When Gods Die (17 page)

He was close enough that Sebastian could see the pores in the man’s skin, the sheen of nervous sweat on his forehead, smell again the reek of the gin with which he’d doused the coarse wool of his coat. The man let out a whooshing gurgle, blood and spittle spewing from his mouth, his eyes rolling back in his head. Wrenching the blade free, Sebastian swung quickly to face the man with the cudgel.

Not quick enough. A blow meant to dash in the back of Sebastian’s head fell on his shoulder, bruising hard. Pain exploded across his collarbone, reverberated to his left arm. He went down on one knee, a grunt escaping his clenched teeth. A shadow loomed over him. Twisting, Sebastian had a vision of heavy jowls dark with anger, lips peeling back from yellow crooked teeth gritted in determination as the man raised the cudgel to strike again.

Sebastian drove his dagger up, deep into the man’s stomach.

The man screamed, then screamed again when Sebastian tried to jerk the blade free, only to have it catch on the stout cloth of the man’s waistcoat. Someone shouted. He heard the pant of breath, the pounding of feet as the men from the other end of the alley drew near.

Abandoning the dagger, Sebastian pushed up. He could see the mouth of the alley, an eddy of movement and shadow framed by the darker shadows of looming brick walls. He took one running step, two, just as the explosive percussion of a pistol reverberated up the narrow passage. He saw the yellow-white flash of the burning powder, smelled the pungent odor of sulfur.

And felt a stinging line of fire plow across the side of his head.

Chapter 29

S
ebastian’s step faltered, but he kept running.

He burst from the mouth of the alley into Giltspur Street.

His hat was gone. He could feel a sheet of blood running down the side of his face, its coppery tang heavy in the moist night air. More blood darkened the front of his coat and waistcoat, only that wasn’t his blood.

Heads turned toward him. Women in shawls drew back, faces pale, eyes wide with fear. He knew they must have heard the pistol shot, but no one stepped forward to help him. He was a stranger here. The men behind him were not.

A trickle of warm blood ran into his eyes. He stumbled off the narrow footpath. Horses’ heads loomed from out of the darkness, their nostrils flaring. He heard the crack of a whip and a shout, and the jingle of harness. He jumped back barely in time to avoid the flashing hooves and rumbling iron-rimmed wheels of a big green-and-red brewer’s wagon driven fast up the road.

The wagon was tall, the top edges of its high wooden sides some three feet or more over Sebastian’s head. He heard running steps slap the paving stones behind him. Without looking back, Sebastian leapt at the wagon’s high back, trying to catch the top of the tailgate with both hands. But the blow to his shoulder had incapacitated his arm more than he’d realized. His left hand slipped off the rough wood, useless. Only his right hand found its purchase and held, jerking his arm in its socket as it took all his weight.

From somewhere behind him came a shout, followed by a hoarse “There he is! Stop him.”

Gritting his teeth, his feet kicking in air, Sebastian fought to pull himself up one-handed onto the tailgate. He’d just managed to hike his elbow over the side when one of the men threw himself forward, his arms wrapping around Sebastian’s legs.

The jolting weight of the man’s body swung Sebastian around, dragged him back down toward the rushing road. Sebastian had a pain-filled vision of a craggy-faced man with thick, straight brows and a thin nose, his lips twisting into a snarl as he said, “I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.”

Freeing one leg, Sebastian drew up his knee and kicked out hard. His foot landed square in the man’s face. He heard the crunch of cartilage and bone, saw the spurt of blood as the force of the blow sent the man reeling back.

For one moment, he clutched wildly at Sebastian’s booted foot. Then the boot slipped off with a sucking
plop
and the man fell back to land with a breath-robbing thump in the gutter, the rough country boot of Squire Lawrence’s secretary still clasped like a trophy in his hands.

“O
NE OF THESE DAYS,”
said Kat Boleyn, dabbing a cloth dipped in witch hazel against the side of his head, “someone’s going to shoot at you and they’re not going to miss.”

Sebastian drew in his breath in a pained hiss. “They didn’t exactly miss this time.”

He was sitting on a low stool beside the kitchen table in Kat’s house in Harwich Street. Elspeth and the rest of Kat’s small staff had withdrawn to spend their evening off in their rooms in the attics high above, leaving the house dark and quiet. In the distance, he could hear the faint, mournful tolling of a death knell.

