When Gods Die

by C. S. Harris

  Sebastian glanced around the humid room, crowded with ferns and orchids and tender, leafy tropicals. The warm air smelled of moist earth and green growing things and the sweet perfume of the cape gardenia blooming over by the door. He had something of a reputation as a connoisseur of exotic plants, the Marquis. They said that when he was young, he’d sailed on a naval expedition to the South Pacific, collecting botanic specimens.

  “Paul Gibson tells me he gave you the results of your wife’s autopsy,” said Sebastian.

  Anglessey nodded. “He thinks Guin was poisoned.” He brought one hand to his face and rubbed his closed eyes with a spread thumb and forefinger. “The dagger would have been a far kinder death. Quick. Relatively painless. But cyanide? God help me, how she must have suffered. She’d have had time to know she was dying. I can’t imagine what her last thoughts must have been.” His hand fell to his side, his eyes open wide and hurting. “Who did this? Who could have done such a thing to her?”

  Sebastian held the old man’s tortured gaze. “Bevan Ellsworth claims the child Lady Anglessey carried was not yours.”

  The words were blunt and brutal, but necessary. The Marquis’s head snapped back, his jaw going slack with shock and anger. He tried to take a quick step forward, only to stumble over an uneven tile so that he had to fling out one hand and catch the edge of a nearby iron table for balance. “You dare? You dare say such a thing to me? I’ve called men out for less.”

  Sebastian kept his own voice calm. “He’s not the only one saying it. The assumption on the streets is that she was the Regent’s mistress.”

  The Marquis’s face had gone white, his thin chest jerking so hard with each breath that for a moment Sebastian was afraid he might have pushed too far. “It’s not true.”

  Sebastian met the old man’s furious gaze and held it. “Then help me. I can’t find out what really happened to your wife if I don’t know the truth.”

  Anglessey swung away. He suddenly seemed older, shrunken. Picking up a long-spouted watering can, he went to fill it at the pump. Then he simply stood there, his head bowed.

  When he finally spoke, his voice sounded tired. Resigned. “It’s no easy thing, facing the final years of your life with the knowledge that everything you’ve dedicated yourself to preserving will be destroyed after your death by another man’s dissipation.”

  Sebastian was silent, waiting. After a moment, Anglessey took a deep breath and continued. “Guinevere and I both went into marriage with our eyes wide open. She knew I wanted a young wife to give me an heir, and I knew that her heart already belonged to another.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yes. She thought I deserved to know. I respected her for it. It was my hope that we would at least become friends. And in that, I think we succeeded.”

  Friends. A lukewarm enough ambition for husband and wife. Yet it was a status achieved by very few married couples of their society.

  “My second wife, Charlotte, was never well,” said Anglessey, tightening his grip on the watering can. “For the last fifteen years of her life, I essentially lived the life of a monk. Other men in my position would have taken a mistress, but I never did. Perhaps that was a mistake.”

  It was a common maxim that a man lost his ability to bed a woman when he quit bedding women. An old maxim that probably had a fair amount of truth in it, Sebastian decided.

  Anglessey went to tip a careful stream of water along the roots of a line of ferns. “I was never able to consummate my marriage with Guinevere.” A faint line of color touched his sharp, high cheekbones and stayed there. “She tried. We both tried very hard. She knew how much it meant to me to have a son. But it eventually became obvious that it wasn’t going to happen.”

  He hesitated, then pushed on. “Two years ago, I suggested she take a lover, someone who could father the heir I couldn’t.” He swung his head to look back at Sebastian. “You think it a vile thing, for a man to push his wife into infidelity, to seek to disinherit his own nephew by putting another man’s bastard in his place?”

  “I know Bevan Ellsworth,” said Sebastian simply.

  “Ah.” Anglessey moved on to a shelf of orchids. “It’s the only time I can remember Guinevere ever being truly angry with me. It was too much to ask of her—too much for any man to ask of his wife. She made me feel as if I’d asked her to prostitute herself, which I suppose in a way is precisely what I had done.

