He was standing beneath the semicircular balcony for the musicians and watching the progress of Tristan Ramsey down a line of the country dance when a woman’s voice behind him said coldly, “Whatever are you doing here?”
Sebastian swung around to find his sister, Amanda, studying him through narrowed blue eyes. She wore an elegant gown of silver-gray satin simply adorned with puffed sleeves, for she was still less than eighteen months widowed.
“Did you hope the Patronesses had blackballed me?” he said.
Amanda let out her breath in a scornful huff. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the heir to an earldom. You could murder half a dozen virgins in the middle of Bond Street, and they’d still let you in.”
Sebastian returned his gaze to Tristan Ramsey. A small but well-formed man in his midtwenties, he had curly auburn hair and pleasant, even features. But he moved with distracted clumsiness, his face as haggard and pale as a man with the ague . . . or a man who’d just learned that the woman he’d once planned to make his wife was dead. He partnered a dainty young thing with the exact same auburn hair and a scattering of freckles across her small, upturned nose. This, obviously, was the young Miss Ramsey making her debut.
“We got on far more comfortably when you were still on the Continent,” said Amanda.
“Not to mention the exciting possibility that I might at any moment get myself killed.” Sebastian let his gaze wander over the other dancers until he spied his eighteen-year-old niece, Miss Stephanie Wilcox, going down the line with Lord Ivins, the rakish young heir to a Marquis. “Would it make you feel better if I pledged to endeavor not to irretrievably disgrace the family before my niece goes off?”
He watched as Stephanie executed a neat pirouette. She had grown into a ravishing young woman, with a tumble of golden curls and the vivid blue St. Cyr eyes. Along with her mother’s coloring, she had Amanda’s tall, slim elegance. But unlike Amanda, Stephanie had escaped the rather blunt features Amanda had inherited from Hendon. In fact, Stephanie looked startlingly like Sebastian’s own mother, Sophia.
“How is Stephanie doing on the Marriage Mart, by the way?” he asked. “Any bidders yet?”
Amanda also watched her daughter. “Don’t be vulgar.”
“I wouldn’t go with Ivins if I were you. He’s rather too fond of faro.”
“We have hopes for Smallbone.”
“Has he come up to scratch yet?” Sebastian watched his niece throw a provocative, laughing gaze up at the admiring Lord Ivins. Stephanie not only looked like the errant Countess, Sebastian realized, but she acted like her, as well.
“Not yet.”
“Best hope he does so soon,” said Sebastian. “My niece looks dangerously fond of Ivins.”
The dance was ending. Sebastian watched Tristan Ramsey lead his glowing sister back to a matronly woman in puce, then disappear toward the supper room. “Excuse me,” said Sebastian, and left Amanda glaring after him with icy dislike.
He came upon Ramsey in the supper room. The tables were spread with the usual Almack’s fare, which was simply thinly sliced bread and butter, plain cakes, lemonade, and tea. Ramsey had passed up the tea in favor of a glass of lemonade, but the bread and cakes didn’t appear to tempt him. He stood turned half away, the glass of lemonade seemingly forgotten in one hand, the fingers of his other hand sliding up and down his watch chain as he stared into space.
Sebastian’s acquaintance with the man was slight. They might belong to the same clubs and at times frequent the same routs and balls, but they were separated by some four or five years and by a world of interests. Yet when Sebastian entered the supper room, Ramsey left the table and walked right up to him. “The woman whose body you showed Cedric Fairchild . . .” Ramsey threw a quick glance around and lowered his voice. “You’re quite certain it was Rachel?”
“Fairly certain, yes.”
Ramsey swallowed hard, his face going slack. He had even features and a pleasant enough face only slightly marred by a weak chin.
Sebastian said, “You knew she was missing?”
Ramsey nodded. From the ballroom came the beginning strains of a Scottish reel.
“Then you also know, presumably, why she ran away.”
“No.” The man’s gaze had wandered, but he now brought it back to Sebastian’s face. “I went to Curzon Street one day, planning to take her for a drive in the park, and Lady Fairchild told me Rachel was ill. They kept fobbing me off with one tale or another. Then they said she’d gone to Northamptonshire to recuperate.”
“So how did you realize she wasn’t there?”
“She never wrote to me. I finally went up to Fairchild Hall myself.” His lips flattened into a straight line. “When the servants told me they hadn’t seen her since shortly after Christmas, I drove straight back to Curzon Street and demanded the truth.”
“And?”
“Lord Fairchild admitted she’d run away.”
“You had quarreled?”
Ramsey’s eyes widened, his jaw sagging in denial. “No. Never.”
“Then how do you explain her behavior?”
“I don’t know. I looked for her everywhere. It was as if she just . . . disappeared.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s ashen face. He had not, obviously, thought to search the alleyways and brothels of Covent Garden. But then, who would?
Ramsey dropped his voice even lower. “Cedric says you’ve involved yourself in this at the request of a woman who survived the fire.”
