Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (13 page)

“Halt, you two there!” The
gendarme's voice was sharp, echoing off of the walls around them. Talleyrand
released her skirts, jerking upright. Body half turned from the two constables,
he worked at fastening his pants.

“That's the pair!” Ty's voice rang
out from the street, beyond the alley. Bless him, his timing was perfect.

The first gendarme was an arms’
length away now, dangling a pair of shackles at her. She stepped back and
twined herself around Talleyrand's stiff arm. The captain raised his shackles
higher. “Don't fight, and don't run.”

“Do you have any idea!” sputtered
Talleyrand, trying to shake her off. “Do you know who I am?”

Both the constables looked stricken
when enough light hit Talleyrand's face to identify their superior. She choked
back a laugh.

“Monsieur,” warned the captain,
“you must take care in this area. Women such as this lie in wait for good men.”

Half points. The captain was right
about her, but so very wrong about Talleyrand.
            Ty, behind them, had been blocked from view until now. “That
woman
is my wife, sir!” His words stabbed the constables with accusation.

There was satisfaction in watching
the unflappable Talleyrand flail his arms, eyes wide in confusion. “Your wife?
No, no. I watched the two of you quarrel over her belly.”

“How she got that way and my
disgust
at it,” Ty bit out, “is not anyone's concern. We will settle the
issue when we get home.” He glanced from one constable to the other, properly
contrite. “If I may, good sirs.”

The gendarmes stared at Talleyrand,
whose eyes darted between her and Ty, mouth hanging open.

Olivia held her breath. Would they
would release her, or cart her to jail as the law dictated? An affair was not
the same as prostitution, ironically, but she had no idea how the men before
her would interpret what they had just witnessed.

With no orders from Talleyrand
forthcoming, the captain finally held out a hand, raking fingers at Ty who
sighed, filling it with a stack of jingling francs. Satisfied with his bribe,
the captain stepped aside, opening the way for her to pass. “She is your matter
to handle, and I wish you luck with it, monsieur. Good afternoon.”

Ty leaned past the gendarmes,
squeezing her wrist, dragging her between them and against his side. “And
handle the matter I shall,” he growled.

They were nearly free; she held her
breath.

The constable replaced his
shackles, stepping back next to his companion. “It seems all of our business is
concluded here.” They nodded to Talleyrand, making little bows of respect while
his eyes stabbed daggers at her. He was furious but wouldn't dare risk humiliating
himself further in the gendarmes' presence.

Ty wasted no time, moving back down
the alley before anyone could change their mind.

She made a halfhearted effort to
pull her arm free of his grasp as they went. “Let go of me, you great ass!”

“Shut up.”

With one fist she pounded at the
small of his back. “Raise a hand to me and I'll cut your throat while you
sleep!”

Ty drug her from the alley and out
into the lane, while she spit and hurled abuse for the benefit of two chuckling
gendarmes and a glaring Talleyrand. They were attracting a crowd, as planned,
creating a human barrier against Talleyrand's inevitable pursuit.

Ty hauled her as far as the rear
door of a public house two streets down, doing a too-admirable job of taking
wide strides and forcing her to skip along behind.

“I know you're tall,” she grumbled
for his ears alone. “You don't have to show off.”

A chuckle was his only reply.
Clearly, he
did
have to show off.

Once inside the servants’ entrance,
he let her pass. Olivia gained the stairs as fast as she could manage, Ty at
her heels. They reached the fourth-floor landing out of breath. Panting, Ty
wiped the fog from a dirty window with his sleeve and peered out. Leaning over
his shoulder, she was just in time to spy Talleyrand hobble up the worn stone
steps and hammer at the door. The sound reverberated up the stairwell,
vibrating the pane against her forehead. Talleyrand caught on quickly, she'd
grant him that.

Laughing, Ty grabbed her hand,
pulling her to the end of the dim hall. “Didn't take as long as I expected!” He
toed a stool beneath a narrow attic door overhead.

“Was that the tallest thing you
could find?” She cast a sideways eye over the rickety bit of furniture.

