by Baird Wells
Grace's smile trembled, eyes damp. “That has made us friends from the beginning.”
Huffing and puffing, Ty reappeared, slamming a wide green door behind him hard enough that half the books inside must have tumbled from their shelves. He looked back, obviously surprised, and she had to laugh.
He thrust a scrap of paper and a pencil nub at his mother, while Olivia resisted the temptation to ask which book he’d defaced. With one stiff finger he jabbed at the paper. “Here. Put it down for me. And write what day is best. Your social calendar gives me a headache.”
Clucking her tongue, Grace scribbled her information onto the paper. “This is what fame has done to you. Hmph.”
“Fame?” She and Ty repeated in unison.
“You're to be knighted. I had the news directly from your father. And any place the greatness of your Webb is mentioned, your name is mentioned shortly thereafter. Your reputations are inseparable.” She wrapped her arms around Ty again, patting affectionately at his coat. “You have made me so proud, Tyler. Just think, each time Lady Lamb starts with her obnoxious prattling, I can smile and say, 'Oh, did I tell you about my son?'”
Ty planted a kiss to his mother’s cheek. “You will do no such thing.”
She held up a slender finger. “One time.”
He repeated the gesture. “Once.”
Olivia found herself buried in Grace's bosom, her arms squeezing as if her life depended on it. “I am glad to see you well. I look forward to our next conversation.”
“Likewise,” Olivia mumbled, watching her sway through a stream of people and wagons clogging the street until she disappeared into a crush on the far sidewalk. Then she turned her full attention to Ty.
He sighed and took her arm, guiding them back the way they'd been traveling. “I know what you're wondering, and no, I had no idea.”
“Not even a hint of a notion?”
“After my parents separated, mama went to Paris. She and the Duc d'Orleans were amours, for a time. Then came revolution. She sided with the queen, the Duc executed his brother the king, and that put a rather abrupt end to my mother’s affair. She spent a year imprisoned and dodged the guillotine by a batting of her pretty lashes. Orleans, the bastard, got what he deserved.” Ty sliced a finger across his neck, as though she were not intimately familiar with the duc’s fate.
She was, however, speechless. How many times had she confided in Ty, spoken of her parents? “You never mentioned any of this before.”
“You lived it. I heard about it now and then at dinner. By arrangement, my father retained custody of me. When the revolution broke out, all I cared about was riding horses and building little ships to sail in the park.”
His shoulders slumped, arm resting heavily against her own. “I loved my mother, and despite their circumstances, my father respected that. No one in his house would dare tell ten-year-old me that she’d been imprisoned and nearly executed. By the time it was mentioned, I was much too old for it to make an impression the way it has upon you.”
“I understand, and I don't. For me, it's actual memories. My mother's screams, the stench of La Force, the way your whole face feels disjointed under a club's swing.”
He stopped them suddenly, pulling her out of the crowd under a gated archway just before the next street. Ty grasped her hands and pressed them to his chest. “I'm glad we don't have that in common, Olivia. I don't want to share that time with you. I want to strangle it, chase it away. Our life together is not a part of La Force or the Terror or anything that came before.”
She threw arms around his neck, pressing as close as she could, Ty's arms crushing her closer. “Those days will always be a part of me, and I never want to make them a part of us.”
“One last thing to do,” he whispered, “and you'll find that a damned sight easier.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
August 18st, 1815 – Paris
The courier mopped sweat from under his hat band. It had been a dog day, and even with the sun below the hills the air was swampy. He had been forced to cool his heels in the courtyard, baking while monsieur stabbed his quill, murdering his inkwell with the same precise strikes as he did his foes. Sheet after sheet of foolscap was sanded, set aside. The courier watched impatiently through the open French doors, looking for any sign that he was near to being dismissed.
Creasing, thumping. A seal, perhaps. He must have been right. A moment later the pretty housemaid who had greeted his arrival appeared on the steps, fiddling with her brown braids and smiling at the ground. He made a mental note to pass by the kitchen stairs another day when work was not so pressing.
