When Gods Die

The implications of the questions were obvious. Varden’s nostrils flared. “I slept late. I’d been out most of the night before with friends. I didn’t even leave the house until around five, maybe six.” He paused in the act of pulling on his boots to throw Sebastian a malevolent glare. “You can check with the servants, if you don’t believe me.”

Sebastian watched him shrug into his coat. “I want to know about Wales.”

Varden adjusted the lapels of his coat. Two men walked into the room, the older one slapping the younger man on the shoulder as he said, “Well done, Charles. Well done, indeed.”

“Not here,” said Varden.

Sebastian nodded. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Chapter 46

“I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love Guinevere,” Varden said as they strolled along the Serpentine. A fine haze was beginning to bleach the color from the sky, turning it white. The air had taken on a sultry quality, the scent of grass hanging heavy in the still air. “She was…she was like no one else I’ve ever known. Proud and courageous and everything that’s noble, and yet so tender, so giving.”

There was something about the way the flat light fell on the Chevalier’s face that reminded Sebastian of just how young Varden still was. He was only twenty-two, his handsome face pale and hollow-eyed with grief. “Guin and I grew up together,” he said. “I suppose Claire and Morgana were around some of the time, but I don’t remember them. In my memory, it’s always just Guin and me.”

He stared out over the parkland, to where two children played with their dog, the dog barking and the children running back and forth and laughing while an aproned nursemaid called to them. A smile touched his lips, a wistful smile that was there and then gone. “I always knew she loved me. And I don’t mean in the way a child might love a brother. From the very beginning there was more to it than that, for both of us. Even when we were too young to understand what it was.”

He fell silent. Sebastian waited, and after a moment Varden continued. “We grew up thinking we would always be together. That she was meant for me and I was hers. Guin simply took it for granted we would marry someday.”

“And you?”

“I was the same at first. But as I grew older I became aware of…the difficulties.”

“Such as your lack of fortune?”

He huffed a small, bitter laugh. “That most of all. When Guinevere was seventeen, her father’s sister invited her to spend the Season in London. She’d done the same for Morgana. At the time old Athelstone had grumbled, but in the end he’d scraped together the money needed for clothes and sent Morgana off. She succeeded better than anyone expected. Athelstone was convinced Guinevere would do even better.” Varden paused. “The old bastard needed her to do better.”

“Badly dipped, was he?”

Varden nodded. “Worse than Guinevere realized. She thought he’d leap at the opportunity to be spared the expense of a London season. But when she told him she had no need of a brilliant alliance because she planned to marry me, he laughed. And then, of course, he flew into a rage.”

While they’d been talking, a breeze had come up, ruffling the long grass and singing through the high branches of the surrounding elms. In the distance, one of the children brought out a kite, a red confection of paper and bamboo that careened straight to earth each time the boy tried to run with it.

Varden’s voice was hard. “Everything my father would have left me, everything that was in my family for generations, has been lost. All I have is a title and a noble pedigree and some impoverished royal relatives who are in nearly as bad straights as I am.”

Sebastian watched the little boy pick up the kite and try again. There weren’t many noblemen who’d welcome a penniless half-French émigré as a son-in-law.

“Guin tried to argue with him, but Athelstone was ruthless. He threatened to cut her off without a penny and cast her out of the house if she refused to go to London—or if she failed to do what she needed to do while she was there. He meant it, too.”

“So she agreed?”

“Not at first. She ran out of the house.” Varden swung his head away, his eyes narrowing as he, too, watched the kite. “I’ll never forget that night. There was a violent storm blowing in from the sea. She came along the cliffs, the way she always had as a child. It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed.” He sucked in a deep, shaky breath. “I’d been out riding and been caught in the storm. She found me in the stables.”

Sebastian pictured Guinevere Anglessey as the young girl she must have been, her wet hair tumbling down her back, her eyes wild with desperation and fear. “What did you tell her?”

The Chevalier kept his face turned away, his throat working as he swallowed. “What could I say? I was eighteen years old. I couldn’t support a wife. I couldn’t even marry without permission.”

“Your mother wouldn’t have taken her in?”