Where Serpents Sleep

Chapter 2

TUESDAY, 5 MAY 1812

The morning dawned overcast and unseasonably cool, the air heavy with the scent of coal smoke and the last lingering wisps of the fog. Winding westward toward the City, a lady’s yellow-bodied carriage persistently shadowed a gentleman’s curricle as he wove around tumbledown hackneys and towering drays driven by men in smocks and leather aprons. When they reached the Strand, the curricle’s driver reined in before the last in a row of small, bow-fronted shops, his pair of blood chestnuts snorting and throwing their heads, restless. Leaning forward, the lady signaled her own coachman to draw up.

“They were ’opin’ fer a good run,” said the gentleman’s tiger from his perch at the curricle’s rear, the sharp Cockney tones of his voice carrying clearly in the damp air.

“They’ll get it soon enough,” said the gentleman, handing the reins to the young groom.

The gentleman’s name was Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. The fourth child and youngest of three sons born to the Earl of Hendon and his Countess, Sophia, he had only succeeded to the heir’s title on the death of his two older brothers. Now nine-and-twenty, the Viscount was said to have been badly affected by his experiences in the Wars, although few in London seemed to know the exact nature of the circumstances that had led to his decision to sell his commission some two years before and return to England. Until the previous autumn, he had kept the famous actress Kat Boleyn as his mistress, but that liaison had ended abruptly for reasons also shrouded in mystery.

The lady in the carriage watched as the Viscount hopped down from his curricle, his multicaped driving coat swirling around him, his head falling back as he glanced up at the wooden sign with a dagger and a pair of crossed swords that swayed gently in the breeze. He was built tall and lean, with hair that was dark—darker even than that of his father in his prime. But whereas the father’s eyes were a piercing blue, the son’s were a feral yellow that brought to mind the howl of wolves in the night. Once, his lordship had made the apprehension of murderers his specialty. But for the past eight months, he had given himself over to drinking and gambling and riding to hounds with a reckless abandon that seemed calculated to get him killed sometime in the very near future.

The lady in the carriage watched as the Viscount entered the shop. “Wait here,” she ordered her coachman, and signaled to the footman to let down the steps.

Sebastian balanced the dagger in his hand and carefully tested its heft. It was a splendid piece, its ebony hilt inlaid with silver and brass in a delicate Moorish design.

“It arrived just this week from Spain, my lord,” said the shopkeeper, a short rounded man with full rosy cheeks and a balding pate who hovered behind the counter of his discreet little establishment in the Strand. “The finest Toledo steel. And the workmanship on the hilt is unusually exquisite, wouldn’t you say?”

Nodding, Sebastian whirled to send the dagger flying toward the dartboard on the shop’s back wall. The blade bit just left of center, quivered a moment, then stilled.

The shopkeeper’s hands fluttered in dismay. Devlin never missed. “Obviously there is an unseen flaw. Let me show you another—”

“No. The blade flew true.” Sebastian rubbed his eyes with a splayed thumb and forefinger, aware of a faint tremor in his hand born of too many sleepless nights, too many bottles of brandy, too many dinners left uneaten. “I’ll take it.” He was reaching for his purse when the bell on the door jangled and a gentlewoman in an ostrich-plumed hat and a hunter green pelisse entered the shop, bringing with her the scent of the cool spring morning.

She was a tall woman just past the first blush of youth, with light brown hair she wore pulled straight back in an unflattering style that accentuated the aquiline nose she had inherited from her father, Charles, Lord Jarvis, cousin to the King and the acknowledged power behind Prinny’s fragile regency. She nodded in response to the shopkeeper’s effusive greetings but turned her frank gray stare on Sebastian.

“I see your curricle is waiting outside. The one with the matched chestnuts and a tiger who looks no more than twelve.”

Sebastian returned his attention to the business of counting out the requisite number of banknotes. “I believe Tom is thirteen. Why? Has he lifted your purse?”

She raised one eyebrow in an expression he found unpleasantly evocative of her father at his most arrogant and ruthless. “He’s a pickpocket?”

“He used to be.”

“How . . . original.” She cleared her throat. “I would like to take a ride around the park.”

Sebastian studied Hero Jarvis’s hostile, determined face. He had no illusions about how this woman felt about him. She’d given it as her opinion on more than one occasion that he ought to be arrested—or else summarily shot. “I take it this is my cue to invite you for a drive?”

“Thank you.” She swept toward the door. “I’ll await you in your curricle.”

