Where Serpents Sleep sscm-4

by C. S. Harris

  His gaze fixed firmly on the former hussar officer, Sebastian walked up to the small group and executed a short bow. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse us? The Colonel and I have something to discuss.”

  The men’s gazes met, clashed. “This won’t take but a moment,” said Epson-Smith to his companions. “Some friends of one of my acquaintances from Liverpool,” he told Sebastian as they moved away from the ladies. “I thought it would make a nice outing.”

  Sebastian kept his own tone low, conversational. “Lord Jarvis might be a powerful protector, but he also makes a powerful enemy. I’ve no doubt he’d be willing to overlook the murder of any number of unimportant people, but he’s not at all pleased with your little plot to kill the Prime Minister. And as for your attempts on the life of his daughter . . . I’d say you’ve signed your own death warrant.”

  The man’s complacent arrogance never faltered. “You’ve no proof tying me to any of this,” he said, still faintly smiling.

  “Not enough to convict you in a court of law,” Sebastian conceded. “But then, you’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. The only thing that matters is what Jarvis believes.”

  “True. Only, why should he believe you? You’ve threatened to kill him—several times, whereas I have served him faithfully for nearly four years now.”

  “Faithfully and efficiently,” said Sebastian, dodging one of the pedestals topped with a particularly hideous set of bronzes that littered the Exhibition Room’s floor. “It’s a distinctive way of killing—just a quick snap of the neck. Where’d you learn it?”

  The Colonel’s smile hardened. “The Sudan.”

  Through the glass of the skylight, Sebastian could see the afternoon clouds building overhead, bunching masses of angry black turmoil. The room grew perceptibly darker. “What precisely is your argument with Perceval?” he asked.

  Epson-Smith’s lips pressed into a thin, tight line. “Thanks to the incompetence of his government, my regiment went through hell in Argentina. We were promised compensation, but Perceval deemed it an extravagant and unnecessary expense, and canceled the arrangements. Thanks to his damnable interference, the ambitions of the few men who survived have been shattered, while the widows of those who died are ruined.”

  “You would kill him over that?”

  Epson-Smith pivoted to look back at the small party of women and children now clustered at the far end of the room. “Not me,” he said calmly. “Perceval has made many enemies. A man driven by passion can sometimes be goaded to act in ways not precisely in his own best interest. Particularly when he’s not in his right mind.”

  “Bellingham,” said Sebastian, remembering the half-mad Liverpudlian he and Perceval had encountered on the footpath outside Almack’s.

  “You know him? Then what a pity you’ve just missed him. He was here with us, you know, but he had to leave early. Some business to attend to, I believe he said. At the House of Commons.”

  Sebastian swung toward the steps, but Epson-Smith put out a hand that closed on Sebastian’s forearm in a surprisingly strong grip. “You’re too late,” said the Colonel.

  Sebastian lunged toward him, trying to break the man’s hold on his arm. But in a maneuver Sebastian didn’t see coming, the ex-hussar spun Sebastian around, one arm clamping across Sebastian’s chest to grip him by his right arm and draw him back into Epson-Smith’s deadly embrace.

  “You kill me here, now, and you’ll never get away with it,” said Sebastian.

  The Colonel’s free hand came up to grasp Sebastian’s chin in an unexpectedly iron hold. “If Jarvis knows I tried to kill his daughter, I’m a dead man anyway.”

  One quick twist, Sebastian realized, and his neck would snap. Bucking against the man’s hold, Sebastian slammed his head back into Epson-Smith’s face, bone crunching cartilage. With a startled grunt, Epson-Smith loosened his grip on Sebastian just long enough for Sebastian to grasp the arm clamped across his chest and spin around, smashing the back of his fist into Epson-Smith’s bloody face. Still holding the man’s arm, Sebastian twisted it in and down, forcing Epson-Smith to pivot enough that Sebastian could stomp the heel of his right boot into the back of the man’s left knee.

