The Impostor Read online

  “Go,” said Sebastian. “Now!”

  “If it is Sevigny, it might better if we both—”

  “I said go.”

  At the harshness of his tone, Tessa took a step back, and then another, an ache rising in her throat. How many times had Sebastian said those words to her over the years, in Portugal and in Spain, as he sought to protect her during missions gone wrong?

  But of course, he did not remember, she thought, or he would have realized that now, as then, she had absolutely no intention of obeying.

  She snuffed her own candle, pressing herself backwards against the wall near the archway that led to the next room, and drew her pistol. The complete darkness was disorienting. The footsteps and the voices grew louder, and then the bronze door flew open with a great rattle and crash.

  Two figures stood framed against the daylight. The bronze door opened directly onto a quay beneath the house, and beyond was the river, bracken and sluggish. As the intruders stepped into the chamber and glanced around, the seraphim that guarded the door came alive.

  Even knowing it was only an illusion, Tessa’s stomach contracted with fear. The two great statues, their eyes burning, rose into the air, their wings beating like hearts, each bearing a great flaming sword.

  As one of them brought down his weapon in a great, wide arc, the face of Francis Hughes, reflected in the bright, orange glow, gazed up in absolute terror at the stone face of the seraph. In the same heartbeat, she realized that to kill Sevigny while he possessed Francis’s body would be to kill Francis as well.

  Sebastian must have come to the same conclusion. Both seraphim winked out of existence, becoming once again only stone statues that guarded the brass door.

  The second intruder reacted immediately. Raising one hand, he shot a long stream of flames into the room, which unraveled like the frayed end of a rope, each strand twisting through the room to ignite into separate fires. A broken Roman table to Tessa’s right burst into flames, and stifling a cry, still holding her pistol steady, she scrambled backwards, deeper into the shadows. A shard of broken glass dug into the palm of her free hand, but she ignored the pain.

  “Can you see him?” asked Sevigny in Francis’s bright American accent.

  The second intruder’s voice was low and soft. “No.”

  “Come on, Montague,” said Sevigny, his voice taunting. “We know you’re in here. You can come out or we can set the whole place on fire. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Montague? Didn’t get enough of fire at Talavera?”

  Sevigny stepped into the next room, staying close to the walls, but the second intruder walked straight into the center of the room, streaking fire through the air with his hands. He was a slender man, much shorter than Sevigny, and he wore a cap pulled low over his head.

  Tessa trained the pistol on his chest and gently squeezed the trigger.

  A terrible cry echoed, and then the flames in the room winked out. The second intruder crumbled into the wreckage of the room, clutching at his shoulder, where a dark stain spread over his shirt. Tessa noticed dispassionately that she had missed her mark: she had been aiming for his heart.

  “Montague!” roared Sevigny, reappearing in the doorway. When he realized what had happened to his companion, he contorted Francis Hughes’s face into an expression of pure rage.

  Tessa raised her pistol again, taking aim. But before she could squeeze the trigger a second time, footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned her head, sensing movement.

  A short, round, aging man, his bald head gleaming even in the darkness, stood gazing down at her from the bottom steps of the stairway.

  Tessa lowered the pistol. She took a step back, and then another, barely noticing the crunch of chessmen beneath her feet, her thoughts flying like panicked birds inside her head.

  And in that moment, before she could decide how to react, the man immobilized her with a thought.

  “Hello, my dear,” said Edward Ryder. His tone was gently chiding as he took the pistol from her stiff fingers. “This is really no way to greet your father.”

  As Sevigny came hurtling back into the chamber, Sebastian flattened himself against a wall, pulling the thin sword from inside his cane and balancing it in one hand. It was strange, he thought, to hear Francis’s familiar voice shouting his name with such rage and hatred.

  The second intruder, still lying in a crumbled heap in the center of the room, stirred feebly. Sevigny raised Francis’s only hand, bringing the body of his companion up to drift through the air and land in a relatively protected area behind a heavy overturned desk. Then Sevigny came to a stop on the other side of the wall.

