by Baird Wells
“Move it down ten! Twenty to the right! Swabber, loader, on my mark!” A man from each gun called the orders, and his crew called back.
Snapping out his glass, Ty scanned the ridge and gauged how well his guns would do on damp, uneven terrain. The infantry needed bailing out, as usual, but his men were vulnerable to French cavalry. Their aim would have to be precise.
“On my command!” His men froze, at the ready. He skimmed the cuirassiers’ line again, watching it writhe along the ridge.”
“First gun, fire!”
The concussion jarred his teeth. Powder smoke choked his lungs with sulfur, its salty residue stinging his lips. “Second gun, fire! Third gun, fire!”
Halfway through his first six guns, he paused and waited for the smoke and airborne soil to clear. As soon as the air cleared enough to see through, he surveyed the ridge again. Riderless animals tore without purpose through the ranks, and rag doll forms tumbled over into the sunken road only to be trodden by enemy and ally alike. He'd punched a hole through the cuirassiers’ ranks.
“Gun four, twenty right, fire!”
Another line of French cavalry tumbled screaming into the pit.
Inhaling deeply, Ty relished the burning stink of his nine-pounders, their bitter ashes on his tongue. It tasted exactly like victory.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It was good to see Fouche rewarding those most loyal to him. Snorting, Olivia shook her head and climbed the steps to Du Fresne's new house on the Rue de Sofia. It was several steps above the square gray column that he'd occupied just weeks before the emperor's return. She’d wager that not a coin was exchanged for it, just secrets and blood.
Resting a hand on the door, she turned the knob and pushed. It swung open just an inch, and she listened for any commotion over the crowd's hum. As a loyal bureaucrat of the empire, DuFresne had likely excused most of his staff for the celebration.
One of the more interesting bits of information they’d picked up about DuFresne, one she’d filed away for later use, was something seemingly innocuous. She’d found over the years that the little details were the most useful. In this matter, it was that the summer heat aggravated a painful skin ailment. He treated it privately by bathing for hours each afternoon in scalding water enhanced with rose oil and lead sugar. Considering what a vain, insecure snake he was, to admit frailty to his servants would be a sign of unforgivable weakness, and he would be glad to have them gone.
Voices reached her through the door, something about wine. Servants. Apparently, a few of them remained. They were arguing, coming closer. Loping back down the steps, Olivia pretended to adjust a coarse linen apron tied over her dress.
A head topped by a bird's nest of white hair poked out of the crack she’d left open, dark beady eyes darting left and right. The door slammed shut, shivering in its frame.
She sighed, skirting the house's flank and cutting through a narrow alley. Time for a less direct route. On any other day, the lane would be empty at least at some portion of the day. Sadly, today was not one of those days. The alley dead ended against a tailor's shop at the end of the block, requiring a pedestrian to backtrack halfway to reach an outlet. Today, the streets were full and no one was in a hurry. Eyes were everywhere, and there was no chance that her scaling the house would go unnoticed. Glancing around, Olivia grasped for something to legitimize her next move.
In a barrel adjacent to the servants’ entrance, a flag had been abandoned. It had likely been left by, or left for, passersby. Grabbing its stick, Olivia upended the barrel and climbed on top of it. With arms wide, she balanced on her makeshift step, raising a leg and moving gingerly to grip lead shingles atop the kitchen's low roof. She had just gained her footing when a pock-faced, middle-aged man who’d been wandering past spit up at her from under his wiry brown mustache. Glancing down, she groaned inwardly. He had an entire group of young, bored, and potentially violent people with him.
“What do you think you're about, imbecile?” he shouted, shaking an open palm as though he might smack her down. His sudden stop and raised voice earned them the exact kind of unwanted attention she’d been trying to avoid.
Olivia waved her prop. “Raising a flag atop the minister's house, traitor!”
He swatted a hand at her in disgust, stomping past down the lane.
