The Impostor Page 10

  “I’ll get over it,” she said, her voice faintly muffled by the pillow. “I did, once before.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You never stopped loving me and you never will. You told me yourself.”

  “Arrogant man!” She attempted to pry herself loose from him, but he pressed his lips to her shoulder and held her still. “Suppose that it is true then. Suppose that some part of me loves you forever.” She drew back far enough to look at him fully, and her eyes were dark and tender in the shadows. “Even if you always hold some small piece of my heart, Sebastian, the rest of me will live a good life without you. I have been happy without you. I can be happy without you again.”

  “Perhaps you can,” he said, “but I cannot. After you left, Tessa, and I returned to England, it was as though a bright light had gone out in my life. For years I have been existing in some kind of purgatory. I thought I wanted peace. I thought it would be enough to be content. But now—with you—you make me feel alive again, alive and happy and at peace in a way I have not been since I was a child. You make me feel new. You make me feel as though I had been born again. You make me feel.”

  “It isn’t me, Sebastian,” she said. “It’s—everything. The war and your wound and the memories, they all became demons. When I came back, I let you face them, you could face them, because I was there with you in Spain, because I understand. But I am not meant for you. What we share now, this isn’t your life. Your life is London and ballrooms and all this. I am not of your world.”

  He pressed his lips against her hair. “We are all of the same world, Tessa,” he said gently.

  “How little you understand. It is not only you, Sebastian, who would suffer for my want of wealth and connections. What of children? Have you thought of what it would mean for someone like me to become the mother of your children? You would want for them all the things that you had yourself.”

  He grew still at the thought of children, the children that this woman, this woman he loved, would bear for him. A son with her golden eyes. A daughter with her long soft curls. He had to swallow past a lump in his throat. “What I had, Tessa, was a grandfather who despised me. I grew up in a big, elegant house where there was no laughter and no love. I do not want that for my children. Did you hear nothing of what I said to you tonight?”

  She touched his face gently. “When this all over,” she said quietly, “I am returning to Wycombe.”

  “I won’t let you go.”

  “You can’t make me stay,” she said. “I won’t be your mistress and I can’t be your wife.”

  “You can be my wife,” he said. “You will be my wife. We can be married, quietly, in the country. We can go to Grenville Park.”

  “It is a dream, Sebastian,” she said, but there was longing in her voice, and he felt a moment of triumph. She loved him. He could persuade her to stay. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder again. “Let us not talk of this anymore, Tessa. Please. It is a beautiful night. We can fight again in the morning.”

  “Yes,” she said, putting her arms around his neck and drawing him close.

  He kissed her, and she was small and slender and perfect in his arms. She had told him that she was leaving him, but he would find a way to make her stay. For now, for this moment, she was his, completely. It was enough.

  Long after Sebastian had fallen asleep, Tessa lay awake and stared at the ceiling, dry-eyed and still. She knew what she must do. She was not ashamed of what they had done here, out of love, but she knew it was wicked to lie with a man when they were not married. Still, it was just one night, one night of memories to hold against her heart in the thousands of lonely nights that would follow. Surely God would not deny her this one small comfort. Surely He would forgive her this one transgression.

  She gazed down at Sebastian’s sleeping form. He reminded her of a sculpture, Michelangelo, perhaps, all that perfect musculature hard as marble. But she was no artist, and there was no way for her to capture this moment. She tried to etch him into her memory.

  He gave a small, contented sigh in his sleep as he pressed his face against her shoulder. His breathing was deep and peaceful. He did not dream, and when the clock struck midnight, she, too, slept.

  Chapter Twelve

  The heat woke Tessa. Tucked against Sebastian’s side, his arm thrown around her waist, she felt as though she were roasting in the great canopied bed. Fretfully, she tried to struggle free of his heavy weight, kicking at the blankets, but even the air was warm and heavy.

  She came awake suddenly. It took her a moment to understand what she saw, that the red glow was not a remnant of a dream or nightmare.

