Where Serpents Sleep

Chapter 32

Hero gently closed the door to her mother’s room and paused in the hall for a moment, her hand still on the knob, a weight of sadness pressing down on her. Lady knob, a weight of sadness pressing down on her. Lady Jarvis had reacted badly to last night’s incident. Sometimes she worked herself up into such a state that it lasted for weeks.

Her hand slipping off the knob, Hero was just turning away when her father came up to her. “How is your mother?” he asked. There was neither warmth nor caring in the question.

“Resting. Dr. Ross has dosed her liberally with laudanum. She should sleep the rest of the day.”

Lord Jarvis’s lips thinned into the pained expression he inevitably assumed whenever the topic under discussion was his wife. “That’s a relief.” His eyes narrowed as he studied Hero’s face. “You’re certain you’re all right?”

“Thanks to you teaching me to keep a steady finger on the trigger.”

Father and daughter shared a private smile. His smile faded quickly. “I’ve dismissed the two footmen you and your mother had with you last night.”

“It wasn’t their fault.”

“Of course it was their fault,” said Lord Jarvis. “I didn’t send you into the country with three armed men to have you come back covered in some highwayman’s gore.”

Hero opened her mouth, then shut it.

“Coachman John tells me you took the injured highwayman to Paul Gibson’s surgery near Tower Hill. Why?”

“I doubted the practitioners of Harley Street would appreciate the delivery of a bloody highwayman at midnight. And if I’d simply taken him to Bow Street, he’d have died.”

“The man still lives?”

“Last I heard, yes.”

“Good. Then he can be made to talk.”

Hero felt a chill prickle down her spine. She’d heard dark rumors of the methods employed by Lord Jarvis’s henchmen to make people talk. “Papa—”

Jarvis raised his hand, stopping her. “These men are connected to what happened last Monday, aren’t they?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

He was so good at hiding his thoughts and feelings that even Hero often had a difficult time reading him. She was both shocked and touched when he suddenly said, “I’m concerned about you, Hero. You’re all I have left.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. Reaching up, she brushed her father’s cheek with a kiss and turned toward the stairs.

But she was aware of him still standing in the hall, watching her.

Jarvis was in the small chamber he reserved for mixing snuff when his butler ushered Colonel Epson-Smith into the room.

“You wanted to see me, my lord?” asked the Colonel.

“What I want is to see this unpleasantness brought to an end. Quickly.” Jarvis added a pinch of macouba to his mortar and began to grind it with a pestle. “You’ve had two days. What have you learned?”

Epson-Smith stood in the center of the room, his legs braced wide, his hands clasped behind his back. “Indications so far are that we’re dealing with a simple tussle over merchandise. It’s not clear yet precisely who is involved, but we’re working on it.”

Jarvis grunted. “Work faster.” Reaching for a small vial, he added three drops to his mixture. “You’ve heard of last night’s incident?”

“Yes, my lord. I’m not convinced, however, that it’s related to Monday night’s—”

“It is. The surviving individual is at a surgery near Tower Hill. Use whatever means necessary, but make him talk.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Jarvis looked up from shaking his mixture out over the sheet of parchment that he’d spread across the room’s table. “I also want one of your men watching over Miss Jarvis from now on. Discreetly, of course.”

The Colonel kept his face perfectly composed. If he’d learned yet of Hero’s presence at the Magdalene House the night of the attack, he had more sense than to mention it. He bowed, said, “Yes, my lord,” and withdrew.