Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  The discovery that his father, the Earl of Hendon, once kept a beautiful Irish actress named Arabella as his mistress had come as no surprise. Many men of their station did so. Nor was it unusual that Hendon had fathered a child upon his mistress. Such matters were typically handled discreetly. After birth, the child would be taken from its mother and dispatched to some “good farm family” in the country, never to be seen or heard from again. Except in this instance, the mother of Hendon’s love child had balked at his determination to separate her from her baby and fled back to Ireland.

  That should have been the end of the story. Instead, Arabella’s child had, in her turn, come to London. Calling herself Kat Boleyn, she had become one of the most acclaimed actresses of the London stage and mistress to a young viscount—Hendon’s son, Sebastian.

  She stood before him now, her fine kid gloves held in a tight grip, her carefully schooled face inscrutable. She said, “Do you know Hendon is not well?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “He has said nothing to me.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t, would he? You don’t speak to him.”

  “You make it sound as if I cut him. I don’t.”

  “Of course not. That would be too vulgar, wouldn’t it? Odd that a curt hello in passing should wound more than the cut direct. That at least would betray some emotion.”

  “Has he sent you here to plead his case?”

  “You should know better than that.”

  She was right, of course; he did know better. “I beg your pardon.” He swung away to the collection of carafes and glasses that rested on a table near the window. “A glass of ratafia?”

  He glanced over to see a wry smile curve her lips. “I think we both need something stronger, don’t you?”

  He reached for the brandy. “Something stronger, definitely.”

  The tension in the room—the awareness of what had once been between them and could never be again—stretched taut. She said, “Hendon is not to blame for what happened. He did nothing that men of his station haven’t done for a thousand years or more. He took a mistress and begat a child upon her. How could he have foreseen what we would become to each other?”

  Sebastian glanced up from splashing brandy into two glasses. “You defend him? He would have taken you from your mother if she hadn’t fled him.”

  “He meant it for the best.”

  “For whom?”

  She didn’t answer him. Hendon always did what was best for the St. Cyr lineage and the St. Cyr legacy. Anything and anyone else was expendable. She said, “You’re not angry with Hendon because of what he would have done to my mother.”

  “I’ve been angry with Hendon for years. This is just one more lie on top of so many others.”

  “Not a lie, exactly, Sebastian. He didn’t know I was his child. None of us did.”

  “Yet he knew you existed, and he never said a word. It rather begs the question, doesn’t it? What else hasn’t he told me?”

  Sebastian held out her glass. She took it, being very careful not to allow her fingertips to brush his. She said, “You haven’t found your mother yet?”

  For half his life, Sebastian had believed his mother dead, the victim of a boating accident the summer he was eleven. In truth, she had merely fled her loveless marriage—and abandoned Sebastian, her only surviving son. Another lie his father had told him. He said, “I believe she’s in France somewhere. The war makes searching for her . . . awkward.” He took a slow sip of his brandy and felt it burn all the way down. “You have forgiven Hendon for what he did to your mother?”

  “I was angry with him at first. Yet I’ve come to believe his love for Arabella was genuine. I see it in his face when he speaks of her. His voice softens. His eyes come alive.”

  Some flicker of emotion must have shown on Sebastian’s own face because she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” and he knew she’d misunderstood entirely the pain and envy she’d glimpsed.

  “I’ve known most of my life that there was no love in my parents’ marriage,” he said. She went to stand beside the bowed window overlooking Brook Street, her head turned away, and for one stolen moment he lost himself in looking at her. “Do you see Hendon much?” he asked.

  She swung to face him again. “He comes to the theater. Sometimes we go for a drive in the park.”

  “I don’t imagine Amanda likes that,” said Sebastian. Amanda, Lady Wilcox, was Sebastian’s other sister—his legitimate sister.

  “She knows the truth,” said Kat.

  “And acknowledges you no more than he.”

  “How can either of them acknowledge the truth when all the world knows I was your mistress?”

  Painful words. Words that brought back the shame of all they had once done together. Yet with the shame came such a rush of every feeling Sebastian had spent the last eight months trying to ignore that he shuddered.

  She set aside her brandy untouched. “I can understand your anger. You think I am not angry? But to blame Hendon for it is not right. He did not do this to us.”

