Where Serpents Sleep

by Harris, C. S.

  “If they’re alive, I’ll find them, my lord,” said Calhoun, and bowed himself out.

  Scrubbed clean of the last lingering traces of Billingsgate, Sebastian prowled the West End, from the clubs of St. James’s to the pleasure haunts of Covent Garden. He was looking for the malaria-plagued hussar captain from Northamptonshire named Patrick Somerville, and finally ran him to ground in the Crown and Thorn, a tavern near Whitehall popular with both military men and sporting young men from the country.

  “Any luck yet locating your missing friend?” asked Sebastian, pausing beside Somerville’s table, where he sat with his chin sunk against his chest and shoulders hunched as if against the cold.

  Somerville looked up and shook his head. “We haven’t found a trace of him.”

  Pulling out a chair, Sebastian signaled a passing waiter and ordered two more pints. “I understand you served in Africa,” he said casually.

  “Yes, Egypt,” said Somerville. “As well as the Sudan and Cape Town.”

  “I spent some time in Egypt myself, but I never went below the Sahara.”

  They spoke for a time of Africa and the Americas, slipping easily into that camaraderie known to soldiers everywhere. Sebastian took his time bringing the conversation around to the Fairchilds. “You grew up in Northamptonshire, I take it?” he asked casually.

  “Wansford.” Reaching into his pocket, Somerville tipped the contents of a rice-paper packet of white powder into one palm. He licked it clean, then gulped his beer as a chaser. “Quinine,” he said when he became aware of Sebastian watching him.

  “With a little added kick of arsenic?”

  The man gave a wry grin. “It’s a winning combination. Africa would be lost to us without it.”

  Sebastian said, “Was Cedric Fairchild with you in Africa?”

  “Cedric? No. We’ve known each other since we were in leading strings. My father’s land marches with Lord Fairchild’s estate.”

  “Then you know his sister Rachel.” Sebastian deliberately kept the sentence in the present tense.

  Somerville nodded. “She used to come over and play with m’sisters when she was little.”

  Sebastian smiled. “How many sisters do you have?”

  Somerville gave a mock groan. “Five. M’father claims buying a pair of colors is nothing compared to the cost of a London Season.”

  “How many still left to go off?”

  “Four. Fortunately Mary—the eldest—managed to do quite well for herself. Married Lord Berridge, you know. She’s promised to sponsor her younger sisters, when the time comes. M’father’s relieved, I can tell you. He always hoped Cedric would take a fancy to one of them, but I’m afraid Cedric always looked upon my sisters as if they were his sisters, too.”

  “I imagine they were often at Fairchild Hall.”

  “Well, no,” said Somerville. His eyes were bright, feverish with a deadly combination of sickness and arsenic. “As a matter of fact, m’father would never let any of ’em go over there.” The captain hesitated, then leaned forward to add softly, “He always said Lord Fairchild was a tad too fond of little girls, if you know what I mean?”

  Sebastian took a slow sip of his beer. A tad too fond of little girls. It was a polite, euphemistic expression for something so ugly and bestial most Englishmen found it difficult to admit it actually existed in their oh so proper and painfully civil society. If Somerville hadn’t imbibed so many beers, Sebastian doubted the man would even have mentioned it.

  Had there been rumors around the village of Wansford? Sebastian wondered. Tales of frightened little girls? Servants who caught glimpses of what was meant to be hidden? Sebastian couldn’t even say exactly what had first raised the suspicion in his head. There couldn’t be that many reasons a gently bred young woman would flee her home to end her days on the streets.

  Yet Rachel Fairchild had run away twice. Once from the Fairchild townhouse in Curzon Street, then again from the Academy in Covent Garden. Were the two flights linked? Or had the first flight merely exposed her to the danger that had led to the second—and, ultimately, to her death?

  Sebastian regarded the young man beside him. “Tell me about the first Lady Fairchild.”

  “Lady Fairchild?” Somerville looked surprised. “She was French, you know. An émigrée. I remember she always wore a red velvet band around her neck, in memory of some relative or other who’d been guillotined.” He brought up one hand to touch his throat. “It fascinated me when I was a lad. But I don’t recall much else about her. I was still at Eton when she died.”

  “Was she ill for long?”

  “Ill? Hardly. She was shot.”

  “Shot?”

  Somerville nodded. “Lord Fairchild himself found her in the Pavilion—you know, one of those follies built like a Greek temple. By the lake. The inquest decided it was some poacher’s shot gone wild, but, well”—Somerville shrugged—“people will talk.”

  “They thought it was murder?”

