The Impostor

by Lang, Lily

  Leaving the man to fight the illusion, he rose to his feet, lifting Tessa with him. The blood spread rapidly across her white cloak.

  “Can you walk?” he asked, his voice low and harsh.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “The bullet only grazed me.”

  The sound of the shot had drawn more pursuers. They could hear the footsteps pounding toward them, and Sebastian could wait no longer. Holding Tessa upright, balancing heavily on his walking stick to support their combined weight, he led her into the closest mews. Panting heavily now, feeling the blood seeping between his fingers from the wound in her side, he forced Tessa onward, through mews and back alleys, along side streets and through the narrow spaces between houses.

  But their pursuers drew closer. As they passed a stable full of sleeping horses, and guarded by a large black mastiff, Sebastian heard them shouting, their footsteps quickening as they caught sight of Tessa’s white cloak glowing against the darkness of the night.

  He glanced down at Tessa. She breathed shallowly, her face pale and drawn. “Go,” she whispered. “Leave me.”

  His gaze fell on the snarling mastiff and the stable full of sleepy ponies. Leaving Tessa leaning against a wall, he drew his sword from his walking stick and brought it down hard across the mastiff’s chains. Then, unshackling the door of the stables, he roused all the horses with a light pat to the rump with the flat of his blade.

  The animals pounded down the streets, straight into their pursuers, who, shouting and cursing, scattered. Sebastian went to gather Tessa, and they set off once again into the darkness, through narrow streets and twisting lanes.

  They emerged at last on a major thoroughfare in Holburn. By now, Tessa was only half-conscious. Hoping their pursuers would not follow them onto the busy street, Sebastian hailed a hackney. The drunk and indifferent driver took no notice of Tessa’s pale face or bloodstained cloak.

  Sebastian helped her into the hired vehicle first, then lifted himself into the carriage seat beside her to hold her upright, and opened the hatch to convey instructions to the driver.

  As the carriage set off down the crowded street, he cradled Tessa close to him.

  “We’ll be home soon,” he said. “I’ll summon a physician.”

  She did not open her eyes. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said tightly. “Thanks to you. But you’ve been shot.”

  “I told you, the bullet just grazed me a little,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “You’re barely conscious,” said Sebastian roughly.

  Ignoring her protests, he reached down, pushing aside the ruined cloak, and beneath it, the tatters of her gown. The bullet had only grazed her, as she had told him, but it had left a long, deep gouge that was now oozing blood.

  “It’s just a flesh wound,” she said, trying to push away his hands. “I’ll be all right.”

  He did not bother to respond, instead reaching into his pocket and extracting a clean, neatly folded handkerchief. As he pressed it hard against the wound, her breath hissed from between her teeth, but she remained otherwise silent.

  After a moment she made an effort to raise herself next to him, keeping the cloak wrapped tightly around her though it was not cold in the carriage. She brushed back the loose hair from her face, then folded her hands very carefully in the skirts of her dress.

  They pulled up in front of a gleaming, graceful Palladian town house, and Tessa asked, “Is this your home?”

  He nodded. “I thought you might be comfortable here while I summoned a physician. Then I hoped we might speak.”

  Tessa nodded, pulling the voluminous hood of her cloak around her so it obscured her face and the dress that fit her small frame so poorly. He pushed the door of the carriage open and exited first, turning to help her down the steps. Her small, gloveless hand trembled in his own.

  After paying the coachman, he led her up the shallow marble steps to the front door of his townhouse, which swung open immediately. Coleman, his exceedingly proper butler, stood waiting to greet them.

  “My lord!” the man exclaimed, looking horrified at the sight of them. He hesitated, seemingly torn between proper butler behavior and curiosity. Finally, he ventured, “What became of your lordship’s carriage?”

  Sebastian did not look at his butler. He watched Tessa Ryder as she studied his hall, her expression absorbed.

  “It caught on fire,” said Sebastian. “Miss Ryder requires the services of a physician. Have one sent for immediately. Then have baths drawn for both of us, and prepare a bedchamber for Miss Ryder.”

  “Very good, my lord,” said Coleman, bowing, but Tessa now turned back to them, and held out her hand.

  “My lord,” she said, “I must speak with you immediately. Tonight.”

  Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Miss Ryder,” he said, “we have just been chased across all of London by a gang of American cutthroats. You have been shot at and are grievously wounded. You need rest. What is so important that it cannot wait until morning?”

  “Your life, my lord,” said Tessa.

  For the first time that night, Sebastian really looked at her, in the gleaming lamps of his hall. Tessa Ryder was no beauty. She had none of Jane’s ripe, melting loveliness, none of her ability to command a stage and a room.

  But the fierceness of her expression, the determination etched in each delicate line of her face, marked her with something beyond mere beauty, an inner strength and a power that rendered her sensitive features more compelling than physical perfection.

  As he watched her, something stirred in his mind, a memory perhaps, as though he had once known her a very long time ago, in a place he could not quite remember. There was something about the way she carried her head, something about the curve of her profile, that was hauntingly familiar.

