Authors: C. S. Harris

Where Serpents Sleep (16 page)

BOOK: Where Serpents Sleep

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Sebastian said, “If Rose was Rachel Fairchild and she came out last Season, then why didn’t you recognize her when you met her at the Magdalene House?”

Miss Jarvis shrugged. “I may have seen her at a ball, but if so I don’t recall it. She wasn’t the type of young woman one would notice in a crush, and I seldom attend Almack’s Assemblies these days.” At twenty-five, Miss Jarvis was virtually an ape leader.

He held up the bracelet. “You bought this?”

“Yes. With the promise of twenty pounds if Tasmin Poole should discover the current whereabouts of Hannah Green.” When he remained silent, she said with some impatience, “At least we’ve a new avenue of inquiry to pursue.”

Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “We, Miss Jarvis?”

She stared back at him. “That’s right.”

“What precisely do you intend to do? Go to Almack’s and offer twenty pounds to anyone who can furnish you with the whereabouts of Miss Rachel Fairchild?”

The color was back in her cheeks, only this time he suspected it was a flush of annoyance. Miss Jarvis wasn’t yet as good at controlling her emotions as her father. “No,” she said evenly. “But I can make a call upon Lady Sewell.”

“Who?”

“Georgina, Lady Sewell. Before her marriage she was Miss Fairchild—Rachel Fairchild’s elder sister. I can’t help but wonder if Rachel ran away from the Fairchilds’ house on Curzon Street, why didn’t she seek refuge with her sister?”

“Rather than in a brothel? It is an interesting question.” Sebastian frowned, remembering what Luke O’Brian had told him about “Rose’s” family.
I think she might have had two sisters, and a brother in the Army
. . . . Sebastian knew that Lord Fairchild had at least one son, Cedric; he’d served with Sebastian in the Peninsula. “Is there a younger sister, as well?” he asked aloud.

“I don’t know,” said Miss Jarvis, shifting her parasol to keep the faint sun off her face.

Sebastian stared off across the sparkling surface of the Long Water toward Hyde Park. What he needed, he realized, was someone intimately familiar with every hint of gossip and scandal attached to the Fairchilds in the last fifty years. Someone like his aunt—

“I think the information we’ve gained was worth whatever minimal risk I might have incurred,” said Miss Jarvis, reaching to take the bracelet from his hand.

Sebastian closed his fist around the chain. “I might be able to use this,” he said. “Leave it with me.”

He expected her to argue with him, but she did not. Looking into her frank, intelligent gray eyes, he had the disconcerting realization that she didn’t argue because she knew precisely what he planned. She knew that as soon as he’d visited his gossipy aunt Henrietta, he meant to confront Lord Fairchild himself.

In fact, she was counting on it.

Chapter 21

Sebastian’s aunt Henrietta, the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne, lived in an enormous pile on Park Street. Technically the house belonged to her eldest son, the current Duke of Claiborne, although the current Duke—who took after his father—was no match for the former Lady Henrietta St. Cyr. He’d long ago retired with his wife and growing young family to a smaller house on Half Moon Street and left his mother to reign supreme in the house she’d first entered as a bride some fifty-four years before.

But the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne was not at her Park Street residence. Trailing his aunt through silk warehouses and Pall Mall haberdasheries, Sebastian finally ran her to ground at the shop of a fashionable milliner on Bond Street.

He was aware of speculative eyes following him as he wound his way toward her through clusters of exquisitely gowned ladies peering at their reflections, past glass-topped counters and rows of gleaming mahogany drawers that reached to the ceiling. “Good heavens. Devlin,” she said, groping for the quizzing glass she wore on a riband around her neck. “Whatever are you doing here?”

“Searching for you.” He eyed the puce and flamingo pink plumed turban she held in her hands. “You’re not seriously considering that, are you?”

Henrietta had never been a tall woman, but she had the same stout build and large head as Hendon, with the piercingly blue St. Cyr eyes so conspicuously lacking in Sebastian. She fixed those eyes upon him now and slammed the turban on her head. “Yes, you unnatural child, I am. Now tell me what you want and go away.”

He gave a soft laugh. “Dear Aunt Henrietta. I want to know what you can tell me about Rachel Fairchild.”

Henrietta’s plump cheeks sagged. “Lord Fairchild’s middle daughter? Whatever is your interest in her? Nothing against the girl, mind you, but I don’t like the stable.”

Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “Tell me about the stable.”

Henrietta studied her reflection in the mirror, her lips curving downward. The effect of the flamingo pink was not a happy one. “Basil Fairchild,” she said in accents of strong distaste.

“I don’t recall hearing anything to his discredit.”

“Probably not. If I remember correctly, you were off at war trying to get yourself killed at the time. His first wife died seven or eight years ago, and he remarried just two years later to a young chit barely out of the schoolroom. Fairchild himself was in his forties at the time. Most unseemly.”

“I knew Cedric Fairchild in the Army. Are there other sons?”

