Where Serpents Sleep

Chapter 26

Hero’s plans to pay a call on Rachel Fairchild’s older sister, Lady Sewell, were frustrated by Lady Jarvis, who insisted upon her daughter’s company on a protracted shopping expedition that afternoon. As this was followed by an early departure for a dinner party being held that evening at the country house of one of Lady Jarvis’s childhood friends, Hero resigned herself to putting off the visit to the next day.

The estate of Sally, the Duchess of Laleham, lay only on the outskirts of Richmond, but Lord Jarvis insisted that both the footmen and the coachman be armed since they were traveling outside of London. At the end of the evening, as the carriage started on the long drive back to Berkeley Square shortly after midnight, Hero found herself unusually grateful for her father’s precautions.

“It’s the arsenic powder,” Lady Jarvis was saying as mother and daughter sat side by side, gently rocking with the motion of the carriage. “Or so I’ve heard. It utterly ruined her health. Which is a pity, because Sally was quite lovely when she was young. But vain.”

“Hence the too-liberal use of the arsenic powder,” said Hero.

“Yes.” Lady Jarvis settled more comfortably against the plush seat and sighed. In contrast to her daughter’s Junoesque proportions, Lady Jarvis was a tiny woman, small of bone, with a head of once golden curls now fading gently to gray. “Yes,” she said again. “But there’s no denying it does give one the whitest skin. Sally was so lovely when she was young.”

It was one of Lady Jarvis’s more irritating habits, this tendency to repeat nuggets of her conversation. Or at least, it irritated her husband, Charles, Lord Jarvis, to the point he could rarely tolerate her company. But Hero remembered a time when her mother had been different, when Lady Jarvis had been high-strung and emotional but not half mad and childlike.

The light thrown by the carriage lamps bounced and swayed with the action of the horses and the bowling dips of the well-sprung chaise. Through the window, Hero caught a glimpse of a copse of birch trees, a flash of white trunks and darkly massed leaves against a black sky. The crisp evening air was heavy with the scent of plowed fields and damp grass and the lush fecundity of the countryside. Normally this was a journey Hero enjoyed. But tonight she found herself scanning the shadows and listening to the drumming of the horses’ hooves on the deserted road. An inexplicable shiver coursed up her spine.

“Are you cold, dear?” asked Lady Jarvis, leaning forward solicitously. “Would you like the rug?”

“No. Thank you,” said Hero, annoyed with herself. The road might be deserted, but she was not one to imagine highwaymen behind every wall or stand of trees. “I’m fine.”

“The cream silk was a good choice,” said Lady Jarvis, casting an approving eye over Hero’s gown. “Better, I think, than the white I wanted you to wear.”

“Cream is always a better choice than white,” said Hero with a light laugh, her gaze still scanning the horizon. “White makes me look like a cadaver.”

Her mother shuddered. “Hero! The things you say! But you do look lovely tonight. You should crimp your hair more often.”

Hero swung her head to look at her mother and smile. “If you had any maternal feelings at all, you would have found some way to ensure that your daughter inherited all your lovely curls.”

Lady Jarvis looked troubled for a moment. Then her brow cleared. “Oh. You’re funning me. As if I had anything to say about it!”

Hero felt a pain pull across her chest and turned her head to stare out the window again. She loved her mother dearly, but there were times when the contrast between the way Lady Jarvis was now and the way Hero remembered her was enough to bring the sting of tears to her eyes.

The carriage lurched and swayed down a long hill, hemmed in on both sides by stands of dark trees undergrown with shrubs and gorse that pressed so close Hero fancied she could reach out and touch their branches. She became aware of the carriage slowing as the horses dropped down to a trot, then came to a shuddering halt as Coachman John reined in hard.

“Why are we stopping?” demanded Lady Jarvis, sitting upright.

Hero peered out the window at the horse and gig slewed across the road. “There appears to be a carriage in the way.” A man stood at the horse’s head, his voice a gentle murmur as he stroked the animal’s neck and said soothingly, “Easy, girl. Easy.”

“What’s the trouble there?” shouted Coachman John.

“A broken trace,” said the man, walking toward the carriage. By the pale light of the carriage lamps, Hero could see him quite clearly. He looked to be somewhere in his midthirties, rawboned and darkened as if from years under a tropical sun. But his accent was good, and he wore a neat round hat and a gentleman’s driving cape, which swirled around a fine pair of high-topped boots.

