When Gods Die

Reaching down, she patted his cheek with one plump hand. “Your mama taught you real good, ducky. But there’s no use you trying to pretend you don’t want it, because I seen you eyeing them pies, sure enough. Now, what kind you want? Apple or cherry?”

Chapter 16

Sebastian spent what was left of the afternoon at the Inns of Court and the seedy gambling establishments around Pickering Place.

It didn’t take him long to discover that Bevan Ellsworth had indeed put in a rare appearance in the legal district on Wednesday. But his activities that day had been erratic, culminating in an evening spent at a hell just off Pickering Place.

In the end Sebastian decided the man could, conceivably, have slipped away from Grey’s Court long enough to have killed Guinevere Anglessey somewhere in London. But there was no way he could have hauled her body down to Brighton and still made it back to Pickering Place by ten o’clock, at which time he was deep in a game of faro from which he had not arisen until four the next morning.

SEBASTIAN ARRIVED at his own neatly stuccoed town house at Number 41 Brook Street just as the last streaks of orange and pink were slowly leaching from the sky and the lamplighters were beginning to make their rounds. Changing into evening dress, he directed his carriage to an imposing mansion on Park Street that belonged to his only surviving aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Claiborne. Technically, the house was owned by the eldest of Aunt Henrietta’s three sons, the current Duke of Claiborne. But she had the poor sod so thoroughly terrified that he had meekly left her in possession of the place and moved his own growing family into a small house on Half Moon Street.

Sebastian found his aunt descending the house’s grand staircase, the famous Claiborne rubies at her throat, a massive lavender turban decorated with red feathers swaddling her gray head. She paused halfway down the steps, one white-gloved hand groping to raise the quizzing glass she always wore on a gold chain around her neck. “Good heavens, Devlin. What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Aunt Henrietta,” he said, running lightly up the steps to kiss her cheek with genuine affection. “What a shockingly extravagant hat.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” she said gaily. “Claiborne would have loathed it.”

Hendon’s senior by five years, she had been married at the tender age of eighteen to the heir to the Duke of Claiborne. It was considered quite a feat of matrimonial maneuvering at the time, for the former Lady Henrietta St. Cyr had never been a particularly attractive female, even when young. She had Hendon’s broad, fleshy face and barrellike body, and the same belligerent habit of staring people out of countenance. She made a grand duchess.

“I was just on my way to the Setons’ dinner party,” she said, leaning her weight on the silver-headed cane she carried mainly for effect. “As of my last reckoning, Claiborne has been dead two years and six hours. I gave the man four children, fifty-one years of marriage, and two full years of mourning. And now I intend to enjoy myself.”

“I wasn’t aware of the fact you ever did anything else,” said Sebastian, following her into the drawing room.

She gave a delighted chuckle. “Pour me some wine. No, not that paltry stuff,” she directed when he reached for the ratafia. “The port.”

She took an enthusiastic sip of her wine and fixed him with a steady stare over the top of her glass. “Now, what’s this Hendon tells me about you involving yourself in the death of that poor, unfortunate woman down in Brighton?”

Sebastian nearly choked on his own wine. “When did you see my father?”

“Today, in Pall Mall. They’ve all come back to London—Perceval and Hendon, Prinny and Jarvis, even that ridiculous Comte de Lille, as he calls himself—although how he can expect anyone to consider him the rightful king of France when he hasn’t even got the gumption to call himself Louis XVIII is more than I can see. Anyway, it seems Prinny’s taken such a turn over what happened in the Pavilion that his doctors thought it best to remove him from Brighton for a time. Not that he’s likely to get much rest at Carlton House, what with all the preparations for this grand fete he’s giving next week. Imagine! Giving a grand dinner to celebrate your ascension to the Regency. Might as well celebrate the poor old King’s descent into madness. I’ve a good mind not to go.”

It was an idle threat, as Sebastian well knew. The Prince Regent’s grand fete was certain to be the most talked-about social event of the decade. Aunt Henrietta would never miss such a spectacle.

She paused to draw breath and take another sip of her wine, which gave Sebastian the opportunity to say, “Tell me, Aunt, what do you know of Lady Guinevere?”

She looked up, a sparkle in her vivid blue eyes. “So that’s why you’re here, is it? Interested in discovering if the poor child was hiding some nasty little secret?”

“Her or someone close to her.”