  Epson-Smith went down on his knees, his left arm still held in Sebastian’s grasp. Too late, Sebastian saw the flash of the blade that had appeared in the man’s right hand. Slashing upward, he laid open Sebastian’s forearm to the bone.

  Sebastian stumbled back, slipping in his own blood, bumping into one of the Exhibition Room’s pedestals. Whirling, he caught up the bronze statue of a satyr and hurled it. As Epson-Smith ducked sideways, Sebastian yanked his own knife from his boot and charged. With a sweep of his forearm, Sebastian knocked the wrist of the hand holding the blade aside and drove his own dagger deep into Epson-Smith’s chest.

  He became aware, suddenly, of a woman screaming, a man’s harsh shout, running footsteps. Yanking his knife free, sliding in the spreading pool of blood, Sebastian hurtled back down the steep winding stairs. Sprinting across the vestibule, he set up a call for his curricle. If only Tom hadn’t gone far—

  “ ’Oly ’ell, gov’nor!” Wide-eyed, Tom reined the chestnuts in hard before the vestibule’s entrance. “You’re bleedin’ worse’n a leaky bucket.”

  Sebastian scrambled into the curricle. “You drive,” he said, yanking off his cravat to wind the long strip of linen around his throbbing arm. “The House of Commons. Quickly!”

  Chapter 59

  “What’s all this then?” Tom demanded, struggling to thread the curricle through the tangle of chaises, sedan chairs, gigs, and hackneys that clogged Parliament Street from Whitehall to far beyond the houses of Parliament and the Abbey.

  “There’s to be an inquiry this evening into the Orders in Council,” Sebastian said as the bells of the Abbey began to toll five o’clock. Men shouted and whips cracked. A donkey brayed. Ragged urchins and barking dogs darted past, the boys whooping and laughing. “Looks like it’s attracting the devil of a crowd.”

  “What time’s the Prime Minister s’posed to arrive?”

  “Five o’clock.” From up ahead came the crash of splintering wood as a landau hooked one of its wheels with a coal cart. “Bloody hell,” said Sebastian, grasping the seat rail with his good hand. “Pull up here. I can make better time on foot.”

  He leapt from the curricle and started running. Pushing his way up Margaret Street, he cut across Old Palace Yard to the small former chapel that stood at right angles to Westminster Hall and served as the House of Commons. Bursting through the double doors, he found himself in a dark, low-ceilinged lobby crowded with a throng of spectators queuing patiently for a spot in the galleries. He knew a surge of relief. He wasn’t too late.

  Glancing around, Sebastian snagged the arm of a self-important clerk bustling past and hauled him back. “Where is Perceval? Is he here yet? Tell me quickly, man.”

  “I say, sir,” bleated the clerk. “You’re not allowed here in boots.” He blanched as his gaze traveled from Sebastian’s bare neck to his bloodied, hastily bandaged arm. “And neck clothes are mandatory. Have you an introduction from a member? Because you really should have entered through the Hall, you kn—”

  Sebastian resisted the urge to shake the man. “Damn you, I’m not here to gawk from the galleries. Where is Perceval?”

  A movement to one side of the lobby caught Sebastian’s attention. A dark-haired man had risen from a seat near an open fire and was now walking briskly toward the entrance, one hand resting conspicuously inside his coat. “Bellingham,” said Sebastian. Then he bellowed, “Bellingham. Someone seize that man!”

  Shocked faces turned not toward Bellingham, but toward Sebastian.

  With an oath, Sebastian surged forward. The clerk latched on to his wounded arm and held tight. “Sir, I must insist—”

  The slight figure of the Prime Minister appeared in the open doorway. He had his head half turned away, speaking to someone behind him.

  “No!” shouted Sebas
tian, shaking off the clerk just as Bellingham walked up to the Prime Minister and fired a single shot into Perceval’s chest from a distance of no more than three or four feet. As Perceval stumbled back into the arms of the man behind him, Bellingham turned calmly and resumed his seat beside the fire.

