The Impostor (13 page)

She whimpered, almost unable to bear the rush of pleasure, but he had no mercy. In a single powerful motion he lifted himself and thrust into her, but this time she was ready for him and there was only the hard, hot feel of him inside her, the sound of his hoarse voice saying her name, and her answering cries.

Chapter Eleven

“There is something I still don’t understand,” said Sebastian, after a long silence. His arm lay heavy over her waist and he wrapped her hair around his fingers. “Why is your father working for Sevigny?”

“I don’t know,” said Tessa quietly. Her breath stirred the tangle of dark hair on his chest. “Perhaps because he’s old. Because he’s tired. Because he’s ashamed he could never afford a dowry for me, because he can no longer provide me for me. I didn’t know what he had done at first. I think I deliberately ignored what he was doing. But when I discovered that you—”

She broke off without finishing the sentence.

“How long has he been working for Sevigny?”

“I can’t be sure,” said Tessa. “A year perhaps, maybe two. I didn’t become aware of the details until very recently. When I finally realized the full extent of what they were planning, I set out immediately to warn you. But it took me some time to find you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about your father last night?”

“I wanted to protect him, if I could,” said Tessa. “No matter what he has done, he is still my father.”

“I understand,” said Sebastian gently. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Do you have any guesses as to the identity of the man who can manipulate fire?”

“No,” said Tessa. “But he is the same one, is he not? The man who burned the dead at Talavera. He set fire to your carriage and attacked us today.”

“I believe so,” said Sebastian. “It would appear he’s close to Sevigny.”

“Yes.” Tessa frowned. “But I truly have no notion of who he might be.”

“They must have a workshop somewhere,” said Sebastian. “They would need a place to build the new
Neptune
and to keep their captives.”

“I believe it to be on the river somewhere,” said Tessa. “They arrived at Somerset House by boat, did they not?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian thoughtfully. “That would make sense. There are certainly places further downriver where they might act unnoticed.”

They were silent for a long time, lying in the moonlight and lost in their own thoughts. Tessa could not help thinking of her father and hoping, again, that she had not hurt him too badly.

Sebastian ran a finger absently over her shoulder, sending shivers down her spine. He was clearly thinking as well, but the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece struck nine before he finally spoke again.

“I have only one more question tonight, Tessa,” he said.

“All right,” she said.

He pushed her flat onto her back, then raised himself over her on his elbows and looked directly down into her face. “Why did you not ask your father to take away your memories as well? Why did you choose to suffer?”

She lifted her gaze to his. “Because I would rather suffer a lifetime of loneliness and heartbreak,” she said in clear, measured tones, “than to lose the memories of the three years that we shared.”

He made no answer, but drew her close to him. She allowed her eyes to slide shut, lifting her hips to wrap her legs around his waist, welcoming him into her body, and all other thoughts slipped away, leaving only their mingled breaths, and their hearts beating in perfect time.

A long time later, Tessa stirred against Sebastian’s side. They were lying in a tangle of limbs and sheets and moonlight, and as she moved he moved with her, wrapping his forearm around her pale smooth stomach. Against the white pillows, her tousled hair looked black as ink.

“You know you’ll have to marry me now, Tessa,” he said, and immediately she tensed in his arms. He tightened his hold on her.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said, turning her face away from him.

“You love me,” he said, running his hands down the slim, smooth expanse of her back, loving the feel of her warm skin beneath his own callused fingers.

“I’ll get over it,” she said, her voice faintly muffled by the pillow. “I did, once before.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You never stopped loving me and you never will. You told me yourself.”

“Arrogant man!” She attempted to pry herself loose from him, but he pressed his lips to her shoulder and held her still. “Suppose that it is true then. Suppose that some part of me loves you forever.” She drew back far enough to look at him fully, and her eyes were dark and tender in the shadows. “Even if you always hold some small piece of my heart, Sebastian, the rest of me will live a good life without you. I have been happy without you. I can be happy without you again.”

“Perhaps you can,” he said, “but I cannot. After you left, Tessa, and I returned to England, it was as though a bright light had gone out in my life. For years I have been existing in some kind of purgatory. I thought I wanted peace. I thought it would be enough to be content. But now—with you—you make me feel alive again, alive and happy and at peace in a way I have not been since I was a child. You make me feel new. You make me feel as though I had been born again. You make me
feel
.”

“It isn’t me, Sebastian,” she said. “It’s—everything. The war and your wound and the memories, they all became demons. When I came back, I let you face them, you could face them, because I was there with you in Spain, because I understand. But I am not meant for you. What we share now, this isn’t your life. Your life is London and ballrooms and all this. I am not of your world.”

He pressed his lips against her hair. “We are all of the same world, Tessa,” he said gently.

“How little you understand. It is not only you, Sebastian, who would suffer for my want of wealth and connections. What of children? Have you thought of what it would mean for someone like me to become the mother of your children? You would want for them all the things that you had yourself.”

He grew still at the thought of children, the children that this woman, this woman he loved, would bear for him. A son with her golden eyes. A daughter with her long soft curls. He had to swallow past a lump in his throat. “What I had, Tessa, was a grandfather who despised me. I grew up in a big, elegant house where there was no laughter and no love. I do not want that for my children. Did you hear nothing of what I said to you tonight?”

She touched his face gently. “When this all over,” she said quietly, “I am returning to Wycombe.”

“I won’t let you go.”

“You can’t make me stay,” she said. “I won’t be your mistress and I can’t be your wife.”

“You can be my wife,” he said. “You
will
be my wife. We can be married, quietly, in the country. We can go to Grenville Park.”

