by C. S. Harris
Sebastian held his ale without tasting it. “Something rather spectacular happened in your house on Wednesday of last week, Kane. What was it?”
Kane shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”
“Maybe. But nothing happens in one of your houses that you don’t know about.”
A smile lit up the other man’s eyes. “I heard that Bow Street magistrate—Sir William—died of an apoplectic fit in his own public office.”
“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear.”
Kane gave a short bark of laughter and went to stretch out in an upholstered seat near the fire. “Very well. You like stories, Lord Devlin? I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there were three gentlemen out on the town. Like most young men, they had a perennial itch in their pants. As ill luck would have it, they chose to scratch their itch at the Orchard Street Academy. They selected three Cyprians and disappeared up the stairs with them. After that, I’m afraid, the tale becomes rather murky. The next thing we know, one of the gentlemen is raising a dust because his particular Bird of Paradise has flown—without, it seems, performing the services for which he had already handed over a substantial sum. Prime articles in my establishment do not come cheap, you understand.”
“And his lady of choice was?”
“Hannah Green. Miss Lil was still looking for dear Hannah when she discovered Hessy.”
“With her neck broken.”
“You’ve heard this tale before.”
“Not in its entirety,” said Sebastian. “And the gentleman who had selected Hessy?”
“Disappeared.”
“Like Hannah Green,” said Sebastian.
“That’s right.”
“What about Rose Fletcher?”
“Rose, too, had simply vanished.”
“Leaving a dead customer in her bed?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Kane leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure you understand my position. Dead bodies are not good for business. They attract all sorts of unwelcome attention from the local constabulary and scare away customers.”
“So you—what? Dumped the bodies in the river? Buried them in Bethnal Green?”
Kane gave a slow smile. “Something like that.”
“It’s an interesting story. There’s just one small problem.”
“What’s that?”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
Kane pressed his splayed hands to his chest in mock astonishment. “Stories need to make sense?” His hands fell. “I’ll be frank with you, my lord. I don’t understand what happened that night. All I know is that a few more nights like that and the Academy will be out of business.”
“Had you ever seen any of the three men before?”
Kane’s lips curved up into a slow smile. “You forget, my lord, I wasn’t there.”
“The dead man, then. You saw him. Did you recognize him?”
“Believe me, Lord Devlin, I don’t have the slightest idea who he was.”
“Believe you, Mr. Kane? Now why should I believe you?”
Ian Kane was no longer smiling. “I could have let Thackery and Johnson kill you in the alley.”
Sebastian set aside his ale untouched. If the confrontation hadn’t occurred in uncomfortable proximity to the Black Dragon, Sebastian doubted the brothel owner would have felt compelled to interfere. As the man said, dead bodies weren’t good for business. “That wasn’t a matter of altruism. That was just . . . geography.”
Kane stayed where he was, his head falling back as he watched Sebastian turn toward the door. “Then I suggest that in the future you choose your locales wisely.”
Chapter 45
Sebastian sat on the scorched, crumbling remnant of a wall and breathed in the pungent smell of wet burned wood and old ash. He’d come here to what was left of the Magdalene House after leaving the Black Dragon in St. Giles. A journeyman glazier passing in the street threw him a sharp look, but kept walking. Sebastian stared out over the charred jumble of debris and wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.
What manner of men would kill seven unknown women just to get at one? The answer was only too obvious. Men who were accustomed to killing. And no one was more accustomed to killing than military men.
He thought about the girl from the cheesemonger’s shop, Pippa. She’d given him a clue that first day, when she’d told him the gentlemen she’d seen watching the Magdalene House had reminded her of some old Nabob. One could always tell a Nabob by his sun-darkened skin, just as one could tell the military men who had spent years under the fierce suns of India and the Sudan, Egypt and the West Indies.
The sound of boot leather scraping over fallen timbers brought Sebastian’s head around. “What are you doing here?” asked Cedric Fairchild, picking his way toward him.
“Trying to make sense of all this.” He studied the younger man’s haggard face. “What brings you here?”
“I don’t know.” Cedric stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat, his shoulders hunched against the dampness as he stared out over the house’s shattered walls and twisted, burned contents. “I can’t believe she died here. I keep thinking that if I’d only managed to talk her into leaving—”
“Don’t,” said Sebastian. “It’s not your fault.”
Cedric swung his head to look at him. “Yes, it is.” He sucked in a breath that seemed to shudder his entire frame. “I was talking to Georgina—Lady Sewell. My sister. She’d heard about Rachel’s death and came to see me. She told me something I didn’t know. It seems that last summer—before I came home—Rachel did quarrel with Ramsey. So maybe my father was right. That is why she ran away.”
