What a Hero Dares (6 page)

“With all these unique, commendable charms to lure you, there was no question you’d become lovers,” Gideon said flatly, ignoring the rest.

“Good on you, as Valentine would say. Yes, we became lovers. Together day and night. She’s beautiful, I’m a man. We were in a dangerous business, never knowing if we’d live another day. It was inevitable.” Max took a deep breath. “And then she decided working with the French was more profitable than a pittance from the Crown and the chance to save the world, one might say.”

Gideon frowned. “Let me make an assumption here. The father died.”

“Even with the return of the monarchy, Zoé could never lay claim to her father’s possessions and property, not as a female. Did I mention she’s also practical?”

“You knew about the father’s death?”

Max avoided his brother’s gaze, instead watching his own movements as he turned back his unbuttoned cuffs. That had always bothered him, that she hadn’t told him. Damn, he could do with a drink. “Only afterwards.”

“After what, Max?” Gideon asked quietly.

“After three agents she betrayed had been lined up outside the cottage where we’d occasionally rendezvous, trussed up like animals bound for market and shot in the head. Two Englishmen, the third French. All good men. I could have been lying there with them, but I’d spent the night meeting with a courier bound for London after gathering information from the other agents I’d summoned to the cottage, and didn’t return until the next morning to find— I told you what I found.”

“You won’t mind if I say I prefer you alive.”

“Thank you. Before you ask, yes, Zoé had been at the cottage when I left, but she was gone. The only one still alive was another late arrival, Anton Boucher, one of our French agents. He handed me the letter Zoé left behind.”

“Not surprising. Women always feel this overweening need to
explain,
especially when their hearts are involved,” Gideon said, nodding. “What did she write?”

“What I’ve already told you. Her father was dead and she’d sold her talents to the French. She would be miles away before I returned in the morning, and it would please her if I didn’t follow her, hoping to change her mind.”

‘Did she admit to killing the other agents?”

“She never mentioned them, but what better way to prove herself to the French than to turn over names and locations to them? Was she there when it happened, or already on her way to Paris? I don’t know. But one way or another, those deaths are on her head. Oh, there was something else in her note about how, as much as she’d cared for me, the time had come for her to take care of herself, as being a country wife would never suit her.”

“Cared for you? Jesus, that’s cold. No wonder you’ve been such a bear these past months, so much so that Val supposed you’d sworn off women or some such thing. Quite a blow to your pride, amid everything else, being
cared for
by the woman you love. My sympathies, brother, on the whole of it.”

“Again, thank you,” Max said shortly, feeling his cheeks go hot. “Look, I don’t want to go over this and over this. Boucher and I buried the bodies to hide them before both of us raced off to warn our other agents for fear Zoé had exposed them, as well, traded names I may have inadvertently told her for whatever the French had promised her. I had no secrets from her—as you pointed out, I loved her. I trusted her with my life. And before you ask, of the two dozen or so agents we had in place, five more died before we could successfully locate and warn them.”

“Eight agents suddenly out of the field. That must have been quite the blow to Perceval. And to you, of course.”

“None of this is about me, Gideon, and clearly never was. As for Zoé, she’d miscalculated, badly. It would appear the French weren’t about to trust her to be loyal to them any more than she had been to England, something she might have learned from England’s own Benedict Arnold. The last I’d heard, she’d been locked up in some Paris prison.
Now
may I be excused, your lordship?”

“I don’t think so, no,” Gideon said. “You can be a bit of a hothead, Max, much as I love you, not to mention having more than your fair share of pride. Dead agents, spurned by your lover—hoodwinked by your lover? I can understand your reaction, but do you still feel the same way eight months later? How do you know she wasn’t forced to write that letter? How do you know she wasn’t betrayed by someone, as well, even this other supposed late arrival, this Boucher fellow?”

“You should pen novels. To be truthful, I’d been concerned about him for some time—we’d been having a few too many more failures than successes, I thought—although I had no real facts. Just my suspicions, which I’d included with my other intelligence sent off with the courier. He would have been the first I’d suspected, save for one thing, one indisputable fact.”

