Elizabeth Boyle (76 page)

“A priest?” Lily asked. “Did you think I was going to die?”

Webb grinned. “No. They came to my aid when I was trying to pull you from the wreckage. Without their help we would never have made it here to Alex’s, to safety.”

Safety. She knew what that meant. Alex knew all about Webb’s duties and had obviously helped him from time to time, given the easy familiarity between the two men.

“Alex was kind enough to offer them a place by the fire for the night,” Webb said. “Besides, I did want them nearby for when you woke up.”

Her gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Whatever for?”

“Why to marry us, hoyden. Before the sun rises, I intend to make you my wife.”

“M
arry you?” Lily sat straight up. “I can’t. I won’t.”

Webb smiled indulgendy. “Lily, don’t be ridiculous. Of course we’re going to get married.” He took her hand in his. “I love you. I don’t know how it happened or when, but it did. You matter more to me than anything. I think I’ve always loved you, hoyden. Doesn’t that count for something?”

It counted more than she cared to admit. Where had everything gone so wrong? Webb loved her. She should be dancing in his arms. But instead she felt like crawling into the nearest gutter.

Webb loved her. She held back the tears threatening to fall.

“No, Webb, I can’t marry you. Not ever.” She looked down at the floor. “Do we have to discuss it now?” she whispered, peeking up at the embarrassed expressions of the strangers around them.

He turned to the others. “Can you give us a moment of privacy?”

The three retreated to a room that Lily guessed was the doctor’s reception room. Once they were alone Webb’s steady gaze returned to her. “You’re right that we shouldn’t be discussing this in front of strangers. But the fact remains, we have to get married.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out several pieces of paper and handed them to her.

She glanced down at the familiar documents. “Where did you get these?”

“From the study. I arrived just after you left and found Troussebois finishing Fouché’s handiwork.”

Lily took a deep breath. “Troussebois betrayed us. You could have been killed.”

“Yes, I assumed so with all the signatures. I left him bleating and crying in the wine cellar.”

“He has no room to complain,” she said, before she could stop herself, “he could have shared Armand’s fate.”

Webb cocked his head. “Armand?”

Lily glanced away.

“What have you done?” His voice rose with alarm.

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean. He’s quite well, as far as I know. Besides, it wasn’t completely my idea. Amelia helped,” she said in a rush. “She promised he’d be well cared for.”

“Amelia? What has she to do with this?”

“She arrived in time to stop Armand from revealing what he’d overheard.”

“Which was?”

“He overheard me telling the Costards that I wasn’t Adelaide de Chevenoy,” she said quietly.

“What?” Even Webb’s swollen eye managed to open, though only a little. “I know I got tapped pretty hard on the head, but I could have sworn I just heard you say you told the Costards you weren’t Adelaide.”

She cringed and nodded her head.

Webb sat back on his heels, his jaw falling slack.

“I didn’t want to stay in Paris any longer, and I thought—” she stopped herself from telling the truth.

I thought you and Amelia were lovers and I couldn’t live with it.

Instead she rushed on. “I just thought it was time to find the journals and be done with our mission. And then when Armand heard me, he said he was going to kill me and he’d probably have killed the Costards or at least turned them over to the guards, so I agreed with Amelia that he couldn’t stay in Paris.”

Webb crossed his arms over his chest. “So what did you and Amelia decide to do with Armand?”

“Amelia suggested giving him as a gift to the Ottoman Sultan,” she told him.

Webb stared at her as if she’d gone mad.

“Truly, it was Amelia’s idea. After she hit him on the head and knocked him out, she suggested giving him to the Sultan. According to Amelia, the Sultan likes good-looking men for servants. She promised he’d be well cared for and more than likely live out his days being quite pampered.”

His mouth opened in a wide
O
and then snapped shut.

“I thought it sounded unusual, but Amelia thought it quite amusing.”

“She would.” Webb laughed.

“So you aren’t angry with me?” Lily asked. The time would come soon enough for Webb to despise her. She wanted to live a little longer in the fantasy that he loved her.

