When Gods Die

Amanda continued to walk in silence for so long that he didn’t think she planned to answer him. At last, she said, “What makes you ask?”

He studied her taut, controlled profile. “I have my reasons. As I recall, no wreckage was ever found. Is that true?”

An unexpected smile touched her lips. “What are you suggesting? That Hendon had her done away with, then staged the accident to cover up the dirty deed?”

“No. I’m suggesting Sophie Hendon was fiercely unhappy in her marriage, and that staging her own death was one of the few ways open to her in our society to escape it.”

Amanda swung to face him. “You mean, you think she ran away.”

He searched his sister’s face for some betraying flicker of emotion, but found none. “Could she have done it?”

“Why are you asking me? I wasn’t even in Brighton that summer, remember? I was already married, with young children of my own.”

“You’re her daughter.”

She glanced up at the lichen-covered statue of an ancient Tudor king beside them. “Have you discussed this with Hendon?”

“Yes. He may not know the truth himself.”

“Not all truths are ever known, dear brother,” she said, gathering her black skirts. “Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m expecting Lady Jersey this afternoon.” She swept past him, her head held high, a tight smile on her lips.

Left alone in the gardens of St. James’s Square, Sebastian watched a young nursemaid shepherd her laughing charges down the steps of one of the stately houses fronting the square, and lead them across the street. He turned in a slow circle, his gaze sweeping row after row of imposing mansions around him. How many women, he wondered, lived lives of quiet despair behind those imposing facades? What tales of disappointment and heartache, fear and desperation, did those walls of marble and brick disguise?

Still thoughtful, he drew the triskelion from his pocket and turned it over to study the entwined initials of another pair of doomed lovers. A. C. and J. S. Addiena Cadel and James Stuart. Was the ancient Welsh necklace that had once belonged to Sophie Hendon a clue to what had happened to Guinevere Anglessey, Sebastian wondered, or simply a distraction? What was Guinevere’s intention when she left that grand, four-story house on Mount Street in a hackney carriage headed for Smithfield, only to be found some eight hours later, dead and in the arms of the Regent in Brighton? During the intervening hours, someone had poisoned her, exchanged her simple red afternoon walking dress for a slightly smaller woman’s green satin evening gown, and used her dead body in an elaborate scheme to further discredit an already unpopular prince. But why? Why?

Somewhere in the half-truths and subtle nuances of what Sebastian had discovered about Guinevere’s life lay the explanation for her death. And for some reason he couldn’t explain, he found himself coming back again and again to that image of the child Guinevere had once been. Grief-stricken, frightened, left alone by her mother’s early death, the young Guinevere had known little love from either her father or her older sister, while her governesses had been content to let her roam the countryside with the kind of freedom usually reserved for the males of her class.

And so the cliffs above the wild Welsh coast had become her refuge, the open fields and forests of her father’s estate her schoolroom. In a sense she’d been fortunate. Her childhood experiences had nurtured her instinctive independence and resiliency, while the love she’d been denied at home had been found nearby, within the ancient walls of Audley Castle. First from Lady Audley, herself so recently bereaved, and then from her son, the Chevalier de Varden, a young man with a life as tragic in its own way as Guinevere’s.

What would have happened, Sebastian wondered, if the old Earl of Athelstone hadn’t placed his own greed and ambitions ahead of his daughter’s happiness? Sebastian had a brief image of the woman he’d last seen dead in the Yellow Cabinet at Brighton, only in his mind’s eye she was alive, with the golden light of the Welsh sun warm on her face as she played with her children on a windy hill overlooking a foam-flecked sea. What if…?

But that was a futile, if beguiling, path to travel, and he closed his mind to it.

Watching the nursemaid chase after her wayward charges, Sebastian found himself remembering what Guinevere had said to the starving, desperate woman she’d made her abigail. If we’re given a hard road to walk in life, we can’t give up. We must fight to find some way to make what we want out of what life has given us.