A Spark Unseen (29 page)

Lane broke from the little clump of trees and ran down the graveled path, while I untangled my skirts from the branches and went after him. His long legs reached my back door far ahead of me, smoke billowing as he threw it open.

“Stay here!” he yelled over his shoulder before rushing inside.

I did not slow my stride, even for the back step, dashing into a thick cloud in the back corridor. I glanced to one side and through the smoke saw Lane throw the bucket of kitchen water onto the fire that was licking the wall behind the stove, and when I turned back to what was in front of me I nearly collided with Mary.

“Out the back,” Mary managed to say, coughing, pushing me backward, “the front room’s on fire!”

“So is the kitchen!”

We paused for a mere second, then ran in opposite directions, Mary presumably for the back door, while I dashed into the dining room and through to the library. The curtains were a flickering pattern of orange and yellow fire. Joseph and a cousin were pulling them down, trying to stop the spread of the flames, while Jean-Baptiste picked himself up from the floor, rubbing his jaw. I hurried into the foyer to fling open the front door, took a few quick breaths of the cleaner air, and then ran into the empty salon to unlatch the windows and draw out the smoke.

I saw the lights being lit in the house across the street, people pouring from Mrs. Reynolds’s onto the sidewalks, nightgowns and bed caps and hair tied in rags, mistresses and servants indistinguishable in their confusion and dishevelment. I caught a quick glimpse of Mrs. Hardcastle in a dressing gown before I pushed the last window open, hiked up my skirts, and ran for the stairs.

Smoke rose through the central stairwell, thinning as I climbed above the cloud.
Twenty-eight stairs
,
twenty-nine
,
thirty
… My body demanded more breath, but the smoke burned, like it had that night in the workshop, the night that had changed everything.
Fifty-two
,
fifty-three
… I reached the final landing, coughing and sputtering.

The smoke was very thin here, barely noticeable beyond the stairs, but all I could see was that the storeroom was unlocked and open, giving me a straight view to the bookshelf door, also swinging gently on its hinges. I burst into Uncle Tully’s workshop in an explosion of sooty skirts.

Most of the toys were still there, but Uncle Tully’s lightning box was gone, his bench turned over, the tools in disarray. And Henri Marchand stood coolly in the middle of the room, hands in his jacket pockets. He turned his dark eyes on me, but I had no time for him.

“Uncle!” I yelled. “Uncle Tully!”

I ran into the little bedroom, but it was empty, and so was the bathing room. The other door, the one that connected with Mrs. Reynolds’s, was unbolted, slightly ajar; the painted cracks had been slit with a knife. My insides wrenched, so hard I thought I might be ill.

“Uncle Tully!” I screamed, stumbling through the door. The large chest that had been blocking the way in from Mrs. Reynolds’s was now toppled on its side. I scrambled over it and through the debris of the silent, dusty storeroom. “Uncle!”

I went like a demon down Mrs. Reynolds’s stairs, and there was no one anywhere, nothing, not even a fire, each landing, each bedchamber soundless and empty, the overstuffed foyer quiet in a smoky haze. Whatever had caused the glow in her back windows must have already been put out. I stood still in the hushed gray air, panting, not heeding the pandemonium I could hear on the other side of the front door. Uncle Tully was gone. I had been outmaneuvered. Ben had played his hand skillfully indeed, and now my uncle was paying the price.

I heard the commotion outside growing, and the clanging of a distant bell that was not Uncle Tully’s. Someone must have sent for the police or the firemen. I turned and flitted up the stairs, back the way I came, and into the storeroom. I righted the overturned chest with difficulty before going through to Uncle Tully’s bedchamber, dragging the chest as best I could across the open doorway. I barred the little door behind me, kicking something in my haste, and a green bottle went rolling across the carpet, empty. I picked it up, clutching it tight in my hand.

Henri Marchand was still amid the mess and broken chairs of the workshop, gazing at the unfinished automaton of a singing bird at his feet. He had one hand in his pocket, the other fingering a brass wheel that had been left behind, one of the gyroscopes my uncle had taken apart. I had no idea how he’d gotten here, or what he thought he was seeing, and at the moment was beyond caring. But his next words jolted me awake.

