Chapter 45
Sebastian sat on the scorched, crumbling remnant of a wall and breathed in the pungent smell of wet burned wood and old ash. He’d come here to what was left of the Magdalene House after leaving the Black Dragon in St. Giles. A journeyman glazier passing in the street threw him a sharp look, but kept walking. Sebastian stared out over the charred jumble of debris and wondered why he hadn’t seen it before.
What manner of men would kill seven unknown women just to get at one? The answer was only too obvious. Men who were accustomed to killing. And no one was more accustomed to killing than military men.
He thought about the girl from the cheesemonger’s shop, Pippa. She’d given him a clue that first day, when she’d told him the gentlemen she’d seen watching the Magdalene House had reminded her of some old Nabob. One could always tell a Nabob by his sun-darkened skin, just as one could tell the military men who had spent years under the fierce suns of India and the Sudan, Egypt and the West Indies.
The sound of boot leather scraping over fallen timbers brought Sebastian’s head around. “What are you doing here?” asked Cedric Fairchild, picking his way toward him.
“Trying to make sense of all this.” He studied the younger man’s haggard face. “What brings you here?”
“I don’t know.” Cedric stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coat, his shoulders hunched against the dampness as he stared out over the house’s shattered walls and twisted, burned contents. “I can’t believe she died here. I keep thinking that if I’d only managed to talk her into leaving—”
“Don’t,” said Sebastian. “It’s not your fault.”
Cedric swung his head to look at him. “Yes, it is.” He sucked in a breath that seemed to shudder his entire frame. “I was talking to Georgina—Lady Sewell. My sister. She’d heard about Rachel’s death and came to see me. She told me something I didn’t know. It seems that last summer—before I came home—Rachel did quarrel with Ramsey. So maybe my father was right. That is why she ran away.”
Sebastian’s brows drew together. “Would Lord Fairchild have forced her to marry Ramsey even if she had changed her mind?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. I suppose he might. He’s a stickler for the proprieties, you know. And if she’d broken off her betrothal, there would doubtless have been a scandal.”
Sebastian watched as Pippa from the cheesemonger’s across the street came and stood in her shop’s doorway, a frown on her face as she narrowed her eyes, watching them.
Cedric said, “I don’t understand why you’re poking into the past, asking these questions about Rachel. About my family. What’s any of it got to do with this?” He swept his arm in a wide arc that took in the fallen, blackened beams, the crumbling chimney of what was once a fireplace.
“I’m not certain it has anything to do with it,” Sebastian admitted.
Cedric’s arm dropped to his side. “My father’s not well, you know. The news about Rachel hit him hard.”
“You told him it was true?”
“My sister told him.”
“And he believed it? He accepted that she is dead?”
Cedric’s gaze shifted away. “I don’t know. He said he didn’t. I mean, it’s hard to believe, isn’t it, with her body burned like that? But he’s—he’s not himself. I’m worried about him.”
Sebastian felt his lips curl into a wry smile. “You want me to stop asking questions about Rachel. Is that what you’re saying?”
“She’s dead! Dead and buried. Knowing what happened to her isn’t going to bring her back, but it could very well kill our father.” Cedric jerked his head toward the back of the burned-out house. “You want to find out what happened to the women in this house, fine. But leave my family out of it!”
In the sudden silence that followed his outburst, Sebastian could hear the rattle of a shutter being thrust up. He glanced down at his clasped hands, then up at the other man’s tight-lipped face. Cedric Fairchild might have been to war, but he suddenly looked very, very young. Sebastian said, “This man who’s missing . . . Max Ludlow. Did you know him well?”
Cedric frowned, as if confused by the shift in subject. “I’ve met him a few times. But I don’t know him well, no. I never served with him.”
“He was in the hussars?”
“Until he sold out, yes.”
“Was he ever wounded?”
“In Argentina, I believe.” Cedric’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
Sebastian was thinking about a dead man in a brothel room with an old scar like a saber slash running diagonally across his belly. But all he said was, “Just wondering.” He glanced across the street at the cheesemonger’s shop.
Pippa had disappeared.
“It don’t make no sense,” said Tom from his perch at the rear of Sebastian’s curricle. “It’s near three o’clock. ’Ow can this Lady Melbourne be ’avin’ a picnic breakfast?”
Sebastian neatly featheredged a corner. They were passing through Putney on their way to Kew, the site of Lady Melbourne’s highly anticipated breakfast. “Breakfasts are like morning calls, which is to say they take place in the afternoon. When you don’t generally get up before midday, it shifts things a bit.”
“You reckon this Mr. Ramsey will be there?”
“He has a sister he’s launching into society. Lady Melbourne’s picnic breakfast is one of the most important events of the Season. He’ll be there.”
They arrived at Kew to find the wildflower-strewn hillside near the pagoda crowded with linen-draped tables set with gleaming silver and crystal. “Gor,” said Tom, practically falling off his perch as he craned around to stare. “ ’Ow’d they get all this out ’ere?”
“The servants brought the tables and trimmings in wagons and set it up before her ladyship’s guests arrived.”
The tiger cast a thoughtful eye toward the clouds above. “And if’n it rains?”
“On Lady Melbourne’s picnic?” Sebastian handed over the reins and jumped down. “It wouldn’t dare.”
Winding his way through liveried servants and ladies with parasols, Sebastian was aware of his sister, Amanda, glaring at him from near the towering, dragon-roofed pagoda. He deliberately avoided her, only to fall into the clutches of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Devlin,” said Perceval, hailing him. “Not usually your type of scene, is it?”
“Nor yours, I’d have said.”
The Prime Minister raised his wineglass with a wry grimace. “I have six daughters, which means I’ll be fighting flies and ants for my food for many years to come, I’m afraid. What is it about the concept of alfresco dining that so captivates the fair sex?”
Sebastian nodded to where the Prime Minister’s daughter—a vision in white muslin and chip straw—stood laughing with a friend. “It does show them to advantage, don’t you agree?”