When Gods Die sscm-2

by C. S. Harris

  “Is that what this is all about? Revenge?”

  She pressed her cheek against his chest, her arms warm around his waist. “No. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of avenging her death. It’s also about protecting the memory of who she was by not letting people distort the truth to protect themselves. And about making sure that whoever did this won’t have a chance to do it again.”

  He took her face between his hands, felt the pulse in her neck beat against his palm. She seemed so fragile beneath his touch, so vulnerable that for a moment his heart caught with fear and he knew the urge to sweep her into his arms and hold her close—hold her safe, forever.

  “Marry me, Kat,” he said suddenly. “There isn’t a reason you can come up with for refusing me that doesn’t sound weak and absurd when you think about how quickly death could take either of us.”

  Her lips parted, her intense blue eyes widening with pain as she looked into his face and shook her head. “We can’t live our lives as if we were to die tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps we should.”

  “And spend a lifetime in regret?”

  “I wouldn’t regret it.”

  A smile touched her lips, then quickly faded. “You think that now.”

  He touched his forehead to hers and said again, “I wouldn’t regret it.”

  Chapter 30

  Waking early the next morning, Kat lay for a moment with her eyes closed and listened to the gentle rhythm of Devlin’s breathing beside her. A smile touched her lips. He had stayed the night.

  Pushing herself up on her elbow, she let her gaze drift over him. She knew every line and sinew of his body, the rare brilliance of his mind and the even rarer nobility of his soul. And she knew, too, what it would eventually do to him if she followed the aching longings of her heart and married him.

  The smile faded. She had loved him since she was sixteen, when she was an unknown chorus girl and he a wild young buck not long down from Oxford. He’d asked her to marry him then, too. And because she’d been young and so desperately hungry to keep him in her life forever, she’d said yes. It was only later—after his father and her own conscience had made her realize what such a marriage would mean for him—that she’d sent Devlin away. What she’d seen in his eyes that night—the agonized disbelief of betrayal—had cut her heart in two and ripped out her soul.

  She could remember wandering the fog-shrouded streets of the City, tears hot on her cheeks, heartsick with all the grief of youth and looking for death. But death hadn’t come, and those who’d told her that time lessens pain had in part been right. Because in time she’d found a reason to live and a cause to fight for. That was part of the problem now. But only part.

  She told herself that the choices she’d made these last few years didn’t make any difference, that she would still have the strength to resist the treacherous weakness of her heart. It was a wonder to her that despite all Devlin had seen and done in the last seven years, in this way, at least, he hadn’t changed. He still believed he could count the world well lost for love. She knew better.

  She knew what it would do to him, to find himself cut off from those of his own class, an object of contempt and scorn, pity and ridicule. Marriage to her would be a social solecism for which neither his father nor his sister, Amanda, would ever forgive him. She didn’t suppose Devlin would suffer overly much from an estrangement from his only surviving sibling. But the ties binding the Earl and his heir ran strong and deep.

  She knew that. And still she was tempted.

  That’s when she reminded herself that you can’t build a marriage on lies, and that while Devlin might know the sordid truth of her childhood years on the streets, he didn’t know about the other years, the years after she’d sent him away from her. The years she’d spent seducing important men and passing the secrets they spilled to the French.

  In her weaker moments, a treacherous voice whispered that he need never know about those years. She’d had no dealings with the French since Pierrepont’s disappearance from London four months ago. And while she’d been told a new spymaster would contact her, the message she’d been dreading—a two-toned bouquet of flowers accompanied only by a biblical quotation—had never come. Besides, her allegiance had never been to France but to Ireland, to the tragic land of her youth and the scene of her mother’s death.

  Yet in her heart of hearts, she knew that was mere quibbling. If Devlin knew the truth, if he knew she had aided the enemy he spent six long years fighting, he would turn away from her in disgust…or condemn her to the ignoble death of a spy.

  She realized his eyes were open, watching her. He had the most extraordinary eyes, the color of amber, with an almost inhuman ability to see not only great distances, but also in the dark. His hearing was abnormally acute, as well. She liked to tease him, to tell him he was part wolf. Yet she knew that his preternatural abilities unsettled him, for there was no history of such gifts in either his mother’s family or his father’s.

  “Darling,” he said softly, reaching for her. She went into his arms, a smile on her lips when she bent her head to taste his kiss. She loved it when he called her darling.

  He tightened his arms around her, rubbed his cheek against her hair. And she pushed aside all her doubts and fears and impossible dreams, and gave herself wholly to the man and the moment.

  FOR AS LONG AS SEBASTIAN COULD REMEMBER, the Earl of Hendon had begun each day he was in London with an early-morning ride in Hyde Park.

  That Monday morning dawned cool and damp, with a heavy mist that drifted through the trees and showed no sign of lifting. But Sebastian knew his father: by seven o’clock the Earl would be in the park, trotting his big gray gelding up and down the Row. And so that morning Sebastian mounted the dainty black Arabian mare he kept in London and turned her head toward the park.