  “But then, last winter…’’ His voice trailed away as he gazed out over the lush groupings of exotic ferns and jasmines, gardenias and tender China roses. He tried again. “Last winter, she came to me. She said…”

  “She said she would do it?” Sebastian prompted when it became obvious the old man could not go on.

  “Yes.” It was little more than a whisper.

  Sebastian stood in the center of the conservatory, breathed in the hot, fetid air. From the far corner came the sound of a fountain bubbling into a small pond with flickering goldfish. Beside it, a caged canary filled the morning with a song that should have been cheerful, but instead sounded mournful, despairing.

  “The name of her lover. What was it?”

  Anglessey emptied his watering can, then simply stood there, staring down at the moist, dark earth before him. “I thought it better never to ask. I didn’t want to know.”

  “Could it have been the man she was in love with before you married?”

  He was silent for a moment. It was obvious the possibility had occurred to him. “Perhaps. But I honestly don’t know.”

  By last winter, Sebastian thought, the Chevalier would have completed his studies at Oxford. Had the two former lovers met again in London and decided to begin a physical relationship? A relationship to which her husband had already consented?

  “Do you know where they used to meet?” Sebastian asked.

  “No. Of course not.” Anglessey paused. “You think this man—the one Guinevere took as her lover—is the one who killed her?”

  “It’s possible. Can you think of any other reason your wife would go to Giltspur Street in Smithfield?”

  “Smithfield? Good heavens, no. Why?”

  Sebastian held the old man’s gaze. “She took a hackney there the afternoon she was killed.”

  There was no sign of dissembling, no indication that Anglessey had known of his wife’s visit to Smithfield but had hoped to keep it concealed. Sebastian tried another tack. “Did your wife have much interest in the affairs of government?”

  “Guin?” A faint smile touched the old man’s lips. “Hardly. Guin was passionate about many things, but government wasn’t one of them. As far as she was concerned, one crowned puppet is pretty much the same as the next. It’s the sycophants and thieves with which they surround themselves that you need to watch out for.” His smile deepened as he studied Sebastian’s face. “Does that surprise you?”

  Sebastian shook his head, although if truth were told, he was surprised—not so much by the sentiment itself as by who had aired it. It was hardly a typical opinion for a woman who was the gently bred, privileged daughter of an earl and wife to a marquis. More unexpected still was the realization that the Marquis himself found his wife’s opinion amusing, even endearing. Such an expression of heresy would have thrown Hendon into an apoplectic fit.

  “What about your nephew, Bevan Ellsworth? What are his politics?”

  “I would be seriously surprised if Bevan has ever given a thought to politics in his life. His mind is occupied with far weightier matters, the chief amongst them being women and wagers and the set of his coat. Why?”

  Sebastian walked over to where the Marquis stood, the watering can hanging empty at his side. “What can you tell me about this necklace?”

  Anglessey’s gaze dropped from Sebastian’s face to the silver-and-bluestone pendant he now held in his hand. “Nothing,” said Anglessey, his age-spotted brow wrinkling as if the sudden change of topic confused him. “Why? Where did it come from?”

  “Your wife w
as wearing it when she died. Do you know where she got it?”

  Confusion had given way to mild puzzlement and a blank stare of ignorance that was utterly convincing. “No. I’ve no notion. I’ve never seen it before in my life.”

  SEBASTIAN WALKED THE STREETS OF LONDON, from Oxford to Edgeware Road and beyond, to where the neat town houses and paved streets gave way to massive construction sites and, beyond that, the green fields and market gardens of Paddington.

  As incredible as it seemed, he’d found no one who’d known Guinevere Anglessey who would admit to ever having seen the triskelion. Not only that, but according to her abigail, Tess Bishop, the gown chosen by the Marchioness on the afternoon of her death had sported a neckline that would have made the wearing of the ancient piece impossible. Obviously, like the satin gown, the necklace had been clasped around Guinevere’s neck after her death. But why? And by whom?

  Although Sebastian doubted it, he supposed it possible that Charles, Lord Jarvis, had dangled the necklace before Sebastian simply to entice him into the investigation. Yet even if that were so, it still begged the question: how had a necklace that should have been at the bottom of the English Channel suddenly reappeared?

