Where Serpents Sleep

by C. S. Harris

  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.”

  “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.

  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 o
nly 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.

  Taking a deep breath, and then another, he forced himself to uncurl his fists and walk away.

  The irony of Hero Jarvis, determined spinster, succumbing to the lures of the flesh in a moment of frightened weakness was not lost on her. She kept telling herself that, with time, she would come to terms with the cascade of embarrassment and consternation in which she now floundered. Resolutely putting all thought of the incident out of her head, she’d just picked up her book again for perhaps the tenth time when the butler, Grisham, appeared to scratch at her door. “There is a personage here to see you, miss.”

  Hero looked around. “A personage?”

  “Yes, miss. I hope I haven’t done wrong to admit her, but I know your . . . er . . . activities do sometimes bring you into contact with a certain class of female which you would otherwise be—”

  Hero cut him off. “Where is she?”

  “I left her in the entrance hall with one of the footmen watching her.”

  “Watching her? What do you think she’s going to do? Make off with the silver?”

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  Hero closed her book and hurried downstairs.

  James the footman stood at the base of the steps, his back pressed against the paneled wall, his arms crossed at his chest, his gaze never wavering from the auburn-haired woman who sat perched on the edge of one of the Queen Anne chairs lined up along the hall. She wore a spangled pink dress striped à la Polonaise, with a blatantly low décolletage decorated with burgundy-colored ribbons. A saucy hat sporting three burgundy plumes completed the stunning ensemble. Once, the effect might have been jaunty. But the plumes drooped, the Cyprian’s shoulders slumped, and she had one hand up to her mouth so that she could gnaw nervously on her thumbnail. Hero had never seen her before in her life.

  “I understand you wished to see me?” said Hero.

  The woman leapt up, her eyes wide. Now that Hero was closer, she realized that beneath the plumes and rouge, the Cyprian was no more than a girl. Sixteen, perhaps, seventeen at the most. She was so small she barely came up to Hero’s shoulder. She was visibly shaking with fear, but she notched her chin up, determined to brazen it out. “You’re Miss Jarvis?”

  “That’s right,” said Hero.

  The girl cast a scornful glance at the footman. “I ain’t here to prig yer bloody silver.”

  “Then why precisely are you here, Miss—?”

  “I’m Hannah,” said the girl. “Hannah Green.”

  Chapter 46

  “Indeed?” said Hero, lifting one eyebrow. She’d wondered how long it would be before hordes of tawdry “Hannahs” started showing up at her door.

  The girl frowned in confusion. “Aye,” she said slowly.

  Hero crossed her arms. “Prove it.”

  The girl’s mouth sagged. “What? Ye don’t believe me? Ye can ask anybody. They’ll tell ye.”

  “Anybody such as . . . whom?”

  The girl put her hand to her forehead. “Aw,” she wailed, half turning away. “Now what the bloody ’ell am I supposed to do?”

  “You could go back where you came from,” suggested Hero, torn between annoyance and amusement.

  “What? An’ get me neck snapped like poor Tasmin?”

  Amusement and annoyance both fled, chased by a cold chill. “Come in here.” Hero put her hand on the girl’s arm, plucked her into the morning room, and closed the door on the interested footman.

  “Where precisely have you been?” Hero demanded.

  The girl’s eyes slid away, going round as they assessed the room with its yellow silk hangings and damask chairs, its gilt framed paintings and tall mirrors. “Gor,” she breathed. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this. It makes the Academy’s parlor look downright shabby, it does.”

  Hero spared a thought for her grandmother’s reaction, were she to be told that her morning room compared favorably to a brothel. “After you left the Academy,” said Hero, still unconvinced this ingenue really was Hannah Green, “what did you do?”

  Hannah wandered the room. Hero kept an eye on Hannah’s hands. Hannah said, “Rose drug me to that bloody Magdalene ’Ouse. She said we’d be safe there, that no one would think t’look for us there.” Hannah’s lips thinned with remembered outrage. “Six o’clock in the bloody morning!”

  Understanding dawned. “They made you get up at six?”

  “Not just get up. Get up and pray. For a whole bloody hour!”

  “Every day?” said Hero.

  “Aye! The first time, I thought it was just some mean trick they was playin’ on us, but when they done it again the next day, I knew we were in for it.”

  “Rose didn’t mind?”

  “No,” said Hannah in a voice tinged with mingled awe and exasperation. “I think she actually liked it. It was scary.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I left. I was afraid they might try to stop me, but if truth were told, I think them Quakers was glad to see the back of me.”

  “You weren’t afraid to leave?”

  “Nah. I mean, I was scared when we left the Academy, but after a couple of days, I started thinking it was all a hum, that Rose had made it all up.” She reconsidered. “Well, most of it.”

  “Surely you didn’t go back to the Academy?” Hero asked, stunned.

  The girl looked at her as if she were daft. “Ye take me fer a flat or something? No. I got me a room off the Haymarket.” She paused. “ ’Course, when I heard what happened at the Magdalene ‘Ouse last Monday, I got scared all over again. I tried to lay low but, well, a body’s got t’eat.”

  Hero studied the girl’s animated face. If she really was Hannah Green, the girl was living proof that God takes care of idiots. “Tell me about Tasmin,” said Hero.

  The girl sniffed. “I was working the stretch between Norris Street and the George when she found me. She said there was a gentry mort willin’ to pay ten pounds t’talk to me, but if’n we was smart, we could maybe figure out a way to get more.”

  Hero had actually offered twenty pounds to anyone who could put her in touch with Hannah Green. But Tasmin Poole had obviously been less than honest with her former coworker. “Go on.”

  The girl’s eyes slid away. “Tasmin was gonna write ye—Tasmin was clever, ye know. She could read and write like nothin’ you ever saw. She came up to m’room to work on writin’ the note while I went to get us some sausage rolls. It’s when I was comin’ back that I saw that cove going into the lodging house.”

  “A man?” said Hero. “What man?”