Letter safely tucked away, he mounted, wheeled, and charged from the courtyard into the lane. Right. A flick of the reins took him around the fountain. Left, and left again, sweeping past flower stalls that were closed for the night. His pace was so break-neck that he would not have seen her, hunched almost on her knees at the mouth of an alley. With the distraction of carts and pedestrians at midday, his horse would have trampled her – thank goodness for empty streets. Even so, he would not normally have stopped under any but the most extreme circumstances. Getting a better look at her under the gas lamp, however, the courier decided that these were extreme circumstances.
She was covered in blood. It caked her face and hands, painted swaths through her wild blonde hair. The courier readied to spur his horse. He wasn't meddling with a prostitute. A furious pimp, perverted customer, either way he wasn't interested in trouble. But she wasn't a whore, he absorbed on second glance. Her gown was crimson silk, well-tailored. At first he thought it was wet, until he realized that the spots were more blood, red on red. Fine embroidered gloves grasped a corner of the wall, waved at his approach, her arm moving with all the fury of a dying moth. Then she clutched at her throat. Please.
“Whoa!” Jerking up on the reins, he brought his horse up short at the alley.
She was stumbling toward him before his feet could strike cobblestones. Then she clutched her throat tighter, moaning, tottering backward into the side street. She fell, and he might have left her had she been still. He did not need questions about a dead woman from the gendarmes. But her legs thrust, one arm clawing the air above her.
She looked upper crust. If he helped her, there could be a reward.
He dismounted and ran to the alley, kneeling beside her, and looked her over. “Miss? Where are you hurt?”
The woman turned her head, rasped out a cough, and spit two teeth onto his leg.
Still clutching her throat, she pressed a hand to her belly. When he wrestled it away, he revealed a slit in her gown, exposing something meaty and corded hanging free. Guts.
He turned his head to wretch, momentarily unable to grasp the polished boots filling his view. He opened his mouth, to shout, to question. An arm pinched around his neck like a vice, and before he could do anything, the world went black.
* * *
Ty reached down and helped Olivia up. “You search him; I'll check the saddle bags.”
Nodding, she fed the intestine out through a tear in her gown. “Guts, blood, teeth. Who knew pigs were such useful creatures?”
Leave it to Olivia to be pragmatic about animal entrails. Drawing back, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, dangling it in her face. “Allow me to help you.”
“Ridiculous!” She snatched the pathetically small square from his hand, laughing. “Let’s get to work.”
And work they did. After weeks of placating Fouche, elevating him, playing the long game and running out his leash, Ty believed they would finally be rewarded.
Olivia bent down, sliding a hand into the courier's clothes without hesitation. She rifled through his breeches and shirt, and came up with a thin brown canvas pouch. “Here are the decoys. Otherwise, he's clean.”
He nodded, pleased to have one false lead eliminated. “Hold here a moment, if you would. You’re hardly fit to be seen.”
Smiling, Olivia rolled her eyes, glancing up and down the a
lley for any intruders.
He took the barest second to study her, thrilled beyond reason that they were married and working together again. He tossed her one more grin before slipping from the alley.
The horse paced anxiously where its rider had left it. The animal snorted and shuffled back, rearing its head side to side as Ty approached. Getting a fistful of the reins, he patted, cajoled, and whispered. Circling a step at a time, he employed all the tricks he used when Alvanley got cranky.
When the horse had calmed, he set about searching it. Getting one saddle bag open, he rifled through lead ball and paper scraps until his fingers reached the hard bottom. It pried up easily. Too easily. He removed the papers, tucking them into his pocket. More decoys.
Where would an experienced courier keep sensitive documents? Not on his person; he could too easily be compromised. Saddle bags and pouches could be cut, torn free.
Ty looked at the horse, thinking carefully. Bracing a hand on the animal's flank for reassurance, he leaned close and slid fingers beneath the saddle just ahead of its pommel.
