What Angels Fear

edged Jarvis’s daughter toward the front. From the doorway of the library, Jarvis nodded to the stony-faced butler, who rushed to open the door.

An eerie, opaque darkness loomed beyond, what was left of the day having been swallowed by the fog that curled through the open door and drifted into the hall, bringing with it a foul, acrid stench that pinched the nostrils and tore at the throat.

Sebastian glanced down at the woman who held herself so stiff and straight in his grasp. “You did say there’s a carriage outside, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” she said in an admirably clear, steady voice.

“I rather think you did.” He glanced at one of the maids, a big-boned, ruddy-faced woman who stood just inside the front door, her arms wrapped around her head, her eyes squeezed shut so tight, her entire face contorted with the effort.

“You there.”

The maid’s eyes flew open wide, her mouth going slack.

“Yes, you,” he repeated, when she simply stared back at him, the bodice of her gown jerking up and down with each rapid, shallow breath. “Get in the carriage. Now.”

“Surely one hostage will be sufficient to guarantee your safety,” said Miss Jarvis hastily. “You don’t need Alice.”

“It’s not my safety I’m concerned about.” Sebastian shifted the muzzle of the gun toward the maid. “Now, Alice. In the carriage.”

With a bleat of terror, Alice scuttled down the front steps and up into the carriage.

Sebastian backed up the carriage steps, hauling Miss Jarvis with him. “It would be detrimental to the ladies’ health were anyone to attempt to follow us,” he said to the grim men crowding the door behind them. “Drive toward Tothill Fields,” he shouted to the coachmen. “Now.”

At the crack of the whip, the horses leapt to the traces, the carriage lurching forward with a jerk that set the lanterns to swinging on their brackets. The maid huddled into a corner of the forward seat, her hands holding her apron over her face as she let out a series of soft little screams.

“Stop that infernal nonsense,” said Sebastian after roughly the twentieth scream.

“She’s afraid,” said Miss Jarvis.

Sebastian transferred his attention to the woman who sat tall and stiff-backed on the seat beside him. “You’re not?”

She swung her head to look directly at him. In the swaying light from the outside lanterns, he could see the terror in her eyes. “Of course I am.”

“I must say, you control yourself admirably well.”

“I see no point in indulging in hysterics.” She ran one hand up her other arm briskly, as if to warm it. A brazier of coals spread its slow heat through the carriage, but a damp cold radiated off the glass and her modest muslin gown was not designed for warmth.

Sebastian reached for the carriage robe of wool lined with fur that lay folded up beside him and held it out to her. “I shan’t harm you, you know.”

After the briefest of hesitations, she took the robe with a politely murmured, “Thank you,” and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

An earsplitting shriek from the forward seat jerked his attention back to Alice. “Mary, Mother of God!” cried the maid, dropping her apron to show them a wild face. “He’s going to ravish us both. Ravish us, and leave us headless and eviscerated like a heathen offering on some pagan altar.” Her body went suddenly rigid, her fists digging into the plush upholstery at her side as she began to laugh hysterically.

Leaning forward, Miss Jarvis calmly slapped the maid across the face. Alice sucked in a startled breath, her eyes going wide, then squeezing shut as she collapsed back into her corner and began to cry. Miss Jarvis took one of the maid’s hands in her own and said gently, “There, there, Alice; it will be all right. We’re quite safe.” To Sebastian, she said, “I know who you are.”

Sebastian nodded toward the quietly sobbing maid. “So, obviously, does she.”

Miss Jarvis paused in the act of chafing the maid’s trembling hand between her own large, capable ones. “A humorist, I see. I hadn’t expected that.”

“And what, precisely, were you expecting? To be ravished and left split like a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Zeus?”

Alice let out a new bleat of terror.

Miss Jarvis threw Sebastian a frowning glance. “Hush. You’re frightening her again.”

Sebastian studied the woman beside him. She was somewhere in her early twenties, he supposed, brown of hair and unremarkable of feature, if one discounted the unmistakable gleam of intelligence and ready humor in those calm gray eyes. He tried to recollect what he had heard of Jarvis’s daughter, and could call little to mind.

“Why did you insist on bringing Alice?” she asked after a moment.

He glanced out the window. They were bowling up Whitehall now, harnesses jangling, the horses’ hoofbeats reverberating oddly in the damp, heavy fog. Soon the narrow streets of old Westminster would close in around them. It would be an easy thing, then, to lose any would-be rescuers and make his way to the Three Feathers Inn, where he intended to have a little chat with the landlord.

“Merciful heavens,” said Miss Jarvis, her eyes opening wide as the carriage slowed for a turn. “Is that why she’s here? To safeguard my reputation from the tongues that wag and do love to speculate on all manner of unrighteous things? Do you really think it will help?”

Sebastian opened the door beside him. “One can only hope,” he said, and slipped out into the damp night.

Chapter 55

It didn’t take him long to locate the Three Feathers, a surprisingly elegant little inn located on a cul-de-sac just off Barton Street. With some persuasion—not all that tactfully applied, for Sebastian was tired—the innkeeper divulged that Hugh Gordon and an unidentified, heavily veiled lady had indeed spent the previous Tuesday night in the inn’s best chamber.

But the Three Feathers was a busy establishment; the innkeeper had no way of knowing whether or not the actor had stayed at his lady’s side all evening. And Barton Street was just around the corner from Great Peter Street and the ancient church of St. Matthew of the Fields.

Leaving Westminster, Sebastian caught a hackney to Tower Hill. “Ah. There you are,” said Paul Gibson when he opened the door to Sebastian’s knock half an hour later. “So Tom found you, did he?”

“No,” said Sebastian, quickly closing the door against the acrid cold of the coming night. “I haven’t seen the boy since this morning. Why? Have you discovered something?”

“Not as much as I might have wished.” The doctor led the way down the narrow hall to the parlor, where he poured Sebastian a measure of mulled wine from the bowl warming near the fire. “You’re looking decidedly the worse for wear.”

Sinking into one of the seats beside the fire, Sebastian grasped the cup in both hands. “So everyone keeps saying.” He took a sip of the warm wine, then leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “I feel as if I’ve been chased across London and back again for the past hundred years.”

Gibson smiled. “Which probably explains why Tom didn’t find you.” He poured himself some of the mulled wine and came to take the other chair. “I tracked down the woman who did Rachel York’s laying out. A horse-faced old battle-ax by the name of Molly O’Hara.”

Sebastian brought his head forward and opened his eyes. “And?”

“Rachel York had a man’s fob clutched in her fist. Unfortunately, by the time I found her, our dear Molly had already sold the trinket. She remembered little about it, beyond the fact that its swivel was broken.”

“Rachel must have torn it from her attacker’s waistcoat, just as he slit her throat.”