  The entire room was ablaze. Flames licked at the curtains, at the furniture, at the bedposts. The air was acrid with smoke.

  Terrified, she raised herself to her knees to shake Sebastian awake. Coughing and choking, she cried his name.

  His eyes opened, growing black with horror as he took in the blazing inferno of the room. “Tessa,” he rasped, “Oh God, Tessa.”

  She knew, though he said nothing else, that he was reliving Talavera once again.

  “It’s all right, Sebastian, it’s all right!” she choked.

  Her eyes streaming, she looked down at him through the black haze. She gazed wildly around her.

  The smoke on the ground was less thick.

  “We have to go onto the floor,” she whispered.

  Together, they rolled down onto a section of the rug not yet aflame. The roar of the fire had grown louder, and orange flames danced everywhere, sending sparks down that pricked at their skin. She could wait no longer. There was a clear path from where they lay to a door just ten feet away, which Tessa knew led to an unoccupied antechamber intended to serve as a valet’s bedroom.

  Her lungs burning, she steered Sebastian across the carpet, snatching up his discarded breeches and a dressing gown left hanging over a chair along the way. When they had reached the antechamber, she shut the door to keep out as much smoke as possible.

  Sebastian coughed violently. She threw his breeches at him and tied his robe around her.

  The room had a single small window. Tessa looked out, then hastily drew her head back in. All of Montague House was aflame, great tongues of fire bursting through most of the other windows, all reaching for the sky.

  Next to the window was a door that no doubt led to the servants’ stairs. She reached it for, but as she pulled it open she a huge wave of heat blasted her. The fire had spread up the stairwell.

  They were well and truly trapped.

  She turned back to the room, where Sebastian lay on the floor, coughing and retching, still in the grips of his worst nightmare.

  Was it her imagination, or was the smoke in the room dissipating, the roar of the fire from the bedchamber outside dying? She reached for the door again, but before she could pull it open, a cool, calm voice spoke quite distinctly from the bedchamber.

  A voice she recognized with sudden horror and understanding. “They’re in here somewhere,” said Jane Cameron. “You can kill Montague, but Ryder wants his daughter alive. She isn’t to be harmed.”

  The footsteps were drawing closer. Tessa pressed herself to the ground and peered out at the bedchamber from under the door. She could see three pairs of feet moving across the ruined carpet, pausing now and again to fling open wardrobes and lift curtains.

  She raised herself back to her knees, glancing wildly around the anteroom. There was no escape, with the fire blocking the servants’ stairs, and the window so high above the ground.

  So Tessa did the only thing she could think of. She reached for Sebastian’s hand, and he gripped it unthinkingly. Then, before he realized what she intended, she opened her mind to the transformation.

  “No!” Sebastian snarled. He tried to release her hand and break the link, but it was too late. She hardly noticed the agony of her stretching bones and popping joints, wanting only for it to be done quickly, before they were discovered. Her skin had hardly resettled over her
massive new muscles when the door flew open.

  Jane Cameron, dressed in men’s clothing, her flaming hair tucked beneath a cap, stood in the doorway, framed by the burnt room, where a few fires still smoldered on the carpet and furniture. When she saw the two Sebastians, side by side on the floor, neither fully conscious, she stared for a long moment.

  And then she laughed.

  “You know, Tessa Ryder,” she said, glancing between the two of them, “I think if we had known each other at a different time and different place, we might have friends.”

  Tessa closed her eyes, not wishing to look up into that beautiful face with its crown of flame-red hair, afraid of giving herself away. The pain had not yet diminished and she had difficulty breathing.

  “I am Montague,” said Tessa, and her voice was Sebastian’s, deep and rough. “Leave her.”

  Sebastian attempted to speak, but his smoke inhalation must have been worse than hers. Nothing but a faint rasp emerged.

