Where Serpents Sleep

Chapter 15

WEDNESDAY, 6 MAY 1812

Sebastian stood beside his bedroom window, his gaze on the still-sleeping city streets below, on the gleam of dew on the cobbles and the pigeons fluttering on the ridge of a nearby roofline. In the pale blush of early dawn, the chimneys of London loomed thick and dark, the spires of the city’s churches thrusting up against a slowly lightening sky. It was that hour between night and day when time seemed suspended and a man could get lost in the past, if he let himself.

Grasping the sash, he thrust up the window and let the frigid air of the dying night bite his naked flesh. He’d been driven here from his bed by the dreams that still crept upon him far too often in the undefended hours of sleep. During the day, he could control his thoughts, even control the yearnings that still came upon him. But sleep made him vulnerable. Which is why he avoided it as much as possible.

Some men could spend a lifetime in a soft, brandy-tinged blur, squinting through a smoky haze at cards that meant nothing. Win or lose, the deadness inside remained. But it was all an illusion, Sebastian had decided—both the sensation of inner deadness and the comfort of the blur. A trick a man played on himself.

No one else was fooled.

The day broke warm and sunny with all the golden promise of the long-delayed spring. Sebastian breakfasted early, then called his tiger, Tom, into the library.

Tom came in dragging his feet. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he blurted out.

Sebastian looked up from the estate agent’s report he’d been reading and frowned. “You didn’t mean to do what?”

Tom hung his head, his tiger’s cap twisted between his hands. “I’m that sorry, gov’nor. Truly I am.”

“If you set fire to the tails of Morey’s coat again—”

Tom’s head jerked up. “I didn’t!”

“Thank God for that, at least.” For all his disapproving ways, Morey ran Sebastian’s decidedly irregular household with the competence and efficiency of the gunnery sergeant he’d once been. Sebastian would be hard put to replace him. “Out with it then,” he said, his gaze steady on the tiger. “What have you been doing?”

“I was down in the kitchen, see? Me and Adam—he’s the new footman. We was just playin’ around and—”

Sebastian became aware of a disturbance emanating from the lower regions of the house, Madame LeClerc’s outraged cries punctuated by Calhoun’s soothing tones. “Explain it to me later. I want you to find someone for me. A man named Luke O’Brian.”

Tom’s eyes flashed with anticipation. “You think ’e might ’ave somethin’ to do with the murder of them women?”

“I think he might.”

“What manner o’ man is ’e?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. The only thing I know about him is that he frequents a brothel near Portman Square called the Orchard Street Academy.”

Tom jammed his cap back on his head. “I’ll find ’im, ne’er you fear.”

“Oh, and, Tom—”

Tom turned at the door.

“Be careful.”

Tom flashed a gap-toothed grin and took off.

The noise level from the kitchen increased. Sebastian set aside his estate agent’s report and stood up. He was crossing toward the entry hall when he became aware of the sounds of a carriage drawing up outside his door. Glancing out the library’s bowed front window, he saw a smartly dressed young woman appear in the carriage’s open door.

She was tall and striking, with glossy dark hair and a wide, laughing mouth. She stood for a moment, the sunlight soft on her face, and just the sight of her was enough to make his breath catch. He watched as she extended one hand elegantly gloved in yellow kid and accepted her footman’s assistance down the carriage steps. Memories of last night’s dreams came to him in a wash of shame, memories and desires that had driven him from his bed last night and that haunted him still.

For eight months now she’d called herself Mrs. Russell Yates. But once, her name had been Kat Boleyn and she’d been the love of Sebastian’s life.

Now he called her sister.