“That’s right.”
“One of the whores?”
“I’d rather not say.”
For some reason, the answer seemed to trouble Ramsey. He stood with the glass of lemonade still untasted, the fingers of his free hand fiddling now with the gold locket he wore at the end of his watch chain. Sebastian said, “People typically run away because they’re angry, or because they’re miserable, or because they’re afraid. Was Rachel afraid of marriage?”
A hint of color touched the other man’s pale cheeks. “Of course not. She couldn’t wait to be married.”
“She was anxious to get away from her stepmother? The new Lady Fairchild?”
Ramsey gave a surprised laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. The woman’s a cipher, a shadow.”
“What about her father? How did Rachel get along with him?”
“Lord Fairchild?” Ramsey shrugged. “I don’t think she saw much of him, frankly. From what I understand he’s pretty much devoted himself to affairs of state. At least, since his first wife’s death.”
Sebastian studied the other man’s pale, haggard face. “It’s curious, don’t you think, that a gently born woman would flee her home and seek refuge in Covent Garden, only to run away again in fear less than a year later?”
“What makes you think she ran away in fear?”
It struck Sebastian as a curious question. “Can you think of another reason she would run away? Twice?”
“I told you. I don’t know.” His gaze drifted back to the ballroom. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I promised my sister this lemonade,” he said, and brushed past Sebastian into the ballroom without a backward glance.
Chapter 25
It was when Sebastian was leaving Almack’s Assembly Rooms that he fell in with a small party that included Mr. Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister. “Devlin,” said the Prime Minister, excusing himself from his party. “Walk with me a ways. I’ve been wanting to speak to you.”
The night was cold and clear, the bells of the city’s churches chiming the hour as the two men turned their steps toward St. James’s. In his fiftieth year, the Prime Minister was a small, slender man with a thin, smiling mouth, protuberant light eyes, and a rapidly receding hairline. “I’m concerned about your father,” he said. “He doesn’t look well these days.”
“Hendon eats too much, drinks too much, and smokes too much,” said Sebastian, wondering how many times in one day he could have this same conversation.
Perceval laughed. “Don’t we all.”
Sebastian kept his peace, although in truth, Spencer Perceval was a temperate family man who spent whatever free time the affairs of state left him either playing games with his children or searching the Bible for prophecies that he then wrote up and published in a series of religious pamphlets. “And how is Lady Perceval? And the children?” Sebastian asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Lady Perceval is well, thank you. And as for the children . . . well, they’re growing up too fast,” said the Prime Minister with that special smile that always lit his face when he spoke of his six sons and six daughters. “My eldest son will be heading off for Trinity College in the autumn.”
Sebastian eyed the tattered hackney carriage that had pulled in close to the curb ahead of them. A man wearing an evening cloak stepped down, but the hackney didn’t move on and the man stayed in the shadows. “I remember when Spence was off to Harrow.”
The Prime Minister smiled. “Makes one feel one’s age, does it not?” The smile faded, and he worked his square jaw back and forth in a way that reminded Sebastian of Hendon. “My Jane tells me I’m worse than a nosy old woman, but here it is. I don’t know what’s happened between you and Hendon, but I do know it grieves him. Grieves him badly. There. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Just thought you ought to know. Before it’s too late.”
Sebastian swallowed a spurt of annoyance and said evenly, “I understand you dined with Sir William Hadley on Monday.”
“That’s right. At Long’s,” said the Prime Minister with a rush of heartiness, as if this time he were thankful for the shift in topic. “The food was appalling. I’ve a good mind to quit going there.”
“What time did the evening break up?”
“Not until midnight at least. You know how it is. A roomful of men with a steady supply of port and a dozen different opinions as to why the country is going to rack and ruin.”
“Ah. I thought I saw Sir William that evening at Covent Garden, but I must have been mistaken.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Perceval. “You might have. Sir William arrived late—close on to nine o’clock, if I remember correctly. Said something about—” He broke off as a man lurched toward them from out of the shadow of the waiting hackney.
“There you are!” said the gentleman, planting himself in the center of the footpath with his hands clenched into fists at his side, the light from the nearest streetlamp limning the side of his face. “Thought to avoid me again, did you?”
A spasm of embarrassment passed over the Prime Minister’s features. Like all well-bred Englishmen, Perceval found public scenes mortifying. “Mr. Bellingham, I did not attend Almack’s Assembly in an effort to avoid you.”
The man was small and dark haired, with a long face that looked prematurely aged. He might have been fifty or sixty, but the blackness of his hair suggested an age nearer to forty. “All I demand is what is the birthright and privilege of every English-man,” said Bellingham, shoving his face up against Perceval’s. “How would your wife and family feel if you were torn from them for years? Robbed of all your property and everything that makes life valuable?”
Perceval drew back, putting distance between them again. “You still have your wife and family, sir. And that is what makes life valuable.”