Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2)

by Baird Wells

  She backed up slowly, her gaze on his face, and Philipe matched her step for step until her back met the cold stone wall. She waited, for his body to press hers, his hands to brace beside her, but he moved no closer. A part of her wanted him to continue, to stop thinking and allow the comfort he spoke of to wash over her.

  His voice was quiet, almost timid, as if afraid to hope. “The looks you afford Major Burrell are unmistakable. I'm not foolish enough to count myself in his class, not in your eyes.” He gave her a wistful smile. “But I would worship you, Olivia…” He trailed off, his fingers gripping hers. He raised her arm and pressed his lips to the naked flesh inside her elbow. An invitation, perfectly placed to let her decide whether or not to continue.

  It felt good. Better than good.

  And it felt wrong. As unfair to Philipe as it was to herself.

  Gently she pulled her hand back, side stepping him enough to put space between them. She closed her eyes, pressed harder into the wall, its cold bracing her. “I cannot give my heart to anyone else, and I cannot give my body without its permission.”

  Philipe sighed and pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek, then pulled away; anything more, and he might have worn through her resolve just then. Inside, she ached for what he was offering, the uncomplicated warmth and pleasure of it. Another part of her railed against the thought, hating that she was tempted.

  “My heart is constant, Olivia, where you are concerned. In Portugal we say a man with patience can have whatever he desires,” he whispered against her ear. “I am a patient man, lindeza. Here, if your heart ever changes.”

  She managed a laugh that was more of a sigh, resting her head against his broad shoulder. “Take me inside then, and prove how patient we both are.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  She was in her room. Not inside Thalia’s mansion, but her father’s. Far off in the chateau, a door shuddered in its frame, and her mother screamed.

  A crash brought her wide awake, another sound echoing in her ears that might have been her own screams. Reality and her nightmare mixed, leaving her confused and disoriented. It was the second time the noise had rattled her walls; somewhere deep in her brain she made the connection. It came again, jarring the headboard, followed by a crisp snap of splintering wood.

  Olivia was out of the bed in a flash, stabbing arms into the sleeves of a wrapper while boots pounded in the marble entry hall downstairs. This time she would heed her mother’s pleas, she would be ready when the soldiers came. And they were coming; she knew the sound as well as she knew her own heartbeat.

  Screams echoed up the stairs, followed by men shouting and several authoritative barks that came rapid-fire before she'd had time to finish dressing.

  She grabbed her knife from inside a shoe beneath the bed and darted for the door, concealing the blade as she went. Guests already hovered on the landing, peering down into the hall where others cowered. Before them was arrayed a company of French soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, bayonets held ready, overflowing the wide foyer.

  Her head swam, and she willed each breath to come slowly and fan away a buzzing at her temples, a threatening darkness at the edge of her vision. This time was different, she reasoned, but it wasn’t; it was always the same. The soldiers were here for her, her and Ty.

  Ty, still mostly dressed, hung back at the opposite side of the balcony, Thalia curved to his side. The sight put a sour taste in her mouth, and, in a less precarious situation, she would have made her displeasure clear. She felt slightly better when he immediately sought her out with his eyes, and his blanched face said plainly that things were too grave for jealousy.

  Madame, more composed than Olivia would have expected at such an hour, detached herself from Ty and took one halting step at a time down the staircase. “Sergeant, what have you done to my door? Why are your dirty boots stomping into my hall? You would have been admitted, had you knocked.”

  A bit haughty for a woman with an entry full of soldiers, Thalia was certainly not sounding as intimidated as she was acting. She was either very brave, or not at all surprised by the intrusion. The thought chilled Olivia, and a new thread of fear laced her thoughts.

  Ignoring Thalia, the commander reached into a pouch at his hip. Producing a sharply creased sheet of paper, he held it aloft, not bothering to read it. “Which of you is Philipe, Duc de la Porte?”

