by Zoë Archer
Mrs. Parrish might. The Channel was notorious for its rough crossing. Even now, the Pauline Ann rocked its way over the water. Most of the passengers had taken to their cabins—if they could afford cabins. The unlucky souls without private accommodation leaned over the rails, denied solitude in their illness.
Earlier, he’d knocked on Mrs. Parrish’s cabin door, but there’d been no sound within. Either she’d been too ill to speak, or she was outside for fresh air. After a quick turn around the ship with no sign of her, he assumed she was sick in her berth. Meanwhile, his own stomach rumbled, but with hunger, not seasickness.
So he found himself a seat in the dining room. Most of the tables were empty, the waiters staggering between the few hardy passengers with plates of roast beef and mashed potatoes, as the chandeliers swung overhead. Just as he was about to cut into his overcooked, gray meat, he glanced up to see Mrs. Parrish standing in front of his table. Immediately, he got to his feet and offered her a chair. She took it, looking not at all green. In fact, her cheeks held a pretty pink color, and he smelled cool air and mist on her skin.
After she sat, he resumed his own place, and motioned for the waiter. She gave her order in perfect French.
“I looked for you,” Marco said once the server had gone. “You weren’t in your cabin and you weren’t on the promenade deck.”
“There’s a way onto the bow.” She sipped a glass of wine, glancing at the mostly deserted dining room. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.”
“Like you had the bow to yourself,” he noted.
He guessed that she modeled her shrug on the one he often made, the one he’d learned from his mother. It often had the consequence of maddening the other Nemesis agents, and his father. Poor English. They never learned the benefit of a proper body gesture. But the Widow Parrish seemed to be on her way.
“Is there a strategy when we reach Paris?” she asked. The waiter appeared with a plate of actually edible-looking chicken and asparagus. He bowed and smiled at her thanks, but disappeared before Marco could demand the same food.
Seeing as how the dining room was nearly empty, there wasn’t any harm in speaking of the plans. “Two Nemesis agents are going to meet us there. You haven’t met them yet—Simon and Alyce.”
“A brother and sister, like Desmond and Riza?” She cut herself a dainty piece of chicken, her table manners faultless even in the middle of a rough evening crossing.
“Husband and wife.”
She raised her brows. “I didn’t know Nemesis agents could marry.”
“No rules to say they can’t.” He swallowed some depressing wine.
Frowning, she said, “But the way you talked, I thought that meant … it wasn’t possible to wed if one was in Nemesis.”
“I used to think so. The work isn’t conducive to happy marital unions,” he conceded, “given that we’re on assignment half the time or working at our other employment the other half. Not many spouses would tolerate that kind of neglect. Yet somehow, there have been exceptions.”
“So some spouses do endure the work.”
“Most wouldn’t.” Was there a Nemesis operative that had caught her eye? Desmond?
His heart unexpectedly pitched. It had to be because of the ship’s movements. What else would cause that sensation?
Not her, or her possible choice. If she wanted Desmond, it didn’t matter to him. It couldn’t. He was on an assignment he didn’t want, and all he had to do was complete it. Whether or not he felt a growing attraction to a spirited, redheaded widow was irrelevant.
Do the job and move on. That had ever been his axiom, whether working for the British government or Nemesis. Always forward.
“Simon and Alyce met on an assignment,” he noted. “He was working to oust the corrupt management of a copper mine, and she worked at the mine itself. It wasn’t a likely match. His family title dates to the Tudor period, and she broke rocks for a living. Somehow, amore found them.”
He shook his head. Even having attended their wedding a month earlier, Marco still couldn’t quite believe that Simon had become a married man, or found a woman brave—or foolish—enough to take him as her husband.
“He’s got connections to circles we’ll need,” Marco continued. “And as his wife, Alyce can learn things, too.”
“And then?” Mrs. Parrish pressed.
“Then … we figure out the rest of our plan. An assignment is fluid, like the ocean. It hits unexpected squalls, or doldrums, and we adapt. But there is something I know for certain we’ve got to do once we arrive in France.”
“That being?”
Oh, she wasn’t going to like this. “We get rid of your widow’s weeds.”
FIVE
Marco expected his announcement would be greeted with resistance at best. At worst, she’d throw her glass of wine in his face and storm off in a rage.
Neither happened.
Instead, Mrs. Parrish rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers, contemplating it, while a small frown creased between her brows.
“Why?” she asked simply. She didn’t look at him, reminding him of one of those Renaissance paintings of shy, vicious nymphs in attendance on Diana—beautiful, serene, and capable of killing an unwary man.
“The French might not be quite as obsessed with mourning as the English,” he explained, “but they know a widow’s dark clothing when they see it.”
“Surely France is filled with widows,” she murmured. “Unless French men have somehow created a patent medicine that grants them eternal life.”
“Bordeaux is the closest they’ve come to that.”
“It doesn’t make them immortal.”
“Fortunately, no. Men die there just as they do everywhere else.” He, himself, had escaped death more times than his considerable memory could recall. That especially persistent, talented German assassin and their deadly encounter on the rooftops of Constantinople came to mind, though. But only because Marco had a scar just below his kidney to remind him of how near he’d come to the afterlife.