“Not as much as I should be. I’d forgive you anything, hoyden. You know that. At least you should.” He held up the papers. “Look here, Troussebois said the groom’s name was left blank because Armand hadn’t arrived on time. So I filled in my name. So in a sense, we are already legally married. I just thought you would prefer having the ceremony blessed, so I asked Father Joseph to formalize what the law already considers binding.”

“How can that be a real marriage? I signed under duress and it isn’t even my real name.”

He pointed to the first line. “Is that your signature?”

“But I—”

“—is it?”

Her brows furrowed. “Yes, but—”

“—and is this a marriage license?”

“We are not married. I do not consider that legal or binding.”

“It is to me, Lily. No matter the names on this certificate, French law considers us married, which means we are married.” His tone brooked no resistance. “Besides, now that we are married, Adelaide’s will designates all her worldly goods to her lawful husband. Since Troussebois also left this blank, I’ll fill in my name. The de Chevenoy properties are secure now until I can return and claim them.”

“Fouché will never let you get away with it.”

“How can he argue against it? Look, his signature is here as a witness. Mark my words, that weasel will find a way to worm his way out of this and back into Napoleon’s good graces.”

“There is only one problem—I’m still alive.”

Webb grinned. “Not for long.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Unfortunately, according to Dr. Alex McTaggart, Adelaide de Chevenoy died of injuries sustained in last night’s tragic explosion. Lily D’Artiers Copeland Dryden is thought to be on the road to recovery.”

“Poor Adelaide,” Lily said. “But what will you do for a body?”

“No need. Alex completed your death certificate, the good fathers signed as witnesses, and your coffin is already sealed. Adelaide will be buried before Fouché has time to know what we’ve done.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought for a minute you were going to send me to the Sultan as well.”

Webb shook his head and looked down into Lily’s innocent gaze. “I doubt you are the Sultan’s type.” He didn’t want to have to explain to her what fate she’d cast Armand into for fear his well-meaning partner would ask him to go after Amelia and stop her.

Leave it to Amelia to give a cad like Armand, or whomever he really was, his comeuppance. However, Webb suspected the wily Armand would probably take the Sultan’s court by storm and live out his days, much as Lily said, in the lap of luxury.

He smiled down at her. “Now that Adelaide’s dead, you can’t stay here any longer, so I’m taking you back to London. Since we haven’t been able to find the journals, I doubt Fouché will either, short of tearing down the houses brick by brick. Which, given the state of the inheritance, not even he could justify. In a few months I can come back and quietly find the journals.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to come back.”

Lily was worried about him. That, he felt, was a good sign. Whatever her reluctance to get married, he was going to find a way around it. “I know you’re concerned, but I’ll be careful and you’ll be safe in my house in London.”

She closed her eyes, her mouth set in a purposeful line. “Just let me finish what I am trying to say.” Her lashes fluttered open and she sighed. “You don’t have to come back to Paris. There are no journals. Costard told me.”

“Costard?”

“Yes, when I asked him this afternoon, he told me Henri never kept any journals.”

“You did what?” he said. If his head pounded before, now it felt ready to explode.

“I told you before, when we were discussing Armand. He was there when I told Costard who I was. But I don’t think he heard me ask Costard where Henri kept his journals.”

“Why would you do that?”

“In the courtroom, it was apparent the Costards knew I wasn’t Adelaide, and it was also obvious Troussebois knew, so I realized our time here was limited. My instincts told me the Costards were in it for different reasons than Troussebois.” She twitched her nose in imitation of the man. “I’d never trusted him. But I trusted the Costards. So I asked them.”

A few days in the field and suddenly she’s an expert on instincts! “Why of all the unorthodox, idiotic, foolish …”

When he paused, Lily jumped in. “Yes, go ahead and say it, I’m the worst agent in the world.”

He didn’t. Instead he asked, “How do you know the Costards are telling the truth?”