  Olivia enjoyed no relief at discovering the sergeant’s true target. She knew how it would go, the questions, games of the mind meant to confuse and unbalance, punctuated by blows from a fist or a rifle butt. A sick terror, wishing for it all to be a nightmare, and for it simply to be over.

  Philipe, who had appeared at her shoulder while she watched the exchange play out, swallowed and was silent.

  She glanced at Ty. His face wore the same terrified, sleep-addled expression as everyone else, but she knew better. His brows were furrowed over narrow eyes that took in the scene with predatory concentration. Without looking at her, he made a light fist, smacking a hand to it. Ambush.

  Olivia studied the intruders below. Green coats, red facings; French Dragoons. They were not local soldiers. Olivia reached her right hand slowly to her left shoulder. From a long way.

  Ty's nod was almost imperceptible.

  The commander raised a fist. One of his men broke rank, highly polished boots pummeling the marble. He stopped before aging Henri Britton and a woman Olivia did not recognize, grasped his rifle stock and drew it back, dragging screams from both targets. With the butt aimed squarely at their faces, he stood ready for an order to strike. The commander waved his paper. “La Porte! Give him to me. Shall I crack you all like eggs and dig out your secrets?”

  Olivia clutched Philipe's shirt sleeve. “Go!” she whispered. “Through my room. There's a low roof to the right of the window. It’s an easy jump.”

  “Out of the question,” he rasped back.

  Still cocked back and eager to swing, the soldier glanced from his target to others paralyzed nearby. “Papers! Perhaps you would all like to show your papers?”

  His officer snapped a nod. “You all have them at hand, I am sure. All in order, nothing amiss...”

  Papers. It was a favorite threat of the Republic. People forgot them all the time and if they were presented, nothing need really be out of order. An official’s 'concern' was enough for a man or woman to be detained and questioned, a fact which struck fear into the populace.

  Guests below were glancing at one another, murmuring over the state of their documents, some patting fruitlessly at their dressing gowns as though they carried passports in their night clothes. Heads swiveled, looking for the duke and questioning silently whether they should speak up. The dragoons were having an effect, and not everyone present counted Philipe as a friend. Any moment, someone was bound to point him out, or give him away even if they did not mean to.

  Olivia pressed fingers at his shoulder. “You have to get out. We need you now more than ever.”

  He shook a fist at her. “Those soldiers know I am here. If I flee, everyone present will be interrogated. Perhaps beaten, imprisoned. Worse! You, of all people, know how these things go, Olivia.” His tone was grim, mouth a hard edge, eyes flinty. He wasn't going to run.

  Her desperation rose. “It's a price we all have to pay,” she ground out.

  He dodged the topic with a brave smirk. “They have questions, nothing more.”

  “Philipe, they smashed open the door!” She did know how this would go, precisely why his arguing baffled her. She caught herself before jamming a finger at the splintered panel. “That is not questions.”

  “I've done nothing wrong!”

  Resting elbows on the rail, she cradled her forehead in her palms. “Guilt or innocence doesn't matter to them. We both know better. You’ve raised arms against Napoleon once, and that’s enough.”

  “I'm going. I will be all right.” Sweat beading at his temples said otherwise. He must be eaten up with fear, with the mad hum of thoughts s
houting simultaneously that he was a dead man, and that he could persevere. She knew the feeling all too well. The urge to scream, beg or feign illness, or to simply run blindly in any direction just to postpone the inevitable. It was self-preservation.

  “I will be all right,” he repeated, nodding to himself. “So will you and the major.”

  You and the major. Suddenly she understood his willingness to go, and it infuriated her. Helpless, she looked to Ty, who was staring back at her with equal disbelief as Philipe made ready to move forward. He tapped a palm against the rail. Stop him.

  Slipping a hand into her pocket, Olivia curled fingers around the knife's grip. They were fast approaching desperate measures. She pressed closer to Philipe, whispers more urgent. “Everyone here is willing to make a sacrifice They are doing our country a service. If you flee, so will you.”

