by Win Hollows
This was more fun than he’d realized it would be, even when he wasn’t kissing her senseless. Everything she did was amusing, even if it was simply pointing to a bowl of mushy greens and laughing as he made a face at her. He could watch her do almost anything, and it suddenly became fascinating. Max stopped himself reaching for her several times, sensing she wasn’t ready for any other sensual pursuits just yet.
They spoke without any words, as words were like barbed traps in the strange world which they were beginning to create. Thoughts were communicated with smiles, lingering looks, teasing bites of food, and playful laughter. It was a language that they both knew would die at the end of the night, and yet, for the moment, they reveled in their fluency of it. Max nipped at her fingers, and Elorie scolded him with a smear of curry on the tip of his nose. She tricked him into eating a mouthful of the stewed green leaves by covering his eyes, laughing until tears escaped as he spluttered and spit it out with a grimace. Then he retaliated by poking her in the belly button with the blunt end of a stick laden with chicken satay. Elorie threw a tiny quail egg at his face, which he caught deftly and then popped in his mouth, grinning.
If anyone was watching, Max knew, they would have looked like children making mud pies, as happy as clams giggling at the mess they were making.
He had meant to seduce her tonight, to finally bed the Viper and fulfill every lascivious whim he’d ever had regarding her. It was turning into something else altogether, though he couldn’t have said what it was for the life of him. He would have never guessed that his greatest joy in the company of a woman would be to open her eyes in shock as he juggled a handful of quail eggs while sitting on silk pillows, or make her laugh in surprise at the taste of the mysterious black jelly that neither had been brave enough to try up to that point. Yet here he was, grinning like a fool at antics which he hadn’t done since in shortpants.
When the lamps began to burn low, Max knew it was time. He had promised Camille he would take her to the Royal Menagerie in the morning, and he doubted he would be in good sorts if he returned home only to have to rise again with the sun shortly after.
It seemed wrong to leave this place that was somehow both a dream and more truthful than anything else in his life. Elorie must have sensed his withdrawal, however, for she broke their self-imposed silence and said, “You’re leaving now.”
He nodded. “I wish I could stay.”
Her eyes became shutters, and she shrugged. “Se La Vie.” She smiled, and he could tell that smile held back more than a trace of things she wouldn’t admit to him. “The French have always been able to put things in perspective that way. I do not expect you to devote your every moment to me, Max.” She came to her feet fluidly.
Frustration rose in a furious tide, and he stood as well. “What do you want, then? Do you want anything? Do you want me?” he demanded, trying to goad a reaction from her as he stepped closer, touching the tips of her breasts with his chest. “One moment, you want nothing more than my lips on yours and my eyes devouring you, and then next, you’re as distant as Calypso taunting men with your golden shores.” He grasped the back of her neck, forcing her to face him. “Which is it? What do you want from me? Because whatever it is, you have it. You have all of it. All you need to do is say the word.”
He couldn’t read what was in her eyes, but she stayed silent, her lips firmly closed while her small nostrils flared. Realizing she wasn’t going to give him an answer, he let her go and stepped back with a growl. She had him tied up in knots over her, and she didn’t even care.
“You know as well as I do that anything between us can only end one way, Max,” she pleaded, reaching for his hand.
He stepped away, his hand sliding through her fingers. “That’s what I thought too, but you’ve covered your tracks well, haven’t you? It would be easy to become someone else if everyone thinks you’re dead.”
Elorie took a step backward, her mouth dropping open. “What?”
“I know about your deception to the Hand of Charlemagne, Elorie. If they think you’re dead, then why not do whatever you please now? Whatever scheme you’re involved in, just let it go. I can take care of you.”
Almost tripping over the table, she backed away from him, her hands balled into fists that he was sure she wished were armed with her darts at this point. “There are things you do not understand. No one can help me now. You cannot wave your magic earl’s wand and make everything right.”
He started toward her but stopped and held up his hands to prevent her from retreating further. “I don’t claim to have a magic solution, but we can’t—I can’t—let you go without knowing if whatever this is is real. I do understand that much.”
“Let me go, Max,” she whispered, and he knew she spoke of both the immediate situation and the one he had built in his mind.
He stared at her, green eyes glowing back at him from the gloom in which she had shrouded herself. After a moment, he stepped aside, and she ran past him through the veils, her form fading with every layer she put between them.
Then she was gone again, but without a note in her pocket to guide her to him once more. The Viper had vanished, yet he still spoke to the colorful, fluttering trail left in her wake. “I’ll find you, Ellie. Every time.”
Chapter Nine
“Hello, pet.” Lord Crescenfort pecked the top of Elorie’s braided crown as he went to the sideboard for breakfast. “What are your plans for the day?”
Her Aunt Temperance, seated across from her at the table, answered his question, cheerfully unaware it was meant for another. “I’m going to take a nap after this. And then, if I’m feeling spry, I’ll have the maids shine the silverware again with the earwax I’ve been saving up in my special jar. Can’t remember where I heard it, but they were certainly right. The silver has never shined so.”
