When Gods Die

Chapter 36

“What happened to you this time?” asked Kat, her gaze meeting Sebastian’s in her dressing room mirror. The curtain had only just come down on the final act; around them, the theater rang with shouts and laughter and the tramp of feet hurrying up and down the passage.

Sebastian dropped the paper-wrapped parcel containing the green satin gown on her couch and dabbed the back of his hand at the blood trickling down his cheek from a graze. “I was coming to see what you could tell me about this evening gown when I decided to stop and have a little wresting match in the mud.”

She gave him a look that spoke of concern and exasperation and amusement, all carefully held in check. Removing Cleopatra’s gilded diadem from her forehead, she pushed back her chair and went to unwrap the gown. In the golden lamplight, the satin shimmered.

“It’s exquisite,” she said, turning to hold the gown up to the lamplight. “Dashing, but not outrageously so. It looks like something that would be made for a young nobleman’s wife. A lady several years past her first season, perhaps, but still young.”

She glanced over at him. “Surely the woman who delivered the note for the Prince couldn’t have been wearing an identical gown?”

Sebastian stripped off his muddy coat. Not even a valet of Sedlow’s genius would be able to repair these ravages. “I doubt it. Probably a gown of a similar cut and hue. A female might have noticed the difference, but not most men.” Sebastian surveyed the damage done to his waistcoat. It was as ruined as his coat. “Whoever she was, she obviously had a hand in the Marchioness’s death.”

“Not necessarily. I know dozens of actresses more than capable of giving a very credible performance as a lady. The killer could simply have hired someone.”

“Perhaps. But it seems a risky thing to have done.”

Kat turned the gown inside out to inspect the seams. “Look at these tiny stitches. There aren’t many mantua makers in Town capable of producing work of this quality.”

He came up beside her. “Do you think if we found the maker, she could tell us who ordered it?”

“Certainly she could. Whether she actually would or not depends on how she’s approached.”

Sebastian hooked an elbow behind her neck, drawing her close. “Are you suggesting my approach might be clumsy?”

Kat rubbed her open lips against his. “I’m suggesting she might find the question slightly more appropriate coming from a female.”

Grinning, he laced his fingers through her hair and rubbed the pads of his thumbs back and forth across her cheeks. “Then maybe—” He broke off as a knock sounded at her door.

“Flowers fer Miss Boleyn,” called a young voice.

“Oh, Lord. Not again,” said Kat.

Sebastian let his gaze drift around the buckets of roses and lilies and orchids that covered every conceivable surface of the dressing room, including the floor. “You appear to have a new admirer,” he said, as she went to jerk open the door.

Nichols, the young boy who ran errands for the theater, grinned and thrust a small sheaf of flowers into her arms. “’Ere’s another one. This bloke gave me a whole shilling. If this keeps up, I’m gonna be able to set up my own shop soon.”

“It wasn’t the same man?” asked Kat.

Sebastian lifted the flowers from her arms. “At least this one won’t take up half the room. It’s a strange bouquet, though, isn’t it? One yellow lily and nine white roses? What an odd conceit. So who is your admirer?”

Kat had gone suddenly, oddly pale. “The others were from the Comte de Lille.”

“This one’s not?”

She looked down at the card in her hand. “No.”

He frowned. “What is it? What’s wrong? Who are they from?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t say.”

He lifted the card from her hand. “‘And the king made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycamore trees that are in the vale of abundance,’” he read aloud, then handed it back to her with a laugh. “What kind of gallant sends a woman a bouquet with a quote from the Bible?”

AFTER SEBASTIAN LEFT, Kat sat for some time staring at the strange bouquet. One yellow lily, nine white roses. The nineteenth. The day after tomorrow.

No, it couldn’t be. She told herself it was a simple coincidence, that the flowers must have been sent by an admirer. With a shaking hand, she lifted the note and read it again. And the king made silver and gold…. With each breath, the sweet scent of the lily and roses floated up to engulf her until she thought she might be sick. She crushed the note in her hand and dropped it to the floor.

She kept a Bible tucked away beneath a collection of old costumes and programs in her trunk. It took her some time to locate the reference. She’d been raised a Catholic and her knowledge of the Bible was not extensive, but she found it eventually.

Chronicles, chapter one, verse fifteen.

She closed the Bible, the black leather covers gripped tight between her hands. Her gaze fixed on the crumpled note on the floor. In the soft light, the broken seal looked like drops of bright blood.

It had been so long, over four months now. Somehow she’d almost convinced herself this day wasn’t going to come. She’d even begun to delude herself into thinking that she might be able to put it all behind her. God help her, she’d actually begun to dream about building some kind of a future with the man she loved more than life itself.

But Ireland was still not free. The war between England and France still raged long and bloody. And on Wednesday the nineteenth of June, at one fifteen in the afternoon, Pierrepont’s successor and Napoléon’s new spymaster in London would be looking to meet Kat Boleyn in the Physic Gardens at Chelsea.