There it was. He pulled free an oil cloth pouch, not much longer or wider than a letter. Lashing the horse's reins to a nearby lamp post, he returned to Olivia, still concealed in the shadows of the alley.
She stood up from the wall, stretching. Next to her, she had kindly seated their still unconscious target. “Success?”
He shook the pouch at her before tucking it away. “Conspiracy letters or love letters. Either way, we will make the most of our ammunition.”
“I approve of your methods.” She tapped the courier with a toe. He inhaled sharply, but didn't rouse. “He'll be all right. Probably. Let's go.”
They dashed to the far end of the alley, where a hired carriage stood waiting for 'monsieur’ to acquire his entertainment of the evening, or so their driver believed.
Dashing from the alley’s mouth, he handed Olivia in before the driver or any straggling pedestrians could get a look at her, then bounced up behind. Flush with success, he stared at her across the cab, but she picked at the tear in her dress, not meeting his gaze.
“What's the matter?”
She shrugged. “This feels too easy. A simple deception, and suddenly we have everything we need?”
Negotiating the carriage's bounce and sway, he moved beside her, settling on the squabs. Taking her hand, he spun her ring between his thumb and forefinger. “We've worked so hard, for so long. Sacrificed. There cannot help but be some anticlimax.”
Olivia’s eyes were far away, a look he’d grown to know so well over their time together. She was remembering. “Maybe it's that I always saw the end coming with his death. I've wished for it a thousand times.”
“There have been more momentous occasions, times when a coup against Fouche would have been more satisfying. I thought as much at Waterloo, when we took the field and found Napoleon already gone.” He squeezed her fingers. “A victory is a victory, Olivia, whether accomplished by a whole a battery or a single musket. We've won.”
She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder, and Ty hoped just then that he was giving as much comfort as he was deriving. “Happiness has never been a lasting thing, Tyler. It will take time for me, learning to trust it.”
He raised her hand, pressing it to his chest, and cradled her close. “In the meanwhile Dimples, trust me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Despite her earlier reservations in the carriage, since delivering the letters and leaving Grayfield's office, she had felt ecstatic. A little disbelieving, but ecstatic nonetheless. After two decades of surveillance, proscription, conspiracy, torture, and execution, Joseph Fouche had improbably outlived his office. But not his legacy; he had stained France with enough blood to last for centuries.
At least his rein was at an end.
Looking down at her arms and chest, smeared with a brick-red crust of pig's blood, memories flooded back. Thalia's blood on her hands, Philippe's blood on her face. She tossed them off, shaking her head. Not tonight. After almost a year, she and Ty had completed their mission. In some fashion or another, they'd won. For now, she would simply be content.
Ty had whisked her from Ethan’s office with a haste that had frustrated her, seeming to miss completely the weight of laying Fouche’s letters into Whitehall’s hands. Letters deposited, congratulations offered, and a nip of good port to salute the occasion; suddenly they were in the hall, and Ty was feigning yawns in between his loud fuss over his lodgings being so far from her own. He had informed Ethan no fewer than six times of his displeasure at having to first ride to her house, and then to his own.
Then understanding had begun to dawn, and she’d retorted that Ty could walk if he was so opposed to her inconveniencing him. He’d stormed to the carriage without a word, Ethan had treated her to the briefest hug, and then she and Ty were bouncing along Paris’s lamplight streets. She had declared her excitement for a bath, and he had baldly stated his desire for what might follow. Ruined by his several following promises for their night, she’d been unable to deny him, even in jest.
Dipping a toe into a long copper tub, she winced and leaned into the steam, then slipped under the water clear to her shoulders. The house she shared with Ty on the Place Dauphine was outrageous, with expensive furnishings, modern plumbing, and an efficient staff. Even the view from their front rooms was ostentatious, with a clear view of the white stone balustrade of the Pont Neuf spanning a lazy-drifting Seine. All of it was worth a whole chest of francs, and then some.
