Where Serpents Sleep

at the rear. Ramsey closed the door behind him with a snap and said, “Now see here, Devlin—”

Moving calmly and deliberately, Sebastian whacked the back of his gloved hand across the man’s face. He was in no mood for any more of Ramsey’s bluster and lies.

A different kind of man might have called Sebastian out for such an offense. Not Ramsey. “Bloody hell!” Both hands cupped protectively over his nose, he doubled over as if he’d been gut-punched. “You’ve drawn my cork.”

Picking up the man by his lapels, Sebastian slung Ramsey back against the brick wall behind him. “We’re going to have a conversation. Only, this time, you’re going to be very careful not to lie to me.”

“What? What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t lie to you!”

“You did. You knew Rachel Fairchild was in Covent Garden. More than that—you knew exactly which house she was in.”

A tiny trickle of blood ran from Ramsey’s left nostril. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—”

“You went there.” Sebastian grabbed the man’s shoulders and thumped his back against the wall again. “You like paying for it, do you, Ramsey? You like it when women have to do exactly what you tell them to do? When they moan on cue whether you’re really bringing them pleasure or not? Must have been quite a shock to find your own fiancee lined up there with all the other soiled doves offering her charms to any man with the money to pay for them.”

“Why you—” Ramsey bucked against Sebastian’s hold, his lips twisting with rage.

“What I don’t understand is how the hell you walked away and left her there.”

“I tried to get her to leave!” said Ramsey, his breath blowing bloody bubbles out his nostril. “She wouldn’t come with me. I had to pay for her just to talk to her! She took me upstairs to one of those awful rooms.” His upper lip curled at the memory. “The bed reeked of stale sweat and sex. She reeked of sex—of men. I begged her to come with me. But she just stood there listening to me with her arms crossed and a bored look on her face. Then she said I only had three minutes left, so if I wanted to fuck her, then I’d better hurry up and do it.”

Sebastian studied the younger man’s trembling chin as full understanding dawned on a tide of rage and revulsion. “And so you did, didn’t you?” Sebastian let Ramsey go and took a step back before the urge to plant the bastard a facer grew overwhelming. “Mother of God. What manner of man are you?”

Ramsey wiped his sleeve across his bloody upper lip. “You don’t understand. She taunted me. She wanted it!”

“Is that what you told yourself? So you—what? Fucked her there? In the upstairs room of a Covent Garden brothel? And then you just left her?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“You could have told her father where she was.”

“Lord Fairchild?” Ramsey looked appalled. “You think I wanted to kill him? The man has a weak heart.”

Sebastian studied Ramsey’s blood-smeared features. “Did you find out how Rachel ended up in Covent Garden?”

“No.”

“You did ask, didn’t you?”

“Of course I asked!”

“And she told you nothing? Nothing at all?”

“She told me to go away and leave her alone.”

“Did you ever go back there?”

Revulsion spread across the man’s face. “Good God, what do you think I am?”

“You don’t want to know.” Sebastian stooped to scoop up Ramsey’s hat from the cobbles, where it had been knocked in the scuffle. “Here,” he said, slamming it against the man’s chest.

Ramsey’s hands jerked up to close on the hat’s brim. “Anyone would have done the same in my place,” he said, clutching the hat to his chest.

Sebastian studied the man’s heightened color and shifting, restless gaze. “You didn’t try to talk her into leaving with you,” said Sebastian, suddenly knowing it for the truth. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you ranted at her. Demanded to know why she’d left you and how she could have done such a thing to you. But you didn’t try to talk her into leaving. After all, what if she had said yes? What would you have done with her then? Taken her to wife?”

Ramsey’s head snapped back. “You say that as if you would have done any differently. What man would have wanted her after that? She was a whore!”

He must have seen something flare in Sebastian’s eyes, because he took a hasty step back. “All right,” said Ramsey, breathing heavily enough to shudder his chest. “It’s true. I didn’t beg her to leave with me. But it isn’t as if she asked me to take her away from there.”

“And that surprises you?”

Ramsey raked the back of one hand across his upper lip. The bleeding was stopping now. “You don’t know the way she treated me. The way she just stood there swearing at me, talking to me like a—” He broke off.

“Like?” prompted Sebastian.

Ramsey sniffed and shook his head.

“When was this?” Sebastian demanded.