Pretending to be winded, Olivia hunched and panted until his band of followers grew restless, then bored. They marched off in his wake, not giving her much of a backward glance as she gripped the first window ledge and pulled.
A high, narrow window directly overhead was likely DuFresne's bathing chamber. It fit with the layout of nearby townhouses.
If his bathtub was positioned like most in Paris, climbing through the window would probably involve her falling into the water with her target, so she moved instead for an adjoining bed chamber.
A few people were still watching her. That became clear when they cheered as she gained the balcony. She spent longer than she’d planned propping her flag, with a lot of unnecessary fuss, as if it had been her aim all along. After a few breaths, she backed up through the open doors to the bedchamber behind her.
Out from under midday sun, it was cool, and she enjoyed the feeling against her skin a moment before getting her bearings. The curtains were drawn on a room which was comical in its execution. It was a model of Napoleon's own suite, if she had to guess, rendered into a scaled-down version. Blue silk and deeper blue velvet embroidered with silver stars and silver Greek knots covered everything: bed canopy, round chair cushions, and a table drape. It was the sad display of a man who resented his menial station, while greedily executing its every function.
She counted two doors. One, on the far wall, faced the hallway. Another, she hoped, led to the bathing room.
As though her thoughts had some influence, that very door swung open. Olivia quickly pressed to the wall beside a high cabinet. A woman, hunched and shuffling, came out with an armload of linen. She turned, struggled with the door and finally wrenched it closed before bustling out.
Exhaling, Olivia waited until she heard footsteps on the stairs, then crept across the room. Pressing a palm to the wood, she pushed. It scraped in the frame, then drifted open.
Her feet struck a hard surface, marble, not wood. A single candle burned atop the remains of a column at the foot of a long copper tub. Each wall was painted with a fresco: a warrior on horseback, his spear raised aloft; two gladiators circling; a roman bath. And, like the bedroom, they were poor imitations.
DuFresne was slumped so far into the tub that she nearly missed him in the dark. Only the curve of his forehead and tip of his beak nose stood out in the dim light.
“I said I was not ready yet.” His voice, echoing off the plaster and stone, held an eerie, disjointed note.
Taking off her cap, Olivia folded it in half and turned around, sliding a bolt into its seat, locking the door. “Ready or no, misseur, here I am.”
Behind her came a splashing and banging. She turned in time to see DuFresne come upright in the water, squinting with all his might to see her without his spectacles. “Who is it? Who is there?”
“A ghost, to you.”
He laughed, but his shoulders didn't relax. “Whose ghost?”
She walked slowly toward the tub, her voice low, tempering the rage which laced her words. “Mathilde Barcourt. Elena Breunig. Philipe de la Porte. Henry Lennox. There are others.”
His swallowing reached her ears, wet and gross. “Who are you? Tell me. Answer me at once or I shall –”
“Scream?”
“No!”
“No? What else is there? No one knows that I am here. The door is locked and you are...” she shrugged, “vulnerable. Not a very masculine option, screaming, but sometimes necessary.” Continuing to close the distance a step at a time, Olivia reached out when she neared the tub, claiming a tall ladder-back chair from against the wall. Positioning it near DuFresne's head, she sat down.
Recognition widened his
eyes at last. “Elizabeth Hastings.”
She gave him a grim smile at the use of her alias. Apparently, Fouche and Thalia hadn’t felt the need to share all of their information with their subordinates. “More or less.”
Arms flailed, and DuFresne struggled to sit up more. Grabbing a fistful of the bath sheet, Olivia used her size and position to an advantage, pressing him all the way back against the tub's wall.
His chin trembled, belying narrow eyes filled with hate. “Where is the baroness?” he hissed.
Instead of answering, she reached into the leather pouch concealed beneath her apron, took out pliers and laid them on her lap.
“What...what is that? What are you doing?”
Next came her petite, bone-handled knife. It was not much more than a scalpel, but it looked incredibly dangerous. Last came a long coil of wire, which she settled between the two.
