Chapter 10

Kat Boleyn had first met Rachel York on the banks of the Thames, on a snowy December night just over three years ago. Rachel had been fifteen then, heartbreakingly young and full of despair. Kat had been all of twenty, but already the toast of London's stage for several years, her own secrets and painful past hidden beneath fine jewels and practiced smiles.

And so it was to the Thames that Kat Boleyn went that Wednesday night, to toss a bunch of yellow roses from the center of London Bridge and watch dry-eyed as they drifted apart and slowly sank beneath the river's black waves. Then she turned purposefully away.

The clouds still hung low over the city, but with the coming of night, the rain had eased off into a fine mist. When she was a little girl, Kat had loved the mist. She'd lived in Dublin then, in a whitewashed house facing an open green edged with chestnuts and giant oaks. One of the oaks, older than all the others, had great spreading branches that reached nearly down to the ground. Even before she started school, Kat's father had taught her to climb that tree.

She always thought of him as her father, even though he wasn't. But he was the only father she'd ever known, and he encouraged her to do things that sometimes frightened her mother.

"Life is full of scary things," he used to tell Kat. "The trick is not to let your fears get in the way of your living . Whatever else you do, Katherine, don't settle for a life half-lived."

Kat had tried to tell herself that, the day the English soldiers came. The mist had been thick that morning, and heavy with the acrid scent of burning. She'd stood in the dim morning light and repeated her father's words to herself over and over again as they dragged her mother kicking and screaming from that pretty little white house. They'd made Kat watch what they did to her mother that day, and they'd made Kat's father watch, too. And then they'd hanged them, side by side, Kat's mother and father both, from the oak at the edge of the green.

Those days belonged to a different lifetime, to a different person. The woman who now drove her phaeton and pair at a smart clip through London's lamp-lit streets called herself Kat Boleyn, and she was one of the most acclaimed actresses of the London stage. The velvet pelisse she wore that evening was a bright cherry red, not a smoke-smudged gray, and she wore a string of pearls at her throat, rather than a black band of mourning.

But she still hated the mist.

Reining in before the townhouse of Monsieur Léon Pierrepont, Kat handed the ribbons to her groom and stepped down, easily, from her high-perch seat. "Walk them, George."

"Yes, miss."

She paused on the footpath to stare up at the classical fa?ade before her, lit softly by the gleam of flickering oil lamps. Like so much else about Leo Pierrepont, this house on Half Moon Street was carefully calculated to create just the right impression: large, but not too large, elegant, and with a touch of the faded grandeur to be expected from a proud nobleman now forced to live in exile. When one lived a life that was, essentially, a lie, appearances were everything.

She found him alone, in his dining room, just sitting down to a table laid for one with fine china and gleaming silver and the sparkle of old crystal. He was a slim, delicately built man upon whom the passing years, however difficult they might have been, nevertheless seemed to have rested easily. His face was largely unlined, his light brown hair barely touched with gray. Kat had never known his precise age, but given that he'd been almost thirty when driven from Paris by the Reign of Terror, she knew he must be in his late forties by now.

"You shouldn't have come," Leo said, his attention seemingly all for his soup.

Kat jerked off her gloves and tossed them with reticule, pelisse, and hat onto a nearby chair. "Whose reputation are you afraid will be compromised, Leo? Mine, or yours?"

He glanced up, gray eyes gleaming with a faint smile. "Mine, of course. You have no reputation left to lose." He signaled for the servants to leave them, then sat back. The smile faded. "You've heard what happened to Rachel, I suppose?"

Kat pressed her flattened palms against the tabletop and leaned into them. Beneath the silk bodice of her gown, her heart thudded hard and fast, but she managed to keep her voice calm, steady. "Did you do it?"

If he had, he wouldn't admit it; Kat knew that. But she wanted to watch his face while he denied it.

Leo dipped his spoon into his soup and brought it carefully to his lips. "Come now, ma petite . Even if I had wanted Rachel dead, do you seriously think I would have killed her in such a spectacular fashion? In a church ? From what I understand, the walls were practically painted with her blood."

Kat watched his long, slim hands reach for a piece of bread. "One of your minions could have got carried away."

"I choose my minions more carefully than that."

"So who killed her?"

A shadow touched the Frenchman's features, a brief ghost of concern that Kat almost— almost —believed might be genuine. "I wish I knew."

Kat turned away, her quick, long-legged stride carrying her across the room and back again.

Leo shifted his weight in his chair and watched her. "Ring for another glass," he said after a moment. "Have some wine."

"No thank you."

"Then at least stop pacing up and down the room in that fatiguing way. It's not good for my digestion."

She hesitated beside the table, but she did not sit. "Who was Rachel scheduled to meet last night?"

Picking up a knife, Leo calmly spread his bread with butter. "No one that I'm aware of."

"What would you have me believe then, Leo? That she went there to pray ?"

"It's what people generally do in a church."

"Not people like Rachel." Kat went to stand before the hearth and stare unseeingly at the glowing coals. There was always danger in this game they played; they all knew that. But whoever had met Rachel last night was more than dangerous; he was evil. And what he'd done could threaten them all. "They'll be looking into her death—the authorities, I mean. They could stumble across something."

"Careful, ma petite ," said Leo, reaching for his glass. "The walls have ears." He took a slow swallow of his wine, then frowned. "But no, I don't think the authorities will learn anything that need concern us. I went past her lodgings this morning as soon as I heard what had happened, but the constables were there. I'll go back tonight and make certain she left nothing that could be incriminating."

"You could be too late. They might have found something already."

Leo huffed a soft laugh. "You can't be serious. This is London, not Paris. They're fools, these Englishmen. So afraid of the danger to their liberties posed by a standing army that they'd rather see their cities overrun with thieves and murderers than establish a proper police force. Those constables won't have found anything. Besides"—He thrust another piece of bread in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed—"they think they already know who did it."

Kat swung to face him. "You said you didn't know who killed her."

"I don't know who killed her. But the London authorities think they do. He's doubtless under arrest even as we speak. Some viscount with a reputed propensity for slaughtering his fellow men. He has a strange name. Something like Diablo, or Devil, or—"

"Devlin?" Her breath coming uncharacteristically shallow and fast, Kat left the fireplace and walked up to Leo, her gaze searching his face.

"That's it." He gave her a wide-eyed look and she knew he was playing with her, had recalled Sebastian's name all along. "Ah. I remember now," he said, his head tipping to one side as he smiled up at her. "Devlin was one of your protectors, once. Is that not so? Before he went off to the wars to fight for King and country against the forces of evil and the Emperor Napoleon."

"It was a long time ago." Kat swung away and reached for her pelisse. She felt a sudden need to get away. To be alone.

Pushing back his chair, Leo came to his feet in one smooth motion, his hand reaching out to close on her upper arm, stopping her, forcing her back around so that he could look searchingly into her face. He was so languid, so slender and effete-looking, that one sometimes forgot both how swiftly he could move and what strength those long, thin fingers possessed.

She stared blandly back at him, calling upon all her training as an actress to keep her features inscrutable and willing the rapid, betraying beat of her heart to calm.

But he knew her well, Leo. He knew her talents and he knew, too, this one weakness she refused to admit, even to herself. A wry smile twitched one corner of his lips, then stilled. "When you're only twenty-three," he whispered, his hand coming up to touch her cheek in a movement that was not quite a caress, "nothing in your life was so long ago."