When Gods Die

Varden used the palm of his hand to wipe the rain from his face. “My sister, Claire, is right in one sense: Bevan Ellsworth must bear much of the blame for what happened to Guinevere. None of this would have occurred if it hadn’t been for all the nasty lies he’s been spreading about Guinevere ever since her marriage. That’s what made Prinny think her the kind of woman who would welcome his ridiculous advances.”

Sebastian knew a quickening of interest. “The Prince Regent made advances on her? When was this?”

“It began at Carlton House sometime last spring. She and Anglessey were attending a state dinner, and the Regent pressed her to allow him to show her his conservatory.”

“Where he became overly familiar? Is that what you’re saying?”

Varden’s lip curled. “He put his hand down the front of her dress.”

Sebastian stared off across the rain-drenched churchyard. It wasn’t the first time the Regent had done such a thing, Sebastian knew. A spoiled prince, handsome when young and accustomed to a lifetime of flattery and sycophancy, the Regent frequently overestimated his appeal to women.

Yet he’d claimed, when asked, that he’d barely known the young Marchioness.

Sebastian brought his gaze back to the Chevalier’s pale, grief-stricken face. “What did she do?”

“She tried to pull away from him. He laughed. Said he enjoyed a spirited woman. So she took more drastic measures.”

“Such as?”

“She slapped his fat, self-satisfied face.”

“Was he in his cups?”

“No more than usual. You’d think that sort of reaction would have quenched his desires, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Kept soliciting her hand at balls, arranging to sit next to her at dinners. And then just last week he sent her a trinket. A small token of his affection, he called it. From Rundell and Bridge on Ludgate Hill.”

They were the Prince’s favorite goldsmiths and jewelers, Rundell and Bridge. It was grumbled in some quarters that he spent enough every year on jewelry to feed and clothe the entire British army. He was always buying trinkets, as he called them, to shower upon his favorites and lady friends: ivory snuffboxes and jeweled butterflies, amethyst and diamond bracelets…and rare, unusual necklaces.

Sebastian squinted up at the rain. Silhouetted against the dark gray sky, the leafy branches of the oaks and chestnuts overhead looked black. “What kind of trinket?”

“I didn’t see it. She sent it back to him—along with a note stating in no uncertain terms that his advances were unwelcome.”

“And Anglessey? Did he know any of this?”

A strange flush darkened the other man’s pale, gaunt cheeks. “It’s hardly the sort of thing a woman would tell her husband, now, is it?”

“Yet she told you,” said Sebastian, and watched the color drain slowly from the Chevalier’s face.

CHARLES, LORD JARVIS, maintained a fervent respect for the institution of the Church of England.

The Church, like the monarchy, was a valuable bastion of defense against the dangerous alliance of atheistical philosophy with political radicalism. The Bible taught the poorer orders that their lowly path had been allotted to them by the hand of God, and the Church was there to make quite certain they understood that. And so Jarvis took pains to be seen at church every week.

That Sunday, his head bowed in due respect for his Maker, Jarvis attended services at the Chapel Royal in the company of his aged mother, his half-mad wife, Annabelle, and his tiresome daughter, Hero, whom he believed to be in serious need of remembering what the Bible and St. Paul had to say about a number of things, particularly the role of women in society.

During the second reading, when the clergyman loudly proclaimed, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law,” Jarvis emphasized the point by quietly elbowing Hero in the side.

Her gaze fixed oh-so-properly on the pulpit, she leaned toward him to whisper maliciously, “Careful, Papa. You’re setting a bad example for the ignorant masses.”

She was always saying that sort of thing, as if the canker of social discontent spreading across the country were a subject for jest. Yet he knew she took what she referred to as “the dreadful situation of the nation’s poor” very seriously indeed. There were times when he almost suspected his daughter of harboring radical principles herself. But it was an idea too disconcerting to be entertained for long, and he quickly dismissed it.

After the service, they walked out of the palace into a gray day still dripping rain. A man stood across the street; a tall young man whose rough greatcoat and round hat did nothing to disguise his aristocratic bearing or the dangerous glitter in his strange yellow eyes.

Jarvis rested one hand on his daughter’s arm. “See your mother and grandmother home in the carriage,” he said, keeping his voice low.