For the first time, DuFresne's thin frame fell completely against the tub. Not in relaxation, but in fear. Realization was dawning, and he tried to pull away. Like most bullies, when confronted with real intimidation, he quailed. “What are you doing?” he repeated, this time in a hoarse whisper.
“The baroness.” Olivia cocked her head and stared up at the ceiling. “You know, the baroness did a great many horrible things to Philipe de LaPorte. To Henry Lennox and Elizabeth Hastings. Horrible things, before killing them.” Picking up her pliers, she studied their tip, observing how they opened and closed.
“Elena Breunig suffered an equally cruel fate at your hands.” Smiling slowly, she at last met DuFresne's wide eyes. “Fate. Perhaps that is who I am. Here to visit upon you every slice and puncture. Each torn nail, eviscerated tongue. Broken finger.”
No, no. At least that's what she thought he'd said, but it came out as stuttering on a rivulet of drool. She fished in her pouch again, collecting the last item. A single green tablet. Olivia dropped it inside the wire's coil. “Cyanide. Nearly instantaneous, nearly painless.” Holding up the pliers again, she nodded. “I am going to revisit all those things on you. Your decision is, simply, how long you wish to suffer?”
“I have information,” he stammered. “Information. Or gold. Would you like gold?”
“I don't want anything from you except blood.”
His voice raised an octave with every word he spoke. “Military intelligence! You have an associate, perhaps, who would find that valuable.”
Closing her eyes, Olivia inhaled and exhaled, signaling her impatience. “I just don't trust you enough to take that chance. I came for one thing, and I'll be perfectly satisfied to leave with it.”
She grabbed his left hand with hers, gripping pliers in her right. It was depressingly easy to overpower him.
His legs pumped. DuFresne grunted, strained. She felt his right hand in her lap, fingers grasping. The pill went into his mouth and he immediately went slack, falling back against the tub without another sound.
As she was gathering things back into her bag, a sheer curtain over the window flapped. To Olivia's astonishment, a head and then a torso appeared through the opening. Moments later it was an entire man, planted on the floor beside the tub.
Impossible. She might have struggled less to grasp the situation had Ty appeared inside the chamber. Finally, she recovered enough to speak. “John? What in the hell are you doing here?”
John raked at one neat sideburn. “Same thing you are. Well, nearly. God Olivia, did you poison him?”
Olivia shook her head, struggling to wrap her mind around the information. “No. No. It's just a grass tablet. Wheat, alfalfa. The fright did him in.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean, the same thing I am?”
“Tracking down Fouche for Whitehall.”
Bollocks. “Since when?”
“Since Burrell and his partner were reassigned in March. And also for a while last September. I didn’t know the partner was you. Had to figure that one out on my own. Seeing you climb up DuFresne’s wall from across the street put any doubts I had to rest.”
Partner, eh? He had a lot of nerve, biting off the word with so much accusation. “And you never saw fit to tell me?”
John waved a hand between them. “You never saw fit to tell me!”
“You're correct. And after our last exchange in Paris, I believe I made the right decision.” When she’d been engaged to him, he’d been a brick wall six days of the week and a volcanic eruption on the seventh. Sharing foundation-wracking news with John held no appeal whatsoever, then or now.
“Meaning?” he growled.
She lowered her voice in pantomime. “Olivia, I demand my ring back!”
Arms crossed. “I bloody well did want it back, if you didn't want to be wed. Did you wish to keep it?”
“No!” Was he daft?
John held up two fingers, ticking them off. “You didn't wish to be engaged, so why should I? What are you upset about?”
She? Olivia didn't bother to point out that he had yelled first. “What are you upset about?”
“As it turns out, not a damned thing!”
“Me either!” Laughing, she rubbed hands over her face.
John laughed in turn. “I should have called it off in a more gentlemanly fashion. Seeing you and seeing Burrell...” He clenched a fist. “I do care for you, Olivia. If you knew half the man's history…”
Avoiding John's eyes, she blew a sharp breath between pursed lips. “So I've heard.”
