Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (6 page)

These moments
. These were
the times which required a spy's every ounce of discipline and self-control. It
was only an assignment, merely a diversion to fool bystanders into trusting
what they saw. Olivia certainly did
not
have some inexplicable hold on
him in these moments. He was tired, cranky and too long without the attentions
of a lady. That was all.

Her influence over him since the
comte's masquerade was another matter entirely.

Creature of habit, indeed.

CHAPTER THREE

Their safe house was the last
building at a Y-shaped intersection between the Rue Durantin and Rue Ravignan.
High and narrow, an anvil wedged at the end of the block, tiny balconies ringed
each floor like teeth. Its yellowed limestone was as dusty and weathered as any
other building on the surrounding three streets, but the walk out front was
clear of litter and manure. The step was swept clear of leaves in the fall and
snow in the winter, all to keep the house looking tidy and lived-in.

All of this was owing to Monsieur
Beltran, the caretaker. He came two or three times a week when the house was
unused, conspicuous in his black-and-white striped jacket. He tipped a hat to
the ladies, nodding to children spinning their hoop down the street. The man
was a fervent Royalist, his history as forgotten over time as his face. He'd
been the king's valet once, according to Whitehall, and his loyalty still
burned bright. When whispers had spread throughout the underground of Britain's
espionage of her need for a native Frenchman to aid with simple but vital tasks
undermining Napoleon, Beltran had been the first to leave a brief, neatly
printed introduction on the desk at the Hotel d'Arblay. It was no more than a
hotel frequented by wealthy tourists, as far as most people knew. Beltran had
obviously known better.

His routine in tending the safe
house was kept in meticulous detail, the mark of a good valet. A wonder of
domestic organization, Beltran maintained a nondescript brown leather journal.
It was stored in a drawer of the console table in the entry hall, where Ty had
discovered it a day earlier. Its spine was nearly worn white on each side from
a thumb and forefinger, updated faithfully upon his every visit for two years.
There was no one to directly oversee Beltran's efforts, no steward or
chamberlain, but should one appear tomorrow, Ty had no doubt that the man could
acquit himself as a hard worker.

Ty had seen Beltran tending the
house once or twice while in Paris on business other than Whitehall's. Beltran
made a show of going in the door, of coming back out a moment to tap his boots
off on the step or shake some dust from a table cover, making certain the
people on the street caught sight of him. There was a little chart, a separate
sheet of vellum folded and tucked inside his log, establishing a rotation for
the lighting of lamps so that different parts of the house were illuminated in
turn. Beltran's activities were itemized with costs, in order to account for
his allowance from Whitehall.

Evening meal at M. Denair's
tavern, 3s.

Napped on sofa after reading the
daily papers – purchase, 1s.

Bed linens sent out to monthly
laundry, 10s.

Elbows resting atop his desk, Ty
thumbed each page, squinting curiously at the next column. He was tucked into
one corner of the formal parlor, leaned over a wide oak desk littered with half
finished work. Three shelves set into the wall above him were no less cluttered,
much, he imagined, to the constant anxiety of poor Beltran who'd been
instructed not to arrange them. Light was scarce despite it being early
afternoon in the outside world. Curtains of the first floor rooms, excepting
the dining room, were never opened for any reason. Ivory silk drapes covered
the panes, sandwiching heavy wool blankets that dissuaded even the most prying
sets of eyes.

As it had so many times today, his
gaze wandered to Olivia, seated before a round card table. Its coarse white
canvas drape was stained all sorts of browns and boasted more than one
char-edged burn. He waved the journal to gain her attention. “Do you ever
wonder at Monsieur Beltran?”

Olivia stayed hunched over the
table, calico bandanna tied to her face like a fashionable highwayman. She
shook her head at something, not him, and frowned. “Wonder about what?” she
murmured through the cloth.

He rose, taking the journal and a
writing tray fanned with papers, moving to a sofa across from her and dropping
to the cushions. Its frame creaked under his sudden impact, dust stars
exploding up from the blue and gold damask upholstery.

Sweeping a hand at the cloud, he
tapped a page. “Just what a strange life he leads. His entire existence is
waiting on someone else.”

“Servants do that,” she murmured.
“They wait on you.”