  In one smooth motion, Sebastian turned the corner and brought the blunt end of the sword down hard on Sevigny’s head.

  Sevigny reeled. In the half-light streaming in through the door that opened out onto the river, Sebastian watched him waver briefly out of Francis’s body. Sebastian raised his pistol, prepared to fire, but before he could pull the trigger Sevigny had regained his balance and his possession of Francis.

  Staggering out of reach, Sevigny sent a stream of debris flying across the room. Sebastian barely managed to move out of the way in time. As his stiff leg buckled beneath him, a desk flew up and hurtled through the air, barely missing Sebastian’s head before it slammed into the wall, cracking the gilt frame of a large portrait that hung behind him.

  Sebastian struggled to his feet, hoping that Tessa had finally followed his instructions and returned upstairs. As Sevigny continued to advance on Sebastian, he waved his single hand, sending furniture, books and lamps hurtling toward Sebastian. Sebastian ducked and sidestepped each missile, knowing he could not shoot at Sevigny, or stab him with his sword, not when Sevigny’s own body was protected in Francis’s.

  That left only illusions.

  “You’re a fool, Sevigny,” said Sebastian softly. “Do you truly believe that this absurd vessel of yours can rescue Napoleon and restore him to power? He has already failed you so many times. He was never intended to be the true emperor of France.”

  He reached out with his mind, and sensed, in return, the two minds that shared Francis’s body. He could not yet tell which was which.

  “This time he shall not fail!” cried Sevigny. “With the Neptune I shall reach St. Helena’s without the Royal Navy ever knowing, and your Dr. McGrigor can restore the emperor to his former health, and we shall return to France and conquer all of Europe.”

  Sevigny’s contorted expression was odd on Francis’s normally cheerful, open face, and pure rage roared through Sebastian at the sight.

  “McGrigor won’t agree to do it,” said Sebastian, still struggling to rise.

  Sevigny sneered. “He doesn’t need to,” he said, sending a huge silver instrument hurtling straight toward Sebastian, who parried it with his cane. “He just needs to be alive. I can possess him easily enough.”

  “To what purpose, Sevigny? More war? Have France’s sons not shed enough blood for the usurper?”

  “Napoleon is the true emperor of France!” Sevigny shouted, and in his best friend’s eyes an edge of madness gleamed that had never been in Francis’s gaze. “He will return! Vive l’empereur!”

  Sevigny raised his pistol. Sebastian, still seeking to untangle the two minds he could feel within Francis’s body, sensed, for one brief second, one mind overpower the other, as, for a single second in time, Francis regained control of himself and forced Sevigny to drop the pistol. In that moment, Sebastian lunged, slashing the cane sword toward Francis’s head once again. The other man went down with a crash and Sebastian leapt, coming down heavily on him, hoping that Sevigny would attempt to escape Francis’s body rather than be captured.

  He had just slammed Sevigny’s head against the floor when Tessa’s terrified voice cried out, “Sebastian!”

  He looked up. The second intruder clutched his damaged shoulder with one hand as he sent a fresh stream of fire shooting across the room.

  Sebastian leapt out of the way, c
utting his knees on broken glass as he fell hard onto the ground. The fire swooped low over Sevigny, singing his hair and clothes without igniting him. But the effort seemed to have exhausted the second intruder, and with a low cry, he sank back to the ground.

  Sebastian whirled around, trying to see where Tessa was. For a moment, glancing around the debris and broken furniture that cluttered the room, he thought he must have imagined her cry. Then, in the next chamber, he saw a short, balding man, dragging her out onto the quay.

  Without hesitating, without glancing back at Sevigny, he snatched up his cane and limped to the door. He found himself on a jetty beneath three great arches that allowed boats and barges to penetrate the landing places beneath the great house. Panting hard, he raised his pistol and aimed it at the third man, prepared to fire.