  He drained his own glass and set it down with a snap. “Yet he somehow managed to get what he wanted, didn’t he?” Sebastian had loved Kat since he was twenty-one and she just sixteen. For all those years Hendon had fought and schemed to prevent his son and heir from marrying beneath him. In a sense it was ironic that the key to the destruction of their love had been there all along, if only he’d known. “You think the fact that it is—” Sebastian realized what he’d been about to say and began again. “You think the fact that it was wrong for me to want you should somehow make the loss of you easier to bear? Well, it doesn’t.”

  He was surprised to see a sad smile light up her eyes. “Oh, Sebastian. You always think you should be able to change things, to make them right.”

  “Are you telling me I’m arrogant?”

  “You know you are.”

  They shared a smile that faded slowly. He said, “How are you? Truthfully?”

  “Truthfully?” She raised her chin in a gesture he remembered all too well. “Yates is not a demanding husband. We deal well together. He has his life and I have mine.”

  Sebastian had heard something of Russell Yates’s activities, the unorthodox but discreet liaisons that had continued since his marriage. He’d heard no such tales of Kat. “Do you?” he said.

  She twitched one shoulder in a shrug. “I have my work at the theater. It’s enough.”

  He walked up to her, close enough that he could have touched her although he did not. “More than I want anything else,” he said, “I want you to be happy.”

  She gazed up at him. “True happiness is rare.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  “Paul Gibson tells me you’ve involved yourself in the death of these women in Covent Garden.”

  “Yes.”

  He was aware of her searching his face, and he wondered what she saw there. The sleepless nights? The months of drinking and dissipation that had brought oblivion if no relief? She said, “In the past, I always worried whenever you found yourself drawn into murder investigations. But I suppose it’s preferable to watching you break your neck on a hunting field or drink yourself to death.”

  He swung abruptly away. “You say Hendon is not well. What is wrong with him?”

  “The doctors say it’s his heart. He eats too much, drinks too much.”

  “That’s not likely to stop.”

  “He’s been worse these last months. He misses you, Sebastian. The estrangement between you causes him much grief.”

  Sebastian paused beside his desk and looked back at her. It was a moment before he could answer. “I’m sorry. I’m not ready to speak to him yet.”

  She nodded briskly, then retied her bonnet strings and pulled on her fine kid gloves. “Just don’t wait until it’s too late, Sebastian.”

  Chapter 17

  At the highly unfashionable hour of half past nine in the morning, Miss Hero Jarvis was drinking a cup of tea A in the morn
ing room when her father came upon her. “You’re up early,” she said.

  He sank into the chair opposite hers. “I wanted to catch you before you left the house.”

  “Oh? Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked, reaching for the teapot.

  “Yes, thank you.” He leaned forward, his frowning gaze hard on her face. “I thought we had an agreement.”

  She poured a measure of milk into his cup with a steady hand, then added the tea. “I haven’t violated it. I agreed not to approach the magistrates, and I have not done so.” Of course, their agreement had been more along the lines of an edict, to which she’d had little choice but to concur. He’d warned her that if she did attempt to approach the magistrates about the killings, he would let it be known that her claims to have been present in the house at the time of the attack were motivated by nothing more than a desire to draw attention to the plight of such women and should therefore be disregarded.

  She handed him the cup. “I take it you’ve received a report from one or more of your minions?”

  “You knew I would.”

  “Yes.”

  He pressed his lips together in a sour line. “It is you, isn’t it? The gentlewoman who has been asking questions about the Magdalene House?”

  “Did you think I would not?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I know your main concern in all this is that my name not be bandied about in connection with the incident. You needn’t fear that I’ve been anything other than discreet. There is nothing to link my name to what happened that night.”

  Lord Jarvis pushed aside his tea untasted, his gaze still on her face. “If I ordered you to stop, would you obey me?”

  She met his stare without flinching. “Yes. But I would resent it.”

  Jarvis nodded. “Then I won’t ask it of you.”

  Hero didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she felt it easing out of her in a long sigh.

  He pushed to his feet. “It goes without saying that you will be cautious.”

  “I will be cautious.”

  He nodded again and left the room.

  She stared after him in surprise. She had expected him to ask her about Devlin’s involvement, as well, for she had no doubt that by now her father had also learned of the Viscount’s interest in the murders. Jarvis’s reticence puzzled her, but only for a moment. She did not know all the details of the animosity between the two men, but she knew it ran deep. And she realized it doubtless had never occurred to Lord Jarvis that Devlin had involved himself in the Magdalene House murders at her specific request.