“No. No,” he argued. “I mean
actually waiting. Foot-tapping, yawn-inducing waiting.”

There was a pop, then an alchemical
whoosh, and all conversation paused.

Olivia's table would have gotten
her burned for witchcraft in another century. A nicked wooden pestle, two white
stone mortars, and a silver tray of some powder in an unnatural shade of sickly
green were neatly arranged to one side.

Directly before her sat a
collection of bottles which would have fit perfectly in a museum: a squat,
square, red glass bottle; a blue, steep-shouldered one; the last one pink and
nearly oval. They all bore some sort of silver charm. Red, a snarling hound.
Blue, a winged demon nearly as tall as the container. Pink, a tangle of
interlaced hearts pierced by tiny knives.

He tensed, watching her tip some
green powder onto the table cloth with a tiny silver spatula. Pinching a glass
pipette, she added a single drop from the blue bottle. Ty flinched at foam,
then smoke. He glanced from the concoction to Olivia's face for reassurance. A
deepening vee to her brows was not reassuring.

Poof!
A small column of
flame shot up and began licking at the cloth. He was half out of his seat by
the time she finished smacking it out with a much-abused leather glove.

Sighing, she got up and opened the
door, fanning it a moment against the acrid, metallic stink. Falling back into
her chair, she tugged her mask down, looking defeated. “What were you saying?”

“God woman, I have no idea. I'm too
preoccupied trying not to inhale. And wondering if you'll burn the house down
while I sleep.”

That coaxed a smile. “You're quite
safe. For now.” She picked up one of his papers. “Now tell me again what you
were saying. You have my undivided attention.”

He leaned forward and laid the
journal in her lap. “Beltran. What a strange life he leads.”

She nodded slowly, taking the book
and turning it over in her hands. “He has no family. His wife was killed in the
massacre. Did you know that?”

Of course, her own past was as
tangled as Beltran’s with the monarchy and revolution. Her information made
sense. Something in Beltran's writing left the impression of a man who was
going through the motions because he had nothing else. It was a suspicion he’d
had about Olivia too, from time to time. “No,” he answered finally. “I don't
believe I knew a thing about him, except what he keeps in his log.” He tapped
the journal still cradled on her lap. “He dusts and reads and takes his meals.
Checks the locks and the flues. Comes and goes three times a week, and to
where? Where does he go?”

Olivia shrugged. “I suppose I'd
never thought about that. Not any of it.”

He met her wide eyes. “He may be
France's most loyal subject.”

She leaned in, interest piqued.
“How so?”

“What he does is trivial, really.
Solitary by its nature and tedious as hell.”

She nodded, seeming to understand.
“But he has done it faithfully, every week for years.”

“So he has, and why?” He smacked a
balled fist into his palm, emphasizing an earlier point. “Because he is
waiting
. Maintaining his little square of France, keeping it tidy for his
king. Only a man truly confident of victory would wash sheets every month for
no one.”

Olivia laughed, but she stared past
him, thoughtful. “He may be the most dangerous man in France. Think of all he's
seen.” She swept a hand around them, “All of the damning evidence to which he
has access.”

He winked. “Loyalty, Dimples.”

Olivia cocked her head, catching
his breath with a smile. “You mean the opportunity to throw someone off the
garden wall, and refraining?”

He laughed, throwing up his hands
in defense. “No. I mean choking them with a powder instead of your fingers.”

“Hm.” Her smiled brightened, then
she scowled. “That sounds more like self-discipline.”

No
. Self-discipline was
ignoring the curve of her cheek, the vague pout to her bottom lip.
Self-discipline was how, when she looked at him and smiled, he
could
stare without blinking until the tension became a physical pull, but didn't.
The feel of his hands, his lips on Olivia hadn't diminished with the passage of
time.

He jerked his gaze away, flicking
at the papers in his writing tray for distraction.

“Any success?” she asked, pointing
to the mess.

Olivia meant his foray into hidden
writing in correspondence. He had spent the past two days mixing rose oil,
waxes, potato starch, all manner of things, looking for some concoction that
could be concealed, then revealed on demand. Thus far his luck had been thin.
“Juice from lemons mixed with gin was the most promising. Unfortunately, I kept
drinking my research.” He chuckled at her not-so-disapproving eye roll. “The
only definite conclusion is that a great deal more study is warranted.”