Sebastian’s brows drew together. “Would Lord Fairchild have forced her to marry Ramsey even if she had changed her mind?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I suppose he might. He’s a stickler for the proprieties, you know. And if she’d broken off her betrothal, there would doubtless have been a scandal.”
Sebastian watched as Pippa from the cheesemonger’s across the street came and stood in her shop’s doorway, a frown on her face as she narrowed her eyes, watching them.
Cedric said, “I don’t understand why you’re poking into the past, asking these questions about Rachel. About my family. What’s any of it got to do with this?” He swept his arm in a wide arc that took in the fallen, blackened beams, the crumbling chimney of what was once a fireplace.
“I’m not certain it has anything to do with it,” Sebastian admitted.
Cedric’s arm dropped to his side. “My father’s not well, you know. The news about Rachel hit him hard.”
“You told him it was true?”
“My sister told him.”
“And he believed it? He accepted that she is dead?”
Cedric’s gaze shifted away. “I don’t know. He said he didn’t. I mean, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it, with her body burned like that? But he’s—he’s not himself. I’m worried about him.”
Sebastian felt his lips curl into a wry smile. “You want me to stop asking questions about Rachel. Is that what you’re saying?”
“She’s dead! Dead and buried. Knowing what happened to her isn’t going to bring her back, but it could very well kill our father.” Cedric jerked his head toward the back of the burned-out house. “You want to find out what happened to the women in this house, fine. But leave my family out of it!”
In the sudden silence that followed his outburst, Sebastian could hear the rattle of a shutter being thrust up. He glanced down at his clasped hands, then up at the other man’s tight-lipped face. Cedric Fairchild might have been to war, but he suddenly looked very, very young. Sebastian said, “This man who’s missing . . . Max Ludlow. Did you know him well?”
Cedric frowned, as if confused by the shift in subject. “I’ve met him a few times. But I don’t know him well, no. I never served with him.”
“He was in the hussars?”
“Until he sold out, yes.”
&
nbsp; “Was he ever wounded?”
“In Argentina, I believe.” Cedric’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Sebastian was thinking about a dead man in a brothel room with an old scar like a saber slash running diagonally across his belly. But all he said was, “Just wondering.” He glanced across the street at the cheesemonger’s shop.
Pippa had disappeared.
“It don’t make no sense,” said Tom from his perch at the rear of Sebastian’s curricle. “It’s near three o’clock. ’Ow can this Lady Melbourne be ’avin’ a picnic breakfast?”
Sebastian neatly featheredged a corner. They were passing through Putney on their way to Kew, the site of Lady Melbourne’s highly anticipated breakfast. “Breakfasts are like morning calls, which is to say they take place in the afternoon. When you don’t generally get up before midday, it shifts things a bit.”
“You reckon this Mr. Ramsey will be there?”
“He has a sister he’s launching into society. Lady Melbourne’s picnic breakfast is one of the most important events of the Season. He’ll be there.”
They arrived at Kew to find the wildflower-strewn hillside near the pagoda crowded with linen-draped tables set with gleaming silver and crystal. “Gor,” said Tom, practically falling off his perch as he craned around to stare. “ ’Ow’d they get all this out ’ere?”
“The servants brought the tables and trimmings in wagons and set it up before her ladyship’s guests arrived.”
The tiger cast a thoughtful eye toward the clouds above. “And if’n it rains?”
“On Lady Melbourne’s picnic?” Sebastian handed over the reins and jumped down. “It wouldn’t dare.”
Winding his way through liveried servants and ladies with parasols, Sebastian was aware of his sister, Amanda, glaring at him from near the towering, dragon-roofed pagoda. He deliberately avoided her, only to fall into the clutches of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Devlin,” said Perceval, hailing him. “Not usually your type of scene, is it?”
“Nor yours, I’d have said.”
The Prime Minister raised his wineglass with a wry grimace. “I have six daughters, which means I’ll be fighting flies and ants for my food for many years to come, I’m afraid. What is it about the concept of alfresco dining that so captivates the fair sex?”
Sebastian nodded to where the Prime Minister’s daughter—a vision in white muslin and chip straw—stood laughing with a friend. “It does show them to advantage, don’t you agree?”
“There is that,” agreed Perceval. He took another sip of his wine and said with feigned nonchalance, “Your father tells me you’ve no interest in politics.”
“No.”
The Prime Minister looked nonplussed. “We could use a man like you in the House of Commons.”
Sebastian hid a smile. “I doubt it.”
“There’s trouble brewing over the Orders in Council, you know. Bloody Americans. They’ve had their sights set on annexing Canada for thirty years now. There are reports they’re planning an invasion and using the Orders in Council as an excuse.”