As he paused near the box, she became aware of the sound of hoofbeats coming down the hill behind them. One horse, ridden fast. Her gaze traveled from the man in the road to the double-barreled carriage pistol in a holster beside the door.

The gentleman in the cape said, “If one of your footmen could help me move the gig out of the road, you can be on your way.”

Reaching out, Hero slowly eased the carriage pistol from its holster.

Lady Jarvis said, “What on earth are you—”

Hero put out a hand, hushing her.

Hero couldn’t see the man who’d ridden up behind them, but she heard his horse snort. “Need some help?” he called.

“I think everything’s under control,” said the man in the road. Reaching beneath his cape, he drew out a pistol and extended his arm so the muzzle pointed up at the box. “Don’t move.”

“What the bloody hell?” blustered the coachman.

The man in the road said, “You’ll notice my friend here has a gun, as well. Throw down your weapons. We know you’ve got them.”

Lady Jarvis’s eyes went wide. “Oh, my goodness,” she said in a panicked, high-pitched whisper. “Highwayman. Hero, put that thing away. We must give them everything! Thank heavens I didn’t wear the sapphires tonight. But there are your pearls—”

Hero put her hand over her mother’s mouth. “Hush, Mama.”

She heard muffled thuds as the two footmen threw down their guns. The man in the road said, “You, too, Coachman.”

The carriage shuddered as the big coachman shifted his weight. His blunderbuss landed with a thump in the grassy verge. Hero tightened her grip on the handle of the pistol and carefully eased back both hammers.

“You didn’t tell me we was stoppin’ a lord’s rig,” said the second man, nudging his horse forward into the lamplight. “Two ladies in a carriage like this oughta be sportin’ some nice baubles.” Hero watched him swing down from his horse. He was younger than the man in the cape, and more coarsely dressed. She steadied the heavy carriage pistol with both hands and pointed the barrel at the door.

“That’s not what we’re here for,” snapped the caped man, shifting his stance so he could cover both the footmen and Coachman John. “Just make it quick before someone comes along. And make bloody sure you shoot the right woman.”

The younger man laughed. “I can tell a young’un from an old’un,” he said, jerking open the carriage door.

Hero squeezed the first trigger and discharged the pistol straight in his face.

The man’s face dissolved in a bloody red shattering of skin and bone. The percussion was deafening, the carriage filling with a blue flash of flame and smoke and the acrid smell of burned powder. Lady Jarvis screamed and kept screaming as the impact of the shot blew the man out of the carriage and flopped him back into the dirt of the road.

“Drummond!” The gentleman in the cape whirled, the barrel of his gun leveling on the carriage door. Half falling to her knees on the carriage floor, Hero leaned out the carriage door and squeezed the second trigger.

She shot higher than she’d meant to, and wilder, so that instead of hitting the man square in the chest her bullet smashed into his right shoulder, spinning him around and sending his pistol flying out of his hand.

“Quick,” Hero shouted to the servants. “Get his pistol.” She shoved up, only to sag slightly against the side of the open door. Now that it was over, her knees were shaking so badly she could hardly stand. “Is he dead?”

“Naw,” said Coachman John, turning the caped gentleman over. “But he’s bleedin’ pretty bad, and he ’pears to have gone off in a swoon.”

“This one’s done for,” said one of the footmen, Richard, bending over the first man she’d shot. “My Gawd, look at that. He don’t have a face no more.”

“Get that gig out of the middle of the road so we can drive on,” said Hero, turning back to deal with her now hysterical mother. “Lady Jarvis has sustained a terrible fright.”

“It would appear,” said Paul Gibson, studying the chessboard before him, “that Sir William has his own reasons for discouraging any investigation of the Magdalene House fire.”

Sebastian and the Irishman sat beside the empty hearth in the surgeon’s parlor, the chessboard, a bottle of good French brandy, and two glasses on the table between them. The neighborhood had long since settled into quiet, and only an occasional footfall could be heard passing in the street outside. From the distance came the cry of a night watchman making his rounds. “One o’clock on a fine night and all is well.”

Sebastian said, “Just because he knew Rachel when she called herself Rose and entertained gentlemen in Orchard Street doesn’t mean he knew she’d taken refuge at the Magdalene House.” He watched his friend move his rook to b3.

“Check,” said Gibson, sitting back in his seat and reaching for the brandy bottle. “But it is highly suggestive.”

