When Gods Die

Ellsworth threw back the sheets and stood up. He was naked to the waist, a pair of drawstring underdrawers slung low on his hips, his feet bare. “Who wouldn’t want to kill her, in my position?” he demanded. “She was going to take away what is mine.” He leaned forward, his curled knuckles thumping against his bare chest. “Mine. And hand it all to some ill-begotten bastard.”

“You can’t know that.”

A tight smile curled the man’s lips. “Can’t I? Some things are hard to keep a secret. And servants do talk.” He swung away to go splash water from the pitcher into the bowl on the washstand.

“So who’s the father?”

Ellsworth shrugged, not bothering to turn around. “How should I know? I saw half a dozen or more young bucks at the funeral yesterday. For all I know, Guinevere herself couldn’t have told you the father’s name.”

Sebastian rose to his feet as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Where is she buried?”

“At St. Anne’s. Why?”

Sebastian shook his head, his lips curving into a hard smile. “What I don’t understand is why you went through all the risk of transporting the Marchioness’s body from London down to the Pavilion.”

“Jesus.” Ellsworth swung around, his face flushing with anger and what may have been a trace of fear. “You still think I did it. You still

think I killed her.”

“I made some discreet inquiries around the Inns of Court. You arrived late that day, and left early.”

Sebastian expected the man to deny it. Instead, his eyes narrowed and he leaned forward to say provocatively, “You think I killed her? All right. Then let’s see you prove it.”

THE NARROW STAIRCASE leading down to the street door was dark in the rainy-day gloom. Halfway down the second flight, Sebastian passed a fleshy young dandy laboring up the steep steps, the man with flaxen hair and a florid complexion he remembered having seen with Ellsworth at Brooks’s.

Studying the man’s protuberant eyes, his molded, almost feminine lips, and weak chin, Sebastian thought the man’s sense of familiarity might come from his unfortunate resemblance to the portly, ruddy-faced princes of the House of Hanover. Then as the man reached the first floor and turned, his profile was silhouetted against the gray light above in a way that made Sebastian realize he did know this man, after all. He was Fabian Fitzfrederick, natural son of Frederick, Duke of York, second son of George III and next in line behind Princess Charlotte to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Wales.

The friendship might mean nothing, of course. Legitimate heirs to the throne were dangerously scarce, but over the years George III’s seven sons had sired scores of illegitimate children. If Guinevere Anglessey’s body had been found anyplace other than in the private apartments of His Highness the Prince Regent, Bevan Ellsworth’s friendship with an illegitimate member of the royal family would have been insignificant. It still might be insignificant, although Sebastian decided it wouldn’t hurt to look into Fabian Fitzfrederick’s activities on Wednesday last.

But first Sebastian intended to pay a visit to St. Anne’s churchyard.

Chapter 23

The bells in the church tower were ringing, calling the last stragglers to late-morning service when Sebastian jumped down from a hackney in front of St. Anne’s churchyard. The rain still came down hard, in big drops that dripped from the sodden leaves of the gnarled old oak trees overhead, flattened the rank grass between the graves, and darkened the granite headstones to near black.

The churchyard was not large, a collection of tombs and monuments hemmed in by tightly packed buildings that had risen up around the old stone church. Standing at the gate, Sebastian could see only two recent burials, their freshly turned mounds of dark brown earth heaped with funeral lilies and mums beaten and bruised now by the rain.

Winding between rusting iron railings and moss-covered statues, he worked his way toward the only other person in the cemetery, a man who stood beside one of the new graves, his head bowed, his collar turned up against the driving rain. At the sound of Sebastian’s footfalls on the flagged path, the man turned and Sebastian recognized Alain, the Chevalier de Varden.

The Chevalier’s head was bare, his once fine shirt stained, his face pale and shadowed by some three or four days’ growth of dark beard. “Well, if it isn’t Lord Devlin,” he said, blinking away the rain that ran down his cheeks and plastered his dark hair to his forehead. “Have you come to pay your respects to the dead? I wonder. Or simply to add me to your list of suspects?”

Sebastian paused a few steps away. Around them the rain poured, beating on the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts overhead and shooting in noisy torrents from the slanted roofs of the surrounding tombs. “You’ve been talking to your sister, Claire.”