His curiosity piqued, Sebastian walked out of the shop a few minutes later to find Miss Jarvis sitting on the high seat of his curricle, a furled parasol at her side, the reins in her own capable hands. Sebastian’s tiger was nowhere in sight, although he could see Miss Jarvis’s elegant town carriage waiting up near the corner. Its driver looked asleep.

“Where’s Tom?” Sebastian demanded, leaping up beside her to take the reins.

“I told him he wasn’t wanted.”

“Two things,” Sebastian said evenly, giving his chestnuts the office to start. “I don’t like other people handling my horses, and I tolerate no one giving false orders to my servants.”

“There was no falsehood involved. I didn’t want him.” She opened her parasol with a snap and tilted it toward the feeble sunshine. “And while I understand your sentiments about the horses, once I had eliminated your tiger, there really was no other option, now was there?”

“Miss Jarvis,” he said, his voice coming out in a grating rasp, “in the last eighteen months, your father has attempted to have me killed and very nearly destroyed someone close to me. Why are we taking this drive?”

“He attempted to have you killed? It is my understanding that you threatened to kill him.”

“Several times,” Sebastian agreed, turning in through the gates to Hyde Park.

“And you kidnapped me,” she reminded him.

“Along with your maid,” he agreed. “But only briefly. Which brings us back to the question: Why are you here?”

“Last night, a group of unidentified men attacked the Magdalene House near Covent Garden. They killed over half a dozen women and set fire to the house.”

The Magdalene House was not a subject generally discussed in mixed company. Sebastian cast her a quick glance before returning his gaze, deliberately, to his horses. “I knew the refuge had burned,” he said. “But I don’t recall hearing anything about the house being attacked.”

“It is much easier for Bow Street to dismiss the fire as an accident.” Her lip curled. “After all, the victims were only women of ill repute.”

“How do you know the fire wasn’t an accident?”

“Because I was there, in the house. One of the women and I escaped through a window and ran down the alley.”

There was a moment’s silence while he digested this. She said, “You haven’t asked why I was there.”

“Very well, Miss Jarvis: Why were you there?”

“I have been conducting research for a bill to be presented in Parliament at the next session, for the relief of indigent women. Centuries of sanctimonious moralists and ministers thundering from their pulpits have convinced society that women become prostitutes because they suffer from some innate moral depravity. I, on the other hand, believe that the unpalatable truth is most women enter the profession only as a last, desperate resort. Unable to earn a living wage by any of the other means our society makes available to them, they soon realize they can either steal, sell their bodies, or starve.”

Sebastian glanced at her tightly held face. It seemed an unlikely subject to stir the passions of Lord Jarvis’s daughter. But then, Sebastian really knew little about this woman. “What happened to the girl you say escaped with you?”

“She was shot and killed before we reached the street. Fortunately, I’d left my maid in the carriage—she’s so sour and censorious she tends to discourage the women from talking. Otherwise, I’ve no doubt she would have been killed, as well.”

Sebastian stared off across the park, considering this. It was an unfashionable hour for a drive; except for a middle-aged man in a shabby gig teaching a half-grown boy to drive, the gravel road lay deserted in the fitful morning sunshine.

After a moment, Sebastian said, “You’ll have to forgive me, Miss Jarvis, if I find all this rather difficult to believe. You see, it seems to me that if anyone had dared take a shot at Lord Jarvis’s daughter last night, every magistrate and constable in England would be out, even as we speak, scouring the back alleys and flash houses of the city until those responsible were brought to justice.”

She twitched her parasol back and forth in short, sharp jerks, a tinge of angry color touching her cheeks. “My father was disconcerted at the prospect my presence at the Magdalene House might become public knowledge—”

“Disconcerted?” said Sebastian, arching one eyebrow.

“Disconcerted,” she said again, with emphasis.

“Given Lord Jarvis’s attitude toward social reform, I suspect dismayed might be a more fitting description.”

“My father understands that my politics are different from his.”

Sebastian simply smiled.

“He has requested Sir William Hadley personally take charge of the investigation,” she said.

“Then you may rest easy. As the chief magistrate of Bow Street, Sir William has proved himself to be crude, ruthless, and very effective.”

“I fear I haven’t made myself clear. Sir William has been ordered to make certain that there is no official investigation, as any such inquiries would inevitably lead to my name being bandied about in connection with the incident. Instead, my father intends to take care of the men responsible himself. He wants it done quietly. Very quietly.”

“Lord Jarvis is highly effective at ‘taking care’ of people quietly,” said Sebastian. “I don’t think you need concern yourself with the matter any further.”

“My father’s sole interest is in killing those who endangered my life.”

“And that’s not sufficient?”

