by Lara Archer
And after a while, all distressing thoughts left her, and everything in her was warm and pink and relaxed.
The tub was so big she could slide her bottom down far enough to plunge her head beneath the fragrant water, and use her fingers to flick out every bit of dirt that had embedded itself in her scalp. She let herself float, let the soft rocking of the water caress her and the tendrils of her hair sweep gently against her face. She imagined this was what creatures of the sea felt like, afloat in their shifting, impermanent homes.
At long last, though, she came up for air, whisking soapy water out of her eyes.
“Glad to see you breathing,” said a deep voice.
She squealed and covered herself with both hands, though she was fairly sure the soap lather kept most of her from view. “Sebastian!”
“I was beginning to think you’d decided to drown yourself.”
If she was going to keep thoughts of him out of her mind, having him alone with her while she was so warm and naked could not possibly be a good idea. “Get out of here,” she told him. “I was enjoying my privacy.” She scooped up a handful of foamy water, and hurled it at him. It splashed futilely on the wall a foot away.
He grinned. “If that’s your best aim, I suggest you climb out and repel me by brute force. We might both enjoy it.” Ah, so he was back in his teasing mode.
He was also dressed in the trousers and shirt of a fashionable nobleman again. He stood in the doorway as if he belonged there, one hip cocked casually against the doorjamb, sipping from a steaming mug of what smelled like coffee.
A blush flamed over her cheeks, and she tried to pretend it hadn’t. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I have no intention of ever leaving this tub.”
“Why ever not? Modesty should be well beyond us by now.”
“I wasn’t concerned with modesty.” Truth be told, having him stand there in his shirtsleeves sent ripples of sensation through her. She thought of the feel of his shirt under her hands when they lay together in the cabin of the Calliope, and it wasn’t doing anything good for her self-control.
Anyway, he was the one who’d insisted they wouldn’t touch one another again.
Now he was flirting with her? And in that cynical way that meant he had no real intention of acting on his words?
She was tired of his shifting, mercurial moods, the way he went from tender to cruel, from seductive to heartless in the blink of an eye. She knew why he did it—it gave him the upper hand, kept her off balance.
Well, she could throw him off balance, too.
Suddenly daring, she raised an eyebrow at him. “Care to join me in here? It’s quite large enough. And this water is wonderfully warm.”
He seemed to consider for a moment, but then he frowned. “Alas, I have bathed already.”
The flush of heat in her cheeks deepened, but she still pretended perfect composure. She could play at indifference just as well as he could. “I don’t see why anyone ever leaves a warm bath,” she sighed. “At Stone Cottage, we bathed with cold water from a basin. And the Greeleys allowed me a tub, but the water they allowed was scarcely lukewarm. Terrible waste of the fires, heating water for mere governesses, especially ones who already had the irritating habit of demanding food to eat and air to breathe.”
“I’ve surprised these Greeleys never met with fatal accidents while you were there. Sal would have arranged something spectacular, in your place.”
“But I don’t engage in violence, I’ve told you that.”
“Hmm. Lucky for the Greeleys then. Well, you look very tired. I suppose it’s off to bed with you?”
“After I read a bit to Eva. If you’d just leave long enough for me to get a towel.”
He picked up the lovely, white, fluffy Turkish thing Evangelina had left on the same small table with the lavender soaps, another delicious bit of luxury Rachel had been looking forward to getting used to.
“You mean this?” he drawled, rather ominously.
“Yes.”
He was holding it, tauntingly, just out of reach.
“Put that back on the table, please.”
“Oh, now, at least let me do the gentlemanly thing and help you from your bath.” He gave her a villain’s leer from a pantomime. “I’d be more than pleased to dry you off, and rub you down until you glow.”
Now he was back to his patently artificial flirting. Why? What on earth was he up to?
“Your towel, madame?” he asked, waggling it two feet in front of her.
She grinned. “Fetch me my pistol first.”
“I thought you did not engage in violence.”
“I’m reconsidering.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, flinging the towel over his shoulder and sauntering out the door.
“Blast you, Sebastian! Bring that back this instant! Where on earth are you going?”
“To bed, of course.”
She had to shout loud enough for her voice to reach his retreating form down the hallway.
“Bring it back!”
But there was no answer from him. She saw the edge of his shoulder as he disappeared into his room.
A suspicious instinct began to niggle at her. She lay quietly as she could in her bath and listened for sounds of him coming out of his room again. It took ten minutes, and the water was becoming disappointing cool, but at last she saw the edge of his shoulder flick by again in the hallway. This time wearing an expensive tailcoat over his shirt.
“Where are you going?” she called out, loud enough that he couldn’t possibly pretend not to have heard her.
He hesitated. She could tell he was on the point of lying to her. “Out. Briefly. To get a drink.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty to drink in the kitchens.”
“And to check up one or two old acquaintances. Colleagues.” His back was still turned towards her. “Nothing of import.”
“Colleagues? Then shouldn’t I come with you?”
“No need.”
“We’re supposed to be working together. I’m supposed to go out and be seen, aren’t I? To let Victoire de Laurent know I’m . . . back in town.”
