Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  Swearing, he heaved the stone at the gate again and again, until he was sweating and his hands were bleeding from the stone’s jagged edges. After perhaps the tenth try, she said calmly, “Stop it. It isn’t doing any good and you’re only hurting yourself.”

  He swung to face her, his breath shuddering his chest. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “We could try to set fire to the door. Someone might see the smoke and come to investigate.”

  It was a crazy idea, but not without merit. He eyed the distance to the door at the top of the stairs. “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Still breathing hard, he went back to select a fist-sized chunk of rock from the rubble. “Here, hold this,” he said, handing her the rock. He stripped off his groom’s coat and waistcoat, then pulled his shirt off over his head. The damp chill of the subterranean vault sent a shiver through him. He hadn’t thought to check his boot to see if they’d missed his knife. They had.

  “Do you always carry that?” she asked, watching him slip the knife from its hidden sheath.

  “Always.” He flashed her a smile that showed his teeth. “I even threw it at your father once.”

  Using the blade, he sliced his shirt into strips and began to plait them. Her mind was quick. She said, “Let me help.”

  He wrapped the plaited shirt around the rock like a long wick, then opened the hinged tin and horn door of the lantern.

  “Don’t put out the candle,” she warned.

  Grunting, he kindled the torn edge of the shirt, watched it flare and catch. Thrusting his arms through the iron bars of the gate, he held the burning, weighted shirt as long as he could. Then he hurled it at the door above.

  It flew through the air, a flaming catapult that illuminated the shadowy stairwell and hit the stout door with a solid thud. Falling to the stone lintel in a shower of sparks, it burned up bright for one shining moment and went out.

  “Hell and the devil confound it,” he whispered, then added, “I beg your pardon, Miss Jarvis.”

  She stood beside him, her hands, like his, gripping the bars of the gate. “That’s quite all right.”

  He swung to look at her, assessing the sturdy cloth of her riding habit. It wouldn’t burn any better than his coat or waistcoat.

  She said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Your petticoats.”

  “My—” She broke off. He thought for a moment that she meant to refuse him. But what she said was, “Turn around.”

  He went to select more rocks from the rubble. She said, “I’m finished.”

  He threw his coat up to the door first, followed by his rough waistcoat, not even bothering to try to light them first. “Why?” she asked as he set to work ripping the first of her fine petticoats.

  “They’re fodder. The lawn of the petticoats will burn fast, but the wool coat will smolder.”

  “We hope.”

  “We hope,” he agreed.

  He threw the first petticoat-wrapped rock short, so that it burned in a bright, useless heap on the second step. The second try landed square.

  “Thank goodness,” she whispered, pressing against the gate, her gaze on the small fire above.

  It burned for a time, long enough to fill the air with smoke and the pungent odor of singed wool. Coughing, she said, “Will it kill us, do you think? The smoke, I mean.”

  “Probably not if we go to the far end of the chamber, near the rubble. I could feel air coming in there.”

  But in the end they had no need to retreat. Once again, the fire sputtered and went out. They had part of one petticoat left.

  “It isn’t going to work,” he said.

  “It has to work.” She pushed away from the gate. “Start ripping up the last petticoat,” she said, setting to work on the brass buttons of her riding habit. “Your coat was wet from lying on the stone.”

  “You’ll be cold,” he said.

  She stripped off her habit with angry, purposeful jerks, the white flesh of her arms bathed in gold by the dim light of the flickering lantern. “Just hit the door.”

  Both parts of the riding habit landed with satisfying plops atop his coat and waistcoat. He’d have added his breeches, too, but they were of buckskin and would never burn. Clad only in her short, lightweight stays, a thin chemise, boots and stockings, she watched him carefully kindle the last petticoat. He let it flare up until it was almost burning his hand, then lobbed it at the pile of clothes above.

  This time, the cloth beneath the burning missile caught, blazing up hot and fast. The air filled with the crackle of flames, the smell of singed wood. They stood and watched it burn, the big bell of St. Clements tolling four times in the distance. Then, as the small bell began to toll again for those who might have miscounted the first bell, this fire, too, hissed softly and went out.

  Chapter 41

  “I’m sorry I involved you in this,” she said.