  For an extra sixpence she was able to acquire a small booklet detailing the wonders of the various exhibition halls. She wandered for a time, studying first the collection of carvings in wood and ivory, then the curiosities brought back from the South Seas by Captain Cook. In the western wing she came upon the Pantherion, which contained—according to her booklet—“all the known Quadrupeds of the Earth.” Stuffed, of course. The Pantherion was reached by way of a basaltic cavern said to be modeled on the Giant’s Causeway of the Isle of Staffa—although her guidebook neglected to mention precisely where that might be.

  In the distance, Hero could hear a progression of church bells chiming the quarter hour. It was nearly eleven o’clock. She studied an Indian hut set against the background of a tropical forest complete with glassy-eyed elephants and roaring tigers and a large, coiled snake, and felt a sense of frustration well within her. It had been a mistake, she realized, to set the rendezvous for this morning. She’d been driven by a sense of urgency, but she should have allowed more time for news of her reward to spread. More time for the women of Covent Garden to summon up the courage to step forward.

  She climbed the steps to the first floor, where a room styled to resemble a medieval hall displayed an exhibit of historic arms and armor. Here she found a young woman seated by herself on a bench beneath the domed ceiling. Hero eyed the woman with a renewed surge of expectation. She was obviously waiting for someone. She sat with her reticule clutched in both hands, her gaze darting warily around the room. With her demur pink muslin and round bonnet, she looked more like a young debutante than Haymarket ware, but perhaps she had deliberately dressed in a way that would not draw attention to herself. Hero had just made up her mind to approach the young woman when she jumped up from her seat and rushed across the hall toward the stairs.

  Looking around, Hero noticed the gentleman in buff-colored breeches and an olive drab coat who had followed her up the steps. Of course, thought Hero; a secret assignation.

  Blowing out an ungenteel breath of disappointment, Hero was about to turn back toward the stairs herself when a woman’s lightly accented voice said, “You’re the one, aren’t you? The gentry mort who was at Molly O’Keefe’s, asking questions about Rose and Hannah?”

  Hero turned as a tall Jamaican with a long regal neck and an elegant carriage stepped out of the shadows. Hero felt a frisson of anticipation. “Do you have information for me?”

  “For a price,” said the Jamaican.

  “You’ll be paid your twenty pounds when and if the information you provide proves to be correct.”

  The woman’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed. “How do I know you’ll deliver?”

  Hero’s head jerked up. No one had ever before questioned her honor. “You have my word.”

  The woman simply laughed.

  Hero said, “What’s your name?”

  “Tasmin. Tasmin Poole.”

  “You know where I can find Hannah?”

  Tasmin Poole shook her head. “I don’t know where Hannah Green is. But I’ve got this.” She held up a delicate silver chain bracelet from which dangled a shield embossed with a coat of arms.

  Hero reached out her hand, but the Cyprian closed her fist tight around the bracelet, hiding it from view. “Uh-uh. You want t’see it, you pay for it.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Rose gave it t’me.”

  “Gave it to you?”

  Tasmin Poole smiled. “Let’s call it a payment.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know this bracelet was Rose’s?”

  A sly smile curved the Jamaican Cyprian’s wide mouth. “You have my word.”

  Hero’s fingers tightened around the strings of her reticule. “I’ll give you ten guineas for the bracelet.”

  “Fifteen,” said the Jamaican.

  “Twelve.”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Thirteen, then.” Hero reached into her reticule for the money. She’d have paid twice that. “Now what can you tell me about Rose?”

  In one deft motion, Tasmin Poole handed over the bracelet and scooped up the payment. “That’ll cost you extra.”

  Chapter 18

  In an effort to humor his volatile French cook, Sebastian was picking at an elegant nuncheon of cold salmon in his dining room, when Tom returned with the information that Luke O’Brian, the man named by Ian Kane as Rose’s particular customer, was a purchasing agent with clients who ranged from India to the West Indies and Canada.

  “He buys ’em everything from kegs o’ nails and plows to furniture and rugs and stuff for their ’ouses—whatever they need. I couldn’t find anyone what ’ad anything to say to ’is discredit. They say ’e’s ’onest as can be with ’is clients, yet ’e don’t seem to put the squeeze on the merchants, neither.”