What a Hero Dares (20 page)

“That’s all well and good,” Simon said as Max helped Zoé down from the plank seat, and her borrowed cloak became caught on a large splinter. “But who’s going to deliver this particular load to the fields, because it damn well isn’t going to be me.”

“All arranged,” Max told him. “And the horses?”

“May I first admit it wasn’t as easy sneaking out of the Manor a second time as it was the first?”

“No. We’ll save that for another time, when both you and Val can regale me with your combined brilliance over these past weeks.”

“I didn’t think so. Would it be all right to tell you our watchers have been reduced by two? Not dispatched to their heavenly rewards, as Kate explained we aren’t to just go killing off those who might be redeemable Coopers, but definitely out of the fray, neatly tied up with a bow wrapped around the base of a tree, and awaiting my return.”

“You can, and just did. Thank you. Now where the hell are those horses?”

Simon inclined his head to the right. “Over there, behind those trees. Zoé, your leathers are rolled up in a small blanket tied behind the saddle. Same for you, Max. Everything you asked for is there. My friend’s man Jacko saw to it personally. He has also, as I understand it, had a stern talking-to with the men who guarded the West Gate yesterday. I don’t think I’d want to be on the receiving end of that man’s idea of a talking-to.”

“Having seen the man, I concur,” Max said. “Our thanks to both of you. I can’t change into something fresh soon enough.”

Zoé only nodded, and headed off into the trees.

“All business this morning, isn’t she?” she heard Simon say as she hastily untied the cloak and tossed it into the bushes. “She looks pale, although that could be the effect of the manure.”

“She’ll be fine, we’ll both be fine. We’ve made our way through more than one Paris sewer in our time together. This is what we do, Simon... What we did.”

“But not with her father’s life hanging in the balance.”

Zoé felt her bottom lip begin to tremble, and pushed a hand against her mouth, willing the betraying trembling to stop, and then quickly lowered it again.

Max joined her a few moments later, even as she heard Simon’s mount’s hoof beats fading into the distance. He looked at her, as if inspecting her for some flaw. “You heard that, I suppose,” he said gently. “Zoé, it’s not too late for me to bring Val or Simon in on this. You don’t have to go.”

“We’ve had that discussion,” she told him sharply, already half out of the plain brown gown “donated” to her rather happily by Valentine, accompanied by the request she forget to bring it back. “You promised a stream. I don’t see one, and without one they’ll smell us coming, and we might as well just approach openly, and surrender.”

“I also promised soap. Other than the obvious, what’s your rush? We’re stuck here until it begins to grow dark in any case, but at least we’re safely away from the possibility of spying eyes. Admit it, the plan was brilliant.”

Zoé sniffed at the back of her hand and grimaced. “With one obvious major exception.”

He laughed, trying to ease the tension between them, she supposed. “Come on,” he said, untying the reins of the two waiting horses. “We’re safe here, the north section of the estate is barely yet to be cultivated, and this particular area is only visited by our huntsmen. The stream is this way.”

“And you’re positive my father is where you say he is?”

“We’ve also had
that
discussion. Yes, I’m positive, and so is Val. But for now, since we can’t do anything yet anyway, and Anton won’t do anything unless you don’t do as he said—and if the Society was watching, the Exalted Leader believes you’re off doing what she had Anton order you to do. Other than pacing and second-guessing our plan, there’s really nothing more we can do than relax, and let the time pass. Maybe we’ll even sleep, since we didn’t do that last night. Zoé, if you want to help your father, you’ve got to pretend this is no more than another mission. And that means we prepare, we consider alternatives, we decide how we’ll go on, and then we remain calm, detached and we get the job done without getting caught, let alone killed. If you can’t do that—”

“What if he’s wrong? What if this she-bitch lied to him about where she and Scarlet were going to be tonight? What if Anton was lying and we’re walking straight into a trap the two of them set up for us? What if we’re all playing games, with nobody telling the truth?”

“Zoé, stop.”

