Where Serpents Sleep

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,