“So this is where you kept him?” he said quietly. “Locked up. Like an animal.”

There was real disgust in his voice. It lit a fury beneath my fear. I marched up and snatched the wheel from his hand. “Do not ever,” I said slowly, “touch my uncle’s things.”

His brows contracted, then the sound of running footsteps came across the storeroom, and Lane slid through the door. It was the first time I’d seen him in proper light: gaunt, soot-stained, unshaven, and with a bleeding cut beside his eye. He looked terrible, but I could not help the illogical feeling that his presence was going to put all this right. I squeezed the little brass wheel until it threatened to break the skin of my hand as Lane took in Henri Marchand and what was obviously an empty workshop.

“Is he gone?” Lane said, his voice very low. There was no need to ask who he meant. I nodded.

Lane took four strides across the room, pulled back a fist, and hit Henri Marchand in the face. I gasped. Henri dropped straight to the floor, as if his body had suddenly chosen to obey gravity rather than the reverse, a short scream ringing out from somewhere near the door. Mary must have come in just behind Lane. I took a step toward Henri.

“Stay away from him, Katharine!” Lane said.

I looked up at Lane, shaking the reddening knuckles of his right hand, his skin flushed even darker with rage. Lane’s temper was nothing new to me; more than half of the time, I was the cause of it. But I had never seen him give way to actual violence. He turned his gray eyes to me, chest still heaving.

“He works for Wickersham.”

My lips remained parted for a long moment before the shock of the words finally closed them. Always Henri had been there, every time I looked up, sticking to my side without question through the bizarre events that had circled me like vultures. And I had trusted him. I wrapped an arm around my stomach. Why had I trusted him? I took a small step closer to Lane as Henri sat himself upright, ruefully rubbing his jaw.

“Well met, my friend,” he said almost cheerfully. “You rule the day.”

I needed no translation to know exactly where Lane had told Henri Marchand to go. At that moment, I wished exactly the same.

I
left Mary in the salon with the police and hurried up the stairs. The fires in both houses had been deliberately set, of course, and two
gendarmes
found it their duty to inquire as to why. While I feigned fright and illness like a proper sort of lady, Mary acted the part of a heroine. She was speaking much faster than the poor Frenchman could possibly write, using her best British Cockney, filling her story so full of nonsense I was surprised he had not already given up and gone home, especially when a more coherent statement could be had next door. Mrs. Reynolds’s recitation of events was nearly the same if one could sift through the chatter, except for the five strangers hurrying down her stairs in the confusion — “burglars” she’d called them — two with a large box between them, two more supporting an old man who appeared to be either ill or asleep. The thought of this made my feet move faster as I went softly up the steps. I locked the storeroom and ducked back through into my uncle’s workshop.

Joseph slouched against one wall, silent and with his hands in his pockets. His cousins had made themselves scarce before the
gendarmes
came, but his brother, Jean-Baptiste, sat against the wall, trimming his fingernails with a short, sharp knife. Lane straddled one of our two unbroken chairs, elbows propped on its back to face Henri, who was tied to the other one. His jacket strained at the shoulders where his arms were pulled tight behind him, each ankle bound to a chair leg.

A quiet conversation in French had been going on between the two of them, but they stopped when I entered, two dark heads turning to look at me, one with his sleek smugness only slightly ruffled, the other tan-skinned, gray-eyed, still bloody, and not a little wild. He was calm, I saw, but fighting his temper; I knew that set of jaw and the stony quality of his eyes. I wondered what sort of infuriating things Henri had been saying to him, but mostly I thought that the person Lane actually needed to be having a conversation with was me. I had no notion how he fit into what was happening here at all.

Lane stood and came across the littered floor to meet me, as if he did not want me near the man in the chair. I opened my hand and showed him the empty green bottle in my palm.

“They will have given him this,” I said, ignoring the feel of Henri’s eyes watching us. “If they got it all down him, then we have five, perhaps six hours. Last time he … he did not wake well.”

Lane took the bottle, rolling it in his fingers. “This is how you got him here?” I nodded, and he turned his body just a bit, partially blocking the view of the man tied to the chair. “Is Mr. Tully all right? Has he been … well?”