  They carried the Prime Minister into the office of the secretary of the speaker. Someone called for a doctor, but one glance at the gaping charred hole in Perceval’s chest was enough to tell Sebastian the Prime Minister was beyond any doctor’s help.

  Sebastian looked around. “You,” he said, his gaze falling on the self-important clerk hovering nearby. “Run to Downing Street. Tell his family what has happened. Run!” he said again when the men hesitated.

  Perceval’s hand fluttered. “Spence? Is he here?”

  “He’s coming,” lied Sebastian, grasping the Prime Minister’s hand. Already, it felt cold.

  Perceval sucked in a gasping breath that rattled in his throat. “I would like to have seen him one last time before I . . .”

  Sebastian leaned forward, straining to hear his words. But the Prime Minister only stared up with blank, unseeing eyes.

  Chapter 60

  Paul Gibson thrust his needle through the flesh of Sebastian’s forearm, stitching up the long gash left by Epson-Smith’s blade. “You’re lucky,” said Gibson. “He nearly sliced the tendon.”

  Sebastian watched the Irishman work his needle in and out. “I think you sew better than my tailor.”

  Gibson tied off his thread and reached for a pair of scissors. “You keep me in practice.”

  Sebastian held out his arm to open and close his fist.

  “It would be better if you rested it for a few days,” said Gibson, turning away to smear salve on a bandage. “Not that I expect you to pay me any heed.” He began wrapping the bandage in place. “What do you think they’ll do to Bellingham?”

  “Hang him, I should think. Probably before the week is out.”

  “The man is obviously insane.”

  “Yes. But I doubt that will stop them.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” said Gibson, busy with his task, “is how the gentleman who stopped Miss Jarvis’s carriage on the way back from Richmond fit into all this.”

  “He was probably another hussar officer. He obviously wasn’t at the birthday debauchery, but he must have been involved in the plot to goad Bellingham into shooting Perceval. I suspect it was the four of them—Epson-Smith, Somerville, Drummond, and the Richmond assailant—who attacked the Magdalene House. Epson-Smith killed him to keep him from talking.”

  “You think there could be more mixed up in it?”

  Sebastian thought about the men who had nearly lured Hero Jarvis to her death. But all he said was, “I doubt we’ll ever know exactly how many hussars were involved.”

  “Particularly if the Crown continues to insist that Bellingham acted alone.”

  The sound of a carriage pulling up in the street outside drew Sebastian’s attention. Even before he heard the knock on the door, before he heard the lilt of her voice as she spoke to Mrs. Federico, he knew it was Kat.

  She came in, bringing with her the scent of the night and the promise of more rain. She wore a sapphire blue carriage dress with cream braided trim and a matching pelisse, and as she paused on the threshold to Gibson’s front room, the exquisite peacock feather of her jaunty blue hat curled down from the brim to rest against her pale cheek. He knew she hadn’t expected to find him here.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, her gaze focused resolutely on Gibson. “I see you’re busy. I’ll come back later.”

  She turned to go, but Gibson said, “No, wait. Let me just empty this and I’ll be back.” Picking up the basin of bloody water and soiled cloths, he walked out of the room.

  Her gaze fell to the bandage on Sebastian’s arm. “I’d heard you were wounded.”

  “It’s just a cut.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I wasn’t.” He slid off the edge of the table but made no move to approach her. They stared at each other across the width of the room. “Do you come here often?” he asked. “To see Gibson?”

  “Sometimes.”

  They fell silent. For one stolen moment he lost himself in looking at her, at the familiar childlike tilt of her nose and the full curve of her lips. He would have sworn that the very air quivered with an aching awareness of all they had once been to each other and all that they could never be again.

  She said, “I must go.” But still she lingered, her gaze on his. And he knew then with a quiet rush of despair that both this love and this pain would always be a part of him.