  Jane arched a perfect eyebrow. “It would be convenient if I could simply shoot you both. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to injure the wrong person. Edward would object most strenuously if I sliced open his daughter.”

  She snapped her fingers, and the two large, burly men who had been standing behind her awaiting her orders, now stepped into the room.

  “You are correct, Miss Ryder,” Jane continued, still addressing both Tessa and Sebastian. “Until I determine which one of you is the true Montague, I will have to keep you both alive. Unfortunately for Montague, I am certain your father can sort this out rather quickly. “

  One of the men reached down and quickly bound Tessa’s hands and feet, then slung Tessa over his shoulder; the other did the same with Sebastian, who made no effort to resist as the rope was pulled tight over his wrists.

  They were carried through the burnt remains of Montague House. Tessa could only pray the servants had all made their escapes. They were carried out into the dark, cool night, and then tossed into a carriage waiting at the front steps. Jane climbed inside, careless of their fingers as she did so, but the two men climbed up onto the box, and after a moment, the carriage set off.

  Tessa lay with her face squashed against the floor of her carriage, trying to draw deep, even breaths. Sebastian faced her, while Jane sat on the seat, keeping a pistol trained on both of them.

  “Tell me, Jane,” said Tessa. “How long have you been working for Sevigny?”

  “How long have I been working for Sevigny?” Jane gave a light laugh. “We have been lovers for years. I was with a traveling troupe for some time. We met while I was traveling through Paris.”

  “May I presume you only became my mistress because Sevigny asked it of you?”

  “Yes,” said Jane coldly. “I was only ever your mistress—if you are indeed Montague—because Pierre wanted me to spy on you. I was the natural choice. You didn’t truly believe I could care for a hideous and crippled man like you?”

  “Sevigny is using you, Jane,” said Tessa. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Jane. “He loves me.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sebastian unexpectedly. His voice was still harsh with smoke. “But he will never love you as much as he loves his emperor.”

  “Nonsense,” said Jane, but uncertainty flickered in her eyes.

  “If his love for you was enough for him, he would not go through all this trouble to bring a sick and dying old man back to France,” said Tessa. “Sevigny’s first love will always be the empire. If he loved you, why would he ask you to become the lover of another man, his greatest enemy?”

  “Shut up,” said Jane, her eyes kindling with rage. “Shut up! You know nothing of my relationship with Sevigny. Nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Jane,” said Tessa. Her voice was apologetic. “The Omega Group never knew anything about you, I confess, but we kept extensive files on Sevigny. Did you know, for example, that he kept mistresses in Salamanca and Madrid, as well as two different ones in Paris? While you were spying for him in London—I presume that is what you were doing in London after 1810—he was keeping quite the string of doxies all across Spain and France.”

  Jane raised her pistol. It shook wildly in her hand. “Shut up, you monster! I hate you, I hate your ugly face—”

  She broke off. While Tessa watched, she began to choke and gasp, the pistol dropping from her hands as she struggled against the illusion of black water that Tessa knew Sebastian, staring intently up at her, was now projecting.

  The actress struggled to breathe, and Tessa allowed her transformation to fall away. As she shrank back into her own form, the cords binding her hands became loose, and she wriggled free and grabbed the pistol. Then, before Sebastian could kill her, she raised the butt of the weapon and brought it down hard on Jane’s head.

  The actress crumpled into a heap.

  She fell to her knees and freed Sebastian of his bonds.

  “What took you so long?” she demanded in an undertone.

  “I couldn’t be sure I could project an illusion strong enough to overwhelm her just yet,” he said shortly.

  “What are we going to do now?” Tessa asked, climbing onto the seat and pushing Jane onto the floor before giving her dressing gown belt a tug to secure it more firmly.

  “I intend to go wherever those thugs are taking us,” said Sebastian, his voice still hoarse and rasping. He rolled his shoulders to work out the kinks. “I am going to rescue Francis, and the Howard brothers, and Dr. McGrigor, and whoever else Sevigny might be holding. And then I am going to destroy the Neptune.”