  “Don’t usually see you abroad until midafternoon,” groused Hendon when Sebastian brought his mare, Leila, into line beside the Earl’s big gray. “Or haven’t you made it to your bed yet?”

  Sebastian smiled softly to himself, because the truth was that as much as Hendon grumbled, he was actually secretly proud of what he called his son’s wildness, just as he was proud of Sebastian’s skill with sword and pistol, and as a horseman. Drinking, womanizing, and even gambling were just the sort of manly activities a gentleman expected of his son, excesses of youth to be indulged—as long as they weren’t carried to an extreme. It was Sebastian’s love of books and music, his interest in the radical philosophies of the French and Germans, that Hendon had never been able to abide or understand.

  “I wanted to hear your opinion on something,” said Sebastian. He trotted beside his father in silence a moment, then asked bluntly, “How much sympathy do you think there would be in this country for a restoration of the Stuarts?”

  Hendon’s answer was so long in coming that Sebastian began to wonder if his father had even heard the question. But Hendon, like Kat, was given to thoughtful silences before he spoke.

  “A year ago I’d have said none whatsoever.” He squinted off across the Park to where a flock of ducks could be seen rising up, dark wings outstretched as they took flight into the mist and filled the morning with their plaintive calls. “The Stuarts have always had a certain nostalgic appeal to the likes of Walter Scott and the Highland Tories. But that’s the stuff of romance. Beyond the romance lies the reality of a very foolish king who lost his throne because he insisted on trying to thwart the will of a nation.”

  “And now?”

  He threw Sebastian a quick sideways glance. “Now we have a mad king, a licentious, debt-ridden regent who spends more time with his tailors than with his ministers, and a hey-go-mad, fifteen-year-old princess whose own father calls her mother a whore. The other day, I heard someone—I think it was Brougham himself—say that what went on under the Stuarts was nothing compared to what is happening today.”

  “But there is no Stuart heir. James the Second had two grandsons, Bonnie Prince Charlie and
his brother, Henry. Prince Charlie left no legitimate children, while Henry became a Catholic priest who died—when? Four years ago?”

  Hendon nodded. “Henry the Ninth, he called himself. The Stuart claim has now passed to the descendants of Charles the First’s daughter, Henrietta. Strictly speaking, the throne should have gone to them after the death of James the Second’s daughter, Ann, in 1714, rather than to the Hanoverian George the First. But they were Catholics.”

  “So who is the current pretender?”

  “Victor Emmanuel of Savoy.”

  “A king without a kingdom,” said Sebastian thoughtfully. Once the Kings of Sardinia and Piedmont, the men of the House of Savoy had been forced by the armies of the French Revolution to abdicate all their territories on the Italian mainland.

  Hendon pressed his lips into a thin smile. “Exactly.”

  “But Savoy is a Catholic—which is what got James the Second into trouble over a hundred years ago. England won’t even allow a Catholic to sit in Parliament. They’re hardly likely to accept one on the throne.”

  “True. But Savoy wouldn’t be the first man willing to change his religion for the sake of a throne, now, would he?”

  “Is he willing?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been hearing things lately that disturb me. All this talk about a curse, for instance—people saying the House of Hanover is cursed, and that England will be cursed, too, as long as a usurper sits upon her throne. Where do you suppose that came from?”

  “You think the Jacobites started it?”

  “Who knows how these things start? But it seems to have fallen on very receptive ground. If there is still an organized conspiracy to replace the Hanovers, now would be the time for them to make a move.”

  Hendon rode in silence for a moment, his gaze fixed on some point beyond his horses’ ears. The silence filled with the creak of saddle leather and the rhythmic pattern of their horses’ hooves on the soft earth. “I was born the year after the ’Forty-five,” he said in a tight voice. “I grew up with the tales of what those times were like. I wouldn’t want to see some fool visit such horrors upon us again.”

  Sebastian studied his father’s closed face. It was the stuff of legends, the Highland Rising of 1745 in support of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Sebastian had heard the stories, too, from his grandmother, Hendon’s mother, who had been a Grant from Glenmoriston. Stories of unarmed clansmen dragged out of crofts and slaughtered before their screaming children. Of women and children burned alive, or turned out of their villages to die in the snow. What was done to the Highlanders after Culloden would forever be a dark stain on the English soul. Everything from the pipes to the plaids to the Gaelic language itself had been forbidden, obliterating an entire culture.

  “Who would support a restoration now?” Sebastian asked. “The Scots?”

  Hendon shook his head. “The chiefs who supported the Stuarts were all killed or exiled years ago, while their clansmen lie in forgotten graves—or were transported to America. Besides, the Risings were always more about Scotland than about the Stuarts. What interest have the Scots in some Italian princeling whose great-great-grandmother happens to have been the daughter of Charles the First, rather than of James the First?”