  “Murder? Oh, no.” Somerville drained his tankard. “They thought it was suicide. But then, what were they going to do? Bury her ladyship at the crossroads with a stake through her heart? They returned a verdict of death by misadventure, and Lady Fairchild now sleeps peacefully in the family tomb.”

  “Buy you another beer?” offered Sebastian.

  The captain looked at his tankard as if startled to discover it empty. “I thank you, but no.” He set the tankard aside and rose to his feet. “I promised m’sister Mary I’d take her for a drive around the park this afternoon. Since I’ve been posted back here to London, she’s decided to make good use of me—she’s lined me up for everything from Lady Melbourne’s famous picnic this Saturday to some grand ball or t’other I can’t remember when. It’s enough to make a man look upon forced marches and monthlong sieges with something approaching fondness.” Smiling faintly, Somerville gave a casual salute and turned toward the door.

  It was when Sebastian was leaving the Crown and Thorn that he very nearly walked straight into the Earl of Hendon. Both father and son took a startled, awkward step back, and for one blazing moment their gazes met and held.

  They had encountered each other in this manner a dozen times or more over the past eight months. And each time Sebastian had felt the same shaking rush of anger and betrayal, the same brutal reminder of all he was trying to forget. He thought that, in time, he might be able to forgive Hendon for the lies, for the wretched coil Sebastian knew was not intentional, even if it was of Hendon’s making. But Sebastian wasn’t sure how he was ever going to forgive Hendon for the triumphant joy Sebastian had glimpsed in his father’s face the day Sebastian’s world had come crashing down around him.

  He was aware of the leap of hope in his father’s eyes. Saw, too, when hope faded into hurt. With painful politeness, Sebastian executed a short bow, said, “Good evening, sir,” and withdrew.

  Chapter 36

  Having bathed and exchanged her ruined burgundy carriage dress for a walking dress of soft fawn alpaca, Hero sallied forth again, this time to pay her long-delayed call on Rachel’s sister Lady Sewell.

  The former Georgina Fairchild had married a middle-aged baronet named Sir Anthony Sewell. Sewell was comfortably rather than excessively wealthy, his house on Hanover Square well appointed but modest. The match had surprised many, for Georgina Fairchild was both attractive and well dowered, yet she had contracted this unspectacular alliance just halfway through her first Season. Hero Jarvis was not the type of female to interest herself in such gossip and speculation, but she nevertheless found herself contemplating possible explanations as she followed Lady Sewell’s butler up the stairs to the Sewells’ drawing room.

  She discovered Lady Sewell already entertaining visitors. One, a flaxen-haired, plump-faced young woman in pink muslin, Hero recognized as Lady Jane Collins. She sat on a red damask sofa beside a sprightly older woman introduced to Hero as Miss More. Miss More was the well-known author of numerous bestselling tracts on Christian piety, an
d it soon became obvious to Hero that Lady Sewell, too, was something of an Evangelical.

  “We’ve just been discussing this dreadful new poem that has taken the ton by storm,” said Lady Jane, shaking her head and tut-tutting in a way one might expect of a woman thirty years older. “Shocking. Positively shocking.”

  Hero glanced at Lady Sewell. Tall and slim, wearing a high-necked crimson gown of figured muslin, she sat in a chair covered in the same red-and-gold-striped silk that hung at the windows. The room was dramatically yet tastefully done. The vibrant palette became its owner, for she was dark of hair and pale of skin, with exquisite high cheekbones and enormous green eyes. Except for the tall, slender nature of her build and those green eyes, there was nothing about this intense, self-contained woman to remind Hero of the frightened Cyprian she had met in Covent Garden.

  “Lady Jane is referring to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, of course,” said Lady Sewell. “Have you read it, Miss Jarvis?”

  Hero was torn between her natural tendency for blunt honesty and the need not to alienate Rachel’s sister. Whatever she thought of the absurd posturing of Lord Byron himself, Hero found his poem both lyrically written and profoundly emotionally evocative. She compromised by simply saying, “I have read it, yes.”

  “The profane, too, have their place in God’s plan,” intoned Miss More with all the moral authority of a woman who’d spent the last thirty years of her life writing improving religious tracts. “They serve to confirm the truths they mean to oppose.”

  “Vice enhancing virtue by contrast?” said Hero drily.

  Miss More’s pinched lips stretched into a smile. “Exactly.”

  Hero suppressed the urge to shift restlessly in her striped silk chair. She could hardly bring up Rachel with the two Evangelical ladies present. Yet propriety limited Hero’s own visit to fifteen minutes. If they didn’t leave soon—

  As if on cue, Miss More and Lady Jane rose to their feet and, after reassuring themselves of Lady Sewell’s plans to attend the next meeting of the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews, took their leave. Hero waited until she heard their footsteps descending the stairs, then said, “I met your sister Rachel the other day.”

