odd description at the time, but he understood it now. Tall and broad shouldered, the Italian was like a handsome shepherd, or a troubadour from a Venetian painting of two centuries before. Curly chestnut-colored hair framed a face with large, velvet brown eyes, a classical nose, and the full, bowed lips of a Botticelli angel.

“I’m looking for a Mr. Giorgio Donatelli,” said Sebastian. There were not one, but three braziers burning in the room, he realized. Donatelli obviously missed the warmth of Italy. Already Sebastian was beginning to regret the second neckcloth and the padding around his middle.

Reaching out, the painter rested his brush and palette on a nearby table. “I’m Donatelli.”

“Name is Beaumont.” Sebastian puffed out his exaggerated chest and struck a self-important pose. “Silas Beaumont. Of the Beaumont Transatlantic Shipping Company.” He fixed the artist with an expectant stare. “You’ve heard of us, of course.”

“I believe so,” said Donatelli slowly, obviously not willing to risk offending a potential patron with an affront to the man’s image of self-importance. “How may I help you?”

The artist’s English was good, Sebastian noticed; very good, with just enough of an accent to increase that air of romance. He’d obviously been in England a very long time. “Well, it’s this way, you see. I was talking to the Lord Mayor the other day, about how I was wanting to find someone to paint my daughter Sukie’s portrait—she’s sixteen now, my Sukie—and, anyway, he suggested you.”

“You needn’t have put yourself to the trouble of coming here,” said Donatelli, casting an anxious glance around the studio, like a housewife flustered to have been caught behind on her cleaning.

Sebastian waved away the suggestion with one gloved hand. “I wanted to see some of your work—more than just the one or two pictures you might choose to trot out for my inspection. Never buy a horse without getting a good look at the stable, I always say.” He cast an inquiring eye about the room. “You do have more than this, I hope?”

Donatelli reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “Of course. Follow me.”