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 emigre 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?”
The younger man smiled. “My mother was fond of Guinevere, particularly when she was a child. But she would never have agreed to such a marriage.”
Sebastian thought about the proud, elegant woman he’d met. Lady Audley must have watched the maturing affection between the young Chevalier and his childhood friend with growing concern. Such a woman’s plans for her dispossessed son would not include marriage to the daughter of some impoverished provincial earl. London was full of rich bankers and merchants more than willing to take on a penniless son-in-law, as long at the son-in-law came with a title and a noble lineage and royal connections.
“What did Lady Guinevere do when you told her?”
“She ran back out into the storm. I tried to go after her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I was afraid she’d thrown herself from the cliffs.” He paused, and it seemed to Sebastian, watching him, as if the skin had tightened across his features, making him look suddenly older. “She told me later she almost did. But then she decided she wasn’t going to let her father destroy her. She made up her mind to go to her aunt in London and marry a rich old man—the older and richer the better. And then when he died, she’d be free of him.”
“And free of her father.”
“Yes. That was her plan, at any rate. The problem was, while there were plenty of rich old men to chose from, she found the thought of being married to any of them more than she could bear.”
“Until she met Anglessey.”
Varden’s lips compressed into a thin line. “Yes. She said that at first he seemed much like all the others—old and gray and jowly, and carrying far too much weight around his middle. But as she came to know him, she discovered he had a good heart and a fine mind, and they became friends. I think in many ways he was like the father she never really felt she had.”
Sebastian tilted back his head, his gaze on the red kite climbing now with sudden dips and eddies against the clouding sky. What was it Tess Bishop had said about the Marchioness of Anglessey and her lord?
He turned to study the younger man’s troubled face. “The night Lady Anglessey was killed, someone tried to break into her room. The abigail scared them away, but they came back again the next night, searching for something. You wouldn’t happen to know what that was, would you?”
Varden stared off across the parklands, as if thinking. But there was something about the way he held his mouth that told Sebastian the man didn’t need to think, that he knew right away what Tess Bishop’s mysterious housebreaker had been seeking. He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”
“No? I understand you and Lady Anglessey had a quarrel recently. A serious quarrel.”
Varden’s brows drew together in a quick frown. “Who told you that?”
“Does it matter?”
He stopped and swung to face Sebastian, the gravel crunching beneath the soles of his boots. “What do you think? That she tried to break things off with me, so I killed her? It wasn’t like that at all.”
Sebastian held himself very still. “So how was it?”
Varden hesitated a moment, then said in a rush, “She was going to leave Anglessey. That’s why we quarreled. She wanted me to run away with her.”
Sebastian stared into the younger man’s tense, anxious face, and didn’t believe one word of it. “Why? Why would she even consider doing such a thing?”
“Because she was afraid of him. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. He seems so mild mannered: the perfect eighteenth-century gentleman. It’s what Guin thought at first. They were married several years before she saw what he’s really like.”
“How is he really?”
“Jealous. Possessive. It was his idea that she take a lover. But then when she did, he couldn’t bear it. In the end, Guin was afraid he might kill her. Kill her and the baby both.”