“I’d be interested in hearing that one fact, if you could indulge me.”

We’d laughed together, cried together...
“Anton’s nephew Georges was one of the executed agents. The boy was barely eighteen, his dead sister’s only child and the apple of Anton’s eye. That left only Zoé, for nobody else knew of our rendezvous spot. Nobody. Boucher didn’t betray us. It was all on Zoé. The only reason I can think of that she’s still alive is that people like us are commodities, often to be traded, exploited, which makes me doubly curious about how and why she was released.”

“Or escaped.” Gideon got to his feet, turning the chair around, placing it carefully. “You’re in a dirty business, brother, and I can’t say I’m pleased with the Max standing before me now. It may be time you left his majesty’s service. It may have been time eight months ago.”

Max bristled. “We were suddenly rather short on agents, and then you came to me about the Society and we decided it would be best if I worked the thread from the Continent.”

“And God forbid you could have told me the truth, or I never would have asked that of you.” Gideon looked at him for long moments and then nodded his head almost imperceptibly. “Water already passed beneath the bridge, leaving us with that creature upstairs. I know you’re full of questions, as I am myself. If she was offered her freedom in exchange for selling her talents to someone—well, let’s just say it and have it out in the open, shall we? Is it too large a leap of conjecture to believe she’s now found employment with the Society?”

Max didn’t bother to deny he’d already wondered the same thing. “Very good, brother. I told you, she has talents, and who else would have her? She’s burned her bridges with both us and the French, and treachery would seem to be her only salable talent.”

Gideon pinched thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “So many questions present themselves. You’d spoken to her of Redgrave Manor, of course. She’d be at least loosely familiar with the estate?”

“As I’d waxed poetical about the place, and the family, innumerable times, you can assume so.” And then, because things had already gone too far to keep secrets from his brother, he said, “I sailed tonight with the person who led me to Gravelines and the Society-hired smugglers.”

Gideon looked at him, then frowned. “Allow me to hazard yet another guess. This Boucher person?”

With his hand now on the doorknob, Max turned and asked his brother, “One and the same, yes. So here we are again, the three of us. Do you believe in coincidences, Gideon, because I damned well don’t, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the greatest fool in nature, hoodwinked by the pair of them. According to Richard, it was Anton who hit me with the belaying pin.”

“Go on.”

“Yes. Maybe that bump on my head loosened something brilliant, or maybe I’m delirious, but think about this a moment, Gideon. What if they’d been working together all along? What if I was only allowed to live because they knew our reaction would be to pull all of our agents from the Continent in order to protect them, taking us months to reestablish ourselves there, while more and more French troops were secretly marched to the Peninsula? What if there never was a French prison? It’s possible. If it weren’t for Georges...”

“More and more I’m learning the most impossible things are possible. It will be interesting to hear what your Monsieur Boucher has to say. Did you see him with the other prisoners before they were led away? We’ve got them all locked up in various outbuildings until we can sort them out in the morning.”

“I don’t know. He’s with them, already dead, or if he believes me still alive and now suspicious of him, or saw Zoé on the beach, has escaped somehow. The answer will have to wait until morning. Right now I need to see Zoé, before I confront him. She said something earlier that— No, that’s enough. You, Valentine, Simon and I can talk more tomorrow over breakfast, before you and Jessica leave for London. Since you sent Richard after me, I imagine something important has been learned.”

“Bad news can always wait. No later than nine, if you please. There’s a lot you don’t know, little of it good, all of it shocking.”

Max was more than simply curious. “Does any of it concern the fact that in a house literally overrun with staff, I found myself having to light my own fire in the grate and bathe in only a few inches of tepid water?”

“Yes, it does. Max? We men make most of our mistakes with women. I know it’s not in your nature...but if we’re to learn anything more of the Society from this Zoé of yours, you might want to consider treading softly concerning the past.”

“I suppose you think I should visit the conservatory and pluck a few posies for her, as well? Clearly marriage has softened your head. Let me handle this, Gideon. I know the woman, you don’t.”

