The bells in the church tower were ringing, calling the last stragglers to late-morning service when Sebastian jumped down from a hackney in front of St. Anne’s churchyard. The rain still came down hard, in big drops that dripped from the sodden leaves of the gnarled old oak trees overhead, flattened the rank grass between the graves, and darkened the granite headstones to near black.
The churchyard was not large, a collection of tombs and monuments hemmed in by tightly packed buildings that had risen up around the old stone church. Standing at the gate, Sebastian could see only two recent burials, their freshly turned mounds of dark brown earth heaped with funeral lilies and mums beaten and bruised now by the rain.
Winding between rusting iron railings and moss-covered statues, he worked his way toward the only other person in the cemetery, a man who stood beside one of the new graves, his head bowed, his collar turned up against the driving rain. At the sound of Sebastian’s footfalls on the flagged path, the man turned and Sebastian recognized Alain, the Chevalier de Varden.
The Chevalier’s head was bare, his once fine shirt stained, his face pale and shadowed by some three or four days’ growth of dark beard. “Well, if it isn’t Lord Devlin,” he said, blinking away the rain that ran down his cheeks and plastered his dark hair to his forehead. “Have you come to pay your respects to the dead? I wonder. Or simply to add me to your list of suspects?”
Sebastian paused a few steps away. Around them the rain poured, beating on the leaves of the oaks and chestnuts overhead and shooting in noisy torrents from the slanted roofs of the surrounding tombs. “You’ve been talking to your sister, Claire.”
“That’s right.” The Chevalier’s speech was flawlessly precise, his movements fluid and graceful. Only the icy glitter in his blue eyes betrayed the fact that he was profoundly, dangerously drunk. “She thinks Bevan Ellsworth did it.”
“And you?”
Varden threw back his head to let out a harsh, ringing laugh that ended in teeth-clenching scorn. “Only Prinny could be found with a woman he’d murdered still clasped in his arms and yet manage to set everyone around him to scrambling in an effort to find someone else to blame.”
Sebastian shook his head. “You’re wrong. The Regent didn’t kill her. He couldn’t have. She was dead some six or eight hours before he found her in the Yellow Cabinet in the Pavilion.”
The wind gusted up, bringing with it the smell of damp earth and wet stone and death. Varden stood very still, only his chest jerking with each indrawn breath. “What are you saying?”
“Guinevere Anglessey was killed Wednesday afternoon—probably someplace here in London, given that she left her home in a hackney just after nuncheon.”
“A hackney? Going where?” he demanded with a sharpness Sebastian hadn’t expected.
“I don’t know.” Sebastian kept his gaze on the other man’s face. He saw grief there, and anger, and some of the guilt that can so often bedevil those left alive. But there was no sign of subterfuge, none of the consternation and fear one might expect from a murderer watching his elaborate stratagems of concealment beginning to unravel. “I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me.”
Varden raked his fingers through his dark, wet hair, his eyes squeezing shut as a spasm of pain contorted handsome features. “I hadn’t seen her since last week. Saturday.”
On the street behind them, a carriage went by driven fast, its iron-rimmed wheels flying, the sound of its horses’ hooves clattering dully in the wet air. The heaviness of the clouds had brought an unnatural darkness to the day, making it seem far later than it actually was.
“Lady Quinlan tells me you and her sister were good friends,” said Sebastian.
Varden dropped his hands to his sides, his eyes open and alert, his body tense. “I’d hazard a guess she phrased it somewhat differently.”
Sebastian nodded in acknowledgment. “There was no love lost between the two sisters, was there?”
“That’s one way of putting it. And if it surprises you, then you must have been an only child,” said Varden with a bitterness that spoke volumes about the Chevalier’s relationships with his own half brothers and sisters.
“I had two brothers,” said Sebastian. Both were long dead, but he saw no need to add that. No need, either, to admit he had a sister who less than five months ago had looked forward to cheerfully watching him hang. The bond between siblings could be close—he knew that; but he also knew something of the fierce jealousies and rivalries, resentments and animosities that could flourish within the tight bonds of a family. Especially when birth order could elevate one to a life of ease and power while consigning the rest to obscurity and relative poverty.
“Athelstone never had anything to do with any of his daughters,” Varden was saying. “I think he hated them. It was as if they were nothing more to him than unwanted reminders of the son he couldn’t seem to have.”
“One might expect that sort of childhood to make sisters close to each other.”
“Only if one were unacquainted with Morgana. Up until the day Athelstone died, Morgana was desperate to curry favor with the old bastard—and she usually did it by making Guin look bad.” An unexpected, tender smile touched the other man’s lips. “Mind you, Morgana didn’t need to work too hard. Guin did a good enough job of making herself look bad. She was…” He paused, searching for the right word. The smile faded. “Guin was very angry, growing up.”
“About what?”
Varden shrugged. “About her mother dying, I suppose. About her father. Who knows?”
He went to stand beside the muddy wound of her grave, his head bowed, his fists clenched at his sides. Around them, the rain poured, splashing into the puddles in the sunken hollows of old graves and drumming on the domed roof of a nearby tomb.
Suddenly, he looked up, his eyes narrowing against the driven rain. “He did it, you know. Prinny. I don’t care what you say. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