“It is a dream, Sebastian,” she said, but there was longing in her voice, and he felt a moment of triumph. She loved him. He could persuade her to stay. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder again. “Let us not talk of this anymore, Tessa. Please. It is a beautiful night. We can fight again in the morning.”

“Yes,” she said, putting her arms around his neck and drawing him close.

He kissed her, and she was small and slender and perfect in his arms. She had told him that she was leaving him, but he would find a way to make her stay. For now, for this moment, she was his, completely. It was enough.

Long after Sebastian had fallen asleep, Tessa lay awake and stared at the ceiling, dry-eyed and still. She knew what she must do. She was not ashamed of what they had done here, out of love, but she knew it was wicked to lie with a man when they were not married. Still, it was just one night, one night of memories to hold against her heart in the thousands of lonely nights that would follow. Surely God would not deny her this one small comfort. Surely He would forgive her this one transgression.

She gazed down at Sebastian’s sleeping form. He reminded her of a sculpture, Michelangelo, perhaps, all that perfect musculature hard as marble. But she was no artist, and there was no way for her to capture this moment. She tried to etch him into her memory.

He gave a small, contented sigh in his sleep as he pressed his face against her shoulder. His breathing was deep and peaceful. He did not dream, and when the clock struck midnight, she, too, slept.

Chapter Twelve

The heat woke Tessa. Tucked against Sebastian’s side, his arm thrown around her waist, she felt as though she were roasting in the great canopied bed. Fretfully, she tried to struggle free of his heavy weight, kicking at the blankets, but even the air was warm and heavy.

She came awake suddenly. It took her a moment to understand what she saw, that the red glow was not a remnant of a dream or nightmare.

The entire room was ablaze. Flames licked at the curtains, at the furniture, at the bedposts. The air was acrid with smoke.

Terrified, she raised herself to her knees to shake Sebastian awake. Coughing and choking, she cried his name.

His eyes opened, growing black with horror as he took in the blazing inferno of the room. “Tessa,” he rasped, “Oh God,
Tessa.”

She knew, though he said nothing else, that he was reliving Talavera once again.

“It’s all right, Sebastian, it’s all right!” she choked.

Her eyes streaming, she looked down at him through the black haze. She gazed wildly around her.

The smoke on the ground was less thick.
 

“We have to go onto the floor,” she whispered.

Together, they rolled down onto a section of the rug not yet aflame. The roar of the fire had grown louder, and orange flames danced everywhere, sending sparks down that pricked at their skin. She could wait no longer. There was a clear path from where they lay to a door just ten feet away, which Tessa knew led to an unoccupied antechamber intended to serve as a valet’s bedroom.

Her lungs burning, she steered Sebastian across the carpet, snatching up his discarded breeches and a dressing gown left hanging over a chair along the way. When they had reached the antechamber, she shut the door to keep out as much smoke as possible.

Sebastian coughed violently. She threw his breeches at him and tied his robe around her.

The room had a single small window. Tessa looked out, then hastily drew her head back in. All of Montague House was aflame, great tongues of fire bursting through most of the other windows, all reaching for the sky.

Next to the window was a door that no doubt led to the servants’ stairs. She reached it for, but as she pulled it open she a huge wave of heat blasted her. The fire had spread up the stairwell.

They were well and truly trapped.

She turned back to the room, where Sebastian lay on the floor, coughing and retching, still in the grips of his worst nightmare.

Was it her imagination, or was the smoke in the room dissipating, the roar of the fire from the bedchamber outside dying? She reached for the door again, but before she could pull it open, a cool, calm voice spoke quite distinctly from the bedchamber.

A voice she recognized with sudden horror and understanding. “They’re in here somewhere,” said Jane Cameron. “You can kill Montague, but Ryder wants his daughter alive. She isn’t to be harmed.”

The footsteps were drawing closer. Tessa pressed herself to the ground and peered out at the bedchamber from under the door. She could see three pairs of feet moving across the ruined carpet, pausing now and again to fling open wardrobes and lift curtains.

She raised herself back to her knees, glancing wildly around the anteroom. There was no escape, with the fire blocking the servants’ stairs, and the window so high above the ground.

So Tessa did the only thing she could think of. She reached for Sebastian’s hand, and he gripped it unthinkingly. Then, before he realized what she intended, she opened her mind to the transformation.

“No!” Sebastian snarled. He tried to release her hand and break the link, but it was too late. She hardly noticed the agony of her stretching bones and popping joints, wanting only for it to be done quickly, before they were discovered. Her skin had hardly resettled over her massive new muscles when the door flew open.

Jane Cameron, dressed in men’s clothing, her flaming hair tucked beneath a cap, stood in the doorway, framed by the burnt room, where a few fires still smoldered on the carpet and furniture. When she saw the two Sebastians, side by side on the floor, neither fully conscious, she stared for a long moment.

And then she laughed.

“You know, Tessa Ryder,” she said, glancing between the two of them, “I think if we had known each other at a different time and different place, we might have friends.”

Tessa closed her eyes, not wishing to look up into that beautiful face with its crown of flame-red hair, afraid of giving herself away. The pain had not yet diminished and she had difficulty breathing.

“I am Montague,” said Tessa, and her voice was Sebastian’s, deep and rough. “Leave her.”

Sebastian attempted to speak, but his smoke inhalation must have been worse than hers. Nothing but a faint rasp emerged.

Jane arched a perfect eyebrow. “It would be convenient if I could simply shoot you both. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to injure the wrong person. Edward would object most strenuously if I sliced open his daughter.”