Elorie paused with her forkful of food halfway to her mouth and set it down again carefully. She looked up to where a cook-maid stood attending the sidetable. Elorie met her eyes, and the maid shook her head discreetly. Taking a bracing sigh, Elorie lifted her fork to her lips again, still rather wary of the thing now. She watched as her father served himself kippers and eggs on toast with fried mushrooms and potatoes on the side, his finger poking each dish to feel the texture before choosing.
It was one of life’s great ironies, Elorie was sure, that her father had slowly begun to lose his eyesight over the past decade. He could still see most shapes and colors and could make his way around his own home without trouble, but the eighth Earl of Crescenfort had not gazed on his lovely, vain wife or his daughters for years with anything other than vague confusion.
She took a bite of her own poached egg topped with béarnaise cream and shallots before answering. Elorie thought her father’s eyesight fitting, really, as he had married Cosette Lavoie Villiard as a young man full of the certainty that the admiration of beauty was equivalent to love, and that was all they’d ever need for a marriage. Observing her parents over the years, Elorie might have agreed with him in some ways. Lord Crescenfort had never lost his naïve fascination with his wife’s beauty and had let her quickly consume him and everything around her in a whirlwind of parties, spending, and amusements centered around her perpetual need for attention. Though she had led them to the edge of financial ruin, the Earl had been quite happy through all of it, never doubting his wife’s attention was returned as long as he kept his worshipful devotion to her alive.
For most of her childhood, Elorie had been caught up in it as well, viewing her mother as a paragon of splendor whose vivacity deserved all the privileges and gifts laid at her feet. The chance to please her and earn a glimmer of the light she gave off had been addicting, never more so than when Elorie began to show promise of the kind of looks her mother had always used to her advantage. Elorie knew she was to be quite the feather in Cosette’s cap, and had taken pride in her mother’s glee at her future prospects.
As for Lord Crescenfort, he was happy as long as Cosette was
, and so Elorie had always basked in his affection as if she were a particularly good gift he’d given his wife that continued to make his life easier. Although Elorie knew she would have been of less significance had Cosette deemed it so, she and her father had always had a positive relationship until the day she’d left home.
Elorie swallowed the tangy mouthful of eggs as her father came over to the table and sat down at the head to her left. “I was thinking of taking a walk and then spending time with Celise. I want to take her shopping.”
“That sounds lovely,” he said in agreement, cutting off a slice of his kippered toast with perfect precision. He looked up at her and smiled before putting the bite in his mouth. Her father was always good at meeting people’s eyes, even though he had once admitted he could only see the blob of color outlined within the larger blob of a person’s face.
Elorie looked over to Aunt Temperance to include her in the conversation, but she was snoozing soundly, shiny spoon full of oatmeal still clutched in her hand. “Yes, it’s a very nice day. This spring has been turning out warmer than I expected, so I intend to take advantage of it.” She speared a crispy, rosemary-salted potato with her fork and brought it to her mouth.
“I imagine there will be plenty of sunshine and walks to be had when you go down to Hampshire,” he replied, his affable tone jarring Elorie.
She murmured in reply, “I suppose so.”
Hampshire.
She had better get used to the idea, and her father was right. The area was famed for its forests, rivers, and coastline, as well as its sunnier weather. There were worse things to happen to a person than to have to rusticate in such a place for the rest of her life, Elorie knew.
Still, the thought gave her shivers along her spine.
“I should think Celise will come visit you there anyway,” her father put in. “It’s not as if you won’t ever see her again.”
Elorie clenched her jaw. She highly doubted her mother would take time away from the amusements of London to bring Celise to the backwater of Hampshire simply for Elorie’s sake, but she held her tongue. Nothing negative of her mother ever penetrated her father’s skull.
When Cosette herself floated into the room a moment later with exuberant greetings, causing Aunt Tempi to awake with a shout and splatter oatmeal all along the back wall, Elorie finished her meal quickly and excused herself. She had no desire to orbit her mother if Lord Crescenfort and her aunt were there to keep her entertained. Cosette pursed her lips at her daughter’s sudden departure, but said nothing as Elorie left the room.
She wanted to be alone. It was early yet, and most of high society wouldn’t be out and about for another few hours. St. James Park was much less frequented at this hour than Hyde Park, so she didn’t need Aunt Temperance as a chaperone. What she did need was some peace and quiet.
Elorie let her hand touch the decorative wooden posts lining the side of the path leading into the heart of St. James Park as she walked by each one. She was headed toward the swan pond, from what she remembered of the park, and even though she had nothing with which to feed them, she wanted to just sit and watch their simple grace as they floated over the surface of the water.
As she neared a fork in the path and chose the way toward the pond, she let her hand brush the wooden signpost in the middle of the fork. Her fingers slid over the smoothed top and knocked something small and flat from it. She paused and looked to where the object had fallen. Bending down to pick it up, Elorie was careful not to let her ankles show as she lifted her skirts. It was a coin, its unusually textured gold surface depicting the head of a Greek Centurion.
