Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (43 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

It was good to see Fouche rewarding
those most loyal to him. Snorting, Olivia shook her head and climbed the steps
to Du Fresne's new house on the Rue de Sofia. It was several steps above the
square gray column that he'd occupied just weeks before the emperor's return.
She’d wager that not a coin was exchanged for it, just secrets and blood.

Resting a hand on the door, she
turned the knob and pushed. It swung open just an inch, and she listened for
any commotion over the crowd's hum. As a loyal bureaucrat of the empire,
DuFresne had likely excused most of his staff for the celebration.

One of the more interesting bits of
information they’d picked up about DuFresne, one she’d filed away for later
use, was something seemingly innocuous. She’d found over the years that the
little details were the most useful. In this matter, it was that the summer
heat aggravated a painful skin ailment. He treated it privately by bathing for
hours each afternoon in scalding water enhanced with rose oil and lead sugar.
Considering what a vain, insecure snake he was, to admit frailty to his
servants would be a sign of unforgivable weakness, and he would be glad to have
them gone.

Voices reached her through the
door, something about wine. Servants. Apparently, a few of them remained. They
were arguing, coming closer. Loping back down the steps, Olivia pretended to
adjust a coarse linen apron tied over her dress.

A head topped by a bird's nest of
white hair poked out of the crack she’d left open, dark beady eyes darting left
and right. The door slammed shut, shivering in its frame.

She sighed, skirting the house's
flank and cutting through a narrow alley. Time for a less direct route. On any
other day, the lane would be empty at least at some portion of the day. Sadly,
today was not one of those days. The alley dead ended against a tailor's shop
at the end of the block, requiring a pedestrian to backtrack halfway to reach
an outlet. Today, the streets were full and no one was in a hurry. Eyes were
everywhere, and there was no chance that her scaling the house would go
unnoticed. Glancing around, Olivia grasped for something to legitimize her next
move.

In a barrel adjacent to the
servants’ entrance, a flag had been abandoned. It had likely been left by, or
left for, passersby. Grabbing its stick, Olivia upended the barrel and climbed
on top of it. With arms wide, she balanced on her makeshift step, raising a leg
and moving gingerly to grip lead shingles atop the kitchen's low roof. She had
just gained her footing when a pock-faced, middle-aged man who’d been wandering
past spit up at her from under his wiry brown mustache. Glancing down, she
groaned inwardly. He had an entire group of young, bored, and potentially
violent people with him.

“What do you think you're about,
imbecile?” he shouted, shaking an open palm as though he might smack her down.
His sudden stop and raised voice earned them the exact kind of unwanted
attention she’d been trying to avoid.

Olivia waved her prop. “Raising a
flag atop the minister's house,
traitor
!”

He swatted a hand at her in disgust,
stomping past down the lane.

Pretending to be winded, Olivia
hunched and panted until his band of followers grew restless, then bored. They
marched off in his wake, not giving her much of a backward glance as she
gripped the first window ledge and pulled.

A high, narrow window directly
overhead was likely DuFresne's bathing chamber. It fit with the layout of
nearby townhouses.

If his bathtub was positioned like
most in Paris, climbing through the window would probably involve her falling
into the water with her target, so she moved instead for an adjoining bed
chamber.

A few people were still watching
her. That became clear when they cheered as she gained the balcony. She spent
longer than she’d planned propping her flag, with a lot of unnecessary fuss, as
if it had been her aim all along. After a few breaths, she backed up through
the open doors to the bedchamber behind her.

Out from under midday sun, it was
cool, and she enjoyed the feeling against her skin a moment before getting her
bearings. The curtains were drawn on a room which was comical in its execution.
It was a model of Napoleon's own suite, if she had to guess, rendered into a
scaled-down version. Blue silk and deeper blue velvet embroidered with silver
stars and silver Greek knots covered everything: bed canopy, round chair
cushions, and a table drape. It was the sad display of a man who resented his
menial station, while greedily executing its every function.

She counted two doors. One, on the
far wall, faced the hallway. Another, she hoped, led to the bathing room.