Bringing up one hand, he explored the open gash that parted the hair just above his ear. She batted his hand away. “Don’t touch.” She was busy for a moment mixing crushed herbs from the apothecary into a salve. Then she said, “You knew it was a trap. Why walk into it?”

“I thought I might learn something. I wasn’t expecting five men. Or a pistol.”

“So what did you learn? That your questions are making someone uncomfortable? You knew that. Someone’s been following you for days.”

“I don’t think my shadow was amongst the men who attacked me.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“No. But the men today didn’t know who I was. If they had, my friend with the cudgel wouldn’t have been so anxious to find out who sent me.”

She finished smearing the open wound with the salve and went to pack a clean cloth with a mixture of grated raw potatoes and cold milk. “Are you going to tell Sir Henry about this?”

Sebastian looked up from peeling his shirt off over his head. “Lovejoy? What the devil could he do?”

She came to slap the cold compress on his bruised shoulder. “He could send someone to investigate the Norfolk Arms.”

“That’s just what I need,” he said, reaching up to hold the compress in place. “Some thickheaded constable tromping about the place, asking blunt questions and putting up everyone’s back. It’s the best way I can think of to make sure we never learn anything.”

Her gaze met his, her beautiful blue eyes wide and troubled. “You can’t go there again yourself.”

He touched her face, his fingertips skimming gently across her cheek. “Careful, Miss Boleyn. You’re in danger of betraying an almost wifely concern for my health.”

He expected her to make some quick rejoinder and then flit away. Instead, she leaned against him, her arms coming around his neck to hold him close. “If these people are involved in a conspiracy against the Regent and they think you’re on to them, they won’t hesitate to kill you. You know that.”

He pressed his face against the softness of her breasts. “We know the men at one table in the common room of the Norfolk Arms have a romantic attachment to a dead exiled king. That doesn’t make the entire district guilty of plotting to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty.”

She pushed away from him and went to assemble the various salves and potions she’d been using. The uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability was gone. She was once more in control, her voice teasing as she said, “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

Stretching to his feet, he swung his arm in slow circles, working out the stiffness in the muscle. “I don’t. But I can’t see how it fits with what I know of Guinevere Anglessey’s life. Now, if I could find some way to tie my friends from Giltspur Street to Bevan Ellsworth, it might begin to make sense. According to Guinevere’s abigail, he came storming into his uncle’s town house last Monday and essentially threatened to kill her. He also has one hell of a motive—the birth of Guinevere’s son would have disinherited him. With his creditors already pressing him for repayment, Ellsworth could easily have decided he couldn’t take a chance on the child being born a girl.”

“And you never liked him anyway.”

Sebastian looked over at her and smiled. “And I never liked him anyway.” Stripping off his bloodied breeches, he went to tip another kettle of hot water into the hip bath they’d drawn beside the kitchen hearth. “What do you know of Fabian Fitzfrederick?”

“He and Ellsworth are of much the same set, although Fitzfrederick also runs with the Dandies.” She frowned. “Why? You think Fitzfrederick might be involved?”

“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

W
aking 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.

The smile faded. She had loved him since she was sixteen, when she was an unknown chorus girl and he a wild young buck not long down from Oxford. He’d asked her to marry him then, too. And because she’d been young and so desperately hungry to keep him in her life forever, she’d said yes. It was only later—after his father and her own conscience had made her realize what such a marriage would mean for him—that she’d sent Devlin away. What she’d seen in his eyes that night—the agonized disbelief of betrayal—had cut her heart in two and ripped out her soul.

She could remember wandering the fog-shrouded streets of the City, tears hot on her cheeks, heartsick with all the grief of youth and looking for death. But death hadn’t come, and those who’d told her that time lessens pain had in part been right. Because in time she’d found a reason to live and a cause to fight for. That was part of the problem now. But only part.

She told herself that the choices she’d made these last few years didn’t make any difference, that she would still have the strength to resist the treacherous weakness of her heart. It was a wonder to her that despite all Devlin had seen and done in the last seven years, in this way, at least, he hadn’t changed. He still believed he could count the world well lost for love. She knew better.