She knew she wasn’t helping her case of being fine, calm and ready to proceed. But she couldn’t help herself. “What if Papa is already dead, now that Anton believes he has me under his control? He has to know he can’t keep me on a leash as his assassin. I agreed to do this one thing for him, and if I were to be successful, he wouldn’t need me again, would he? There’s simply no reason to keep my father alive.”

They’d both stripped by now, and were standing waist-deep in the cool stream. Max was soaping his chest. “Is that it? Are you done now?”

“Yes.” She took the soap from him and began working it into her wet hair. “Max? Do you remember the night we infiltrated the French lines just outside Wagram after the first day of fighting was over, sent there to gauge the strength of Bonaparte’s remaining forces?”

“Père Francis et Sœur Marie Magdelene,”
he said, nodding, “come to pray over the wounded and dying. I remember. What of it?”

“I don’t know,” Zoé said just before bending her knees and sinking below the surface, coming up blowing air through her nose, her hair now free of soap and sleekly hugging her head. “It was terrible, it was frightening—it was most certainly a wildly dangerous thing to do. And it was all a game. I don’t think we ever felt so alive as when we were a hair’s breadth from dying. How...how did we ever consider any of it a game?”

He helped her back onto the bank and handed her a length of toweling. “I don’t know. Youth? Blatant stupidity? I take it you don’t feel that way anymore.”

“No,” she said softly. “Not anymore. And never again. I’m ashamed that I ever thought it was.”

“We did a lot of good, between us. Saved many lives.”

“And took a few.”

She bent to one side and twisted her hair, squeezing water from it, and then handed him the damp toweling to dry himself while she slipped a soft white lace-edged chemise over her head, laced it shut and stepped into a matching undergarment. There was also a simple dark blue skirt and a white blouse for her. She ignored the blouse, and selected only the skirt. The blouse would only get wet when she combed out her hair.

Max also had finished dressing. He wore simple nankeen breeches without hose and a collarless white shirt with ridiculously wide sleeves, left open, even at the cuffs. He could have been one of the pirates she’d glimpsed that first night, although lacking a brace of pistols hanging around his neck from a length of rope or a cutlass stuck in a red sash.

“You don’t mind if I want to be alone for a space, do you? I’m going to try to find a place to sit in the sun, so that my hair dries,” she told him, looking up through the trees. It wasn’t even close to noon, and the day stretched before her as if it might prove to be endless.

“No, I don’t mind,” he told her. “I’ll pack up things here. Too bad no one thought to include a shovel, or else I’d bury our clothes. Not to hide them, but to be rid of the stink. Never let it be said that all of nature is beautiful.”

She smiled weakly, nodded and turned away, heading toward what looked to be a fair-size patch of sunlight off to her right.

What she had thought to be only a small clearing turned out to be a perfect, miniature-size meadow in the midst of a fairy forest. The tall, sweet grass waved gently in the breeze, and seemed to be dotted all over with wildflowers: blues and yellows and reds and pinks, their perfumes blending with the smells of sunshine and white clover. A soothing place to sit and reflect, she supposed, and decided that’s just what she would do, sit cross-legged among the flowers, and listen to the birds sing, the bees buzz.

She’d pass the time, and the time eventually would pass, and clear her mind of her fears.

Otherwise, she might fall to pieces again, and Max would toss her over the front of his saddle and deposit her back at the Manor.

He was keeping his distance, and she was grateful for that, especially after she’d told him...well, what she’d told him. She hadn’t said she loved him, and he hadn’t pressed her to say the words.

What she knew, what she’d finally acknowledged, was that she’d lived life with him in it and without him, and the idea of living without him again was unthinkable.

Was that love?

She ran her fingers through her hair, holding it up to the sun, lifting the thick blond hair to the breeze.

She’d believed him dead, and remembered her rage, her sorrow, her bone-deep grief. She’d raged against him for dying, screamed out her anger until the guard warned her he’d throw a bucket of slops at her through the bars. She’d cried, she’d drowned herself in memories and regrets hour after hour; she’d curled up on the dirty, damp straw piled in one corner of the cell and stared at nothing until her eyes had burned themselves dry.

Was that love?

