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

She skirted the garden, bypassing
the terrace doors and slipping instead to an open window at the darkened end of
a long porch.

To say Fouche had taken pleasure in
the Reign of Terror was an over-simplification. He had found unimaginable ways
to sate Madame Guillotine's appetite; anonymous leaflets, poorly fabricated
conspiracies, even cold execution of his closest allies. As he stoked
Madame's
hunger, he increased her food supply, mounting each body like a
stair on his climb to the peak. His influence was undeniable, as he had turned
on, and been forgiven by Napoleon twice already.

Fouche declaring himself a friend
of Britain for a third time was laughable. He was a wolf calling itself a door
mouse after eating all the hens. For a political
supporter
of the
Allies, Fouche seemed to believe he should be leading them. There were
documents, letters Whitehall had assured her he would be bringing to the
masquerade; hand-delivered evidence of his treachery they required for his
dismissal and imprisonment.

She just had to be the one to claim
them.

Olivia dug beneath her garter,
fingers hunting for her flint and steel, neither one much bigger than a
thumbnail and bound together with a small strip of flannel. Setting the cloth
on a window sill, she felt a rare thrill at working with only the screen of a
blue velvet curtain between her and two hundred guests drifting around the
ballroom. It was nice to take pleasure in an assignment for a change.

Assuring herself there were no
prying eyes present, she banged the pieces together with a high
tap-tap
.
Sparks showered the flannel, a little tail of smoke swirling where the fibers
glowed orange. She blew, slowly and steadily, raising a tongue of flame that
licked up the rag. One push of her finger and it met the curtain, struggled,
then flared eagerly.

“How careless of that servant,” she
chided softly, “leaving a candle so close to the drape.”

The first shrieks reached her
before she had finished tucking away her tools, and she smiled.

*          *          *

Ty rolled his eyes. Crocked nobles
might not realize that curtains did not spontaneously combust, but
he
wasn't fooled for a moment.

While guests fled down the
staircase, hysterical over a now-smoldering pile of soggy velvet, he slipped up
past them along the wall. He waited, calming his drumming heart, ears sifting
through overwrought drama from the ballroom. Hearing nothing out in the
hallway, he dared a glance and found the passage empty. A few dashing steps
brought him to the first door. He slipped into an empty guest room, moonlight
filling the space with nothing but silhouettes. Five steps to the foot of the
bed; he counted them out and bent down, sliding a hand beneath its frame. His
satchel lay stuffed under the right corner, waiting patiently to be retrieved.

Shrugging free of his coat and
pants, Ty changed them out with a practiced efficiency learned over ten years
with the British army. Red wool coat and gray trousers were everyday wear for
him, standard uniform, but apparently not for the revelers. He had already
spied half a regiment of overweight, middle-aged politicians stuffed into
similar garments. Not that he was complaining; each decoy was welcomed.

He wadded hat and mask into his
sack with the discarded clothes, shoving it all back under the bed in exchange
for his boots. Refolding his silk scarf into a triangle, he tied it snug over
his face like a highwayman.

By the moon's position halfway up a
window pane, he guessed midnight was a quarter of an hour away, give or take.
He had to reach the cloak room now, to lie in wait for Fouche and subdue his
competition in the process.

Cracking the door, he surveyed the
hall and ducked out. It was a painstaking operation, turning the knob, holding
and seating a two-hundred-year-old door soundlessly in its warped frame. No
single step could be rushed, but being too meticulous, loitering, guaranteed
being discovered.

There was the barest echo when the
door met the jamb, like another door tapping shut.

Sod it all
.

He cast a reluctant glance off his
shoulder.

There she stood in front of the
next door, hand on the latch in perfect imitation of his posture. She radiated
arrogance.

“Goddammit,” he groaned.

Her lips curved in triumph.

He had her pinned in a fashion,
between him and the end of the hall, blocking her escape downstairs. If her
saucy wink was any indication, she didn't agree. That was a problem; if he
wasn't intimidating her, he didn’t own the upper hand.