“You should rest tonight,” he said repressively. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.”
“I don’t require rest. I wish to do something productive.”
“Well—if you must know, I was going to visit a woman.” He did turn around now and poked his head back inside the bathing room, a challenging look on his face. “An old friend.”
“Business, then?”
“Of a sort. The oldest sort. You would not be welcome.” He turned on his heel then, and headed off down the hallway and down the stairs.
She sunk down into the water again. Damn him.
Something wasn’t right here. He’d told her on board ship that he didn’t frequent whores. And the revulsion on his face when he spoke of how Murdoch had treated Sarah convinced her he meant it.
So why was he implying he was headed to such a place? And why had he played that idiotic game with her towel? He was hiding something from her. He didn’t want her coming with him—and not because he was visiting some woman of ill repute.
She waited until the downstairs door slammed, and Sebastian’s voice on the step outside, speaking to the carriage driver, and the sound of hoof beats and grinding carriage wheels pulling away from the house.
Then she called for Evangelina to bring her another towel—and the gown she’d offered earlier.
She had to apologize for postponing their reading.
She was Sal, and, given what she knew of Sal’s life, no one would question her if she demanded to dress and leave for the night herself. And surely no one would question her request to be taken wherever it was Sebastian had gone. There was a certain thrill and power in the knowledge.
Chapter Thirteen
Sebastian pressed his Venetian mask to his face as he navigated the halls of the ornate villa belonging to the Conde de Orte-Saldana. The women, faces carefully concealed with velvet or feat
hers or satin, were already half-unlaced from their gowns. The men, a colorful mix of Spanish grandees, exiled French aristos, and rich Portuguese and Moorish traders, were drunker even than usual, carousing through the gilded rooms and bumping into priceless antiques as if they were hay bales.
It was, after all, the apocalypse. Word had reached them this morning that Napoleon’s army would be at the city walls within days, and all this wealth, all this freedom would be taken from them as cleanly and heartlessly as a trapper strips the pelt from an otter.
The rank air—full of the smell of cigars and drink and sex and fear—nearly gagged him. He’d already passed two pairs openly coupling in the corners of rooms, and it wasn’t yet midnight. Before another hour had passed, there’d be an outright bacchanal.
He wished himself back in that little bathing room in Rosa’s house, bright with candlelight and scented with lavender.
With Rachel.
But at least she didn’t have to be here, exposed to this.
An agent of Mawbry’s had come by Rosa’s as soon as he knew Sebastian had arrived, carrying reliable intelligence the Conde was hosting a masked entertainment tonight. The report also said that in the past two weeks, the Conde had taken a new lover—a golden-haired woman. Mawbry’s agent speculated it might be Victoire de Laurent under yet another assumed name, exchanging her beauty for the Conde’s extensive stores of gold. She might attend tonight to bleed off a bit more of his wealth before he lost it all.
Oh, how she must be exulting now.
Three months ago, she’d won a spectacular victory against the English—making fools of England’s most experienced agents and slaughtering one of them. And now her French master was poised to seize this city, and no doubt reward her handsomely for clearing his path to victory.
Had word reached her yet that the Marquess of Hawkesbridge was back on Spanish soil, once more assuming his identity as a wealthy but harmless Dutch merchant, and ripe for another round of humiliation at her hands? And the more critical question: had she heard that Salomé Mirabeau, whose murder she’d witnessed with her own eyes, whose murder she’d ordered, was still alive?
Unless he seriously missed his guess, that book Sal found was still dangerous enough to the French that Victoire would risk a great deal to get it back. Finding it might give him the opportunity to strike a serious blow at Napoleon before the tyrant sunk his hooks too deeply into the flesh of Spain.
He took the stairs to the upstairs gallery to get a view of the ballroom and main hall, but that showed him only greater numbers of carousers bumping and drifting through the rooms, filling the air with their desperately raucous laughter.
And then at last his quarry came into view. The Conde strode in first, pushing his way through a small throng of his guests, his booming voice unmistakable.
And then he saw the lady with him.
Hatred spiked through his chest.
No question: it was Victoire. Her beauty was unchanged, the gold of her hair as bright as ever, her slim body still as porcelain-white as it had been three months before. In his mind’s eye, she’d taken on the hideousness of a demon, her flesh scaled, her eyes turned to burning coals. It surprised him to see her still human.
She did have a spangled, deep-blue Venetian mask up over her eyes, so perhaps those had indeed transformed, just as he’d imagined.
In her gown of midnight silk, cut low at the bosom and narrow at the hips, and with her lips stained scarlet, she at least looked like the temptress she was. Not quite the innocent baker’s daughter she’d played for him.
How had he mistaken her youth and beauty for innocence? Why had he assumed he could manipulate her, rather than the other way around?
He saw her give a flick of her fan, her slim fingers splayed across the ivory handle. The same fingers that tore at his scalp in his nightmares.
Well, she was in his sights now. He’d track her from here tonight, follow her to the mouth of hell if he had to. He’d make her talk—make her tell him the name of every last agent who’d conspired in what happened the night Sal died. And he’d make her pay.
Rachel could stay safe at home, with Rosa and Evangelina, enjoying her bath.