“The way you knew her eight months ago? Or the way you
think
you knew her eight months ago? Love can make fools of us all.”

Max opened his mouth to say something, realized he had nothing to say, yet had more questions than made him feel comfortable, so he let the door he slammed behind him speak for him.

CHAPTER THREE

S
HE
RECOGNIZED
M
AX
’
S
distinctive footfalls, could picture him advancing beyond the patchwork of carpets scattered over the thick wood plank floor of her attic cell. There was a near arrogance in his walk, a confidence that had others instinctively stepping aside to give him room to pass.

She’d teasingly termed it his “I am
so
much more than you could ever aspire to be” walk, as opposed to his equally brilliant old-man’s shuffle, his wounded-soldier limp, his prim and proper vicar’s modest gait, his prancing nincompoop’s mincing step or his drunk-as-a-lord laughable stagger.

He was adept at all of them, but what came most naturally to him was that sure-footed stride that said: I am Maximillien Redgrave; take heed, ignore me at your own peril.

And he was heading straight toward her.

Not that she hadn’t left the mullioned window open, with the light muslin draperies blowing in the breeze.

“Zoé?”

She lay back against the fairly steeply-pitched slate roof, her bare feet firmly braced against one of the ornate iron cleats that lined the edge, and looked up at the moon as the clouds slowly rolled by, revealing its grinning face.

“Look, you’ve either jumped, which you’d never do, or you’ve escaped, which is next to impossible. Which leaves you hiding out there somewhere like a sulky child. Never your best look, by the way. In any event, I’m coming out. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t attempt to push me over the edge.”

She’d known he was her man, her equal, the first time she’d seen him walking toward her, his handsome face a thundercloud as he realized he’d been put under the command of a woman. But that anger hadn’t lasted much more than a sennight before he ceased resisting their undeniable attraction for each other.

She wondered now, as she had then, if he could hear her heart pounding in her chest.

Now, as then, she believed he was about to offer a limited, reluctant truce. As she was currently out of options, she decided to agree with him.

“You always did talk too much,” she said, turning her head to watch as Max gracefully eased his way over the sill of the dormer window, found purchase for one bare foot, and then maneuvered himself onto his back not three feet away from her.

“That’s because you usually devised interesting ways of shutting me up, as I recall.”

Only his tone warned that he wasn’t being teasingly reminiscent.

“You have no fear of me believing seduction would work on you, Max. Not anymore. What do you want? It’s late, and I’m tired.”

“I also wouldn’t suggest falling asleep in your current precarious position. Think of the mess one of the servants might trip over in the morning.”

This time he did sound genuinely amused. Zoé rolled her eyes. “I was about to go in when you barged out here to harass me.”

His gaze met hers in the moonlight. “So this isn’t some sort of attempt at escape?”

Don’t look at me, don’t look at me. You make me want so much more...

“But of course it is. I plan to crawl to the very tip of the roof in this borrowed dressing gown and then flap my arms as hard as I can and fly away. That blow to your hard skull must have done more damage than I thought. Just remember, if you become dizzy and fall to the courtyard below, I take no responsibility.”

“Yes, the consequence would be on my own head, wouldn’t it? Probably literally. Now tell me why you climbed out here.”

She turned away from him, looking into the seemingly infinite distance of moonlight and shadows. “I dislike closed doors, especially locked doors. After months in a dank cell with little light and constantly foul air, simply standing at the window wasn’t enough to keep me from—but that was never your problem, was it?”

“If I’d found you and dragged you back to London, you would have been hanged for the murder of English agents. I chose the lesser of two evils, and let you go.”

“For you, Max. The lesser of two evils for
you
. Admit it, I made a fool of you in front of your superiors, your message to them concerning your worry that Anton might be working for the French, while all the time being hoodwinked by your French lover. You washed your hands of me.”

“If it’s any help, you were already gone, and I didn’t really have time to think at all beyond getting our other agents out of harm’s way.”

She knew the answer to her next question before she asked it. “And then you came chasing hotfoot to Paris, looking for me.”