She stalked him, treading closer
one dangerous step at a time. He tensed, knowing their exchange could only end
one of two ways. He slipped a hand inside the waistband of his trousers,
locating a little glass vile and pinching its cork in anticipation. The powder
within was nonlethal but uncomfortable, a mix of coal soot and very finely
ground India hot peppers. Blowing it in the face of, say, a charming but
inconvenient adversary would guarantee enough time for a hasty and non-lethal
retreat.

Giggling, chased by a low masculine
chortle drifted up the stairs, punctuating drunken stumbling that sounded
exactly like a lame bull climbing the steps. By the count of five, Ty estimated
they would not be alone in the hallway.
Time to move
.

Five.

She pounced on him in a single
breath, winding him. He drew back an arm to throw the blinding powder, no doubt
in his mind she intended the first painful blow. Her hands flew up; for his
eyes or throat?

Four.

Long fingers dug into the edge of
his improvised mask, yanking it down. Using it as a tether, she jerked him
forward, bringing her face to his, close enough to catch spiced wine on her
breath. Her lips crushed against his in a violent assault of cinnamon and
oranges, arms sliding around his neck.

Ty’s eyes fell shut, and with his
free hand he buried his own fingers deep into curls that felt exactly as thick
and silken as he'd imagined.

She moaned, an unmistakable purr
from deep in her throat. Shamefully, he did too.
So much for keeping matters
professional.

Three.

A leg slipped free of her skirt's
high slit, hooking his knees. Limbs twined with his, but he wasn’t fooled into
thinking she’d given up a shred of leverage.

He grabbed her thigh, beating her
to the garter and chuckling at a knife's cold outline beneath. One flick of his
wrist slipped it free and sent it skittering down the hall. Breaking their kiss
to follow its exact path seemed a fool’s errand.

Two.

She chopped his other wrist in
retaliation, stiff fingers biting into a tendon. Hand tingling, he released the
vial. It clattered unbroken to the marble floor, rolling somewhere between
their feet. Like the knife it was hard to judge
where;
her tongue raking
the back of his teeth muddled his thoughts.

One.

Arching from the wall, he drove
them across the hallway in a tangle, crushing her to the plaster from the waist
up. Her lips didn’t leave his, and he was certainly not retreating first.

A hand snaked inside his coat. She
was searching him, and he was content to let her. There was nothing to find,
but he saw no need for a hasty end to the brush of her fingers through his
shirt.

The interlopers finally tottered up
the last step. “What... oh! Pardon, monsieur! Pardon!” A man muttered the
apology while his lady gasped, then snickered.

A door closed to his left and Ty
never saw the pair, too focused on how easy it was to get her bottom lip
between his teeth. He plucked at her mask's ribbon, prepared for retaliation.

Not too focused to miss her knee
driving up in answer, a hammer aimed for his gut. He caught her ankle mid-air,
trapping her and forcing her to balance awkwardly, entirely dependent on his
decision not to tip her onto her backside. The challenge hung palpably between
them, as it had in the garden.

He grinned.

She grinned.

A small fist swung out at his head,
and with a boxer’s instinct he jerked his face away. That would have deflected
her blow had she aimed for his cheek. She'd anticipated the move, catching
sensitive nerves between his jaw and ear with her knuckles. An explosion up the
left side of his face loosened his grip and her foot cut him behind the knees,
dropping all six feet of him to the marble. The fall jarred his teeth and
smarted a hip bone. He raised arm instinctively to guard his face.

The kick to his gut was just
showing off.

A smack of her shoes retreating
down the staircase penetrated his pain and humiliation. This was only a minor
setback. He picked himself up, dusting at his coat, ignoring the taste of her
lips and his own wounded pride.

Squinting in the lamplight he
spotted his vial and her knife, claimed them both and tucked tem in his pocket.
The mansion's crescent staircase was comprised of sixteen steps; he’d counted
them enough to be certain. Yet just nine footfalls had reached his ears when
she fled. She was waiting for him around the curve.

Let her wait
.