They hadn’t needed her after all. Napoleon himself had flushed this quarry out of hiding.
Victoire walked on into the next room, out of Sebastian’s sight. He moved swiftly along the gallery, back down the stairs, ready to fight through the crowds blocking the way to the back rooms of the house.
And then he received a shock: at the other end of the corridor, pushing her way from behind a wall of drunken men, he glimpsed a very familiar auburn-haired beauty, in a familiar emerald-green gown. Sal.
His vision wavered; the air grew hot.
And then his reason reasserted itself. Not Sal. Rachel.
Dear God.
Rachel was here. Alone. With Victoire in the house.
His limbs went heavy as lead. Damn it all. Of course she hadn’t listened to him and stayed home. He’d underestimated her will, and her ingenuity.
Before he could muscle through the crowd, she vanished again.
No. No, no, no. Rachel had no weapon with her. She shouldn’t be here. She’d been meant to lure Victoire into plain sight, with Sebastian right beside her to deal with the she-devil. Rachel wouldn’t know what to do if Victoire confronted her directly.
After what seemed like an eternity jostling through drunkards to search the interconnected maze of rooms, he was ready to tear the damned house from its foundations.
Rachel could be anywhere in these rooms. Victoire could have her already. She could be slumped in a lightless corner with her life’s-blood pooling around her. He shoved harder at the throng of bodies around him, working his way towards the back of the house.
At long last, as he was passing through a darkened music room near the back of the villa, the sound of low female voices suddenly carried from a connecting parlor, behind a half-closed door.
He crept forward in the shadows and looked in through the crack along the hinges.
A wave of horror swept over him: Rachel stood with her back to the door, and just a few feet beyond her was Victoire, her mask lowered, her blue eyes bright with hatred.
A far too familiar scenario.
His pistol was in his hand in an instant. A kick to the door, and he’d have a shot.
He waited, though—a heartbeat, two, three. The women were alone, tensed like pugilists, but not moving. Victoire had no weapon he could see. And her face was pale: Victoire looked terrified.
She was, of course, seeing a ghost.
Sweat prickled along his back, but he forced himself to keep still. Victoire might have a weapon concealed, and he didn’t want to startle her into using it.
And if the sight of Salomé Mirabeau unsettled her, who knows what she might reveal.
Rachel had volunteered for this. It galled him to admit it, but she deserved a chance to see what she could do. And as much as he ached for Victoire’s death, getting knowledge from her was far more important. At least for now. And to get that knowledge, he needed the witch alive.
“I don’t know what devil you made a deal with,” Victoire was saying in French, her voice marred by an unfamiliar tremolo. “You should be dead.”
“There were no devils involved,” replied Rachel in the same language, her tone admirably cool. Good girl—even to his ears, she had the sound of Sal. “Your assassins do sloppy work. I’ll carry scars the rest of my life. But I live.”
Victoire’s face darkened, shadowing with anger. “Not for long. I regret that I have come tonight with no knife. But I don’t fear you. If you knew how to use what you’ve got your hands on, you would have, weeks ago.”
Sebastian willed Rachel to answer carefully. If she misspoke, if she revealed she didn’t know any details about what Sal had gotten her hands on, she was dead.
“I was injured, remember?” said Rachel. “They took me to England, to heal. Away from my possessions.”
Good. Smart girl.
Victoire flinched at her words. No, wherever that book was, Victoire definitely hadn’t retrieved it when she captured Sal. And that fact clearly angered her. So it was valuable, still. Dangerous to the French if decoded.
“For that time,” said Rachel, “I was quite useless. And I dislike feeling useless.” She took a step forward. “I promise you will regret inconveniencing me.” Dear Lord, she was goading Victoire.
His grip on his weapon tightened.
A look of scorn crossed the French spy’s lovely face. “You have had luck so far, but luck will not always hold. Had I been the one to wield that knife, I would not have held back so much as an inch of the blade.”
“Foolish of you, then, to let someone else do your work. You should find more trustworthy partners.”
“Trustworthy?” Abruptly, Victoire laughed. “You say that without irony? The spies of England speak so much of loyalty, yet betray the ones they love at the slightest provocation. I am not the fool here. I turned Robert Ehlert, the firmest of you. And I’ve turned others—you don’t even know whom. Men are easy to manipulate. Beware, Mirabeau, whom you make your bed with.”
Rachel stiffened. “I know enough to choose wisely.”
“Do you? Well, I won’t be the one to enlighten you. But you’ve just proved you cannot read what that book. Le Merveil has outdone himself, if even Salomé Mirabeau cannot break his cipher.”
Rachel’s nerves were clearly wearing thin—her hands clenched and unclenched behind her back. He could burst into the room now, take Victoire. Get Rachel the hell away from her.
But Victoire was not done talking. Her eyes glittered maliciously. “Perhaps you will learn to read that notebook after all, or perhaps the truth will dawn on you some other way before the French army arrives.” Sebastian knew that look. Victoire was calculating. She was setting a snare. “I hope so,” the Frenchwoman said, “so I can watch you suffer even before you go to the guillotine.”