Viridian (The Hundred-Days Series Book 2) (29 page)

Olivia's hand darted past the
blanket, fingers smacking him in the chest. He almost groaned aloud; he was
being tested, there was no other explanation.

Her voice came from the other side
of the curtain, holding more of her old energy than he’d heard in days. “Oh!
Sorry. Soap, please?”

He dropped the soap into her palm
without touching her. At some point the noises stopped, and there was just an
occasional rustle. She was getting dressed now, drying the water from her skin.
Ty realized he was standing, staring at nothing. Snapping to, he slipped his
breeches on.

“All done?” she called softly.

Snatching down the blanket, Ty
panicked when he realized he'd failed to ask whether she was done. Luckily, it
appeared that she was, though she was clad in only a man's shirt. Long enough
to be modest, except it was undermined by the firelight. Holding the blanket
out, he tried to appear more chivalrous than he felt. To his relief, she took
it, wrapping up and settling near the hearth. Grabbing a shirt from the pile of
clothes, he took up a spot opposite her, resting his back against the corner
beside the firebox. “Now will you tell me what happened at the camp?” Olivia
tousled damp curls, hypnotizing him a moment into forgetting he had asked a
question. “I recovered the letters, if that is what you're asking.”
            He stretched arms still weary from the poison and decided that a
frontal approach was best for the conversation they had to have. “It is, but I
think you know I am asking more than that.”

“The others are dead. I've already
told you so.”

Scrubbing hands over his eyes, Ty
sighed and tried not to feel annoyed by her vagueness. “How? Where? We have to
make our report to Grayfield… And...” He wanted to ask if she was all right.
Wanted to know how Thalia had died, and how to interpret her distance. How to
stop it. He realized that he desperately wanted to know where he stood with
her.

“And when the time comes, we will.”

“Why are you being so damned coy
about this, Olivia? We do not keep things from one another.”

“You're my partner, Tyler, but you
are also my friend. I’ve done things...” Her voice trailed off, eyes far away
for a moment, and he had his answer. “I don't want you to think of those things
when you look at me. There are details it's just better you don't know.”

He recalled the blood on her hands
and face, her dress, a greater quantity than her own. Ty doubted that his
ignorance was really for the best, but he could gain those details from
Whitehall, when the time came. It didn't seem there was any hope of getting
them right now. He would bide his time; his main concern was that Olivia was
safe, and that she could confide in him if she needed to. “Hungry?”

Olivia nodded, eyes half closed
now. “Put on the kettle?”

He smiled. “Consider it done.” He
managed the pot, with a decent amount of water, back over the fire. While he
added wood and stoked the flame, Olivia rifled through their packs, handing him
the food she'd brought. He dumped in the small sack of oats, adding the salt
pork and leaving it all to simmer. Beside him, Olivia held her palms toward the
fire and sucked in a breath.

“Cold?” he asked.

“Freezing.”

“Here,” Settling back against the
wall, he patted the space beside him, inviting her to sit.

Olivia dropped beside him, draping
them with the blanket. She wriggled against him until Ty had trouble believing
they could be any closer. Laying her head in the crook of his arm at his
breast, she closed her eyes. Moments later, she was fast asleep.

He still wasn’t sure where they
stood, but this was a start. He could work with this. He wasn’t going to lose
Olivia without a fight.

Brushing the hair at her temple, he
watched her for a long time. They'd had a fair amount of friction today; he
dreaded tomorrow, knowing it wasn't over. She had taken a dangerous and
unnecessary risk coming back for him. The only thing of import, as far as
Whitehall was concerned, was the intelligence they’d stolen from Thalia. Once
Olivia had recovered it, she should have run for Paris and never looked back.
Not that he wasn't grateful. What she had done was the sign of a good friend,
just not a good partner. One of the primary truths of their assignment was that
they were both expendable. He studied Olivia's face, listened to her slow, even
breathing.

Never before had the idea left him
so uncomfortable.

