He continued up the path toward the Long Water, and after a moment, she fell in beside him again. She said, “Had you discovered the name of the woman who fled with Rose?”
“No,” he admitted, glancing sideways at her. “Did Tasmin Poole tell you why the two women ran away from Orchard Street?”
“She said she didn’t know. But she had this—” Reaching into her reticule, Miss Jarvis held up a short length of silver chain. “She said Rose gave it to her as payment for something.”
Sebastian reached out to take the chain and cradle it in his gloved palm. It was a bracelet, small and delicate, with a single round medallion. He remembered his sister, Amanda, having something similar as a child. “It’s a child’s bracelet,” he said, glancing up at the woman beside him. “How do you know this really belonged to Rose Fletcher?”
“I recognized the coat of arms on the medallion.”
He flipped over the small medallion to study the helm with three eagles’ heads. “The Fairchilds,” he said. He looked up to find her watching him. “You do realize that either Tasmin Poole or Rose Fletcher could have acquired this bracelet in any one of a hundred different ways?”
“Of course I realize that,” she said with ill-disguised indignation. “But the coincidences are more than intriguing.”
“Coincidences?”
“Lord Fairchild has a daughter named Rachel, who made her Come Out just last Season. Her betrothal was announced in May, not long before she supposedly retired to the family estates in Northamptonshire for health reasons. But there are rumors that Miss Fairchild is not in Northamptonshire. There are rumors that she ran away.”
Sebastian rubbed the pad of his thumb over the bracelet’s delicate silver links. According to Luke O’Brian, Rose’s family was from Northamptonshire. He said, “Why would she take this with her, of all things? It can’t be worth much.”
“Perhaps it was given to her by someone she loved. I don’t know. But Tasmin told me something else significant. She said Rose—or Rachel, or whatever her name is—was terrified someone would find her. Tasmin thought it might have been her family, but she wasn’t certain.”
Sebastian said, “If Rose was Rachel Fairchild and she came out last Season, then why didn’t you recognize her when you met her at the Magdalene House?”
Miss Jarvis shrugged. “I may have seen her at a ball, but if so I don’t recall it. She wasn’t the type of young woman one would notice in a crush, and I seldom attend Almack’s Assemblies these days.” At twenty-five, Miss Jarvis was virtually an ape leader.
He held up the bracelet. “You bought this?”
“Yes. With the promise of twenty pounds if Tasmin Poole should discover the current whereabouts of Hannah Green.” When he remained silent, she said with some impatience, “At least we’ve a new avenue of inquiry to pursue.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “We, Miss Jarvis?”
She stared back at him. “That’s right.”
“What precisely do you intend to do? Go to Almack’s and offer twenty pounds to anyone who can furnish you with the whereabouts of Miss Rachel Fairchild?”
The color was back in her cheeks, only this time he suspected it was a flush of annoyance. Miss Jarvis wasn’t yet as good at controlling her emotions as her father. “No,” she said evenly. “But I can make a call upon Lady Sewell.”
“Who?”
“Georgina, Lady Sewell. Before her marriage she was Miss Fairchild—Rachel Fairchild’s elder sister. I can’t help but wonder if Rachel ran away from the Fairchilds’ house on Curzon Street, why didn’t she seek refuge with her sister?”
“Rather than in a brothel? It is an interesting question.” Sebastian frowned, remembering what Luke O’Brian had told him about “Rose’s” family. I think she might have had two sisters, and a brother in the Army. . . . Sebastian knew that Lord Fairchild had at least one son, Cedric; he’d served with Sebastian in the Peninsula. “Is there a younger sister, as well?” he asked aloud.
“I don’t know,” said Miss Jarvis, shifting her parasol to keep the faint sun off her face.
Sebastian stared off across the sparkling surface of the Long Water toward Hyde Park. What he needed, he realized, was someone intimately familiar with every hint of gossip and scandal attached to the Fairchilds in the last fifty years. Someone like his aunt—
“I think the information we’ve gained was worth whatever minimal risk I might have incurred,” said Miss 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.