Sebastian crossed his arms at his chest and studied the board before him. “In the Levant, if a young woman disgraces her family by loose, immoral conduct, the only way the family can regain their honor is to kill her. Some people think it’s a Muslim custom, but it’s not. All the religions of the area do it—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze. It’s not religious. It’s tribal, and it goes back to prebiblical days when the Jews were just another Semitic tribe wandering the deserts of the Arabian peninsula.”

Gibson refilled their glasses and set the brandy bottle aside with a light thump. “This isn’t the Levant.”

“No,” said Sebastian, moving his queen to e7. “But Englishmen have also been known to kill unfaithful wives and wayward daughters.”

Gibson frowned down at the board. “You think that’s why Rachel fled Orchard Street and took refuge at the Magdalene House? Because her father discovered where she was?”

“Her father or her brother. I’d say Cedric Fairchild knew his sister was in Covent Garden.”

“But why? That’s what doesn’t make sense about any of this. How did she end up there in the first place? A lord’s daughter?”

“That I haven’t figured out yet.”

Gibson leaned forward suddenly, his two hands coming up together. “She could have had a secret lover. Someone her father considered unsuitable. Rather than marry Ramsey, she fled to her lover, who then abandoned her and left her on the streets. Too ashamed to go home, she was forced into prostitution to survive.”

Sebastian sat back in his chair and laughed. “If you ever decide to give up medicine, you could make a fortune writing lurid romances.”

“It’s possible,” insisted Gibson.

“I suppose it is.” Sebastian watched his friend move his queen to d5. “The fact remains that however she came to be in Covent Garden, all three men have a motive for killing her. Both Lord Fairchild and Cedric Fairchild might well have wanted her dead for disgracing the family name, while Tristan Ramsey would hardly be the first man to kill a woman who rejected him.”

Gibson reached for his brandy glass. “What about the other man you were telling me about? This purchasing agent.”

“Luke O’Brian? His motive is roughly the same as Ramsey’s. He wanted her enough to try to buy her out of the Academy. According to Kane, she rejected him.”

“So he flew into a rage and threatened to kill her? That sounds logical. She fled Orchard Street to get away from him.”

“There’s just one little detail that doesn’t fit with any of these scenarios.”

Gibson frowned. “What’s that?”

“According to both Joshua Walden and Tasmin Poole, two women fled the Orchard Street Academy last Wednesday night—Rachel, and another Cyprian named Hannah Green.” Sebastian made his final move, and smiled. “Checkmate.”

Gibson stared at the board. “Bloody hell. Why didn’t I see that coming?”

Sebastian raised his head, his attention caught by the sound of a team driven at a fast clip up the street. There was a jingle of harness and the clatter of wheels over uneven cobbles as the carriage was reined in hard before the surgery. An instant later, a fist beat a lively tattoo on the street door.

“What the devil?” Gibson lurched awkwardly upright.

“I’ll get it,” said Sebastian, grabbing a brace of candles as he headed up the narrow hall.

The pounding came again, accompanied by a man’s shouted “Halloooo.”

Sebastian jerked back the bolt and yanked open the door. A liveried footman, his tricorner hat askew on his powdered hair, one fist raised to knock again, was caught off balance and practically fell into the hall. Sebastian gazed beyond him to the team of blood bays sidling nervously in the street, their plumed heads shaking. His eyes narrowing, Sebastian was studying the crest emblazoned on the carriage panel when the door was thrust open and an imperious female voice said, “Don’t just stand there. Help me.”

It took Sebastian a moment to realize she spoke not to him but to a second footman, who now scrambled to let down the carriage steps.

“George,” snapped the woman’s voice, recalling the first footman. “Come take the man’s shoulders while Richard takes his feet. Careful. He’s bleeding quite dreadfully.”

“Bleeding?” Gibson limped toward the unconscious man the two footmen were easing through the carriage door. “No, don’t lay him down in the street! Take him straight into the surgery. This way,” said Gibson, hurrying before them.

“Who is he?” asked Sebastian.

“A would-be assassin,” said Miss Hero Jarvis, appearing in the open carriage door. A picture in a demure cream silk confection with a high waist and a skirt sodden dark with blood, she held a beaded reticule in one hand and what looked like a carriage pistol in the other. “We left one dead on the road from Richmond, but this one’s still living. I’m hoping he’ll survive long enough to tell us who hired him.”

Sebastian stepped forward to offer her his hand down. “Who shot him?”

She handed him the carriage pistol as if somewhat surprised to find she was still clutching it. It was a double-barreled French flintlock, and he saw that both barrels had been fired.

“I did.”