Tugging down on the rope, he
frowned. “This is not the sort of public house where guests concern themselves
with sitting, Dimples. Not on anything besides each other.” He shuddered,
planting a foot on the stool. “I'm fairly certain that just my reconnaissance
here yesterday nearly gave me bedbugs.”

She snorted, laughing as much at his
bawdy joke as his revulsion at their surroundings.

The hammering downstairs came to a
stop. She knew better than to believe Talleyrand would simply go away, not
after what they'd taken. Her belief was confirmed moments later when shouts
echoed up from the back hall. He was coming, with the gendarmes in tow.

She exchanged a wide-eyed glance
with Ty, who hopped onto the stool and held out both arms for balance. “Time to
go!”

He grabbed the mouth of the attic
door, bending knees and elbows, hauling himself up with an easy grace which she
paused to admire. He disappeared into the hole above; a second passed, and his
arms appeared, waving her up.

Below, doors were thrown open,
shuddering into a wall, the protests of occupants mingling with those of the
police, an angry buzz swarming closer.

Grasping his long fingers, she
gained the stool. She made a deep-kneed bounce and he pulled her in behind. The
tension was fluid, the landing less so. She hit the beams with enough inertia
to knock the wind from her chest. “I'm not a sack of potatoes, Tyler!” she
coughed. He couldn't just throw her around.

“Sorry!” he hissed back from the
shadows. “Perhaps you should decline the cake from time to time.”

She chuckled. “I'm fat and you're a
drunkard. We deserve each other. Now help me up.”

Laughing, he grasped her elbow and
hauled her in.

“Which side?” she whispered,
fumbling in the dark as he drew up the door.

“Left,” he called back, choking off
the last of the light.

Her palms raked along the grit and
dust until they identified the candle's waxy shaft. “Matches?”

There was a metallic rattle,
something shaking inside a tin. A grating sound, and then a small flame blazed
to life in Ty's fingers. He touched a second match to the first, swearing as it
burned down. “Light it quick, before we burn the damned building to the ground”

Not a pleasant memory; she ignored
his caution and kept silent. Grabbing the candlestick's wooden shaft, she held
it aloft so he could see the wick. It caught, offering a bit more illumination
than the matches, but not by much. She got to her feet and raked a curtain of
cobwebs away from Ty's shoulder, glancing at dry timbers around them. “We may
burn it down either way.” She shuddered, recalling Elena Bruenig’s smoldering
shoes and lolling tongue.

“Mm.” He was already bent over, hat
on the floor, slipping out of his jacket. She followed suit, tossing aside her
bonnet and working at her wig. It was hot and it itched unmercifully after half
a day's wear. She presented him with her back. “Buttons?”

Her bodice fell forward almost
before the word was out. “Good lord!” she gasped, feigning disapproval. “I hope
you're less efficient as a lover than you are as a partner.”

“Depend upon it.” She caught the
smile in his voice from over her shoulder.

Muffled shouts and commotion grew
louder, moving closer out in the stairwell. Olivia shimmied out of the gown,
turning and tossing it with the rest of their discarded costumes. Then she
pulled the letters from deep in her stays, holding them out to Ty. “Here, you'd
better take these before the ink runs.”

He looked her over. “You didn't
have to give them to me. I would have gotten them myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “Incorrigible,
as usual. Are you ready?”

“Nearly.”

Nodding, she finished the last few
buttons along her bodice, smoothing out the worn green linen skirts of her new
costume.

Ty wrestled with a wide leather
traveling case, struggling to fit their belongings back into it. Frustrated, he
pulled out the red wig, tossing it into one of the attic's dark corners and
wedging his top hat in its place. He must have felt her eyeing him, and glanced
up. “What? It is a very expensive hat!”

She pointed. “And a very expensive
wig!” It wasn't, but she would enjoy seeing him sweat a little over it.

Pouting, he entrenched. “Well, I
wear mine every day, so it takes precedence.”

“And I shall never wear mine
again,” she concluded theatrically, delighting in how the attic's shadows
deepened his scowl. “Are you ready or not?”

“Yes!” he whispered sharply. “Shall
I send 'round an invitation, or can we go?”