  But he knew with great certainty he had never met Tessa Ryder before.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “Coleman, after the physician has tended to Miss Ryder, I will speak to her in the library. See to it there is a fire lit.” He glanced at Tessa one last time. She shivered in her ruined cloak, her face pale and drawn in the lamplight.

  “And have the kitchen send up some tea and toast,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  Three hours later, Sebastian sat in his library, absently massaging his left leg and nursing a glass of brandy. Flames crackled in the hearth, making the shadows dance like goblins around the room. When the door swung open, he looked up. Tessa entered the room.

  “You will forgive me if I do not rise, Miss Ryder,” he said.

  “Your leg pains you, sir?” she asked, coming into the center of the room. The firelight turned her hair into the polished gold of a Stradivarius. She looked considerably cleaner, but she was still pale and she moved very carefully.

  “I was wounded at Talavera,” said Sebastian. He poured a glass of brandy from the decanter and held it out to her. “I’m afraid it never fully recovered.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Tessa quietly.

  She stepped forward and accepted the glass. Her fingers brushed against his, the faintest of touches, but a jolt of heat burned across his nerve endings where their skin had met. She must have felt it too, because she drew her breath in sharply and jerked back, the glass slipping from her hand. It fell to the floor with a muffled thud, rolling across the carpet and beneath his chair.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She fell to her knees at his feet and bent forward, as though to reach for the glass, but straightened immediately with a wince, one hand going to her side.

  “Leave the glass,” he said sharply.

  He caught her hands in his own. A faint flush crept up her face at his touch and her gaze flew up to meet his.

  She was close enough to kiss. He could see the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat, and wondered what she would do if he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers.

  “But your carpet,” she breathed. “The brandy.”

  A stran
d of her loose hair fell across her forehead. He repressed an urge to brush it back.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “One of the maids will clean it up later. Sit before you hurt yourself further. The physician tells me your wound will heal nicely, but not if you pull at it.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Looking away, she pulled her hands free and rose to her feet. “Thank you. It was very good of you to send for him.”

  She took a chair opposite him. Sebastian tilted his head to one side. “Why did you do it?”

  “What?”

  “You pushed me out of the way,” he said. “You could have let me take the bullet instead. It was meant for me. Those men were not there to kill you.”

  She was silent for a long moment, and her mouth trembled briefly. Finally she said, “I came here because of a…a mission.”

  “I think it’s time you explained it to me then,” said Sebastian.

  She looked up at him with an expression he did not understand. For a moment, she seemed not to have heard his question. “You are aware now, I think, that Pierre Sevigny has returned,” she said at last.

  For a moment the room was utterly silent. Sebastian continued to study her.

  “As those Americans claimed affiliation with Sevigny, I am aware he has returned,” said Sebastian. “Only I was told you were working for him.”

  “You must be insane,” snapped Tessa. “I would never work for Sevigny. Who told you that?”

  “Sir Francis Hughes,” he said. “He was the one who told me that you would be at Carlton House tonight, disguised as Jane Cameron.”

  Tessa shook her head. “Francis Hughes?” she repeated. “When did you see Francis Hughes?”

  “Tonight. Just before the ball. “

  Tessa shook her head. “But that’s impossible,” she said. “Sevigny kidnapped Francis Hughes more than a year ago.”

  For a long moment, Sebastian stared at her. “Sevigny kidnapped Francis a year ago? Absurd. He was here only a few hours ago.”

  She shook her head. “You believe you saw Francis just an hour ago,” she said. “No doubt Sevigny took possession of your friend’s body. Did nothing seem amiss to you?”

  “No,” said Sebastian. He hesitated, trying to remember what Francis had been like during his brief visit a few hours before. He had seemed as charming and laughing as always as he sat in Sebastian’s study, using his telekinetic Gift with his usual casual ease. “I had no cause to suspect at the time that Sevigny had returned. Francis implied you were working alone, and you were merely seeking revenge.”

  “Revenge for what?” asked Tessa, looking even more bewildered.

  Sebastian cleared his throat. Somehow, it was difficult to repeat what Francis had said to the clear-eyed woman sitting before him. “Francis implied that you, ah, were Sevigny’s friend. His lover, to be precise.”

  “I see.” Tessa frowned. “But what cause would he have to—” She broke off, and he could all but see the wheels in her mind turning as she crossed her arms before her and paced the study floor. “I see,” she said at last. “Of course.”

  She trailed over to the window to gaze out into the night, her hair falling in thick ropes over her shoulders. “He would tell you that,” she said softly, almost as though she were speaking to herself. “It would get rid of both of his problems at once, if he could persuade you to kill me. What did Sevigny tell you, precisely?”

  “That I was to kill you. That you were here to kill me. What do you know of Sevigny, Miss Ryder?”

  “His is the only name the British were ever able to learn in relation to the League of the Imperial Eagle,” she said. She paused and frowned. “A truly absurd name, is it not? Worse even than the Omega Group.”

  Despite the events of the evening and the severity of the situation, Sebastian found himself smiling. The League of the Imperial Eagle was Field Marshal Marmont’s group of Gifted soldiers, the French equivalent of the Omega Group. And Tessa was right—their name was even more absurd than Omega Group.

