When Gods Die

Varden’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped. “She never told me that. The first I knew of it was from you.” He let out a low, harsh laugh. “Do you know what she said to me the last time I saw her? She said she was glad her father had refused to let her marry me. She said…she said she’d loved me all her life, but now she realized that the boy she’d loved had grown up to be less of a man than the husband she’d married.”

The silence of the house seemed to stretch around them, thick and ominous.

“Your mother,” said Sebastian, “where is she?”

“Upstairs.”

Sebastian turned toward the door, then paused to look back at the man who still stood beside the desk, one fist clenched around the handles of the satchel. “This conspiracy against the Prince…who else was involved besides Portland?”

“I don’t know. Portland was the contact between Savoy and the others. He kept their identities secret.”

Sebastian nodded. It might be a lie, but he doubted it. Men in positions of power were typically very, very careful about committing themselves to treason. “What will you do?”

Varden twitched one shoulder. “Go to the Continent.”

“To Savoy?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’ll go to France. Make my peace with Napoléon.” He cast Sebastian a penetrating look from beneath dark, heavy brows. “You don’t feel it incumbent upon you to attempt to stop me?”

“No. But others will doubtless feel differently.” Sebastian turned again toward the stairs. “I suggest you lose no time in reaching the coast.”

Chapter 64

A gentlewoman never lay upon her bed until it was time to retire for the night. For spells of faintness and periods of rest, a lady of quality had a small daybed in her dressing room.

And so Sebastian found Lady Audley there, on a Grecian-style couch upholstered in green velvet. She wore an evening dress of black silk richly embroidered and trimmed with Chantilly lace, and had loosened her hair so that it spread out on the pillow around her face like a bright flame. Her breathing was already slowed, her cheeks pale. Whining softly on the carpet beside her lay the collie bitch, Cloe.

“What did you take?” asked Sebastian, pausing just inside the doorway. “Cyanide?”

Her gaze flickered toward him. “No. Opiates. I will simply go to sleep and never awake.”

“It’s a far kinder death than the one you gave Guinevere.”

“With Guinevere, I needed something that would act quickly.”

He walked into the room. The collie stretched to her feet and padded up to him, sniffing. He crouched down to stroke her soft coat.

“How did you know it was me?” Isolde asked when he remained silent. “It was the necklace, wasn’t it?”

“The necklace and the note.” And the certainty that had Claire been the killer, Portland would never have disclaimed responsibility for Guinevere’s death.

“The note.” Isolde moved her head restlessly against the pillow. “That, I hadn’t anticipated. What woman doesn’t destroy a note from her lover?”

“Yet you sent someone to search her rooms for it after her death.”

“No. He was looking for the Savoy letter.”

“That she did destroy.”

With a whine, the collie returned to its mistress’s side. Isolde reached out to rest one hand on her neck. “Varden confronted me. After you spoke with him. The note I could have denied, but not the necklace.” She gave a soft laugh. “How ironic. It was supposed to bring its owner long life. Instead it has brought me death.”

Sebastian stretched to his feet. “But it wasn’t meant for you, was it? It had once belonged to one of Guinevere’s great-grandmothers. That woman you met in the south of France asked you to give it to Guinevere, didn’t she? But you kept it instead.”

Isolde’s voice sharpened. “That necklace has power. I could feel it when I held it in my hand. Power. I didn’t often wear it. It was enough for me simply to have it.” Her tongue darted out to moisten her dry lips. “Now it’s gone, and I am dead.”

“So is Guinevere.”

For a moment, the serene features of Isolde’s face contorted with a quiver of rage and hatred so fierce it took him by surprise. “She would have ruined everything. Everything I worked so hard to bring about.”

Sebastian shook his head. “She loved Varden. She would never have destroyed him.”

“Yet she did destroy him in the end.”

“No.” Sebastian turned toward the door. “You’ve done that. You’ve destroyed Varden and Claire both.”

“Claire knew nothing of this. Nothing.”

“And Portland?”

“Portland was a fool.”

He heard her suck in a gasping breath and turned to look back at her. She was almost gone now. “I’ve never understood why you interfered in all this,” she said hoarsely.

“The woman with the necklace,” said Sebastian.

Lady Audley’s lips parted, her delicately arched brows twitching together in the ghost of a frown. “I don’t understand.”

“She was my mother.”

DRESSED IN A SPLENDID SCARLET UNIFORM with a saber at his side, the Prince Regent was having a rollicking good time. He was a marvelous host; everyone said so. People were always praising him for his generosity and congeniality.