She swept a hand across the attic,
inviting him to lead the way.

Sighing, Ty grabbed the bag’s thick
handles, hefting it up.

Voices ebbed and flowed from the
rooms below, Talleyrand barking muffled instructions over masculine protests
and a woman's outraged shrieking. His hounds were loping ever closer.

She moved behind Ty, one slow,
light-footed step at a time over uneven beams. Once or twice she buried her
face in her shoulder against the musty smell, stifling a sneeze.

When they reached the far well, Ty
set down the bag and passed her the candle. With little effort and surprisingly
little noise, he pushed aside the shell of an old armoire, revealing a doorway
cut into the stone which led to a building next door. Memory had served her
well. There was a time when Paris's upper crust had survived by just such
passages. Marking down the passages was forbidden, a death sentence for the
sympathetic landlords and proprietors who maintained them. Like so many things
in a world where someone was always watching, listening, the only safe means
was memorization. She'd found a few people who still remembered the doorways
and their locations, and that had served her well on more than one mission.

She turned sideways, sliding
through a small space between the cabinet and the wall, darting across a
foot-wide gap between the two structures.

Ty handed off the bag and the
candle then, leaping beside her with cat-like ease. He covered the entrance
once more, and she relaxed. There was little chance of Talleyrand finding them
now.

The attic they'd entered was
lighted by three narrow dormer windows. They struggled to take in afternoon sun
through a hundred years of dust coating their panes. It was enough light to
work by, and she blew out the candle. There was little to see between the
rafters: a handful of crates housing documents for the offices below, a
strategically placed bucket for a leaky roof, and a tall, spindle-backed chair
of a style abandoned by the passage of time outside. She nestled the candle
stick between two of the crates, taking the bag from Ty so that he could manage
the attic door. As they crept along, he looked back to her over his shoulder.

“Top floor is the clerks' lodgings.
They're never dismissed before three. Formal offices on the ground floor and
first floor. Second floor is the clerks' offices. Third floor belongs to a
Doctor 'Stoutreed' or 'Longrod' or some such nonsense.”
            She pressed a fist against her lips, cheeks straining.

Ty shook his head and whispered,
“Quackery.”

They reached the door, and he
paused. “Anyhow, he only sees patients, if you can believe it, at
night
.”

She widened her eyes for his
benefit. “Curious.”

“Isn't it?” His brows wiggled, and
she fought back another bout of laughter. “The short version is, I don't expect
any interference, but we cannot be certain.”

He raised the door, and she was
pleased to catch sight of a ladder below them. Coming up on the stool had been
a bit tenuous. She could do without getting down that way.

Ty clambered down first, and she
lowered the bag after. Her new, simpler dress was meant to help her blend into
a lower class crowd once they reached the street, but the decrease in
petticoats and flounces also assured she would probably not break her neck on
the ladder.

She nearly had to eat her assurance,
when her hem caught beneath her shoe on the second rung, fumbling her grip. She
managed silent panic until Ty's hand, previously on her calf, drove beneath her
skirt. His hand pushed against her backside in an effort to keep her from
falling.

“What in the devil is that?” he
hissed.

Tripping gingerly down the last two
rungs, she met his wide eyes. “What the devil is what?”

His head cocked left and right,
studying her dress as if he could see through it. “I mean what the devil have
you got on under there?”

Feeling saucy now that they were
nearly clear of danger, she grabbed a fistful of linen. Raising her skirt and
shift above the knees, she revealed lacy white cuffs brushing her stockings.
“They're drawers, Tyler.”

He squinted, and she watched him
struggling to comprehend. “What do they do?”

Olivia shook her head slowly,
confused at his confusion. “Provide... modesty?”

“Bloody hell.” He waved a finger,
like he was casting a ward against something evil. “Are a great many ladies
wearing them?”

How on earth would she know? Did
men believe women discussed such things in company? That there was some highly
intricate system for communicating the information while passing on the street?
This time there was no fighting a laugh. “No. I don't know. I don't believe so.”
She took a moment to be surprised, wondering that Ty of all people had yet to
encounter the budding rage in women's undergarments.