  The explanation suggested by Hendon, that the necklace had been sold by some peasant who’d found the Countess’s body washed up on a distant beach, remained plausible. But Sebastian could not avoid confronting the more likely explanation, that Sophie Hendon had not died in that long-ago boating accident, but had simply sailed away, leaving a husband, a married daughter, and an eleven-year-old son to mourn her.

  Sebastian stared off across a mist-filled meadow to the line of elms that could be seen edging a stream in the distance. Even as a child, he had nourished few illusions about his parents’ marriage. It was the way of their world, husbands busy with Parliament and their clubs while their wives were left to amuse themselves with other things. In Sebastian’s memories, Sophie Hendon was a golden presence, her touch soft and loving, her gay laughter still echoing to him down through the years. Yet his school days had been punctuated with fisticuffs, fought to defend his mother’s honor. For in a society where infidelity was commonplace, the Countess of Hendon had been known to be particularly promiscuous.

  A crow rose from a nearby field, its voice raucous, its wings dark against the cloudy sky. Sebastian paused, then turned his steps toward the New Road. He had never thought of his mother as unhappy, yet he realized now, looking back, that it might well have been unhappiness that drove her restlessness, that brought that brittle edge to her smile. Had she been unhappy enough to simply sail away and leave them all? To leave him?

  He remembered the aching loss of that summer. He hadn’t believed it when they’d told him of the tragic end to the Countess’s pleasure outing. He thought about the endless hot hours he’d spent on the cliffs overlooking the sea. Day after day he had stood there, his eyes dry and hurting as he determinedly scanned the sunsparkled horizon for sails that would never come. He thought about the possibility that it had all been a lie, and he knew a surge of bitter rage and a deep, abiding hurt.

  Chapter 32

  Of the four children born to the Earl of Hendon and his Countess, Sophia, only two still lived: Hendon’s youngest and only surviving son and heir, Sebastian, and the couple’s eldest child and only daughter, Amanda.

  By the time Sebastian was born, Amanda had already been in her twelfth year. In the memories of his childhood she was a distant, sullen presence, disapproving and vaguely hostile. She had grown into a tall, haughty woman, fiercely proud of her noble lineage and forever embittered by the harsh realities of an ancient tradition that handed everything—titles, estates, wealth—to her youngest, most despised brother.

  At the age of eighteen, she had married Martin, Lord Wilcox, a man of staid respectability from a suitably ancient and wealthy family. She was now a widow, left financially comfortable by the terms of her marriage settlement as well as being in full control of her children’s fortunes. But the circumstances of her husband’s death that previous February were cloudy, and served only to deepen the animosity between brother and sister.

  He found her that afternoon walking the boxwood-trimmed paths of the iron-railed square before her house. She still wore the heavy black trappings of deep mourning, a state of forced idleness and isolation he knew she must find trying, although she would never show it. She turned at his approach. In her early forties now, Amanda had inherited their mother’s fairness and slim, elegant carriage and combined it with Hendon’s more blunt, heavy facial features. At the sight of Sebastian, her blue St. Cyr eyes narrowed.

  “Well. Dear brother. To what do I owe this unexpected…” She paused just long enough to make the word a lie. “Pleasure?”

  Sebastian smiled. “Dear Amanda. Walk with me a ways, won’t you?”

  She hesitated, then inclined her head. “Very well. What is it?”

  They turned their steps together toward the statue that stood at the center of the square. “I wanted to ask you a question. Is it possible, do you think, that Mother didn’t die in a boating accident that summer? That the accident was simply a hoax, a ruse?”

  Amanda continued to walk in silence for so long that he didn’t think she planned to answer him. At last, she said, “What makes you ask?”

  He studied her taut, controlled profile. “I have my reasons. As I recall, no wreckage was ever found. Is that true?”

  An unexpected smile touched her lips. “What are you suggesting? That Hendon had her done away with, then staged the accident to cover up the dirty deed?”