With the moon full above them, she could see a faint flicker of pain cross his features. “My superiors—
our
superiors—moved all of the surviving agents out of France entirely. I was assigned to the Home Office for a month—”

“Your punishment.”

“Yes, my punishment for all but indicting innocent, bereaved Anton as a traitor while allowing myself to be, as you so incisively said, hoodwinked by my lover, thus losing us eight good agents. Then I was reassigned to the Peninsula with Wellington. And then...and then something else demanded my attention. I did eventually hear that you weren’t on the loose, but in prison.”

“I see. In that case, no, your explanation means nothing to me.”

He nodded. “Understood. Why were you released?”

How she wanted to tell the truth, about everything. But it had been too late for that eight months ago. So she’d keep him concentrated on the present.

“There was an arrangement. Nothing that concerns you.” She pushed herself up on her elbows. “I want to go back inside now. Kindly take yourself out of my way and spare me the indignity of having to crawl over you.”

Max didn’t move, except to turn on his side so he could face her. “Not yet. You traded names to show your new loyalty. You as good as murdered those men, Zoé. What else did you expect from me?”

Don’t, Zoé. Don’t feel sorry for him, or for yourself. You only did what you had to do. You wanted him to believe you, remember? But now it’s over, with events moved long past any hope of salvaging what we’d once had, because what we’d once had clearly hadn’t been enough. The truth will aid nothing, and perhaps make things even worse. Just let it go... Let him go the same way he let you go. He was never
really
yours.

“Nothing else. I expected exactly what you did. I even prayed for it, something I hadn’t done in a long time.”

“But now you’re claiming innocence? That is what you’re doing, isn’t it, Zoé?”

Too late. Too late for questions, too late for answers.

“I’m claiming nothing. Why I’m here has nothing to do with you. As far as I knew, you died months ago. I told you that on the beach. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a walking, talking ghost from the past. Now move out of my way. If I’m to plead my case to be allowed to leave, it will be with your grandmother. Richard tells me she has great good sense.”

“And I don’t. I suppose you’re right, because I’ll be damned if I can’t still imagine you in my arms, your legs wrapped high about my back as we drive each other out of our minds. My superiors were right to punish me. I never thought I was the sort of fool who, against all common sense, could be led about by his—”

“Oh, Max, just shut up. Please, shut up.”

Without another word, he at last turned away from her and carefully made his way back to the opened casement, neatly easing himself over the windowsill. She followed a moment later, the skirt of the dressing gown and the night rail beneath it carefully tucked about her body.

“Give me your hand.”

“I can manage on my own,” she shot back, but the slates were becoming slippery with dew, so she only issued the complaint before tucking her hand in his. His touch devastated her, and for the first time she could see herself losing her balance and sliding off the edge of the roof.

“Steady, woman.” In a moment he had both her hands safely within his grip, and she was half lifted, half dragged over the windowsill, to end with her bare feet on the floor, the length of her body pressed up against Max’s lean strength.

She could see his dark features in the light from the fire and lit candles, just as she knew he could see hers.

How badly had the time in prison aged her? It had taken her months to fully regain her strength, the weight she’d lost. But even now she knew she would never be the same Zoé Charbonneau who’d been all but flung into that dank cell, the sound of a heavy key turning in the lock presumably sealing her fate. No matter if she bathed in milk and rose petals every day for the remainder of her life. If she had been able to lose the stink of prison that had clung to her, she could never be rid of the new shadows in her brown eyes or the nightmares that still plagued her.

“You look just the same,” Max said, raising his hand to run a fingertip down her cheek. “Life just doesn’t seem to touch you, Zoé.”

She turned her head away. “Now who’s the liar? You look like hell, Max. You probably need some sleep.” She disengaged herself and took several steps away from him, hanging on with her last fraying thread of resolve. “And a shave wouldn’t come amiss, although I’d admit the earring is rather interesting.”

Max touched his ear, and the diamond that winked there. “I don’t know why you women suffer these things. It hurt like hell for three days, having that hole punched in me.”