Thank God he had no woman waiting at home for him, worried that he might not return from an assignment. How could he put anyone through that kind of hell?
“Widows in France are common enough,” he continued. “Noticeable, though. Easier to remember a woman dressed in weeds than one out of mourning.”
“And whatever it is we’re going to do in France, we aren’t supposed to be memorable,” she deduced.
“The best way to collect information is through subtlety.”
She did look at him then, her gray-green eyes narrowed. Shadows from the swinging overhead lights drifted back and forth across her face, adding to the illusion that she was some cunning forest creature lying in wait among the trees.
“A spy,” she said abruptly.
He didn’t move. Not a blink or twitch.
“I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what it is you do for employment when you aren’t working for Nemesis,” she said. “The way you took on different personae made me think at first you were an actor. Then a thief, with the skill you had picking locks. But now I see it. You’re a spy.” She shook her head. “Those words didn’t really leave my mouth, did they?”
“They did.” Mrs. Parrish might be somewhat sheltered, but she wasn’t stupid. “I can also deny it, but we’re partners in this mission. It won’t succeed unless we trust each other.”
Her expression barely changed, but he could read her, and the slight parting of her lips, the dilation of her pupils. His lack of denial shocked her, yet she was learning the game, learning how to keep herself opaque. Adaptable, this widow. He liked that.
Softly, she said, “You realize, of course, the chance you’ve taken by admitting your … activities.” Setting her glass down, she spread her hands. “What’s to prevent me from going to some foreign agency—the Russians, for example—and telling them all about you in exchange for a substantial amount of money? More money than Hugh’s missing fortune.”
/> “Nothing’s stopping you.” He smiled. “Except for me.”
His smile seemed to alarm her. She collected herself. “I could slip away, out of your clutches.”
“Mrs. Parrish,” he said, “I’m thirty-eight years old. Do you honestly think that I would’ve made it to this advanced age if I wasn’t very good at my job? One mostly ingenuous widow presents little challenge, no matter how clever that widow might happen to be.”
Color drained from her cheeks. “That sounds suspiciously like a threat.”
“No more a threat than you suggesting you’d sell me out to the Russians.” He took a bite of his tired roast beef and attempted to chew it.
“Which I’d never do.”
He swallowed, though it took effort, and chased it with the last swallows of his wine. “There you go. We’ve reached detente simply on the basis of mutual distrust.”
“I thought this was about trusting each other.”
“Two sides of the same coin.” He waved the waiter over to refill his wine glass. Once the server had come and gone, staggering, Marco continued. “Besides, I’m already known to the major intelligence bureaus across the Continent and Asia, so exposure isn’t much of a threat.”
“Yet you hold my life in your hands.”
“The man driving a wagon could easily run down people in the street. A ship’s captain could run the vessel into the shoals and drown the passengers. But most don’t. Every day is a delicate balance between our darker impulses and the need to keep the world safe and sane.”
A stunned little laugh burst from her. “Now I know for certain you’re a spy. Words come so glibly to you.”
“I’m half Italian,” he answered. “Either we talk with our hands or with our mouths. But either way, we talk. However”—he lowered his voice—“it would serve us both better if you didn’t make a habit of calling me that word, especially in public.”
Instead of speaking it aloud, she mouthed it silently. Spy. It made her lips form intriguing shapes. Shapes that gave him unwonted ideas.
“There,” she said. “That’s the last I’ll say it in public. It’s only … as you said, I’m not exactly conversant in the world outside what I already know. The fact that you are … what you are … it must be very exciting.”
His mouth twisted. He’d thought so at first. Then learned the truth of it. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s ugly, gritty, and dangerous.” He held her gaze as he spoke. She flinched slightly.
He usually worked under cover of darkness, but that didn’t make blood any less sticky, or flow less freely. And he’d spent more than one night awake, thinking of the soldiers he’d sent to their deaths just because he’d passed a piece of paper into someone’s hands.
He saved more lives than ended them, even if he could never receive thanks or commendation for his work. Simon had medals and a soldier’s bragging rights—though he never exercised them. Marco could only try to sleep easier, contemplating the Russian missionaries he’d saved from execution—a ruse the Russian government had itself attempted to perpetrate in order to blame England and thus spark more war.
“Now that you’ve successfully guessed my other occupation,” he continued, “you can understand why we’ll need you out of those weeds and into something less memorable.”
She rubbed between her brows, her expression more thoughtful than pained. “Half mourning?”
“Just as noticeable. The intent is to keep us both as forgettable as possible.”
“I doubt anyone can forget you,” she said, then looked abashed at her own admission.
Ah, so he was mistaken. The widow had something of an interest in him, not Desmond. Something that went beyond the mission. That he felt a tug of interest in her, too, didn’t help matters. Her looks, yes, but her intelligence, as well, her willingness to push past her uncertainty and fear. These things pulled on him, intrigued him. He should only be interested in completing the job, and then going on to the next. There wasn’t time or room in his life for dalliances with women like her. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be content with a few weeks, which was as much as he could give any lover before moving on to an assignment. Temporary—that’s what he was, in everything but his chosen professions.