  “No. I’m suggesting Sophie Hendon was fiercely unhappy in her marriage, and that staging her own death was one of the few ways open to her in our society to escape it.”

  Amanda swung to face him. “You mean, you think she ran away.”

  He searched his sister’s face for some betraying flicker of emotion, but found none. “Could she have done it?”

  “Why are you asking me? I wasn’t even in Brighton that summer, remember? I was already married, with young children of my own.”

  “You’re her daughter.”

  She glanced up at the lichen-covered statue of an ancient Tudor king beside them. “Have you discussed this with Hendon?”

  “Yes. He may not know the truth himself.”

  “Not all truths are ever known, dear brother,” she said, gathering her black skirts. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m expecting Lady Jersey this afternoon.” She swept past him, her head held high, a tight smile on her lips.

  Left alone in the gardens of St. James’s Square, Sebastian watched a young nursemaid shepherd her laughing charges down the steps of one of the stately houses fronting the square, and lead them across the street. He turned in a slow circle, his gaze sweeping row after row of imposing mansions around him. How many women, he wondered, lived lives of quiet despair behind those imposing facades? What tales of disappointment and heartache, fear and desperation, did those walls of marble and brick disguise?

  Still thoughtful, he drew the triskelion from his pocket and turned it over to study the entwined initials of another pair of doomed lovers. A. C. and J. S. Addiena Cadel and James Stuart. Was the ancient Welsh necklace that had once belonged to Sophie Hendon a clue to what had happened to Guinevere Anglessey, Sebastian wondered, or simply a distraction? What was Guinevere’s intention when she left that grand, four-story house on Mount Street in a hackney carriage headed for Smithfield, only to be found some eight hours later, dead and in the arms of the Regent in Brighton? During the intervening hours, someone had poisoned her, exchanged her simple red afternoon walking dress for a slightly smaller woman’s green satin evening gown, and used her dead body in an elaborate scheme to further discredit an already unpopular prince. But why? Why?

  Somewhere in the half-truths and subtle nuances of what Sebastian had discovered about Guinevere’s life lay the explanation for her death. And for some reason he couldn’t explain, he found himself coming back again
and again to that image of the child Guinevere had once been. Grief-stricken, frightened, left alone by her mother’s early death, the young Guinevere had known little love from either her father or her older sister, while her governesses had been content to let her roam the countryside with the kind of freedom usually reserved for the males of her class.

  And so the cliffs above the wild Welsh coast had become her refuge, the open fields and forests of her father’s estate her schoolroom. In a sense she’d been fortunate. Her childhood experiences had nurtured her instinctive independence and resiliency, while the love she’d been denied at home had been found nearby, within the ancient walls of Audley Castle. First from Lady Audley, herself so recently bereaved, and then from her son, the Chevalier de Varden, a young man with a life as tragic in its own way as Guinevere’s.

  What would have happened, Sebastian wondered, if the old Earl of Athelstone hadn’t placed his own greed and ambitions ahead of his daughter’s happiness? Sebastian had a brief image of the woman he’d last seen dead in the Yellow Cabinet at Brighton, only in his mind’s eye she was alive, with the golden light of the Welsh sun warm on her face as she played with her children on a windy hill overlooking a foam-flecked sea. What if…?

  But that was a futile, if beguiling, path to travel, and he closed his mind to it.

  Watching the nursemaid chase after her wayward charges, Sebastian found himself remembering what Guinevere had said to the starving, desperate woman she’d made her abigail. If we’re given a hard road to walk in life, we can’t give up. We must fight to find some way to make what we want out of what life has given us.

  Faced with such determined opposition from her family, another woman might simply have succumbed to the wishes of her keepers and lived a pale, unhappy life of resignation and acceptance. But not Guinevere. Given no real choice, she had come to London. But she had come determined to find some way to make her life on her own terms.

  And so she had taken to husband the Marquis of Anglessey, a man who was not only wealthy and kindly, but also old enough to be nearing the end of his life. As a wealthy widow, Guinevere would have been free to marry to please herself. Had that been her objective? Only, in the end it had been the Marquis of Anglessey who buried his beautiful young wife.