“I could not agree more.” She
leveled a heavy pat to his leg and stood up. Producing a key from a deep pocket
of her apron, she unlocked a tantalus on the mantle and pulled free one of its
decanters. Popping out the stopper, she thrust the bottle into his hand,
perching beside him.

Sniffing the fumes wafting up from
its open neck, Ty coughed and shook his head. “Miss Fletcher, it's barely three
in the afternoon.”

“Then we'll
sip
it.” She
snatched the container back, putting the lie to her words with a deep swig. A
peculiar look crossed her face, color burning her cheeks. For a moment she
struggled, and Ty wondered if he should help, slap her on the back. She coughed
at last, a long, raspy sound that might have been a lung deflating. She pressed
the back of her wrist to her lips. “Whoo! It's Russian. Pace yourself.”
            “The same holds true for their women.” Jerking the bottle back, he
set it on her worktable and scowled. “'Pace yourself'. Was that for my benefit,
or yours?”

“Very amusing,” she choked out,
leaning forward to reclaim the spirits. He caught her with an arm and she
frowned, falling back onto the sofa. Someone had to get ahold of her, though he
wasn’t sure of being equal to the task.

“I wonder, where did you pick up
all these bad habits?” he mused, pushing the bottle farther away with the toe
of his boot.

She snorted, looking unrepentant.
“My uncle can enlighten you.”

He was well enough acquainted with
Lord Portsmouth to know that the man would not indulge some of Olivia's more
risqué behaviors. “I doubt you inherited a taste for vodka from your uncle.”

“You are correct,” she slurred with
a heavy nod. “He thoroughly discouraged it, along with many other things. If
you would like a running tally of my vices, he is your man.”

“You'll get no sympathy from me. I
know for a fact the two of you get on just fine.” In his bare synopsis of
Olivia, Grayfield had focused on Portsmouth's devotion to his niece and how
they'd kept one another company through dark times.

She stared down at her hands, voice
thin and wistful. “We do
now
. Not so much in the beginning. Not,” she
admitted, “that it was his fault.”

“His wife had already died when you
arrived, if I recall correctly.” Precisely how Olivia's uncle had come to claim
her was a mystery. He'd also learned from Grayfield that Portsmouth had barely
spared his niece from the guillotine. Olivia's parents had not been as lucky,
victims of the mob.

“Mm. She died the year before. His
wife and sister in short order; Edward was so happy to have me, I think. To
have some family left. The poor man had no idea what he was in for.”

A widowed, middle-aged man and a
teen-aged girl named Olivia sounded like a recipe for bedlam. “You were an
obedient child, by your own telling. Was it really so bad?”

Olivia nodded slowly, staring back
into her past. “I was not a child anymore when my uncle came for me. Not in any
sense of the word. A fourteen-year-old girl is a terrifying thing already.
After imprisonment in
La Force
...” She trailed off, head shaking. “When
I first came to England, I couldn't sleep in a bed. I tried never to stand with
my back to a room, always pressed against a wall. For weeks, I needed to have
my door locked, from the
outside
, to feel safe.” She pressed a hand to
her chest, breathing faster a moment. “The sound of horse hooves outside,
growing closer? To this day I still get goose flesh.”

So many things suddenly became
clear, things he'd taken for granted as part of Olivia's personality. How she
was always the one to turn out the lamp at night, but only after he'd prompted
a few times. Her willingness to cross the street, through an inch of muck and
rain water to avoid certain kinds of people, even when he was sure she did not
know them. It was funny, in a sad way. Olivia the civilian was intimidated by
them; Olivia the spy would never so much as flinch.

“At first, I would leave the house
by deception, sometimes in the middle of the night. Once I was caught and
forbidden to go out, I left by sheer, open defiance. The market theater, the
docklands. Whitechapel. I was nabbed there at sixteen for pinching a
gentleman's wallet.”

Ty feigned shock; the information
didn't surprise him at all. “A pickpocket!”

Olivia shook her head. “No! That's
what the constable thought, and why he chased me. I thought the gentleman was
handsome and wanted to slip my handkerchief into his coat.”

“Outrageous. I approve of your
methods.”