She was physically attracted to him from the first moment, certain from that first night together that there could be, would be no other who would satisfy her the way he did. The passion, the desire, the hunger that never seemed to be far from the surface whenever they were together, and even when they were apart.

Was that love?

Standing face-to-face in a stream, ridding themselves of the smell of manure, assisting each other, questioning each other: old friends, deeply caring friends, their nakedness simply a condition of the moment, and not a mandatory prelude to what might come next. Passions laid aside, leaving them two people simply comfortable enough with each other to stand naked in front of each other.

Was that love?

She sensed him behind her before she felt him carefully place something on her head. She lifted her hands to lift it off, only to see he’d fashioned her a daisy chain of pink and yellow flowers. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

She replaced it, allowing the ring to tip forward, onto her forehead.

“Thank you.” That’s all she could say.
Thank you.

He knelt behind her, laid his hands on her sun-warmed shoulders.

She closed her eyes. “I don’t think we should be—”

“It’s not like that, Zoé,” he told her, pressing warm lips against the side of her throat. “Not anymore.”

He slipped one lacy strap aside, and then the other, before employing his thumbs and fingers to knead at her taut muscles, relaxing them, her terrible tensions seeming to melt away beneath his fingers.

“That...that feels wonderful.” She probably hadn’t had to tell him. He only had to see how she’d dropped her head forward so that he could continue his ministrations.

Human touch. Not invading, not requiring any response other than to accept what was offered. How did anyone survive without it?

“Lean back against me, Zoé,” he encouraged, sliding his hands halfway down her arms. “You can always lean on me and feel safe. I’d never let you fall.”

“I never thought you would,” she told him. “You never did. Max, I—”

“Shhh,”
he said as she did as he’d asked, and was now snugly held between his legs, the skin of her upper back in contact with the warm flesh of his muscled ribcage.

He put his arms around her, crossing them in front of her, his hands drifting up and down her upper arms. He was close beside her now, as well, his cheek pressed against hers. His skin warm with sunshine. She was cocooned, with growing hopes of one day becoming a butterfly.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“A small perfect world of its own,” she agreed.

“Let’s just look at it for a while, enjoy it, remember this moment. A time just for us.”

She could stay like this into eternity. Safe, as he’d just promised. Protected, surrounded by Max’s strength.

She’d never felt like this. Never.

Zoé realized she’d spent the majority of her life on the edge, always moving, always with one eye trained behind her, never feeling safe, secure. Life had taught her to rely on herself, and that everything good in that life sooner or later went away. People passed in and out of her life all the time, as she was shuffled here, taken there, told to wake up, gather what she could and follow where her father led. Leaving behind her home, her quiet life, her mother.

Maybe that’s why her new life, working for the Crown, had come to her so naturally. She didn’t know how to stay in one place. Or relax. Or become attached.

Until Max. She’d held him so fiercely, become so protective of him, needing him not to disappear. Even their lovemaking had been fierce, even greedy.

Just in case it went away, if he went away.

And when he did...ah, when he did, the heart she’d believed she’d learned to protect broke into little pieces. Impossible, she then believed, to ever be put back together again.

It was easier to believe you didn’t care, that being on your own was the best way to be. And much less painful.

Zoé felt a tear run down her cheek, and looked down to see it had splashed on Max’s arm, to be followed another.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he whispered against her ear. “Don’t cry. Another night, another day, and it will be over. You’ll have your father, the Society will be in tatters and we’ll all stand together at the Manor and raise our glasses to salute that we’ve accomplished what no one else but us would either believe or suspect—thank God. And then we’ll get on with our lives, and forget any of this ever happened. Can you do that? Can you wait just one more day, can you believe in the future?”

“I believe in you,” she said quietly.

He pressed another sweet kiss against her neck. “Thank you.”

She disappeared into her own thoughts once again, her mind floating, touching on so many things, then flying off again. Just like the colorful butterfly she watched flutter from flower to flower.

After a time, be it moments or minutes, she asked Max a question. “What’s it like...having a home you always know will be there when you return, having a family?”