“Well enough,” I replied. We both knew Uncle Tully was not well now. “What are we going to do?”

Lane put a hand on the back of my head, kissing me once on the forehead before he went back to Henri, sliding easily into his backward position on the chair. I met Henri’s dark eyes and the impertinent smile playing about his mouth, and suddenly had a very good idea of the sort of thing he’d been saying to Lane. That peck on my forehead had been about more than affection, and we were all aware of it.

“Tell me what you know about Ben Aldridge,” Lane said to him. We were speaking English now, I noted.

“If you are meaning Arceneaux, you should be asking that question of her, my friend,” Henri replied, eyes still on me.

I saw Jean-Baptiste’s knife slow as he watched the proceedings intently, waiting for the word to intervene. Though a brew of anger and betrayal simmered just beneath my rib cage, I was also silently willing Henri to stop being an idiot.

“Or perhaps you have not had much time for talking,” Henri continued, smiling at me. “That blood on your face is not your own, is it,
chérie
?”

My hand jumped to my cheek. Of course I had Lane’s blood on my face, which would explain the way Joseph had stared, and Mary’s offer of a handkerchief. And since when had Henri ever called me his “darling”? I dropped my hand and lifted my chin. Henri probably deserved whatever he got.

But Lane only said, “I will ask you again.”

He had not even changed his position in the chair, yet there was something behind his words, something that riveted the attention. From the corner of my eye, I watched Joseph straighten and Jean-Baptiste’s knife go still. There wasn’t a man in this room that was not going to do exactly as Lane said when he spoke like that, including Henri, I realized, and the revelation startled me.

Henri shrugged against the ropes. “I was told to find out about his background, to mingle in his society. But he was a man favored by the emperor, high in the imperial circle. …”

“Then you knew him,” I said, “before the ball.” This hurt me. I could not help it. “And Mr. Babcock? Did you know about that, too?”

Lane looked back at me. “Is Mr. Babcock here?” Before Henri could respond or I could think how to answer, Joseph started speaking rapidly in French. Joseph almost never spoke in English, but it was good to remember that he understood his share of it. I watched Lane’s face darken and, when Joseph had finished, Lane said, “I’m sorry, Katharine.”

I took a breath against the pang in my chest and looked back to Henri. “Did you know? Is that why you took me to the morgue?”

Lane’s gray eyes slid between us, but Henri was looking directly at me. “I swear to you I did not. And I did not intend to lose sight at the ball. On the grave of my mother.”

“And what did you intend?” asked Lane.

Henri grinned. “Why, to find you, of course. Wickersham said she would lead me to you if she could and so she did, though the lady is not the talker. But I am guessing you know this. You should take her dancing more,
mon ami
.”

I held my breath as Jean-Baptiste watched Lane, waiting for a sign. Nothing came. But I had seen the muscles in Lane’s back tightening. I came to stand just behind him. When the low voice spoke again, it was dangerously quiet.

“And what did you find about Ben Aldridge?”

“Nothing at all since my assignment was changed.” Henri’s eyes went sly. “Since Wickersham asked me to find the traitor who had left our ranks.”

By “traitor” he meant Lane, and then my own temper was igniting. “That is quite a word coming from you, Mr. Marchand.” I nearly spat the words. “Remind me what country you were born in again?”

“I am no traitor to France,” he replied, once again serious. “I do not betray France if I wish to see the emperor overthrown.”

“You favor the royal line, then?” Lane said.

Henri lifted a shoulder. “I would see a king in France.”

“So you help those that are the enemies of France?”

“I aid the enemies of Napoléon,” he corrected.

Lane smiled. “I sympathize. But you are not helping the enemies of Napoléon.”

“Allies or not, England will see the emperor overthrown,” Henri said. “She must.”

“England may. But Wickersham will not.”

Again Lane had not moved, or significantly changed his voice, but somehow the entire room had fixed its attention.

“Let me explain,” he said. “When you have information you are to write to Wickersham’s secretary, Mr. Johnson at the British Embassy, in English, with a particular wording that tells Wickersham when and at which of your chosen places you are to meet. Am I right?”