  “Did fleeing aid your parents?”

  His jab found its mark and rage stole her voice. She didn’t need it. Philipe tangled fingers in her hair, and his lips pressed to hers with a sweet urgency which briefly silenced her fear. She clutched at his hair, his jaw, willing him to stay even as he pulled back. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and before she could find words, he raised a hand in the air. “Here! I am la Porte!”

  Staring past him at Ty’s frozen expression, Olivia brushed two fingers under her chin: Too late.

  Philipe, to his credit, didn’t hurry the steps or cower. He covered the distance with all the grace and dignity of his title, head high and stern-faced. To Olivia it was still a death march.

  Ty clasped and unclasped his hands, as if ready to take on the entire regiment single-handedly. He turned back to her, casting her a look filled with the same impotent rage beating in her breast. He leaned on the banister, gripping its polished wood. We must meet. Two fingers raised, indicating her room.

  The soldiers dragged Philippe down the last two steps, jamming with fists and gun butts at his back and sides even when he did not protest and she endured every blow with him. The blood in her veins chilled at the Dragoons' demeanor. Philipe was not being treated with courtesy or with consideration for his rank. He was not being handled as an asset, he was being handled as garbage. They were not taking him for questioning, or even to be held in reserve for the impending political chess game. In the courtyard, on the road, in Paris, anywhere from this moment on, he could be slaughtered. It was the inevitable conclusion; she knew it in her heart.

  Philipe was on his knees now, the result of a pistol that had come from nowhere to strike his face. While two men shackled his hands, he pressed his nose to his shoulder, staunching the flow of blood painting his upper lip. “What are the charges? As a loyal son of France, I deserve at least to know my crimes.”

  The commander held up his warrant. She had expected him to smirk or demean his prisoner. The detached, empty manner in which he listed the charges was far more chilling. It was just a task, another order to be crossed from his list. “For raising arms against the true emperor of France. For conspiring with enemies of the state. For conspiring with the traitors Villan and Charbrand to assassinate the emperor.”

  Napoleon had become emperor after Philipe had opposed him. He was being tried for something which had not been a crime when he'd done it. They lived in a world gone mad.

  She waited for Philippe to yell or protest, but he was still, his lips working in confusion. Olivia suspected that he finally grasped the gravity of the situation. There was no possible way he had been anywhere long enough to conspire with Charbrand's known band of radicals, and it didn't matter. He had been found guilty of an idea, a rumor, and condemned before a single Dragoon had mounted his horse. Accusations of conspiracy, violence; they were just bureaucratic names for 'culling'. Philipe would not be granted the same quarter as before.

  At bayonet point, Philipe was prodded into the night. Fifteen pairs of boots turned and stomped in unison, creating a chilling, final sound. Horsetail plumes swung from their retreating helmets, snakes threatening a strike at any who dared follow.

  It took nearly all of her discipline to stand there passively as they filed out, to reconcile that for now, she and Ty would have to let things stand. Thalia was still watching, and now, likely waiting.

  A lady's wail cut the silence in their wake, punctuated by quiet sobs or manly outrage muttered between the guests. Madame Bellon collapsed without anyone moving to break her fall, the man closest to her standing frozen in only a shirt and dressing gown and ringed by a puddle of urine.

  Thalia, petrified until now on the bottom step, swept across the hall hurling black insults at the patrol, too comically far away to hear a single word she barked in their wake. Reaching the entry, she claimed a jagged door fragment, cradling it to her chest. Then she dropped to the marble, hung her head, and began to cry. The sequence was perfect, as if scripted for the stage, and Olivia didn't trust it for a moment.

  She had seen enough. Without looking at anyone else, she went back into her room, shutting her door on one terrible scene while reliving another.

  There was no time to write Whitehall and organize something on Philippe's behalf. She and Ty would have to get the duke back on their own. Hopefully with more success than those who’d done the same for her parents.