“I hope you can forgive –”
She cut John off with a sweep of her hand. “Perhaps we can share our mutual regrets later. Somewhere other than locked inside this man's bathing room.”
“A sound point.” He leaned over, peering at DuFresne still limp in the tub, then at the bag she carried. She’d put away her implements, but John would suspect what she carried. “Just fright, you say? What did you intend to do with him from here?”
Frowning, Olivia rested hands on her hips. “I'm not entirely certain. I expected to get a little more out of him before we reached this point.” She sighed. “The tablet was just for a laugh. To enjoy his shock when he swallowed it and nothing happened.”
John looked their target over once more, then glanced around the room. “Help me get him out. I have an idea.”
* * *
Olivia was just finishing working herself into a pair of DuFresne's trousers when the scuffle started. Loud, angry French from an older woman, then a man, drifted up to her. It began somewhere near the front door, progressing under loud protests and even louder swearing until it paused somewhere near the staircase. DuFresne's domestic staff had a very hard time getting along, she thought, closing the wardrobe. Then she caught two more voices, deeper and masculine.
“This house is property of the state. We'll come in as far as we please,” said the first man.
“And stay as long as we like,” threatened his partner.
“You'll wait here!” insisted the female. “Monsieur will be down directly. Or, I can carry a message to him.”
“We will not wait. We'll go up and see him ourselves.”
Then, there were the sounds of a struggle. The servants were either very brave or very stupid, considering the furor outside. Olivia could hear the grunts and pants cutting through broken protests. There was a thud, and then something fell over. Something that sounded like porcelain shattered against the floor.
“You'll stay down, woman, if you value your life!”
Racing for the bathing chamber, Olivia almost felt sorry for the maid. The woman obviously understood the power her master wielded, his place in the regime, and unspoken social rules that prevented men such as her newly arrived guests from challenging DuFresne's position. What she clearly did not grasp was that, in Napoleon's empire, when you were out, you were all the way out.
Inside the bathing room, she pressed the door shut behind her, sliding the lock as fast as she could manage without making too much noise. She turned to John who was seated on a chair beside DuFresne. Their captive was now aw
ake and glaring hotly at them from above his gag.
She pointed to the hall. “We have a problem.”
John sprung up from his seat. “What is it?”
“Assassins, perhaps?” They certainly didn’t sound like friends. “I think Bonaparte is tying up loose ends.”
Grinning, John poked DuFresne's calf with his boot. “Looks like you only have value to one half of your enemies. I'd keep quiet and do as we say if you wish to live any longer.”
DuFresne crossed his arms and turned his face away, but he didn't make a sound.
“How are we getting out of here?” John asked. “We cannot take him down the roof.”
The same thought had occupied her mind. “I think all we can do is make a dash for it. If they start at the room closest to the top of the main stairs, we can flee down the back. Clear the landing before they come back out. But,” she poked a finger at their hostage, “we have to go now.”
Leaning down, John circled DuFresne's arm, hauling him up. They had managed him into breeches and a shirt that he hadn't bothered tucking in. He wore no socks or shoes. They weren't taking him far, so it didn’t matter.
Something occurred to her, staying her fingers on the knob. “There's likely to be more of them outside. Which way are we going?”
He passed her the small canvas satchel she’d brought. “The crowds are moving northwest, towards the square. We'll push opposite for three blocks, to the cab stand.”
Nodding, Olivia opened the door.
They moved single file across the bed chamber to the outer door. Olivia pressed her ear to a small gap where it stood ajar and listened. Two pairs of boots pounded up, striking the landing. The men whispered between themselves, and, for a moment, she feared they would start at the hall's opposite end. Instead, they opened the first door near the steps and went in.
Now was their moment. Without looking back, she rushed to the servant's stairs, hanging at the top just long enough to detect any sound or movement further down.
Something bit the soft flesh above her left hip, and she flinched, glancing over her shoulder.
