Free Where Serpents Sleep by C. S. Harris Page B

none o’ that at the Black Dragon.”
     
     
    Sebastian quietly slipped past him up the stairs and into the chamber on the half landing.
     
     
    After the dim haze of the common room, the chamber’s blaze of lights made Sebastian’s eyes water. Two branches of wax candles burned on the mantelpiece, with three more scattered on the tabletops around the room. Ian Kane stood before an easel in the center of a good Chinese rug. Of medium height and build with hair the color of burnished copper, he was stripped down to his breeches, shirt, and waistcoat, and held a piece of charcoal in his hand. Some ten feet in front of him, a winsome young thing with soft white flesh and a halo of golden curls sprawled on a blue velvet divan. She wore pink slippers and a pearl necklace, and nothing else.
     
     
    At Sebastian’s entrance, Kane glanced around. The girl jerked, but Kane said, “Don’t move,” and she froze.
     
     
    “Nicely done,” said Sebastian, coming to look at a half-completed charcoal sketch somewhat in the style of Ingres.
     
     
    From the room below came the sound of breaking glass and a man’s hoarse shout. Kane reached for a rag and calmly wiped his fingers. “I presume you started that for a reason?”
     
     
    The faint echo of a Lancashire burr was still there in the brothel owner’s speech, but he’d obviously made considerable efforts to eradicate it in the ten or fifteen years that had passed since he’d fled the mines. His breeches, coat, and waistcoat could only have come from the best Bond Street tailors. Sebastian could easily see Pippa from the cheesemonger’s shop taking this man for a gentleman. However nefarious the nature of his current businesses, Kane was working hard at obscuring his origins. But unless he’d dyed his hair, Pippa was unlikely to have described him as “dark.”
     
     
    “I thought our conversation would be more congenial without the presence of one of your gentlemen of the Fancy,” said Sebastian. He wandered the room, his gaze roving over the series of canvases on the wall. Done in oils in much the same style as the charcoal sketch on the easel, the paintings included both London street scenes and views of ships on the Thames. One particularly striking image of the church of Allhallows Barking caught in a stream of sunlight was only half finished. But most of the paintings were of naked women in a variety of languid poses.
     
     
    “I suppose that’s one of the advantages of running a brothel,” said Sebastian. “There can’t be many artists with such ready access to a houseful of women who are more than willing to take off their clothes.”
     
     
    Kane merely set aside his rag and grunted.
     
     
    “I wonder,” said Sebastian, “did you ever paint Rose Fletcher?”
     
     
    “Who?”
     
     
    “Rose Fletcher. Up until last week she was one of the dashers at the Orchard Street Academy. I understand you’re the proprietor.”
     
     
    Kane picked up a short piece of charcoal and traced a neat line along the hip of the figure in his sketch. “I have more than one house and employ scores of women. Do you think I know them all?”
     
     
    From below stairs came a loud thump, followed by a bellow of rage. Sebastian said, “This woman left your house precipitously and went into hiding. I’m wondering if she was hiding from you.”
     
     
    “What do you think?” said Kane, keeping his attention on his work. “That I stock my houses with traffic from some nefarious white-slave ring?” He had a slickly handsome face and a wide mouth full of straight white teeth he showed in a smile. “Why would she hide from me? Every soiled dove on the street would have you think she was kidnapped and forced into the trade. It’s all a fantasy. The girls in my houses are there because they choose to be, and they’re free to leave whenever they want.”
     
     
    Sebastian glanced toward the Cyprian on the divan. She made a small movement, then lay still, her