  They sat side by side on the ledge that ran along the near wall of the stone vaulted chamber. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs so that she could hug them close. He had set the lantern next to her on the ledge, but its feeble warmth provided a pitiful defense against the cold gloom of the subterranean room.

  He turned his head to look at her. She’d lost most of her pins. Her hair was coming down, falling in artless disarray about her face. It made her look uncharacteristically approachable. He said, “I involved myself.”

  “Why?” That frown line appeared again between her eyes as she studied his face. “Why do you involve yourself in the investigation of murder?”

  He tilted back his head, his gaze on the ancient vaulting above. “I’ve been told it’s a form of arrogance, thinking I can solve a mystery that baffles others.”

  “But that’s not why you do it.”

  He felt a smile curve his lips. “No.”

  “It’s the victims, isn’t it? That’s why you do it. For them.”

  He said, “It’s why you involved yourself in this mess, isn’t it? For the woman who died in your arms?”

  She was silent for a moment. He could hear the distant drip of water, feel the weight of a thousand tons of earth pressing down on them. She said, “I’d like to think so. But I have the most lowering reflection that I’ve been doing it for myself.”

  “Yourself?”

  She shifted restlessly, edging ever so slightly closer to him. If she’d been any other woman, he would have offered her the warmth of his body—for his sake as well as hers. But one did not offer to hold Lord Jarvis’s daughter, even if she was freezing and about to die. She said, “My father thinks I involve myself in reform because I have a maudlin attraction to good works.”

  “He doesn’t know you well, does he?”

  She surprised him by letting out a soft huff of laughter. “In that way, no. I’m not a charitable person. I work for reform out of a sense of what’s right, a conviction that things ought to be different. It’s far more intellectual than emotional.”

  “I think you’re being too severe with yourself.”

  “No. I concern myself with the fate of the poor women and children of London the way I might concern myself with the well-being of cart horses. I empathize with them as fellow creatures, but I certainly never imagined I could ever find myself in their position. But then—”

  She broke off, swallowed, and tried again. “Then I met Rose—Rachel Fairchild. And I realized . . . there was a woman like me. A woman born into wealth and privilege who had danced at Almack’s and driven in her carriage in Hyde Park. And yet somehow she had ended up there, at the Magdalene House. That’s when I think for the first time I truly understood . . . there but for the grace of God go I.”

  He swung his head to look at her. The light from the lantern limned the proud lines of her face with a soft glow, touched her hair with a fire it lacked by the light of day. He said, “So that’s why you set yourself to discover who she was and w
hy she was killed? Out of guilt? Because your life remained privileged and safe while hers . . . fell apart?”

  A trembling smile touched her lips. “I’m not exactly safe now, am I?” She shivered, and he reached awkwardly out to draw her against the heat of his body. He expected her to resist, but all she said was, “I am so scared.”

  He chaffed his hands up and down the cold flesh of her arms, rested his chin on the top of her head, and held her close. “So am I.”

  And so he talked to her about the places he’d been, and about the War. He found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone, not even Kat. He talked to her about the things he’d seen, and the things he’d done, and why in the end he’d realized he had to leave it all behind or lose himself in a world where everything he believed in could be sacrificed for a chimera. When he fell silent after a time, she said, “Don’t stop. Please. Just . . . talk.”

  And so he did.

  He tightened his arms around her, holding her so that her back was against his bare chest. Holding her that way, he couldn’t see her face and she couldn’t see him. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I suppose I regret having failed my father. The one thing above all else he wanted of me was that I marry and sire an heir. I didn’t do that.” He hesitated. “Why? What do you regret?”

  She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “So many things. I’ve always wanted to travel. Sail up the Nile. Explore the jungles of Africa. Cross the deserts of Mesopotamia to the land of the Hindu Kush.”

  He found himself smiling. “I can see you doing that. What else?”

  She, too, was quiet for a moment. He felt her chest rise with a deeply drawn breath, then fall. “I regret never having known what it’s like to have a child of my own. Which is an odd thing to realize, since I never intended to marry.”

  “You didn’t? Why not?”

  “A woman who marries in England today consigns herself to a legal status little different from that occupied by slaves in America.”

  “Ah. You’re a student of Mary Wollstonecraft.”

  She twisted around to look up at him. “You know of her work?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Yes.”

  He said, “She married.”