It had been a gift of the Prince Regent. Gratitude for Ty's bravery and service at Waterloo and his other hair-pulling, aiding Paris in the building of a provisional French government.
Ordinarily, anything like charity would make her uncomfortable, but they had both gone above and beyond for England and for France, in ways that could never be acknowledged. She leaned her head back against the tub's rolled edge and sighed, content with her substitute reward.
A rapping at the door broke her reflection. Ty didn't wait to be invited in – he never did – but he didn't step much beyond the threshold either. “Are you decent?”
Snorting, she waved a hand, ushering him in. “I think you know better than that by now.”
“Always happy to be wrong,” he teased, straddling a chair at the tub's foot. He glanced around, shaking his head, then tugged at the blue silk bath curtain. “This place is a damned sight more posh than my house in London.”
“That’s concerning news, since it is now my house, too,” she quipped, frowning for added effect. She hadn't seen his house during their brief visit home to care for Webb, but she sincerely doubted anything of Tyler's was other than first rate.
Grinning, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “They've given us separate bedrooms.”
Now it was her turn for teasing. Eyes wide, she shrugged. “So?”
He waved a finger between them. “Each of us. Our own bed chamber.”
“That is usual for a husband and wife. What did you expect?”
Ty's head was already shaking. “No. No. How do you… Do you just get up and tip toe back and forth whenever you wish to…?” He made an awful face. “Do you knock and leave a calling card?”
She couldn't last when he shuddered. Laughter doubled her over until it turned to gasps, and she fell back against the tub under his scowl. “They can give us ten bedrooms, Tyler. We'll put them to use.”
Suddenly thoughtful, he dipped fingertips into the water, trailing a damp path up her breast to the hollow at her throat. “I love you Olivia.” He brushed her cheek. Olivia closed her eyes, drinking in every moment. Ty leaned down until his breath whispered over her ear. “Even if you did try to kill me.”
Giggling, she smacked at his shirt with wet hands until he was forced to abandon his chair in retreat.
“Let's settle this once and for all. If I had been trying to kill you, you would be dead.” Her eyes narrowed. “That holds true past and present.”
Ty held both ha
nds aloft. “I'm more than happy to prove my usefulness. Again.”
Hanging one leg over the tub, Olivia dangled a foot, lacing arms behind her head, arching her chest. “And I am more than happy to let you.”
* * *
They rushed the darkened hallway.
“Hurry up!” Olivia's whispering was ruined by her own giggling. “We can't go running through the house in a bath sheet.”
“We are not. You are. And shame on your bad manners!”
She swung, aimed a blow for his shoulder, discovering too late she’d misjudged.
Grabbing her wrist, he threw open the door and pulled her inside in one fluid motion. “There. Now we're not in the house. We're in a room.”
“Which room?” she provoked. “Yours, or mine?”
Pulling her by a fistful of the giant ivory bath sheet, he towed her across the room. “Dimples, a few minutes from now, you won't give a fig about the difference.”
Olivia couldn't recall a single encounter, not even their wedding night, when she had been permitted complete and unhurried access to Ty. No sunrise curfew, no sentries or advancing armies. Just the two of them, alone. A bed, a room, and privacy for days
She took a deep breath in and then out, looking him over. Her eyes roamed from his crisp linen shirt to the soft nap of his trousers. His flesh was bare at the arms and throat, bronzed by weeks of command under the summer sun. He was gorgeous, though she couldn’t tell him that. She’d never hear the end of it.
Her fingers itched at the possibilities.
“Olivia,” groaned Ty, “You cannot sit here half the night with a layer of clothing separating me from sanity.”
And then, a wonderful thought occurred.
She began, a button at a time, down his breeches. Pinching, thumbing each one through its grommet; that was easy enough. Taking her time, on the other hand...
Ty's forehead crushed her shoulder, his breath fanning her bare breasts while she worked. His hands braced against the table on either side of her hips, and Olivia moved against them at intervals, pressing them with her own flesh, curious to see how long his resolve could hold.
