When Gods Die

Chapter 12

Even in the thickness of the fog, Sebastian had been aware of a steady drumming of hoofbeats, staying always a comfortable distance behind them. One horse, he decided, ridden at a steady clip, never gaining, but not falling too far behind, either.

Then the mists began to thin to faint wisps of elusive white that hugged the deeply cut road’s stone walls and brambly hedgerows while laying bare the surrounding fields of green barley and flax. At that point, the shadowy horseman dropped back. But Sebastian’s eyesight was considerably keener than most others’. As the wide vistas of the South Downs opened up beneath a strengthening sun, he began to catch glimpses of a single, dark-clad rider mounted on a big bay, first seen in the distance through a tangle of hazel, then half-hidden by a copse of fine beech.

Thoughtful, Sebastian urged his chestnuts to a faster trot. The mysterious horseman quickened his pace, too. They continued on that way for a mile, two. Sebastian brought his pair down to a walk.

Their shadow dropped back.

“Don’t, whatever you do, look behind us,” Sebastian ordered his young tiger. “But I think…no, I am quite certain, actually, that we are being followed.”

Tom went visibly stiff with the effort of resisting the urge to turn around and look for himself. “Since when?”

“Since we left Brighton, it would seem.”

“What we gonna do?”

Sebastian held the chestnuts to a steady pace. They were winding up a gradual incline, the twisting road thrown into deep shade by a stand of poplars. But at the top of the slope the ground evened out, the road running across a broad common of vivid green pastureland dotted with a peacefully grazing herd of black-and-white milk cows.

Without looking behind, Sebastian whipped his team into an easy gallop so that the man behind them was forced to do the same. They streamed across the common, the sun shining on the chestnuts’ wet flanks, Sebastian urging his team on ever faster until the road crested a sudden rise and fell away rapidly before them in a long, steady sweep.

Sebastian immediately reined in his horses to a brisk walk. The rush of the wind and the thundering of hoofbeats gave way to a soft crunch of wheels and a relative silence in which Sebastian could hear the rapid soughing of Tom’s breath, quickened with excitement. They were only halfway down the slope when the rider on the bay crested the hill behind them at a loping canter.

At the sight of Sebastian, he checked for a moment, then urged his own horse forward at a easy walk.

Sebastian swung over to the verge and pulled up. At his signal, Tom hopped down to run to the horses’ heads.

“What’s he doing?” Sebastian asked, bending forward as if busying himself with something at his feet. In one hand, he clasped a neat little flintlock pistol.

Again the horseman had checked. But now he had no choice: he must either make his intentions obvious, or continue on and pass them. Pulling his hat low on his forehead, the dark-clad rider set his spurs to his horse’s flanks.

“Here he comes,” said Tom on a tense exhalation of breath.

The rider charged past them in a dust-swirling rush of creaking saddle leather and sweat-flecked prime horseflesh. Looking up, Sebastian had a quick vision of a bloodred bay, its head up, its eyes wide, and a man of medium build wearing a gentleman’s beaver hat and a greatcoat of respectable tailoring. Then the bay disappeared with a clatter around a bend in the road ahead. The hoofbeats retreated into the distance until all was silent except for the rush of the wind through the sweetly scented grass and the gentle lowing of a cow.

Tom stood with a hand on the team’s reins, his head twisted around as he stared off up the road. “Who was he, gov’nor?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Sebastian, collecting his whip. “Stand away, Tom.”

Tom obediently sprang back, then scrambled to resume his perch as the curricle once again bowled away toward London.

THEY REACHED TOWN just after midday. The greatcoated rider on the big bay was not seen again.

Sebastian’s own house lay on Brook Street, just off New Bond Street. But that was not his first destination. Drawing up before an elegant little town house in Harwich Street, Sebastian handed the reins to Tom and said, “Stable them.”

The maid who opened the door was a mousy creature with thin bony shoulders and pale, unsmiling features. At the sight of Sebastian, she sniffed and looked as if she’d shut the door in his face if she could. “Miss Boleyn is still abed.”

“Good,” Sebastian said cheerfully, already taking the steps two at a time. “No need to interrupt whatever you were doing, Elspeth,” he added, although she remained rooted in the entry hall, her head tipping back as she continued to glower up at him. “I’ll announce myself.”

The door to the front bedchamber on the second floor was closed but not latched. Sebastian pushed it open, the painted panels swinging into a room of blue satin hangings and heavy shadows. A woman lay in the bed, a beautiful young woman with rich brown hair that spread out over the pillows in a glossy wave. Her name was Kat Boleyn, and at the age of twenty-three she had already been the toast of the London stage for several years now. She was also the love of Sebastian’s life.

As he drew nearer, he saw that she was awake, her blue eyes crinkling lightly at the corners with a subtle smile, her shoulders bare where they showed above the fine linen sheets. “Poor Elspeth,” she said.

Shrugging out of his many-caped driving coat, Sebastian swung it onto a nearby chair and tossed his hat, whip, and gloves after it. “Why on earth do you keep such a Friday-faced creature about the place?”

Kat reached long, naked arms over her head in a lazy stretch. “She’s not Friday faced with me.”

“Then what the devil does she have against me?”

Kat laughed. “You’re male.”

Sebastian knelt on the edge of the bed, one doeskin-clad knee sinking deep into the feather mattress. “How’s the new play?”

“Popular. Or maybe it’s just my Cleopatra costume that’s popular.” She brought her arms down to loop them around his neck and draw him to her. “I expected you yesterday.”

From any other woman the words might have been read as an expression of reproach. But not with Kat. With Kat, it was simply a statement, an observation.

She demanded no loverlike commitments from him. She had rebuffed his every attempt to make her his wife and refused even to be considered his mistress. He supposed there were men who might relish such an arrangement as a freedom from the ties that could bind; Sebastian lived with a quietly desperate fear that one day, for some reason he would never quite understand, she would leave him. Again.

He slid his hands down her naked back, heard her breath catch in that way it always did when he touched her. He nuzzled his face against her neck, breathed in the wonderful, heady fragrance of her skin and hair. “Forgive me?”

She bracketed his cheeks with her hands, drawing back so she could see his face. Her lips were smiling, her eyes shining with what looked very much like love. But her words were light, frivolous. “That depends on how good your excuse is.”

He took her mouth in a kiss of tender hello and subtle promises of want and need. Then, lifting his head, he brushed the ball of his thumb across her lips and saw her smile fade when he said, “How about murder?”