  “I know. I’ve never been able to figure out why.”

  He smiled against her hair. “You wouldn’t.”

  A silence stretched out, filled with awareness of things said and unsaid. And then the big bell of St. Clements began to toll the hour, followed by its echo. Five o’clock.

  “Oh, God.” She pushed away from him, thrusting up from the ledge to stalk across the shadowy chamber to where the pile of rubble separated them from the river. She stood with her back to him, her hands coming up to rake the loose hair from her face, her fingers clenching together behind her neck. When the chimes of St. Clements began to play “Lass o’ Glowrie,” she shifted her hands to cover her ears, as if to block out the sound. “I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not here. Not like this.”

  He went to her, drawing her back into the comfort of his arms. She turned toward him, her face lifting to his. Her kiss was a maiden’s kiss, driven by fear and desperation rather than lust. And he clung to her as fervently as she clung to him, because he knew her horror, and shared it.

  He heard her breath catch, felt her body arch against his as the bells of St. Clements echoed away into stillness. He knew a strange sense of wonder, like a man awakening from a long, drugged sleep. And he thought, This is what life feels like. This is what a woman feels like. Skin soft, heart pounding against his, her hand guiding his to all the secret places she’d never been touched. No restraints now. No strictures of society that could stand in the face of looming death.

  Picking her up, he carried her back to where the lantern cast a pool of golden warmth. He felt her eyes watching him as he eased her down beneath him. He said, “Tell me this is what you want.”

  In answer, she slid her hands up to his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  She kept her eyes wide-open when he entered her. She cried out once, sharply, her breath coming in quick little pants. He tasted the tears spilling wetly down her cheeks. He said, “I can stop.”

  She said, “Don’t stop,” and closed her eyes.

  Fiercely, she held him to her as if she could in this last act of defiance and by sheer force of will hold on to life itself. He’d thought himself dead within. Had at times found himself wishing for death. Ironic that he should be so aware of the life coursing through him now, when he was about to lose it.

  “Hold me,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear, her fingers curling into his shoulders.

  He’d known somehow that she would taste like this, feel like this. As he loomed over her in the flickering darkness, she said, “The French call it le petit mort. I’ve always wondered why.”

  And he said, “What could be more intimate than to die together?”

  She seemed to sense his tension. “What is it?” she asked, or started to ask. Except by then the sound was unmistakable. It was the relentless surge of rushing water.

  Chapter 42

  Thrusting up from the ledge where they had lain together, Sebastian scrambled into his breeches and reached for the lantern. The candle was nearly gone now, guttering in its socket as he held the lantern high. For a moment the light dimmed and almost went out.

  The water was a black torrent seeping through the rubble fill. He grabbed Hero’s hand, dragging her with him to the iron gate. Already he could feel the water cold against his feet. “Climb up onto the crosspiece of the gate,” he shouted.

  She clung to the iron bars, her eyes huge in a pale face, her hair loose around her. She said, “Throw the lantern.”

  His gaze met hers.

  “Throw it,” she said. “It might ignite the clothes.”

  It was one last crazy gesture of defiance. He eased the battered tin and horn cylinder between the bars, transferring his grip to the base. It was awkward, throwing it that way, the hot metal burning his fingers. The lantern soared up the stair shaft, the light flickering over stone coffers and worn steps. Then it slammed against the wooden door in a rending of tin and horn and they were plunged into darkness.

  He moved to stand behind her, his body close to hers. The water was already lapping at their ankles. He said, “When the water gets too high, you must stand on my shoulders.”

  Her teeth were clenched so tightly against the numbing strain of cold and fear that she could barely push out the words. “To buy myself an extra minute? No.”

  He rested his cheek against her hair, his body bracketing hers, his grip on the iron bars tightening as he felt the tug of the water swirling around his legs.

  She said, “I never liked you. What an irony that we should die together.” And he laughed.

  The water was at his hips when he heard the scraping of a bolt being drawn back above. He stiffened, anger surging through him. “It seems our murderers have misjudged the tide,” he said softly against her ear.

  Her head came up, her body jerking as sunlight flooded in from above and a man’s puzzled voice echoed down to them. “Wot the bloody ’ell? There’s a pile o’ burned clothes ’ere! That musta been wot started the fire. Only wot the bloody ’ell—”