Elorie’s hand began to shake as she turned it over, knowing what she would find there. The other side bore an owl with symbols surrounding it, none of which she knew the meaning of. The Gold Stater of Athens lay on her fingers, its metal warmed by the sun overhead. Immediately, her heart began to pound, and she whipped her head around quickly to check her surroundings.
The coin itself was extremely rare, but it was what it meant that terrified her. It was the coin she and Ruben used to signal each other if they needed swift removal from a situation. It was the coin she had given to him via Porthos that day in the Scottish catacombs. He had not given it back.
Ruben was here.
He knew she was alive, and he had to have been watching her just now. Blood pumping in her ears at the knowledge, she almost didn’t hear Tamara’s voice, so intent was she on hearing other noises.
“My Lady?” Tamara approached.
Elorie swallowed her fear and the clamor of thoughts that had accompanied her realization. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I think— I think we should go,” she announced, giving her maid a quick smile at her puzzled look.
Tamara simply shrugged. “As you like.”
As she walked briskly back the way they’d come, Elorie kept a nervous watch on the trees around them, looking for signs of her former partner. When they reached the carriage without incident, Elorie ordered the driver to take a circuitous route back to Crescenfort House, and she didn’t fully breathe until she and Tamara were back inside the townhome.
How had he known? How had he found her?
Had the Hand sent him to dispose of her for daring to leave their ranks?
Whatever game he was playing, Elorie knew for certain Ruben wasn’t simply going to let her be after this. He had left the coin to toy with her, to make her understand that her life was in his hands now.
The problems Elorie thought she had now paled in comparison to the knowledge that Ruben had come to claim her. It was only a matter of time, and it wouldn’t matter if she went to Hampshire. It wouldn’t be hard for him to find her again, no matter where she went after this, especially if he knew she was really Elorie Deirdre Lavoie Crescenfort, daughter of an English Earl.
Nowhere was safe, and she couldn’t simply run away as she had done four years ago. Her family—Celise, especially—was depending on her. She could only hope Ruben wouldn’t make a move toward her before she was away from them and could handle him on her own terms.
And to think she had thought life would be dull once she was no longer a spy.
****
Nothing.
That was what his inquiries had turned up on the Damarek. Absolutely nothing.
Max refolded the letter from his contact in Chesham and rubbed a hand over his face as his carriage ate up the ground beneath the floorboards. James MacDowell, the last known person to be in possession of the Damarek, was dead. The rest of his family had moved on, but neither the county nor church’s records had divulged any clue as to where they had gone.
Which was why he was now on his way to Chesham with Losif, to question the townsfolk about where James’s family might have gone after leaving the area or if he had left the Damarek to anyone there. He had been in the coach for hours, and although the banana-colored rig was outfitted for comfort, the further he got from London, the worse the ruts in the road rattled his teeth. He wasn’t sure his rump would ever recover, if he was honest with himself. Losif didn’t seem to mind the jarring pace at all, sitting across from him, reading a book titled Mountainous Sheep Herding for the Discerning Gentleman Farmer of the North, one of several he’d brought back from Ireland. The large book rested on his ample stomach, which looked to provide the perfect, built-in reading desk for the monk.
What a dandy he was becoming already. That was what London life did to you—made you soft and weak and unable to handle anything but lifting a cigar or snifter to one’s mouth. While he was being honest, he had been eager to leave home again, if only for a short trip. He had begun to feel the itch, the nagging pull of more exciting things than attending a London musicale and whiling away his days with trips through Hyde Park. Although he had loved spending time with Camille and his mother these past few weeks, they didn’t quite understand the restlessness that ran through his veins and simmered just under the surface at any given time.
The only problem now was the closer he go
t to Chesham, the farther he was from Elorie Lavoie. Blast, but the woman was frustrating. Every time he thought of her, he became both elated and irritated.
“Is it too early for a snack?” Losif inquired from his seat on the opposite bench.
Max smiled and shook his head, reaching under his seat for the hamper Cook had speedily prepared this morning. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Losif leaned forward to peek in the basket as Max rifled through it. “There’s something about eating while traveling with friends that turns a snack into a friendship, wouldn’t you say?”
Max pulled out a jar of pickled yellow peppers and a log of imported salami rolled together with white cheese. “No.”
Max’s attitude didn’t deter Losif’s appetite, who made short work of several slices of the meat and cheese, along with some of the peppers. Max ate as well, having had his breakfast cut short with the arrival of the letter from his contact that morning.
By the time they arrived in Chesham, the sun was setting. For Max’s purpose, it was perfect. The best way to gain information, he had found over many missions in many countries, was to buy a man a drink at the end of the day.
Finally, after sitting alone up at the old wooden bar of the local tavern, an older man with iron-gray hair grown over his ears sat down next to him, dressed in a rough work shirt and faded trousers. The man sighed and put his elbows on the wood bar in front of him, waving the bar maid over.
“An ale for me, lass,” he said in a weary voice.
“O’Course, Darmon.” She turned to Max, leaning forward over the bar. “And wot about ye, sir? I’m sure I’ve got somethin’ ta please yer tastes.” She twirled her brown hair around her index finger as she smiled with yellowed teeth.