Henrietta removed the offending turban and reached for one done up in puce and navy blue silk. “No. This new marriage has been childless. But there is an older daughter, Georgina. She married Sir Anthony Sewell. . . . It was the year Pitt died, if I remember correctly. I understand there’s a younger girl, as well, but she’s still in the schoolroom.”

Sebastian stared out the shop window at a red-and-green brewer’s dray lumbering up the street. A brother in the Army, one older sister, one younger. It fit only too well. He said, “Rachel came out last year?”

“That’s right.” Henrietta settled the puce-and-navy confection on her iron gray curls. “But let me tell you right now, Sebastian, that if you’ve developed a
tendre
in that direction—”

“I’ve never met the girl.” Sebastian studied his aunt’s latest venture. “The navy is definitely an improvement,” he said, then added, “What does she look like? Rachel, I mean.”

Henrietta stared at her reflection in the counter’s round glass, her chin sinking back against her chest in a way that emphasized her heavy jowls. “Her mother was Lady Charlotte, one of the Duke of Hereford’s daughters. Rachel takes after her. She’s pretty enough, I suppose. I myself have never cared much for that rather nondescript shade of brown hair, but she has good skin and teeth, and her green eyes are lovely. Still, she never exactly
took
, if you know what I mean. She always simply faded into the background. It was as if she were going through the motions of her Come Out because it was what was required of her rather than because it was something she wanted to do.” Henrietta looked over at him. “If you’ve never even met the girl, then what is your interest in her?”

Sebastian simply ignored the question. “You say she didn’t take?”

“Well, she was certainly far from being all the rage. But she did manage to contract a respectable alliance. Tristan Ramsey, if I remember correctly. No title, of course. But the Ramseys are quite warm.”

“They married?” said Sebastian in surprise.

“The engagement was announced. Then the child supposedly took ill and retired to the country.”

“Supposedly?”

“That’s right. Rumor has it she’s not there.”

“Were there other suitors?”

His aunt thought a moment, then shook her head. “Not that I recall.”

“What do you know of Tristan Ramsey?”

The Duchess fixed Sebastian with a dark glare. “He’s steady and boring—quite appallingly so, actually, considering he’s only twenty-four or twenty-five. He has a younger sister—Elizabeth or something like that. She’s making her Come Out this Season, and he’s being quite the dutiful son and brother, squiring his mother and sister all over town. He came into his inheritance as a child, you know. Sometimes that has disastrous effects on the development of a young man’s character. But not Ramsey’s. He keeps his estates in order, he doesn’t gamble to excess, and if he keeps a mistress, he must be very discreet about it because I’ve never heard tell of it. In many ways he reminds me of Lord Fairchild.”

“Yet despite this list of virtues, you don’t care for either one. Why?”

“If I liked steady, virtuous, boring men, I’d have lost patience with you years ago, now wouldn’t I?” She removed the puce-and-navy silk confection and nodded to the demure shop assistant hovering nearby. “I’ll take this one.” To Sebastian, Henrietta said, “Now, not another word until you explain your interest in the child.”

“I’ll explain later,” said Sebastian, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. “Thank you, Aunt.”

Henrietta reached out to snag his arm. “Oh, no, you don’t. You can carry my package to the carriage.”

Sebastian glanced at the Duchess’s liveried footman waiting patiently beside the shop door, then silently scooped up her purchase and followed her out of the milliner’s into the fitful May sunshine. Once on the footpath, she fixed him with a critical eye that made him suddenly uncomfortable. “I’ve been hearing disturbing reports about your activities these past months, Sebastian. Most disturbing reports. And from what I can see, they’re all true. You look like the very devil.”

“Why, thank you, Aunt.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I can understand drowning your sorrows in a few bottles of brandy and wild nights on the town. It was a shock, obviously. A shock to us all. But eight months, Sebastian? Don’t you think that’s a trifle excessive?”

“Obviously not.”

She grunted. “At any rate, that’s not what I wished to speak to you about. I’m worried about Hendon.”

“Aunt—”

“No. Hear me out. I said I understand it was a shock, learning of the connection between Hendon and Miss Boleyn. But to allow the consequences of something that occurred more than twenty years ago to poison your relationship with Hendon now is worse than illogical. It’s mean-spirited. And that’s something I’ve never known you to be.”

“You think I should be able to accept with equanimity the discovery that my father is also the father of the woman I planned to marry?”

“Equanimity, no. Understanding and forbearance, yes.” She tightened her hold on his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh through the fine cloth of his coat and shirtsleeve. “This estrangement grieves him, Sebastian. More than you’ll ever know. Nothing means more to him than you.”

They had reached the carriage. The footman let down the steps and stood waiting woodenly. Sebastian passed him the package, then took his aunt’s hand to help her negotiate the passage through the narrow door. “Good day, Aunt,” he said, stepping back.

Swinging away, he had taken two strides toward his own waiting curricle when her voice stopped him. “By the way, Sebastian,” she called maliciously through the carriage’s open window, “I hear you were driving Miss Jarvis in Hyde Park yesterday.”

He whirled back around. “Good God, wherever did you hear that?”

But his aunt simply smiled and nodded to her coachman to drive on.

BOOK: Where Serpents Sleep

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