  “Right then,” said Tessa. “I hope you have a plan.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The carriage continued to move with great rapidity through the darkened streets of London. Tessa was not surprised to see they were moving east and staying close to the river.

  It was some time later they finally halted in front of a series of tall warehouses that faced out toward the river. In the darkness, she could make out the shapes of ships further down the river, anchored to a series of quays.

  “Are you ready?” Sebastian asked.

  Despite the danger, despite her fear for her father, Tessa found herself smiling at him in the shadows. “This is not our first adventure, Sebastian,” she said. She reached out a hand and touched his jaw briefly.

  He smiled back.

  As the carriage drew to a halt, Tessa glanced down at the dark shape of Jane Cameron, still unconscious but now wrapped in the dressing robe, and securely trussed with the bonds that had held Sebastian. Tessa had transformed some time ago into the actress, and had donned Jane’s clothing—men’s breeches, shirt, waistcoat and a cap to confine the flaming hair.

  As the carriage door swung open, she stepped down and directed one of the hired thugs inside, knowing Sebastian would make short work of him. When Sebastian emerged presently, somewhat tousled but otherwise unharmed, the second thug gave a horrified exclamation, but before he could sound an alarm, Tessa gave his thick skull a tap with the butt of the pistol she had taken from Jane, and he promptly sank to the ground.

  “You are disconcertingly skilled at rendering men unconscious with that,” said Sebastian.

  “You were the one who taught me how to do it, Sebastian,” she said.

  “I remember,” he said. “I must say, I am an excellent instructor.”

  She returned his smile and he permitted her to bind his hands once again. Then, pistol in hand, they started toward the great, fortress-like warehouse with its gates and high walls. It stood along a stretch of riverside road that was otherwise empty.

  Tessa made an effort to access memories of Jane’s that might help them.

  “There are guards all around, inside and outside,” she said. “Jane would enter through the side door.” She looked around and pointed. “There.”

  As she had predicted, a guard stood at the door, but when he recognized her he tipped his cap and permitted them to enter unmolested.
Tessa made a show of prodding Sebastian forward with her pistol.

  They found themselves in a great workshop that opened directly onto the river, which lapped lazily at the building’s side. Dozens of lanterns hanging from chains over the rafters illuminated the area. The workshop had no windows looking out onto the streets, but a glowing square on the far side of the great room seemed to mark the window of an office. Someone moved within it.

  Benches, tools and great sheets of metal lay scattered at random. More guards stood posted inside. Tessa counted swiftly. There were five of them, all looking vaguely menacing if also stupid, and all carrying weapons of some kind.

  But what nearly took Tessa’s breath away was a large, dark ship that seemed to fill the entire amount of open space. She had never seen such a bizarre-looking vessel in her life. It was shaped like a long teardrop with a clear glass dome on top of it and seemed to be constructed entirely of copper. A fan-shaped sail rose above it like a rooster’s coxcomb. A man she recognized as one of the Howard brothers, looking unkempt and malnourished, stood on one side of the ship, lifting several huge copper plates and sending them soaring upwards to graft onto an exposed iron rib.

  In front of her, Sebastian swore softly.

  At that moment, Ronald Howard turned and saw her. As she watched, Sevigny separated from the older man, leaving Ronald Howard’s unconscious body lying on the ground, and started toward her.

  The Frenchman was tall and fair, his hair gleaming like gold threads beneath the flickering lamp light. He was dressed plainly but expensively, and as he crossed the length of the workshop he smiled at her.

  “Jane—” he said, then broke off abruptly as the great front doors swung open with a creak and groan.

  They all turned. A figure, wrapped in a silk robe, came hurtling into the workshop, but as she passed the stairs that led up to the office, Sevigny, not recognizing her with the blood from the wound in her temple streaking her face grotesquely, had already raised his pistol and fired.