She turned toward him, her gray eyes as intelligent—and inscrutable—as her father’s. “One of the women I interviewed last night was called Rose. Rose Jones. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, tall and slender, with brown hair and green eyes. I would swear she was wellborn. Very wellborn.”

“She may have been. Unfortunately, Miss Jarvis, gently born women are frequently reduced by circumstances to prostitution.” Sebastian completed his second circuit of the park in silence, then turned back toward the Strand. “Clergymen’s daughters, daughters of impoverished solicitors and doctors, the widows and orphans of officers killed in the war . . . all are far more common in Covent Garden than you obviously imagine.”

“That may be. But when we first heard those men breaking into the Magdalene House last night, Rose said to me, ‘Oh, God. They’ve found me. They’re here to kill me.’ Then, later, I heard the men say, ‘She’s not here,’ and, ‘She must be upstairs.’ I believe Rose Jones is the reason those women were killed. I want to know who she was and why those men were after her.”

“Why?”

“Why?” The question appeared to surprise her.

“Yes. Why do you want to know? Vulgar curiosity?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

She was silent for a moment, the damp breeze ruffling her plain brown hair as she stared off across the misty parkland. She drew in a deep breath that flared her nostrils, then said, “I held that woman in my arms as she was dying. It could so easily have been me. I suppose I feel I owe her something.”

It was a heartfelt performance, and if it had been delivered by anyone other than Jarvis’s daughter, Sebastian probably would have believed it. He said, “So why, precisely, have you sought me out?”

She turned to face him, the hint of humanity he thought he’d momentarily glimpsed now gone. “It’s the oddest thing, but I’ve realized that none of my acquaintances have much experience with murder. So naturally I thought of you.”

Sebastian was startled into letting out a sharp laugh.

Something unpleasant gleamed in her eyes. “I amuse you, my lord?”

If truth were told, Hero Jarvis scared the hell out of him. Sebastian shook his head. But all he said was, “I may have been involved in several investigations in the past, Miss Jarvis, but apprehending murderers is not my hobby.”

“What would you call it, then? Your avocation?”

Kat Boleyn had once called it his passion, his obsession, his self-imposed penance for sins she only half understood. But that seemed a lifetime ago now, and he slammed his mind shut against the thought. He said, “I haven’t been involved in anything of that nature for a while now.”

“I have heard something of how you’ve been spending your time these past months,” she said drily. “Rest assured that I am not asking you to investigate personally. I am merely requesting guidance on how I should go about beginning such an investigation.”

“It’s your intention to investigate these murders yourself?”

“Are you implying that I am incapable?”

“I’m implying that women of your station generally hire Bow Street Runners to do their investigating.”

“That’s not possible in this situation.”

“Because of Sir William?”

“Not exactly.” A flush crept up her cheeks, and he wondered what she was not telling him. “I promised my father I would not approach the magistrates.”

He studied her carefully composed features. “Yet Lord Jarvis has no objection to you pursuing your own inquiries?”

She turned her head away to study a passing row of shops, and Sebastian gave a low laugh. “You haven’t told him, have you? He will find out.” Lord Jarvis maintained an extensive network of spies and agents, which had earned the man a well-deserved reputation for omniscience.

She said, “I have no intention of denying my activities.”

Sebastian knew a brief flicker of admiration. There weren’t many with the courage to cross the King’s powerful cousin. He said, “You also realize that I could use the information you’ve given me to hurt you.”

“You mean, to hurt my father through me.” She met his gaze and held it. “It has occurred to me. It’s a risk I’ve decided I am willing to take.”

“Discovering this woman’s identity is that important to you?”

“I don’t think anything has ever been this important to me,” she said simply.

A tense silence fell between them. He had a dozen good reasons for avoiding this woman and very few incentives to help her. Yes, the temptation to annoy Jarvis was powerful. Yet that in itself might not have been enough to tempt him if he hadn’t been aware of a vague, unexpected quickening of interest. He couldn’t think of anything that had intrigued him—really intrigued him—for eight months now.

He reined in beside her carriage and said, “If it were me, Miss Jarvis, I’d begin by talking to the authorities. See what they have discovered so far.”

For the first time since she had approached him that morning, he saw what looked like a slight faltering in her formidable composure. “But that’s the one thing I can’t do.”

“No. But I can.”

“You? But . . . why would you involve yourself in this?”

“You know why.”

She met his gaze. And in that moment he realized that she did, indeed, know why. She knew he would welcome any chance to discomfit her father. More than that: She had, in fact, been counting on it.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, allowing herself a slight smile as she turned to alight. “You will tell me if you discover anything?”

“Of course,” said Sebastian, and went in search of his tiger.