  In the pale light streaming down from between the arches, Tessa’s soft hair gleamed. She wept as the man dragged her backwards onto one of the boats. Struggling, she lost her balance and fell to her knees.

  In that moment, he recognized the third man. He stared at the familiar face, hardly believing what he saw—the balding head, kind face, enormous whiskers. But he was not mistaken.

  It was Edward Ryder.

  His pistol dipped, Ryder reacted. He shoved Tessa aside. Sebastian flew backwards under a psychic blast more powerful than any he had ever felt before.

  “No!” Tessa’s scream rent the air. “No, you mustn’t hurt him! Please, Father, please…”

  “Get in the boat, Tessa,” said Ryder quietly. He advanced on Sebastian, his hand outstretched.

  Sebastian barely saw him. He was on his knees on the jetty. Cold overwhelmed him; he was drowning, sinking into memories he long ago buried. The years fell away; he was six years old again, standing over the open graves of his entire family, and the handfuls of earth he threw down sounded hollowly against the plain wooden coffins.

  You are alone. You have much to fear. You cannot escape from your own private hell, you cannot escape your past…

  He could hear low, inhuman cries, surely that was not his own voice?

  “No. No. No.”

  Tessa was weeping. “Father, please, Father, please stop, please stop, please don’t do this.”

  Sebastian looked up with an effort. Dimly, he saw her rising to her knees, her hair streaming down over her shoulders. Then his eyes slid shut again as he tried to fight off the incredible pain.

  His head was going to split apart. He could not see. He could not breathe. An agony beyond anything he believed possible tore open his mind. Memories seeped through, faster and faster, memories of every day of his life he had spent lonely and frightened. Gray afternoons spent with his coldly disapproving grandfather, the loneliness of his first days at Eton, the fires of Talavera burning through him, things he had not thought of for years except in his nightmares.

  And then, a final memory suddenly appeared, fully formed and complete, a memory that he had not buried, but which had been utterly suppressed, years before, and now returned whole and untarnished—the day he was to marry Tessa Ryder in secret at the chapel of the Escorial, and had waited for her in vain as the red sun sank below the horizon.

  He heard a low, dull thump.

  The pain cut off abruptly. He raised his head from the wooden jetty, dazed and confused. Tessa stood over her father, holding a rotting plank like a club. Her father lay crumbled at her feet, unconscious, a trickle of blood running down his forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Father, I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she fell to her knees to check the pulse at his temple.

  Sebastian struggled to rise to his feet, trying to shake away the painful remnants of the telepathic assault. But the floodgates had opened, the water rushed through. More memories, old memories were finally unveiled, as though curtains had been pulled from all the dark spaces in his heart, letting in the light for the first time in six long years.

  “Sebastian.” Tessa moved to him, still sobbing, her fingers brushing desperately over his throat, his cheekbones, his forehead.

  He gazed up into her face, the face of the only woman he had ever loved, the face that had haunted his dreams for six long years, the face that had been stolen from him, and only now, finally, returned to him.

  “Tessa,” he gasped hoarsely. “Tessa.”

  Chapter Ten

  They had met in Lisbon, in the spring of 1809. He was twenty-three, a newly commissioned officer of the army. She was the daughter of Wellington’s assistant quartermaster general, and she had followed the drum all her life.

  The love that had flared between them was immediate, passionate and absolute. They became inseparable, rising at dawn to ride together through the city and the surrounding hills, before meeting again at noon to explore the many palaces, avenues and narrow backstreets of Portugal’s capital. They wandered the Bairro Alto, lingering together at the Chiado fruit market and marveling at the mosaics of Sao Roque. In the evenings, they ate at the Grotto down in the Largo Sao Paolo, before attending the opera at the Sao Carlos together.

  When the army moved on into the countryside, he had taught her to shoot both pistols and rifles. They danced a hundred dances together at the many impromptu balls the regiments gave in abandoned barns or peasant cottages. He had joined Tessa and her father for meals each evening, and brought them the game he and the other officers liked to hunt.

  He had loved her with the whole of his young and ardent being—and she had loved him back.