She turned away from him a little and then reached inside her dress and pulled a small, folded letter out from her bodice. She handed it to him. “I haven’t opened it, but Costard told me that this is from Henri de Chevenoy. It was to be delivered to your father in the event of Henri’s death.” She shrugged. “I suppose it explains it all. You could say, Henri’s last laugh at your father’s expense.”

He turned the missive back and forth in his hand. The handwriting was certainly Henri’s, as was the seal. Sliding his thumb under the wax he popped it open.

Ignoring her protests that the letter was for his father and his father only, Webb scanned the lines. Lily had, in fact, discovered the truth.

There were no journals. Henri confessed to using them as a ruse to keep his payments current. He apologized and then urged Lord Dryden not to send anyone to France as a replacement, but only to see what he could do for the welfare of the Costards given their long years of loyalty.

Webb rose and walked over to the fire, where he fed the last piece of damning evidence against de Chevenoy into the fire. He stared into the flames for moment before he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about your plan to confront the Costards?”

“You were occupied at the time.”

Amelia
. He returned to her bedside. “If you think that Amelia and I were …”

She put her finger to his lips, stilling his flow of words. “I know you weren’t. She told me.”

Webb could imagine how that conversation had gone. Catching up her hand, he kissed the finger that just moments before had brushed against his lips. “Then why didn’t you tell me about your suspicions, that you were going to confront the Costards.”

“Because you would have told me not to.”

She was right there. But telling the Costards? It was a tremendous risk, even by his reckless standards.

“Webb, you may argue with my means, but I got to the truth of the matter rather quickly. According to Costard, Henri wasn’t so foolish as to keep anything in a journal, in fact he—” Her words came to an abrupt halt.

“He what?”

“He … he was … quite brilliant at remembering it all,” she said, struggling over each word, as if she’d forgotten her lines in some play. “Yes, and according to Costard, he never kept any records that might incriminate him.”

He suspected Lily wasn’t telling him the entire truth, but now wasn’t the time to search it out. If what she said was true, then their mission was over.

“I can see the disappointment in your eyes,” she said, softly. “We came here for nothing.”

Nothing? He could hardly call it that. The British agents on the Continent could now rest easy knowing that a record of their activities wasn’t about to be handed over to Bonaparte, Henri’s estate was now safe from the grasping upstart; and they could see to Henri’s last wish, the safety of the Costards.

But even beyond all these things, he’d unearthed something far more valuable than Henri’s journals.

He’d found his direction, he’d found his life.

He’d found Lily.

Now he’d have to find a way to make her believe in this same impossible notion. Only before he could get to that, he had a few more unanswered questions. Like, where were the Costards? And Celeste as well?

As Lily outlined the rest of the evening’s events, until Fouché’s abduction, he felt a growing pride at how she’d handled the situation.

Now there was nothing left to do but gather together the Costards and Celeste and make a hasty retreat to the coast where they would meet their ship.

“That leaves only one unanswered question, Lily,” he said, kneeling before her. “Why won’t you marry me tonight?”

She looked up at him, her green eyes clear and round. For a moment he thought he spied tears there, but it may have been only a play of light.

“Webb, it was wrong for us to make love, it was wrong for me to come here. And it would be an even bigger mistake if I were to marry you.” She paused and took a deep breath. “My life is back in Virginia and yours is working for your father. I’m not suited for this life, as you can well attest. Please, just forget about our time here. Forget about us. It was a mistake.”

He caught her by the shoulders. “I don’t believe that and neither do you. Tell me, Lily, why you won’t marry me.”

Her face set in determined lines and her shoulders straightened. “Because I don’t love you. I wanted to get even with you for the way you treated me all those years ago, and I suppose now I’ve succeeded.”

T
hough back in London, Lily’s emphatic statement that she didn’t love him, still left Webb reeling. Looking across the carriage toward her, he took only a quick glance at her quiet features.

Had she truly deceived him? His pride was too stung to ask her further.

Before they left Paris, Lily had asked Webb to send a note to Lucien. She prayed her brother heeded her advice and returned immediately to his family in Virginia.