  Lady Sewell sat very still. “My sister?”

  Hero pushed on. “You are very different from each other, are you not?”

  Lady Sewell smoothed her skirt over her knee with a hand that was not quite steady. “That’s right. Rachel takes after our mother.”

  Hero studied the other woman’s composed features. Either Lady Sewell was an incredibly cold woman, or she had no idea where Hero was going. She said more gently, “You haven’t been told, have you?”

  “Been told? Been told what?”

  How did you tell a woman her little sister had been murdered? Hero had never been very good at this sort of thing. She said bluntly, “I’m sorry. Rachel is dead.”

  Lady Sewell’s mouth sagged open, then closed, the muscles jumping along her tight jaw. “There must be some mistake.”

  “I was with her when she died.” Hero leaned forward. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Lady Sewell rose very slowly and walked across the room to stare out the window, one hand clutching into a fist around the striped silk of the curtain at her side. Instead of answering, she said, “You say you were with Rachel when she died. When did this happen?”

  “Last Monday. At the Magdalene House.”

  Lady Sewell whirled to face her. “At the what?”

  “The Magdalene House. It was a refuge for women wishing to leave their life on the streets.”

  “I know what it was.” Hero watched as horror and disbelief flickered through those beautiful green eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Where did you think she’s been all this time?” said Hero. “You knew she wasn’t in Northamptonshire.”

  “I’d hoped . . .” Lady Sewell’s voice caught. She swallowed, her throat working convulsively. “You said you were with Rachel. What were you doing at this refuge?”

  “I’ve been conducting research for a bill to be introduced to Parliament. I’ve discovered that women tend to enter prostitution for two reasons. For some, it’s quite straightforward; they simply can’t earn enough money to stay alive any other way. The second reason is more complicated. It’s as if for some women life on the streets becomes a form of never-ending penance. It’s as if they see themselves as ruined and give up any hope of ever leading a respectable life.”

  Lady Sewell stood stiffly, her chest jerking with each convulsively indrawn breath.

  Hero pushed on. “If Rachel needed money or a refuge, surely she could have come to you. Couldn’t she?” When the woman remained silent, Hero said again, “Couldn’t she?”

  Lady Sewell reached out one hand to grip the back of a nearby chair.

  Hating herself for what she was doing, Hero said, “Why did your sister leave home?”

  Lady Sewell swallowed again, then shook her head and said in a hoarse whisper, “I don’t know. She was happy with her betrothal. At least, I thought she was.”

  “Did she quarrel with your father, perhaps?”

  Sudden fury flared in the other woman’s eyes, bringing a flush of hot color to her pale cheeks. “What do you mean by that?” She pushed away from the chair, then drew herself up short. “If you’re suggesting—” She broke off.

  Hero stared at the other woman in confusion. “Suggesting—what?”

  Lady Sewell brought one hand to her forehead in a distracted gesture and turned half away. “Why are you here? Asking these questions? Involving yourself in this?

  “Because your sister died in my arms. She was shot.”

  Rachel’s sister spun back around, all trace of color leaving her face again. “But . . . the Magdalene House burned.”

  “The fire at the Magdalene House wasn’t an accident. Those women were murdered, although because of what they were, no one seems to care.”

  For one telling moment, Lady Sewell’s gaze met hers, then wavered away. “I . . . I’d like to be alone now.”

  Hero rose to her feet. She discovered that her hands were tingling, and tightened her hold on the strings of her reticule. “If you’re interested, Rachel was buried by the Society of Friends, at their meetinghouse in Pentonville.”

  “Please, just . . . go.”

  Hero inclined her head and turned toward the door. Lady Sewell still stood tall and rigid beside the windows.

  But when Hero glanced back at the woman’s masklike face, she saw the glistening of silent tears.

  Charles, Lord Jarvis was in the courtyard of Carlton House, preparing for the arrival of the Spanish minister, when Colonel Bryce Epson-Smith walked up to him, the heels of his boots tapping a military-like staccato as he crossed the paving.

  “There have been some developments,” said Epson-Smith, his voice pitched low.

  Jarvis swung his head to study the Colonel’s lean, sun-darkened features. “Not here.”

  They walked away from the turmoil of the reception area, into the lee of the portico. “Now what?” snapped Jarvis as the cool shadows of the coming evening closed around them.

  “The assailant who survived last night’s attack is dead.”

  “Did you learn anything from him?”

  “Unfortunately, he died before we could reach him.” Epson-Smith stared off across the courtyard entrance of the palace. “There’s more.”