When Gods Die

“Hell. I don’t know. He does provide a link between Ellsworth and the royal family.”

“A tenuous one.”

“A tenuous one.” Sebastian stepped over the high enameled sides and settled himself in the tub, his knees drawn up close to his chest. “The problem is, while the Inns of Court are suspiciously close to Giltspur Street, Ellsworth himself simply wouldn’t have had time to drag Guinevere’s body down to Brighton and still make it back to his faro game in Pickering Place by ten o’clock. Apart from which, the man’s interests begin and end with the turf and gaming table—and the set of his coat, of course. Why would he go through all the risks involved in attempting to implicate the Regent?”

“To deflect suspicion from himself?” Kat suggested.

“Surely there are easier ways to have done so?”

She was silent in that way she had, carefully thinking things through. “The only one I can see who might have a reason to implicate the Regent is Anglessey himself. If he found out the Prince was pursuing her when she hadn’t told him, he might have believed the advances were welcome.”

Sebastian leaned his head against the back of the tub and let the moist heat of the water soothe his sore muscles and aching shoulder. After a few moments, he said, “If Anglessey were to implicate anyone in his wife’s murder, I think it would be his nephew, not the Regent. Besides, Anglessey’s a sick old man. He’s simply too frail to have managed the thing. Apart from which, he was in Brighton, remember?”

She came to kneel on the stone flagging beside him, a bar of soap in one hand. “He could have hired someone.”

“Hell, they all could have hired someone.”

“Sit forward.” Kat worked the soap across his shoulders and down his back. “What about Varden? They could have had a lovers’ quarrel. A quarrel that turned violent.”

“We don’t know that they were lovers.”

“They were lovers,” said Kat.

Sebastian smiled as she rubbed the soap around his side and over his chest. He himself wasn’t so sure. “According to his mother, Varden was at home until that evening,” he reminded her.

“Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?” Kat pushed to her feet and took a step back as he stood up, water streaming down his torso.

He stepped from the bath, one hand reaching for the thick cotton towel Kat had set on a nearby chair. “I’m obviously missing something. Something I should be seeing.”

She came to help him shrug into the silk dressing gown she kept for him. “If it’s there, you’ll see it,” she said simply.

He turned toward her. In the soft light of the kitchen fire, she looked so peaceful, so sure of his abilities, that for a moment, he felt humbled. He reached to comb the loose tangle of her heavy dark hair away from her face. “Sometimes I find myself wondering, what’s the point? Even if I do find who killed her—and why—it won’t change anything. She’ll still be dead.”

“I think she would want to know that the man who killed her and her child didn’t get away with it.”

“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.