by Baird Wells
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. Her 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.
Arching her breasts forward, she beamed as though his presence was the fulfillment of her greatest desire. He was one of the keenest marks she had ever worked, perceptive and paranoid. No detail could be left to chance. Whom she knew and how she knew them, her family's loyalties; they couldn't be too ambitious or too frivolous. One contrary bit of information and he would make her and slit her throat before she drew enough breath to scream. “Your grace.”
“Mademoiselle.” His voice was as tight as his expression. Fouche snapped his hat and perched it on the shelf above him without breaking their gaze.
Olivia extended her right arm in response, palm face-up to display the broken-crown tattoo on her wrist.
Fouche recognized the mark. His bony shoulders dropped, tension draining from his frame. He pressed skeletal fingers into her hand, fixing her with a wolf's grin. “Mademoiselle, it is a supreme pleasure.”
* * *
Five guineas was highway robbery. The footman should have let him peer through the door's crack for half that sum. Who carried so much coin at a ball? And who employed such greedy servants?
Ah well. It was a seller's market. Ty made peace with his lighter pockets and adjusted an ear to better hear the exchange between his two very different prey.
Diana's ruse on the steps had been coldly sobering, a reminder that from here on he would have to be more vigilant, more thorough. He could allow her to do the dirty work, if he handled things correctly. Claiming the letters from her was preferable to dealing with Fouche and certainly more enjoyable. And if she botched the ruse, he could always take his turn after her, with one less pair of hands to interfere.
So far she was doing an admirable job of cultivating Fouche into low hanging fruit. The tattoo was a move of sheer brilliance; that sort of dedication was the hallmark of a good spy. For just a moment he gave in, indulging some admiration for his lovely adversary.
She was close to Fouche now, playing on her beauty and the intimate lighting afforded by a single lamp. He pressed an eye harder to the crack, to see her stroke Fouche's thin shoulder, laugh throatily at something he murmured into her ear. None of it was seductive in his estimation, nothing to rival the intrigued study he’d received in the ballroom or her bald satisfaction at catching him in the upper hall. To a man with a great deal of vanity, like the police minister, it must have been heady attention.
“No,” she laughed in reply to something Fouche had asked. “Marshal Davout.”
Fouche raked her over. “My old friend is so thoughtful.”
Davout was Napoleon's most unsinkable general. Fouche's acknowledgment of their renewed friendship confirmed suspicions that the man was a turncoat. Again.
Long graceful fingers pinched at Fouche's coat, just as they’d pinched at his own mask, and Ty held a breath as he watched. “He sent me to welcome you properly,” she cooed, “and see that you are satisfied in every fashion.”
Melodramatic, but Fouche responded predictably by stroking a withered knuckle up her cheek. “I have no doubt you are a… talented hostess.”
Her sweet vanilla musk clung to his clothes, a reminder of what they'd shared upstairs. Had she made him the same offer, they would not still be talking.
She was stripping off Fouche's coat with all the ease of peeling an orange, the man never once thinking to resist. She dropped it carelessly onto an empty peg. “Will you treat me to a waltz before dinner? In my experience, it increases one’s appetite.”
Fouche licked his thin purple lips. “I have arrived hungry.”
Her gasp when Fouche grabbed her arms and hauled her to him might have been genuine, but she masked it with a giggle and a sigh.
It took actual force of will, watching Fouche slobber over her neck. This was her job, and she had probably gone through the same charade a hundred times, but the idea of Fouche touching her churned his stomach.
Ty was glad he'd found restraint a few moments later. She did something with her arm he wished he could decode, slipping a hand under one side of her target's waistcoat, up the back, and out the armhole on the opposite side. And when her hand appeared again, it clutched three sealed letters. He blinked, not trusting his eyes on first glance. Perhaps he should check himself again, after their earlier encounter, to see what might be missing.
Fouche buried his face in her breasts, gathering fistfuls of red velvet with the uncouth eagerness of a rutting hog. Ty rolled his eyes. A woman should be charmed, seduced. It disgusted but didn't surprise him that Fouche lacked the skill for either one.
She could handle herself, he reasoned, and he doubted she needed his help. Let her do whatever it was she did, and he could claim the letters once they were out of Fouche's proximity.
Or he could interfere. Spare her and claim his prize double-quick.
At an undignified grunt from Fouche, Ty groaned, knowing he was going to help her.
What was he doing? There was no answer. He drew taut and rammed the door open with his shoulder. “Sarah! What in bloody hell are you doing? Who is he?”
Fouche went rigid, turning in such a hurry that his elbow nearly caught her in the face. He harpooned Ty with an accusing finger. “Who are you?”
“I'm her goddamned husband, sir!” There were few things more terrifying in close quarters than jealous husband.
Over Fouche's shoulder, Ty caught her slip the letters into her bodice without missing a step.
The game was fun when she played along. Not that they were on the same side, but there was no harm in make believe.
Ty raised a fist at his lovely goddess. “I told you last time I would throttle you publicly, and I mean to do just that!” He lunged left around Fouche and she went right. Darting by, he gave Fouche's shoulder two sharp pats. “Sorry, old hat! She's an incorrigible light skirt.”
“Ooh!” The insult earned him a glare, thrown over her shoulder so that she almost tripped on the coat rack.
On his second pass, Ty crooked an arm, hooked Fouche's neck, and squeezed. It was a delicate balance, not fracturing small bones or crushing the throat, applying just enough pressure to slow the blood and bring collapse. After the barest resistance, Fouche's long legs folded, and
he crumpled with a meaty thud against the tile.
Panting, Ty rested one hand on his knee, raking the other at her wide-eyed expression. “Come on, hand them over.”
“You cannot just leave him like that!” she protested. “Someone is bound to see.”
Her voice was an instrument, rich and musical. Soft, and surprisingly, very English.
Glancing left and right, he snatched the first handy cloak, tossing it with a half-effort over the boney heap. “There. Now give them to me.”
She tensed, sizing him up with slit eyes and Ty knew he had made a grave mistake. In circling Fouche, he had allowed her to gain the other side of the room. He raised a hand. “Don’t. I can outrun you any day of the week.”
She hovered at the door. When he pounced, she ran.
A primitive, instinctual part of him registered the door's creak a breath before he reached it. He skidded to a halt as it shuddered in the frame, just in time to miss catching a faceful of wood. “Open, you bloody heap of kindling!” he grumbled. The knob was old and loose; he cranked fully to the left and right before it finally unlatched.
Ty was sure of being right behind her, but as he passed through the hallway and the entry to the outside steps, there was no hint of her existence. His Roman goddess had vanished into thin air.
* * *
She had to get clear of the estate.
Olivia huddled in the carriage's foot well, catching her breath. She'd chosen one close enough to the house that she could climb in before the Fox caught up and far enough away that she could gain a decent head start if he decided to search in earnest. She would have run already, if she could be certain he wasn't right behind her. Without knowing the grounds well enough to make an educated escape, tearing through dark woods ahead of her sounded, at best, like a broken neck. No. Better to wait him out concealed, making a move in her own time.
The game was just between the two of them, but not for long. Even if they had not been heard by the guests, they had been seen. Two people tearing after one another through a crowded mansion merited some notice. Fouche would recover and realize in short order that his letters were gone, and some helpful reveler would point out their direction, giving her a whole new set of problems. Her own masquerade with the Fox, and whatever protection it had afforded, was over.