As though her thoughts had some
influence, that very door swung open. Olivia quickly pressed to the wall beside
a high cabinet. A woman, hunched and shuffling, came out with an armload of
linen. She turned, struggled with the door and finally wrenched it closed
before bustling out.

Exhaling, Olivia waited until she
heard footsteps on the stairs, then crept across the room. Pressing a palm to
the wood, she pushed. It scraped in the frame, then drifted open.

Her feet struck a hard surface,
marble, not wood. A single candle burned atop the remains of a column at the
foot of a long copper tub. Each wall was painted with a fresco: a warrior on
horseback, his spear raised aloft; two gladiators circling; a roman bath. And,
like the bedroom, they were poor imitations.

DuFresne was slumped so far into
the tub that she nearly missed him in the dark. Only the curve of his forehead
and tip of his beak nose stood out in the dim light.

“I said I was not ready yet.” His
voice, echoing off the plaster and stone, held an eerie, disjointed note.

Taking off her cap, Olivia folded
it in half and turned around, sliding a bolt into its seat, locking the door.
“Ready or no, misseur, here I am.”

Behind her came a splashing and
banging. She turned in time to see DuFresne come upright in the water,
squinting with all his might to see her without his spectacles. “Who is it? Who
is there?”

“A ghost, to you.”

He laughed, but his shoulders
didn't relax. “Whose ghost?”

She walked slowly toward the tub,
her voice low, tempering the rage which laced her words. “Mathilde Barcourt.
Elena Breunig. Philipe de la Porte. Henry Lennox. There are others.”

His swallowing reached her ears,
wet and gross. “Who are you? Tell me. Answer me at once or I shall –”

“Scream?”

“No!”

“No? What else is there? No one
knows that I am here. The door is locked and you are...” she shrugged,
“vulnerable. Not a very masculine option, screaming, but sometimes necessary.”
Continuing to close the distance a step at a time, Olivia reached out when she
neared the tub, claiming a tall ladder-back chair from against the wall.
Positioning it near DuFresne's head, she sat down.

Recognition widened his eyes at
last. “Elizabeth Hastings.”

She gave him a grim smile at the
use of her alias. Apparently, Fouche and Thalia hadn’t felt the need to share
all of their information with their subordinates. “More or less.”

Arms flailed, and DuFresne
struggled to sit up more. Grabbing a fistful of the bath sheet, Olivia used her
size and position to an advantage, pressing him all the way back against the
tub's wall.

His chin trembled, belying narrow
eyes filled with hate. “Where is the baroness?” he hissed.

Instead of answering, she reached
into the leather pouch concealed beneath her apron, took out pliers and laid
them on her lap.

“What...what is that? What are you
doing?”

Next came her petite, bone-handled
knife. It was not much more than a scalpel, but it looked incredibly dangerous.
Last came a long coil of wire, which she settled between the two.

For the first time, DuFresne's thin
frame fell completely against the tub. Not in relaxation, but in fear.
Realization was dawning, and he tried to pull away. Like most bullies, when
confronted with real intimidation, he quailed. “What are you doing?” he
repeated, this time in a hoarse whisper.

“The baroness.” Olivia cocked her
head and stared up at the ceiling. “You know, the baroness did a great many
horrible things to Philipe de LaPorte. To Henry Lennox and Elizabeth Hastings.
Horrible things, before killing them.” Picking up her pliers, she studied their
tip, observing how they opened and closed.

“Elena Breunig suffered an equally
cruel fate at your hands.” Smiling slowly, she at last met DuFresne's wide
eyes. “Fate. Perhaps that is who I am. Here to visit upon you every slice and
puncture. Each torn nail, eviscerated tongue. Broken finger.”

No, no.
At least that's what
she thought he'd said, but it came out as stuttering on a rivulet of drool. She
fished in her pouch again, collecting the last item. A single green tablet. Olivia
dropped it inside the wire's coil. “Cyanide. Nearly instantaneous, nearly
painless.” Holding up the pliers again, she nodded. “I am going to revisit all
those things on you. Your decision is, simply, how long you wish to suffer?”