  And a part of her.

  Later that evening, Hero received a courteous note from Viscount Devlin briefly detailing for her benefit the day’s events and the circumstances surrounding the Magdalene House killings. He told her of the quarrel between Rachel and Tristan Ramsey, but without the knowledge Hero had acquired from Lady Sewell, Rachel’s subsequent flight would still have made no sense. She had no doubt that Devlin himself knew of Lord Fairchild’s dark secret, and it irked her that Devlin had thought to protect her by withholding the information from her.

  She held the crisp white sheet of his letter a moment too long, then resolutely thrust it into the library fire before her. She was still in the library, curled up in an overstuffed chair beside the fire and lost in the contemplation of the dancing flames, when she felt her father’s gaze upon her. She looked up to find him watching her from the doorway.

  “No book?” he said. His lips smiled, but his eyes were narrow with concern.

  She shifted uncomfortably beneath his regard, as if he might somehow detect the dangerous drift of her thoughts, just by looking at her. To forestall him, she said, “I heard Patrick Somerville is dead. Did you have him killed?”

  “No. It was my intention to do so, but he managed to beat me to it. Quinine and arsenic can be a deadly combination.”

  “He killed himself?”

  “Probably. Although for the sake of his father, it will be ruled an accident.”

  She tipped her head back against the seat cushion. “So many deaths,” she said quietly. “Any decision yet on who’ll replace Perceval?”

  Jarvis snorted. “I left Prinny and the rest arguing over whether to offer the premiership to Canning or Castlereagh. A moot point, since neither man will take it. Between Bonaparte and the Americans, this is a damnable time to be without a prime minister. Perceval might have been an ineffectual idiot, but he was better than no one.”

  “Will there be any repercussions from today’s events?” she asked with studied casualness. “To Devlin’s killing of Epson-Smith, I mean.”

  “Hardly. Epson-Smith attacked him. Oh, there’ll be some talk, of course. But then, there is always talk about Devlin. It will die down eventually.” He stared at her for so long it took all of her sangfroid to continue holding his gaze. “Devlin said there were three attempts on your life. I am only aware of two.”

  His enemies credited him with such omniscience that she’d worried he might somehow come to learn of those disastrous hours in the vaults beneath the ruined gardens of the old Somerset House. It was a relief to know that he had not. Perhaps, with time, she herself would be able to forget for days at a time that it had occurred. “There was no third attempt.”

  “You lie well,” he said, coming toward her, “but not well enough yet to deceive me.”

  Tipping back her head, she gave him a soft smile. “No one can deceive you, Papa.”

  “Not for long. Remember that,” he said. Reaching out, he touched her cheek, briefly, with his knuckles. It was the closest he ever came to a gesture of affection. Or an apology.

  It was the Earl of Hendon’s habit every morning that he was in London to rise early and exercise his big gray in Hyde Park before breakfast.

  On the Tuesday following the death of Spencer Perceval, the mist lay heavily on the rain-drenched grass. But the air held a n
ew crispness, a promise of the vital energy of a spring too long delayed in coming. Turning his black Arabian mare through the gates to the park, Sebastian could see the Earl trotting briskly up the Row, his body rising and falling in rhythmic precision with his horse’s easy action.

  For a moment, Sebastian checked, the familiar drumming of the gray’s hooves on the earth reverberating in the ghostly stillness. The urge to wheel the mare’s head and simply ride away was strong. But still he sat, his reins held in a clenched fist.

  Through the mist beyond the dark line of trees, he could see the spire of the Abbey and, beyond that, the towers of the ancient palace of Westminster. He kept remembering the helpless longing he’d seen in Perceval’s face as the dying Prime Minister asked for his son with his last, gasping breath. Sebastian’s anger was still there, burrowed deep. The anger and the hurt. But something had shifted within him, and he knew now what he must do.