  When, three months later, he was wounded at Talavera, and left behind to die in the dry, burning grass as Wellington hastened to move his army east and block the French, she had ridden a fallen cavalry officer’s war horse through a wall of flame to rescue him. Later, when a drunken surgeon had attempted to amputate his wounded leg despite her protests, she had shot him.

  Her Gift, like his, was useful to Lord Wellington, who had often sent her on forays into enemy territory, disguised as Spanish priests, Portuguese peasants, and once, a French officer. These Sebastian had never permitted her to attempt alone, always accompanying her every step along the way.

  Then, in the summer of 1811, the League had captured Tessa while she was on a reconnaissance mission to Salamanca, where she was meeting with British agents. Sebastian had extracted her from her prison cell, and they had spent the next month eluding capture in the Spanish countryside and trying to rejoin Wellington’s army. They had fallen in with a band of guerilleros, and each night, despite the stiff leg that even Dr. McGrigor with his Gift could not heal, they had danced together around the great camp fire, beneath a sky studded with a million stars.

  A year later, after the bloody battle of Salamanca, the British had entered Madrid, and there they had agreed to be married secretly. Sebastian had known Tessa’s father did not approve of the depth of their attachment. Nor did Wellington, who had seen in Sebastian a brilliant career, and could not comprehend his desire to waste himself on a marriage to an unsuitable woman, a woman of no background, connections or wealth.

  So, as Madrid descended into a kind of gay madness at its liberation from the French, Sebastian and Tessa had made private plans to meet at the chapel at the Escorial. Sebastian would bring a priest. Tessa would bring her love, and herself.

  On the appointed day, Sebastian had waited, waited until the frail little priest he had brought with him had finally collapsed with hunger and thirst. The priest he finally permitted to leave, but Sebastian had waited on, waited until the sun had sunk below the horizon, waited until a clear, bright moon had risen over the city. He had waited until all hope had vanished, and only doubt and pain and rage had remained.

  But he had waited in vain.

  Tessa never came.

  In the cool blue twilight, Tessa was sitting by his bedside, an unread book in her lap, when Sebastian finally woke.

  At first, consumed by worry for her father, she did not notice, but gazed unseeingly out the windows at the great green park below. She had struck her father hard. She had intended
to render him unconscious, but the sharp, sickening crack had still made the bottom drop out of her stomach.

  She furled and unfurled her hands at the memory.

  Sebastian’s utter stillness troubled her as well. The physician that Coleman, Sebastian’s butler, had sent for earlier in the day had tended to the numerous cuts and scrapes and bruises Sebastian had received in the secret chambers beneath Somerset House, but been unable to pronounce judgment on his state of unconsciousness.

  Nor had Tessa expected him to produce a diagnosis. Her father’s particular brand of telepathic assault had killed men before. She did not know what he had done to Sebastian. She could only hope that, as he was still breathing, Sebastian would sustain no permanent damage.

  It was only as she reached to pour herself a glass of water from the pitcher at his bedside that she looked at him again. He was awake, his eyes intent as he watched her. His hair and olive skin were dark against the sharp contrast of the crisp white sheets.

  She stilled, her hand dropping back into her lap and knocking the book to the floor with a crash.

  Her voice, when she spoke, was hoarse and nearly inaudible.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like a coach and four ran me over,” he said.

  Her lips curved slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It is hardly your fault that Sevigny is a madman and a murderer.”

  She gave another half smile. “I suppose not,” she said. She hesitated, uncertain of how to frame her question. “But my father… What did he… What happened?”

  “He gave me back all my worst memories.”

  Even in the half darkness, she could sense the intensity of his gaze as he studied her. She pretended not to notice and instead reached again for the pitcher to pour him a glass of water. She held it out to him. He took it and set it aside, reaching out to grasp her wrist instead.

  She could not meet his gaze.

  “He gave me back something else, Tessa,” he said. “Something that I do not think he intended to give me.”

  “I don’t understand.”