The Impostor (10 page)

Sebastian stared at her. “That’s insane,” he said flatly. “You are implying that Sevigny intends to build a submarine to rescue Napoleon, force Dr. McGrigor to restore him to his former strength and overthrow the restored Bourbon monarchy?”

“I believe that is exactly what Sevigny intends to do, my lord,” said Tessa, standing.

For a long moment, Sebastian continued to sit and stare at the plans in his hands. Finally, he gave a single nod.

“I believe you are right,” he said at last.

“Of course I’m right,” said Tessa, though she was feeling rather dizzy and breathless from the magnitude of this revelation.

“And if Sevigny is building a submersible vessel with the intention of slipping past the Royal Navy to St. Helena’s, healing Napoleon of his disease and freeing him from exile…” Sebastian shook his head. “It sounds mad,” he said. “It sounds utterly insane.”

“I know,” said Tessa. “Then again, I do not think anyone has ever accused Sevigny of being sane.”

Sebastian stood up. “If Sevigny intends to do all this, he will need to be stopped. We had better get going.”

“Where are we going?” asked Tessa, glancing back at the table strewn with papers. “Oughtn’t we put everything away? Brears—”

“Never mind Brears,” said Sebastian. “We should go to Francis’s offices in Somerset House immediately. There might be something there.”

Chapter Nine

Half an hour later, Tessa stood gazing up at the graceful façade of Somerset House, a large, beautiful, neoclassical structure that stood on the south side of the Strand, overlooking the Thames, which lapped at the south wing of the house. Sebastian had told her that in addition to the Royal Academy, the building also housed the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Geological Society.

“Why are Sir Francis’s offices here, instead of at Horse Guards or at the secret military annexes off Abchurch Street?” Tessa asked, as yet another elderly porter admitted them through the great front door.

Sebastian kept his voice low, so it would not echo off the marble and stone. “His official cover is as a Fellow of the Academy, studying natural sciences. This way.”

He had apparently visited Francis here before, for he made his way unerringly through a maze of marble halls and lobbies. They walked so quickly that she hardly had time to look around her at the profusion of treasures that crammed the halls—the statuary in the niches and plinths, large bones of strange beasts, and, curiously, a human skull grinning savagely in an alabaster bowl. At last they came to a large door at the end of a long, spacious corridor, and Sebastian knocked sharply.

There was no response.

After a moment, when it was clear no one was going to come, he turned to look down at Tessa. She raised her head to meet his gaze with a questioning one of her own. The light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window behind her seemed to dapple them both in gold.

He reached out a hand and passed it lightly over the thick fawn-colored braids pinned close to her head. She drew in a quick breath, but he hardly noticed as he rubbed his callused fingertips against her hair.

“My lord?” she asked uncertainly.

He did not respond. Instead, he slid his finger along her scalp, igniting her nerve endings, sending a shiver down her spine, and for a moment she could not move, could not breathe.

But she was a fool. He merely worked a hairpin loose from her braids. Then his hand lightly grazed the edge of her ear as he withdrew the pin, and for a long moment they stood staring at each other, neither able to look away.

Only the sound of footsteps down another hall shattered the moment. Sebastian turned and began to work the lock of the door with the pin.

A few minutes later he swung the door open to reveal a dark, windowless study within. Ushering Tessa in quickly, he shut the door behind her and struck a match.

The sudden flare of light illuminated a large, vaulted room, furnished in heavy leather and mahogany furniture. Tall bookshelves lined two walls, filled with large, leather-bound volumes. Two large portraits hung on opposite walls. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

Sebastian moved quickly toward a large desk on the other end of the room, where he lit two tall candles and handed one to her. Tessa accepted it, running her free hand over the dusty surface of the desk.

“He hasn’t been here in some time,” she said.

Sebastian shrugged. “That doesn’t signify. He almost never remembers to have this room cleaned.”

With some confusion, Tessa watched as Sebastian, grunting and straining, dragged the desk to the center of the room, then put the chair on top of the table. Then he found a pen, climbed on top of the chair, and stretched himself just far enough to press the pen into the open mouth of the grotesque and bearded Green Man grinning down from the ceiling boss at the intersection of two ribs.

To her amazement, one of the bookshelves swung open like a door, which opened onto darkness. Tessa lifted her candle, and the faint flame lit a passageway within.

“Francis is telekinetic, of course,” Sebastian said dryly, leaping back onto the floor and picking up his walking stick. “It makes hitting the switch much simpler.”

Clutching the candle, Tessa followed him into the passageway, which led down a long, narrow flight of steps into blackness below.

“Francis keeps his true offices below the one given to him by the Academy,” said Sebastian. “It allows him to keep secret files and meet privately with his agents.”

She did not know what to expect. Her heart pounding, she followed Sebastian down the flight of steps, and found herself in a large square chamber, which, judging from the number of doorways opening onto other spaces, was but one in a labyrinth of rooms.

She raised the candle. The weak light illuminated a scene of total destruction.

The study had been searched, carelessly and completely. The tapestries and charts that hung on the wall had been slashed with a knife. All but the heaviest of the furniture had been broken and destroyed. Broken objects were scattered across the room—brass instruments, statues made of wood and stone and clay, shattered oil lamps and empty goblets turned on their sides.

“Stay close to me,” said Sebastian, making his way through the wreckage to an archway that led to the next room.

Her heart still pounding like a war drum, she followed him into the next chamber, and stumbled over an abacus missing nearly all of its beads. Chess pieces, several of which had been crushed as though by a heavy foot, lay strewn across the carpet. A broken hourglass spilled sand everywhere. Pens and overturned bottles oozing black ink also littered the floor.

And everywhere, scattered like leaves and branches after a storm, the debris of torn books and loose papers. Only two winged seraphim, flanking a bronze door to yet another room, seemed untouched.

Despite his limp, Sebastian’s tread made no sound on the thick carpet as he picked his way through the destruction.

“Francis must have fought back ferociously,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” said Tessa. She made her voice gentle. “I know he was your friend and dear to you.”

He glanced sharply at her, and for a moment she wondered if she had revealed too much. But he only bent to examine a few chests that lay crumbled and broken against the far wall. In the weak light of his candle, his dark hair gleamed like dark silk seen through water.

“Why was he taken but not killed?” Sebastian asked. “What use did Sevigny have for him?”

But before Tessa could think of a response, they both froze. The sound of footsteps and faint voices came through the great bronze door.

“Go back upstairs,” he said, snuffing out his candle immediately. “Get back in the carriage and wait for me there.”

“But—”

“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.