  Hendon was right: apart from the romantic appeal of a lost cause, the Stuart claimant to the throne would no longer inspire enthusiasm in Scotland. Nor would Jacobitism have much appeal to the Tories of today. The Hanoverian succession had been a disaster for the old Tories. There was little resemblance between the Tories of the early eighteenth century and the new Toryism that had emerged from the fears inspired by the French Revolution. Far from sympathizing with the Catholics, the Tories had become fierce defenders of the Church of England, opposing religious toleration of both Catholics and non-conforming dissenters alike. It was now, ironically, the Whigs who championed the cause of tolerance.

  But it would be hard to imagine the Whigs advocating a restoration of the Stuarts. For in this, the Whigs had not changed. While the Tories had turned their backs on reform and embraced the sanctity of property over the defense of individual liberty, the Whigs remained dedicated to limiting the power of the crown and had claimed the objectives and achievements of the Glorious Revolution as their own.

  As they rode, the morning mist began to lift, blown away by a cold wind that kept the park deserted except for one or two solitary riders. Hendon posted along in silence for a few moments, his thoughts to himself. Then he said, “It’s the necklace, isn’t it? That’s what’s sent you off on this.”

  Sebastian studied his father’s closed, hard profile. They had never been close, even in the golden years of Sebastian’s early childhood, when all the people he’d loved—his mother, his brothers, Richard and Cecil—had all lived. Then had come the black summer of Cecil and Sophie’s deaths, and at one point it had seemed to Sebastian that the Earl came very close to actually hating him—hating him for living, when all the others had died. With time, Sebastian had seen a reemergence of some signs of Hendon’s gruff affection. But things had never been the same, and now it was as if a wall of silence and mistrust had reared up between them anew. Sebastian had no idea how to surmount it.

  “Partially,” he said simply.

  Sebastian had never asked the Marquis of Anglessey how his wife came to be wearing the ancient talisman once given by a Welsh witch to her Stuart lover. It hadn’t seemed fitting somehow, when Sebastian’s main interest in the necklace had been personal. But he was beginning to realize the triskelion might have played a more important part in Guinevere’s death than he’d first realized.

  Chapter 31

  “I’m dying, Egypt, dying. One word, sweet queen: Of Caesar seek your honor, with your safety.” Marc Antony looked at his Cleopatra expectantly.

  Kat, her theatrical costume covered with a pinafore to protect it during rehearsal, stared off across the darkened pit to where a gentleman stood in the shadows, his hat pulled low on his brow.

  The pit was empty in the afternoon light, the theater silent except for a distant hammering and the swish of the cleaning lady’s broom sweeping up the orange peels that littered the floor from last night’s performance. The gentleman should not be here.

  “Of Caesar seek your honor, with your safety,” repeated Marc Antony, his voice sharp with exasperation. “Would someone please wake up the sweet Queen of Egypt?”

  Kat jerked and swung back to face her Marc Antony. “They do not go together,”’ she said, then mouthed, Sorry.

  After that, she was careful not to miss any more cues. But she remained aware of the gentleman in the shadows.

  She thought she recognized him. He was the Duc de Royan, one of the noblemen who had come to London in the train of the dethroned Louis XVIII, or the Comte de Lille, as he called himself. Royan professed to be a fierce opponent of Napoléon’s regime. But then, Leon Pierrepont had also claimed to be an enemy of Napoléon, all the while serving as the French spymaster in London.

  “Come, thou mortal wretch,” said Kat, applying a papier-mâché asp to her breast. “With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie….” When she turned around, the Duc de Royan was gone.

  As soon as rehearsal ended, she hurried down the corridor to her dressing room. Heart beating uncomfortably fast, she thrust open the door. A bouquet stood upon her dressing table, a lavish confection of white lilies and pink roses in a cloud of baby’s breath. A two-toned bouquet.

  Kat snatched up the note she found balanced amidst the stems and tore open the seal. “His Highness the Comte de Lille presents his compliments and begs you to accept these paltry blossoms as a token of his admiration.”

  No biblical quotation. No secret message. No appointment for a rendevous with danger.

  Kat leaned her forehead against the wall, drew in a shaky breath, and let it out in a soft laugh of relief.

  SEBASTIAN SPENT THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS asking some discreet questions about Bevan Ellsworth’s boon companion, Fabian Fitzfrede
rick, illegitimate son to Prince Frederick, the Duke of York. But Fitzfrederick’s movements on that fatal Wednesday proved to be as innocuous as Bevan’s. After a day spent at Tattersall’s, Fitzfrederick had whiled away the evening at the same Pickering Place gaming hell frequented by his friend Ellsworth.

  Thoughtful, Sebastian sent Tom off to canvass the shops of Giltspur Street in Smithfield, then turned his own steps toward the Marquis of Anglessey’s Mount Street town house.

  He found the Marquis in the tile-floored conservatory built onto the back of the house. Pausing beneath a gently drooping tree fern, Sebastian looked at Guinevere’s husband and saw an old man, his once-sturdy frame now gaunt, his gray head bowed as he tended a yellow blooming jasmine. Then the Marquis looked up and the impression of age and infirmity was dispelled by the power of the intelligence and sheer force of personality shining in his eyes.

  “I was wondering if you would come today,” said the Marquis, jerking off his gardening gloves and laying them aside.

  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?”