He crept back into the room, slid
one evening shoe from under the bed and dropped the open vial inside. Satisfied
with his handiwork, he returned to the hallway. Pressing himself flat at the
top step, he judged the degree of the arc and his shoe's weight, treating the
exercise no different than he would his own artillery. He flung the shoe,
watching it sail up, nearly applauding when it struck the tread exactly where
he’d planned.

The shoe smacked down and the
powder billowed up. For a moment there was nothing but strains of music and
conversation, wild laughter. Then he heard it: a strangled hiccup, which
erupted into a genuine fit of ragged coughing.

Victory.

Grinning, he loped to the door at
the other end of the hall. The enthusiastic creaking of a bed frame in no way
deterred him from popping inside. It was not as though he were going to
look.

He expected protest, outrage. Instead,
there was a rustle from the couple, shielded now behind his raised fingers.

“Henri, is that you?” a woman
queried excitedly. Her male companion chuckled and groaned.

“Regrettably no. Should I see him,
I will tell him he's anxiously awaited.” Chased by their laughter, Ty made
haste for the servant's staircase.

*          *          *

She felt
no
guilt
whatsoever.

Olivia braced outside the cloakroom
and waited a breath.

All right, a
little
guilt.
She had no way of knowing that her opponent wouldn't resort to lethal means.
While the lady
had
been exceedingly rude to her in the ballroom, asking
her to stand on the stairs and deflect whatever punishment the Fox had in mind
might have been lopsided retribution. His victim seemed well enough, all things
considered, and an impressive number of gentlemen were clawing over one another
to lend a hankie or pat her heaving shoulders.

Truly, what were the odds that his
concoction was
fatal
? Less than fifty-fifty, fair odds in her line of
work. He had been ruthless, at least her lips and backside thought so, but he'd
left her otherwise unharmed.

When the footman finally took her
advice and went to see about an alleged disturbance in the drawing room, Olivia
let herself into the cloakroom, relieved to find no Fox in sight.

An iron rack wrapped three of the
room’s four walls. An arm jutting from its center divided the space in half to
create two large, separate alcoves. Shelves spanning the frames held a fortune
in beaver top hats and thick ermine muffs. Above each scrolling coat hook, a
brass frame waited for the footman's hastily scrawled card, indicating to whom
stored garments belonged. Hurrying along the perimeter, she checked each tag to
be certain her target hadn't already arrived.

Now it was time to insure she was
alone. She jerked aside cloaks and greatcoats, slapping at velvets and
corduroys and heavily-lined satins all shoved up together. No one groaned and
no one jumped out. Exhaling, she took a moment to bask in her victory,
satisfied as the hall clock bellowed out the first of twelve deep chimes.

A low rumble of voices reached her
ears, raised in greeting, vibrating the shared wall of the cloak room and entry
hall. Fouche was punctual, she would grant him that much. As ruthless with time
as he was with flesh.

She tightened the ribbon on her
mask one last time, tucked at her curls and tried to ignore the memory of
his
fingers pulling them loose. He was dangerous, her Fox, better equipped
mentally and physically than her usual opponents. H
er equal
, she
grudgingly admitted. A worthy adversary, even though she had won. Success,
however, in no way meant they were done. She would have to be twice as cautious
once the letters in her possession. He would still be waiting.

A blue-liveried footman opened the
door and allowed Fouche to pass. He froze, hat raised halfway off his snowy
head, piercing her with a stare of cold suspicion. She was fourteen again and
he was looking her over, debating the wisdom of letting her go, sparing her
life.

She had seen him many times since
then, and he always looked the same. Tall, with the lanky frame of a sick
horse, stiffness passing for a kind of dignity. A long, narrow face divided by
a long, narrow nose that was perpetually red on the end, irritated from
sniffing out his enemy's secrets.

Hate boiled up and she wished again
that her assassination order in Naples had not been called off. It was the
closest she had come in all her years with Whitehall to disobeying orders and
risking the noose. Still he had an undeniable effect, and almost fearful that
he had a power to read her mind, she cleared her thoughts and smiled.