*          *          *

Olivia wriggled under the blanket
just as he finished eating, rustling straw inside a mattress he had conscripted
from the loft. After a moment, she sat halfway up, braced on her elbows, and
took stock of the room with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Feeling better?”

Closing her eyes, she stretched. He
should look away, not stare at her breasts filling out the shirt-front. A long
moment passed before he was able to tear his eyes away.

“Mmm. Feeling
cleaner
.” She
pressed a finger to her swollen lower lip. “Considering the bumps and bruises,
I'm not certain I feel
better
.” Olivia laughed, but he did not. He
stared at her for a moment, wondering if now was as good a time as any to clear
the air between them. After all the time they’d spent together, she knew him
well and must have sensed there was something on his mind. She feigned a yawn,
the worst he had ever seen, and closed her eyes.

“Olivia.”

She lay still. Obviously, she had
heard him. He knew her well enough to recognize that she was retrenching,
buying time while she formed a new plan.

“Olivia, look at me.” He leaned
forward on the stool, bracing elbows on his knees, and waited. Finally, she
wriggled up against the wall and met his eyes.

He breathed deep, preparing
himself. “You should have left me there. The moment I was a liability, the
intelligence was your priority.”

“Understood.”

She didn't sound as agreeable as
he'd hoped, just irritated, as he had expected. He felt compelled to drive the
point home, again. He had to be certain she understood, remembered their
purpose for being in Paris. “You should have left me behind. I'm not worth the
mission. No one is.”

“
Understood
,” she bit again,
closing her eyes. If he had to guess, and guessing was
all
he could do
at the moment, she was angry. What did he say? He had no idea where to start.
Olivia hadn't been herself for days. Sometimes, he wondered if they were
speaking the same language. Other times, he wondered if she was simply finished
with him.

“Olivia,” he repeated, unsure what
else to say, desperate to pry something,
anything
from her.

She forced out a sigh. “What,
Tyler?”

A drowning man, he cast about for
anything. “I had a message from Grayfield. He is a little confused.”

That bit of information put a real
expression on her face. Measuring, gauging what he might know, maybe a nervous
draw around her eyes.

“Something about you asking to be
recalled.”

Had it never occurred to her, that
he might question the information?

She turned her face away and stared
at the floor, where moon spots slipped in through the window cover. “I think
you
are confused. You must be misunderstanding him.”

“We're in the same business,
Olivia,” he chided. “Your tricks do not work on me. Why did you ask to be
reassigned?”

Her face began to crumple. Her eyes
blinked faster, heavy with wetness he could see pooling along her lower lids.
“I had my reasons, Tyler.”

“You have your reasons?” That was
all she had to say? Fobbing him off with an answer that was no answer at all.
It was certainly not the one he deserved. “You have your
reasons
?” Anger
burned across his chest, pounding at his temples. It cut his self-control in
its wake; he snapped, smacking a fist into the wall planks and jarring
something from the mantle overhead. “Indeed you do! And I bloody well have a
right to know what they are!”

Olivia slid furiously up the
mattress, batting at tousled hair, red from her ears to the tip of her nose.
“Why! Why must I tell you anything?”

Swallowing hard, Ty held his hands
out. “Is it that you do not trust me?”

“No.”

“Do you feel I am a weak partner?
That I cannot do the job?”

“
No!
”

He shook his fists, desperate to
gain purchase, even the smallest foothold on her stubbornness. “Then
what
is it?” He wracked his brain, trying to think of something,
anything
that would cause her to act this way. Their partnership had always been colored
by a mutual attraction; from their first embattled kiss at the comte’s estate
to the many moments they’d spent in each other’s confidence, he’d grown to care
for her as more than a partner long ago. But it was that trust, that blind
faith that he’d held for a few people in his life, which he shared with Olivia,
which made it so hard to believe that she asked for reassignment without a
word. He desired her in so many ways, and though she was a convincing actress,
he’d seen too many signs to doubt she felt something of it, too. But that
couldn’t be what was driving them apart now. Olivia would tell him, honor his trust,
and end his misery over something so easily addressed.