“I have information,” he stammered.
“Information. Or gold. Would you like gold?”

“I don't want anything from you
except blood.”

His voice raised an octave with
every word he spoke. “Military intelligence! You have an associate, perhaps,
who would find that valuable.”

Closing her eyes, Olivia inhaled
and exhaled, signaling her impatience. “I just don't trust you enough to take
that chance. I came for one thing, and I'll be perfectly satisfied to leave
with it.”

She grabbed his left hand with
hers, gripping pliers in her right. It was depressingly easy to overpower him.

His legs pumped. DuFresne grunted,
strained. She felt his right hand in her lap, fingers grasping. The pill went
into his mouth and he immediately went slack, falling back against the tub
without another sound.

As she was gathering things back
into her bag, a sheer curtain over the window flapped. To Olivia's
astonishment, a head and then a torso appeared through the opening. Moments
later it was an entire man, planted on the floor beside the tub.

Impossible. She might have
struggled less to grasp the situation had Ty appeared inside the chamber.
Finally, she recovered enough to speak. “John? What in the hell are you doing
here?”

John raked at one neat sideburn.
“Same thing you are. Well, nearly. God Olivia, did you poison him?”

Olivia shook her head, struggling
to wrap her mind around the information. “No. No. It's just a grass tablet.
Wheat, alfalfa. The fright did him in.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do
you mean, the same thing I am?”

“Tracking down Fouche for
Whitehall.”

Bollocks. “Since when?”

“Since Burrell and his
partner
were reassigned in March. And also for a while last September. I didn’t know
the partner was you. Had to figure that one out on my own. Seeing you climb up
DuFresne’s wall from across the street put any doubts I had to rest.”

Partner, eh? He had a lot of nerve,
biting off the word with so much accusation. “And you never saw fit to tell
me?”

John waved a hand between them.
“You never saw fit to tell
me
!”

“You're correct. And after our last
exchange in Paris, I believe I made the right decision.” When she’d been
engaged to him, he’d been a brick wall six days of the week and a volcanic
eruption on the seventh. Sharing foundation-wracking news with John held no
appeal whatsoever, then or now.

“Meaning?” he growled.

She lowered her voice in pantomime.
“Olivia, I demand my ring back!”

Arms crossed. “I bloody well did
want it back, if you didn't want to be wed. Did
you
wish to keep it?”

“No!”
Was he daft?

John held up two fingers, ticking
them off. “You didn't wish to be engaged, so why should I? What are you upset
about?”

She? Olivia didn't bother to point
out that he had yelled first. “What are
you
upset about?”

“As it turns out, not a damned
thing!”

“Me either!” Laughing, she rubbed
hands over her face.

John laughed in turn. “I should
have called it off in a more gentlemanly fashion. Seeing you and seeing
Burrell...” He clenched a fist. “I do care for you, Olivia. If you knew half
the man's history…”

Avoiding John's eyes, she blew a
sharp breath between pursed lips. “So I've heard.”

“I hope you can forgive –”

She cut John off with a sweep of
her hand. “Perhaps we can share our mutual regrets later. Somewhere other than
locked inside this man's bathing room.”

“A sound point.” He leaned over,
peering at DuFresne still limp in the tub, then at the bag she carried. She’d
put away her implements, but John would suspect what she carried. “Just fright,
you say? What did you intend to do with him from here?”

Frowning, Olivia rested hands on
her hips. “I'm not entirely certain. I expected to get a little more out of him
before we reached this point.” She sighed. “The tablet was just for a laugh. To
enjoy his shock when he swallowed it and nothing happened.”

John looked their target over once
more, then glanced around the room. “Help me get him out. I have an idea.”

*          *          *

Olivia was just finishing working
herself into a pair of DuFresne's trousers when the scuffle started. Loud,
angry French from an older woman, then a man, drifted up to her. It began somewhere
near the front door, progressing under loud protests and even louder swearing
until it paused somewhere near the staircase. DuFresne's domestic staff had a
very hard time getting along, she thought, closing the wardrobe. Then she
caught two more voices, deeper and masculine.