“Invisibility is a skill that takes years to master, but it can be done.” Concentrating, he made himself feel small, shabby. Someone hardly worth anyone’s attention. He drew into himself, as if disappearing into his own skin.
Then he called for the waiter.
The server was only twenty feet away, but it was as if Marco hadn’t said a word. The waiter glanced around the dining room, a pitcher of sloshing water in his hands, looking for someone who might need his services.
“Waiter,” Marco called again, and with some volume. “Garçon.”
Nothing. The server didn’t move.
As if releasing a breath, Marco inhabited himself again. He grew bigger on the inside, worthwhile.
“Waiter,” he said again.
The server immediately came to his side.
“I’m done battling my dinner,” Marco said. “Take it away.”
“Of course, sir.” Bowing, the waiter removed Marco’s plate, and scurried out of the dining room.
Turning back to Mrs. Parrish, he was gratified to see the astonishment on her face.
“I knew you could playact,” she breathed, “but that was … some kind of sorcery.”
“No magic, only the will to make myself unseen.” Then he surprised himself by adding, “I can teach you how.”
A corner of her mouth turned up. “I’ve had enough of being invisible, thank you.”
That was something he often considered, especially after his years working with Nemesis. He could choose when to make himself disappear, when he wasn’t important or worth attention. Not many had that option.
“You’ll have to abandon your weeds,” he said. “Until the mission is over. Then you can wear bombazine for the rest of your life, if that’s your desire.” Though he thought it a damn waste. All that black crape did her creamy complexion no favors. “Will you do it?”
She didn’t speak, her gaze fixed on the dark windows and the occasional spray of seawater hitting the glass. For one of the first times, he couldn’t quite read her. But he wouldn’t bully her into making a decision. Either she came to this choice on her own, or not at all. A reluctant or resentful partner made for a rocky job.
And he wanted to know what decision she’d make, with no one but her own mind telling her what to do.
At last, she exhaled.
“All right,” she said, more to herself than him. “This might not be an adventure story with a guaranteed happy ending, but … I’ll try to do my part to get us one.”
He felt it then. A small filament, a thread of danger that he wasn’t as indifferent to Mrs. Parrish as he’d like to be. One of the rare moments in his adult life that he didn’t feel himself in perfect control.
* * *
The last time Bronwyn had visited a modiste, she was arranging her mourning wardrobe. In truth, the seamstress had visited Bronwyn at her home, since she wasn’t permitted to leave the house. Some of her clothing had been dyed—the more budget-conscious option—but other gowns had been specially made to accommodate her new status as a widow.
Mired as she’d been in sadness, leafing through fashion prints of women in dull, somber clothing hadn’t lifted her spirits. If anything, sorrow had weighed even more heavily on her chest, crushing her, the bolts of crape and bombazine forming dark shrouds around her.
This is my life, she’d thought. For the next two years, this is who I’m to be. A shade. A living reminder that everything dies.
Now she stood in front of the mirror at a Calais modiste’s shop, trying not to feel too much pleasure in her new clothing.
“Are you sure Madame would not prefer the emerald jacquard?” the large but elegantly dressed woman asked in French. “The color, it would set off Madame’s skin and hair.”
“This will
do well enough,” Bronwyn answered in French as well. She smoothed her hand down the skirt of the pale slate gown. Her other choices had been similarly muted: a fawn merino day dress, a wool sateen walking dress the hue of a bay leaf, and, because Marco had insisted on a gown for evening, a pearl-gray lutestring silk with minimal embellishment. The modiste had all these dresses premade, requiring a minimal amount of alteration to make them fit.
The dresses weren’t the lively, bright hues that the seamstress—and Bronwyn’s own color-loving heart—wanted for her. But Bronwyn wouldn’t be swayed.
She stepped from the fitting room. Though the hour was early, Marco was all alertness as he paced the shop. After docking last night, they’d taken rooms at one of Calais’s many hotels. A door had adjoined their room, and though she knew it was a useless gesture, she’d locked her side. Again, given the long and strenuous day, she should have fallen instantly asleep. Instead, she’d lain awake, listening to Marco moving quietly in his room. Hugh’s bedroom had been separated from hers by a bathroom and closet, so she’d never grown familiar with the sounds of a man readying for bed.
Yet either the walls of the hotel had been exceptionally thin, or she’d been too attuned to Marco. He had a soft, careful tread, yet she’d felt his every step. The tap running as he washed before bed. This morning, too, she’d heard the splash in the basin as he’d shaved, and heat and curiosity had pulsed through her sleep-fogged body, as though it—and her imagination—were out of her control.
They’d breakfasted in near silence. When they’d finished and they’d checked out of the hotel, he’d taken her immediately to this small shop a cab ride away. Then installed himself in the front room while she’d sequestered herself with the seamstress. Typical of her countrymen, the Frenchwoman hadn’t looked askance at Bronwyn being accompanied by Marco, without the chaperoning presence of a maid, nor the fact that Bronwyn wasn’t moving from mourning to second or even half mourning. No, it didn’t seem to matter to the modiste what Bronwyn’s intentions were, only that the money for the gowns would be paid.