He looked to her, eyes pleading.

“I was compromised!” Olivia panted,
chest heaving, openly struggling for control. “I was compromised, and I
compromised you in turn. Can we simply leave it at that?”

“Do I have a choice?” He hadn't
meant for the words to shape an accusation.

“No. I don't suppose you do.”
Falling back, she crossed her arms and looked away again. He could feel her
closing up, putting space between them. The distance was palpable.

It stung that she could be so
callous, when he was grasping for anything to set matters right. His chest
ached as much as his head. “I guess I did not give you enough credit, after you
drug my carcass from the pit. You are ruthless after all.” The words spilled
out before he could check them, the barbs sharp on his lips, hinting too late
that he had struck a low blow.

Olivia turned sharply onto her left
side, away from him, relations going from frosty to glacial in two quick
movements.

He fell back onto the stool, lacing
fingers behind his head and staring up at the cobwebs waving across the
ceiling. and silence filled the divide.

*          *          *

It was for his own good, and hers.

She had repeated that over and
over, lying in the chill of a dying fire, listening to Ty breathe in the
darkness. At some point she fell asleep, but it was fitful. When she woke the
moon had hardly moved behind the window cover. Ty was silent next to her, deep
asleep, his shape a dark outline. Olivia noticed he refused to share the mat, lying
instead on the wood floor in quiet protest. She rolled over slowly, pressing
him lightly through the blanket. There was no movement, no response. She rose
from the mattress, barely daring to breathe.

Feeling carefully beneath the
table, she located the rest of her clothing and grasped the cracked tongues of
her leather boots. Clutching the bundle, she crept to the door.

It was old, weathered. It had been
noisy in the afternoon heat. She had no doubt it would be worse on cold hinges.
She raised the bar incrementally, resting it in the corner beside the frame.
Breathing deeply, she was still, listening for any movement from the bed.

Nothing.

The bar had been simple, but the
door was another matter entirely. It no longer fit square in its hole. If the
hinges did not creak, the wood was going to grate. Olivia decided there was no
finessing it. Grabbing the cross beam, she gave a sound yank. It only sounded
with the pop of dry wood, not nearly the wall-jarring rattle she'd expected.

Another pause to listen.

Hearing nothing but night birds,
she tiptoed outside.

Dropping her load of clothes at one
corner, she began digging out a sock. Back against the rough boards, she bent
and poked her toe into the wool.

“Olivia.”

She froze. The voice didn't come
from the doorway behind her. It had come from the darkness, beyond an arbor of
trees at the short edge of the clearing. Olivia turned in time to see Ty step
out.

How long had he been out there
waiting? It was an amateur trick, the stuffed shirt in the bed. Her pride stung
at being duped by it.

“Going somewhere?” He was stalking
her, moving in one step at a time.

She pulled her toes out of the
stocking, threw it down and kept silent. Talking hadn't exactly kept her out of
trouble.

“You know,” he drawled, sounding
far more at ease than he looked, “I could almost be persuaded that you are up
to no good.” There was a flinty edge to the accusation, and he moved one step
closer. “You would slip off into the night, leaving both you and myself to face
the woods alone? And then what, Olivia? With Fouche and DuFresne ready to set
the dogs on us, you were just going to skip through the gates of Paris as
though no one were watching?”

There was no answering the second
part of his accusation, because it was absolutely correct. Olivia swallowed
hard. “I'm not a turncoat. You know me better than that,” she pleaded.

“Do I? I don't believe that's an
accurate statement anymore. You keep a great many secrets for someone who
claims being known to me, Olivia.”

“I'm not betraying you.” She
whispered it, with Ty just an arm’s length away now.

“Why did you ask to be recalled?”

He was relentless; she should have
been prepared but she wasn’t. She was empty, exhausted, but not prepared. “It
is personal. That’s all I can say.”

“Not good enough.” His words, and
tone, were steely. She wasn’t getting out of this.