  * * *

  Pressed as flat against the wall as he could manage to stay out of a cold mist falling from the night sky, Ty tapped on Olivia's window pane. It swung open, revealing a darkened room and nothing more. Grabbing the ledge, Ty braced his toes against the wet limestone wall and hauled himself inside.

  Olivia's room was truly dark with not a single candle lit. Only lamps from the mews across the yard, the same ones which had lit his climb, offered hints of silhouettes inside.

  “Olivia,” he whispered, searching and waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  “Here,” she called back from inside the curtains of a massive bed.

  He closed the distance with measured steps until his knees bumped the mattress, then sat. He found Olivia in the dark by her breathing. Gathering a fistful of her sleeve, he pulled until she raised up, falling against him and resting her cheek against his chest. She clung to him as if drowning, and he found himself doing the same, pouring days of tension and uncertainty into his embrace. “We can sort this out, Olivia. We'll get him back.”

  “We don't know that, Ty,” she whispered in return. “There are new rules now. A whole new madness. We cannot pretend for a moment that we know what will happen, that there's anything rational to this new regime.” She squeezed him tighter. He didn't know everything about her past, but he could infer much; her expression when the soldiers had burst into Thalia's hall coupled with her shaking like a leaf in his arms spoke of her painful experience.

  He grasped for anything he could, anything to give her hope, even for a moment. “We know they could simply have taken him outside and ended it. La Porte has been arrested. That means interrogation, at least. A trial, even if it is a sham. That buys us time.”

  “You're assuming a great deal. I hope for his sake that you're right.” Olivia pulled away, but her fingers wove between his. He'd forgotten, after days of flirtation with the baroness, of pretending, how much comfort he derived from Olivia's touch. How much he'd missed her.

  Should he ask about her letter to Grayfield? Tell her that he knew she'd asked to be recalled and demand to know why the hell she had done it behind his back? No. After the events of the past few hours, now was not the time. He would focus on saving Philipe’s neck so he could have the pleasure of wringing it later for his stolen kiss.

  “Where will they take him? We don't have much time to puzzle this out.”

  He was relieved that her mind was thawing, and matched her thoughts to keep her focused. Sighing, he tried to put himself in the sergeant’s head. “They came from across the river. It's obvious to me that Napoleon has been settling matters as he goes, but I don't believe they'll take La Porte back into the city.”

  He could barely make out her head shaking i
n the dark. “They don't intend to keep him long. Whatever they plan to squeeze from Philipe, they'll dispose of him when they're done.”

  “So, where?” Ty chewed on the question. “They won't risk having him out in public view.”

  “And that means they're limited by however far they can manage by dawn.”

  “So, two hours? Five miles wouldn't be unreasonable. What does that give us?” Ty mapped what he knew of the city in his mind, considering and discarding possible locations. Olivia knew more of the city than he, and he waited for her to help him along.

  Her eyes were focused miles away. “If they won't let him be seen in public, then I can't imagine they'd keep him somewhere word might get out. No estates with lots of staff.”

  He nodded. “It will be somewhere private. Somewhere made for the purpose.” Scooting closer to her, he fished the watch from his pocket and laid it on her coverlet, catching a low light from outside. “Here we are.” With a finger he pressed a line into the blanket, representing the city walls. “Where is he?”

  “Place du Trone?” she said slowly. He traced a path from the watch, creating a circle north of an imaginary river. He stayed silent, letting her puzzle it through. She was reanimating as they created their plan, and he wouldn’t interfere.

  Olivia was quiet for a moment. “Du Trone. There's a house of detention between the guillotine and the cemetery. But I don't think they mean to guillotine him. Not without first occupying the city.” She placed her finger next to his, continuing a path along their invisible map. “Here!”

  What was there? Ty visualized the streets, intersections, landmarks. “Chateau Vincennes?”

  She nodded, slowly and then faster. “Do you know it?”