“You’re expecting a revolt in the Commons, are you?”
“There’s a formal Inquiry scheduled for Monday evening’s session. But it’s not just the Commons. It’s the Lords, too. Fairchild is leading the pack. He’s saying we ought to rescind the Orders. Appease the Americans.”
“There’s no doubt the timing would be bad for another war,” said Sebastian. “We’re already rather occupied with Napoleon.”
“Hence the Americans’ bellicosity. It’s bloody opportunism.”
“They’re learning, aren’t they?” said Sebastian, scanning the open hillside. He spotted Tristan Ramsey’s young sister first, then the widowed Mrs. Ramsey. Tristan Ramsey himself was rapidly disappearing down a path hemmed in by rhododendrons and lilacs. “Excuse me, sir,” said Sebastian before the Prime Minister had a chance to launch into an impassioned defense of his much-maligned Orders in Council.
By striking a diagonal course through the shrubbery, Sebastian came out onto the path leading toward the distant pond just as Ramsey was casting an anxious glance back over his shoulder.
“If I didn’t know better, Ramsey, I’d suspect you of trying to avoid me,” said Sebastian, stepping out from behind a cascading wisteria in full bloom.
Ramsey’s head snapped back around, his weak jaw sagging. “Of course I’m trying to avoid you. The last time I saw you, you nearly broke my nose. Any sane man would try to avoid you.”
Sebastian smiled. “If you didn’t want to risk having your cork drawn again, you shouldn’t have left the ladies.”
Ramsey threw a wild glance around, his mouth opening and shutting soundlessly as he realized the shrubbery effectively hid them from the view of the others.
Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and said, “Tell me about the quarrel you had last summer with Rachel Fairchild.”
“Quarrel? We didn’t—”
“You did, Ramsey. Tell me. What was it about?”
The man’s shoulders sagged, the air leaving his chest in a long ragged exhalation. “Someone told her things about me. I don’t know who. She wouldn’t say.”
“Told her . . . what?”
Ramsey’s jaw tightened mulishly. “A man has appetites.”
“She discovered you kept a mistress.”
“A mistress? No.” The man seemed indignant at the thought. “Nothing like that. Just every once in a while . . . You know what it’s like. I can’t imagine what she expected. She was always so skittish. Never wanting me to do more than kiss her hand, even after we were betrothed. What was I supposed to do? A man needs some relief.”
“Someone told her you were in the habit of picking up prostitutes?”
Righteous indignation flared in Ramsey’s eyes. “She followed me. Can you imagine such a thing? She followed me and watched me pick up some strumpet in the Haymarket.”
“She confronted you?”
“Not there on the street, thank God. But the next day, when I came to take her for a drive. She said the most outlandish things, about how she’d thought I was different from other men.” He gave a ragged laugh. “Like I was supposed to be a monk or something.”
Sebastian stared out over a hillside covered with Turkish hazel and American sweet gum, and tried very, very hard to control his temper.
“I was pretty indignant, I can tell you.” Ramsey’s chest swelled with remembered pique. “I told her all men had appetites, and while I might be content to leave her alone while we were betrothed, I expected things to be different after the wedding.”
Sebastian considered how a young woman like Rachel Fairchild, already traumatized by years of her father’s unwanted attentions, must have reacted to a speech such as that. “And so she ran away,” he said softly.
Ramsey bit his lip and nodded. “I went back the next day to try to reason with her—maybe moderate some of the things I’d said. But she was gone.”
“When you saw her later, in Orchard Street, did she tell you how she had ended up there?”
Ramsey swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down. “She said she met an old woman who was kind to her—or at least that’s what she thought at first. Turned out the old hag was a procuress.”
It was an all too familiar story. Young women fallen on hard times or newly arrived from the country, befriended by helpful old women whose business it was to keep the brothels and whoremasters of the city supplied with fresh goods. Sebastian said, “But she had family—friends. She could have escaped.”
Ramsey sniffed. “I asked her why she didn’t leave.”
“And?”
“She said the strangest thing. She said she’d spent the last ten years of her life fighting it, only now she realized there was no use. I didn’t understand. It made no sense. But when I asked what she meant . . . that’s when she told me I only had three minutes left.”
His body swept
by raw fury, Sebastian felt his hands curl into fists at his sides.
Tristan Ramsey’s eyes widened and he took a prudent step back, his arms thrust out in front as if to ward off a malevolent spirit. “I told you everything. You’ve no call to hit me again!”
It wasn’t the fear in Ramsey’s eyes that gave Sebastian pause. What stopped him was the sweetness of that rush of anger, the ease with which the old familiar bloodlust of the battlefield could return to beguile a man. He’d seen where the seductive power of violence could lead a man.