When Gods Die

The collie let out a soft whimper. Lady Audley rested her hand on the dog’s head. “There, there, sweetheart. You’re going to do just fine.” To Sebastian, she said, “Athelstone Hall lies on the northern coast, not far from Audley Castle. Traveling by road the distance between them is some three or four miles. But if one follows the path along the sea cliffs, it’s a journey of only fifteen minutes. Less for a running child.”

“You mean, for a girl child who frequently escaped her governess’s care to run wild about the countryside?”

Lady Audley nodded. “Guinevere’s mother, Katherine, was very kind to me when I first came to live there. When Katherine died…the poor child was nearly inconsolable. No one can take a mother’s place, of course, but I did what I could.”

“I thought Athelstone remarried?”

“Yes. But I’m afraid the new Countess took little interest in her predecessors’ daughters.”

Sebastian studied the elegant woman on the floor beside the birthing bitch. She had narrow shoulders and fine-boned hands, and an air of fragility that he suspected was entirely misleading. “I must confess,” he said, “I expected you to be French.”

“Oh, no,” she said without looking up. “I was born and raised in Devonshire. When I was eighteen, I went to spend the spring of 1786 with my aunt in Paris. You can’t imagine what Paris was like in those days, the endless round of balls and gaiety, music and laughter. I suppose we should have known it couldn’t last.” She gave a little sigh. “But one never does.”

“That was where you met the Chevalier de Varden?”

She sat back on her heels, an unexpectedly soft, sad smile playing about her lips. “Yes. At a banquet at Versailles. We were married within six weeks. I considered myself an extraordinarily fortunate woman—and then, just weeks after the birth of our son, Alain, came the fall of the Bastille.”

Sebastian watched as that haunted smile faded. The year 1789 would not have been an easy one for a gently born Englishwoman married to a French aristocrat.

“It was in the autumn that a mob attacked the château. I managed to escape with Alain through the cellars, but Varden was out riding through the vineyards at the time and…’’ She paused to take a deep, soul-shaking sigh. “They pulled him from his horse and tore him to pieces.”

A shudder convulsed the collie’s swollen belly, her body jackknifing up as the first of her puppies slipped into the world, wet and shining with blood. Lady Audley stared down at it, but Sebastian thought she was seeing something else, a memory she would never forget.

Once, in the Peninsula, Sebastian’s colonel had ordered a Portuguese peasant tied between two horses and then had the horses whipped in opposite directions. Just for fun. He blinked away the memory. “You were fortunate to make it back to England.”

“Fortunate? Yes, I suppose we were. One does what one must.”

At their feet, Cloe went about the task of severing the umbilical cord and cleaning her pup. Lady Audley was silent for a moment, stroking the bitch’s head. Then she said, her voice flat, “I married Audley the following year.”

Sebastian watched the elegant woman before him help with the collie’s birthing. Lady Audley was beautiful even now in middle age. Twenty years ago she must have been stunning as a young, grieving widow. Did marrying the late Lord Audley fall into the category of things one did because one must?

“Tell me about Lady Anglessey’s mother,” he said aloud.

“Katherine?” The question seemed to surprise her. “She looked much like Guinevere, although she was a tiny thing, whereas Guinevere was tall, like her father. They had the same blue-black hair, and those eyes that made you think of a fern-filled mountain glen in spring.” She smiled softly. “And the same passionate, not always wise nature.”

“I’ve heard it said Lord Athelstone lost four wives in childbirth. Is that true?”

“Not exactly. I believe the first died of consumption when her daughter, Morgana, was a year or two old. But the other three died in childbirth, yes. Lord Athelstone was a bear of a man. All three of his daughters were unusually tall, and one assumes the sons would have been even larger. I gave it as my opinion that it was like mating a Yorkie bitch to a Great Dane. His boy babies were so big they were literally killing his wives. And it’s certainly true that he only succeeded in getting a son when he finally had enough sense to take to wife a woman nearly as big as he.”

Cloe was cleaning her pup now, licking it roughly, nudging it with her muzzle. It would be another hour, perhaps more, before a second pup was born. Sebastian said, “Why did you want to see me?”

Lady Audley wiped her hands on the apron she’d tied over her muslin dress and stood. There was a sudden fierceness about her, the aura of a mother willing to do battle to protect her young. “Varden was here with me, all last Wednesday afternoon. If you seek to deflect suspicion from the Prince Regent onto my son, I will not allow you to succeed.”