  Then again, Omega Group was merely a nickname due to the fact that Wellington had always called them “a measure of last resort”. Wellington, whose own Gift was weak, had always resented the members of the group for having Gifts more powerful, and generally more useful, than his own.

  “In any event,” Tessa continued, “we know Sevigny has a Gift for possession.”

  Sebastian nodded. During the war, they had discovered Sevigny could corporeally enter another person’s body and take complete control. If the victim was Gifted, Sevigny could also control their Gift. It had never happened to Sebastian, but once or twice other members of the Omega Group had been possessed for some time before anyone noticed.

  Tessa asked, “Do you know what became of him after the war?”

  “No.” Sebastian shrugged. “The war ended. Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. It was over, finished. I presumed he and the other members of the League returned to Paris. It didn’t matter. I had no interest in tracking them down.”

  “He must have somehow managed to possess Francis,” said Tessa. “You are certain you noticed nothing amiss tonight?”

  “No, but I suppose that does not signify. After all, we discovered during the war that Sevigny can access the mind as well as the body of whomever he possesses. His performances can be very convincing.”

  Tessa nodded. “What else did Francis—that is, Sevigny—speak with you about?”

  For a moment Sebastian hesitated. Ought he tell her the truth? After all, if she was correct, he had already been deceived once tonight. He had no reason to trust yet another person linked to his past who had suddenly appeared asking about the Omega Group, when he had not heard the name spoken aloud in over six years.

  But as he looked at her, pale and slender in her plain dress, he remembered she had risked her own life to save his tonight. Most of the members of the Omega Group were missing or dead. Someone had bribed his coachman and set his carriage on fire. And the Americans who had pursued them through London had admitted to working for Sevigny.

  “He wanted to know about the Omega Group,” said Sebastian at last.

  Tessa’s brows drew together. “And what did you tell him?”

  “All I knew,” said Sebastian. He shook his head at his own stupidity. “I had no reason to prevaricate. Francis served aboard one of His Majesty’s ships-of-the-line on the Atlantic and would have known little about the Omega Group. When he indicated the information might be of some use to him in his investigations against you, I told him everything.”

  He looked down at the glass in his hands, feeling an unfamiliar flush of shame at having been taken in so easily.

  “Sevigny is excellent at what he does,” Tessa said gently. “It is his Gift. You need not blame yourself for believing his ruse. And in any event, I doubt what you told him matters. I believe Sevigny already knows most of what there is to know of the Omega Group. Did he tell you anything else?”

  Sebastian nodded slowly.

  “He told me that most of all the old members of the Omega Group are missing or dead,” said Sebastian.

  “I thought you said he pretended not to know much about the Omega Group?”

  “He indicated he was interested in the disappearances of Ron and Peter Howard a year ago and that the trail had led to you,” said Sebastian.

  “Ron and Peter Howard,” said Tessa, nodding.

  “Francis—Sevigny—indicated he had grown interested in their disappearance because he noticed that though they were only a pair of Kent blacksmiths, they were serving on Wellington’s staff.”

  Tessa looked briefly confused. “Why should that arouse any particular interest?” Her face cleared after a moment, and the expression that tightened her face might have been contempt. “Of course. Because Wellington is a notorious snob when it comes to birth and breeding. The fact that two former blacksmiths were serving on his staff would have set off alarm bells in the minds of anyone who knew him, or made a point of studying him.”

/>   Sebastian nodded.

  “Did he tell you the rest? That John Dudley was killed in Yorkshire six months ago? That Colquhoun Grant died in Aix-La-Chapelle, shot in the back in a dark alley? That Colonel Brown was beset by highwaymen on his way to visit his family, and that Dr. McGrigor disappeared last month?”

  Sebastian nodded mutely. Though it was the second time he had heard this litany of deaths and disappearances, he still felt a pang. These were the men with whom he had shared campfires and laughter and danger and fear for the first three years of the war. But after his return to England, he had not kept contact with the other members of Omega Group.

  Though they had been comrades during the early years of the war, the differences of their stations in life were vast. Colquhoun, with his Gift for languages, was a career military man, but John Dudley had been a Yorkshire farmer, a man who might have remained in his quiet village all his life if not for his Gift, the ability to shape-shift into an owl.

  They had all been good, brave men, and they had fought hard and well for England. Sebastian ached at the thought of their passing, and was ashamed that he had made little effort to remain friends after the war.

  Perhaps if he had, they would not have vanished or died as they had done.

  “He said you were the one responsible, and I was the last one on your list,” said Sebastian, after awhile. “Some sort of vengeance for Sevigny, I suppose. I ought to have pressed for more details, but he indicated I had to leave immediately, in order to meet you at Carlton House.”

  “What I wish to know is how he knew I would be at Carlton House tonight,” said Tessa.

  “You told no one of your plans?”

  “No one,” said Tessa.

  “Perhaps it is time you told me your story, Miss Ryder.”

  “Yes,” said Tessa. “Of course. I hardly know where to begin.” She closed her eyes and drew a breath, making the gentle swell of her breasts rise and fall. “It was my father who discovered the truth. As the old members of the Omega Group disappeared one by one, he realized something was amiss. He guessed all of you would be in danger.”