She sat in the only chair in the small servant’s room. She wanted him to leave, but at the same time she wanted him to stay, so she asked him: “It’s quite the stone. Is it real or glass?”

He stayed where he stood, the sloped ceiling of the room fairly well hindering him from moving too far in any but the direction of the door or single window. “You’d have to ask the man I cut it from about that. No self-respecting wharf rat is without one, I discovered, and relieving the fellow of his earring after I’d milled him down for looking at me too long established me in certain quarters.”

Zoé nodded. “It isn’t enough to dress the part, is it? You have to knock down at least one man before the others learn to mind their own business. Did you have to slice his ear?”

“I wasn’t going to kneel over him until he woke up, fiddling with the damn thing to figure out how to remove it. Besides, I’d already poked the hole in my own ear. Should I keep it, do you think?”

His rakish yet boyish smile curled her toes.

Suddenly the months disappeared as if they’d never happened. This feeling wouldn’t last, she knew, but the moment was too precious to waste. “I’d say no. It makes you much too memorable. If you haven’t had it stuck there too long, the hole should close up in a few weeks. After the swelling goes down, that is. I wouldn’t have made such a botch of the job if I’d done it for—”

The moment was over. There’d probably never be a time when they wouldn’t stumble over their past history within minutes of calling a temporary truce.

“Why were you following Anton?”

Very clearly over
.

Zoé shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “To see where he went, of course. Why did he try to knock you unconscious?”

“He didn’t tell you why he was going to do that?” Max said as he touched a hand rather gingerly to the side of his head.

“He didn’t know I was aboard. I didn’t know you were going to be aboard. If you can get anything into that thick head of yours, understand this—I do not work for or with Anton Boucher. I act on my own now. Trusting others is for simpletons.”

“So it was all one grand coincidence, the three of us crossing the Channel tonight in the same ship.”

Zoé pushed herself up and out of the chair. “You and Anton clearly were traveling together. You were the only coincidence. Taking Anton to meet your family, were you? That doesn’t seem like anything you’d do, especially considering it was your family that very nearly blew us out of the water. See, Max? You have questions, but so do I. My solution is for you to let me go, putting an end to those questions. It would seem you and your family have enough on your plates without attempting to wedge me into whatever is going on.”

He stared at her yet again, as if he could somehow bore a hole into her head and examine her brain for answers. “How do you survive? How do you live? How do you eat? You can’t work for the French or the English. Who benefits from your talents now, Zoé? You were always amazingly inventive, but you couldn’t have survived without some sort of help. Tell me about this
arrangement
.”

So much for bravado, for lies. Sometimes the only ploy that works is to tell the truth. “I already was halfway toward convincing the night guard I would make him a rich man if he let me go, when I had a visitor from a very unexpected corner. Bonaparte has as many enemies inside France as he does without. If I would work for this person, I would be released. I agreed.”

“Damn, we were right.” Max was suddenly leaning forward, as if he could somehow physically drag the words from her. “Who? An Englishman? Give me his name.”

“An Englishman? In Paris? Walking freely in and
out
of that terrible prison? The man introduced himself as Monsieur Périgord, but I believe that was only to test my intelligence.”

Max straightened, nearly hitting his head on the pitched ceiling. “Charles Talleyrand? No, that’s impossible.”

“But true, although he was careful to keep his face hidden beneath the hood of his voluminous cloak.
Le grand négociateur,
who’s turned his loyalties more than a poor man turns his shirt cuffs. Were I Bonaparte, Talleyrand’s head would be stuck on a pike at the city gates. The day will come when the new emperor regrets not ordering the execution.”

“Men like Talleyrand always land on their feet, one way or another.”

“I suppose so. In any event, he’d somehow learned of my skill with languages, and entrusted me to carry a verbal message to Austria for him. I didn’t ask how he knew. I was much more intent on his offer to free me. I traveled to Salzburg for him, paid well before I left because I was then to continue straight on to my second mission, which would take me to London.”

“But with money now in your pocket, you went hunting Anton instead?” Max shook his head as if attempting to shake some bit of knowledge loose. “Not me. Anton. Just as you said.”