The Impostor (9 page)

She was very tired. She had slept little the night before, and she knew her exhaustion was plain on her face, in the dark, almost bruise-like shadows beneath her eyes and the skin drawn tight across her forehead.

Sebastian pushed open the door and climbed out of the hackney, turning to offer her his hand. She rose as well, and though her wound gave a twinge of pain she suppressed her wince, knowing he watched her.
 

Hesitantly, she placed her gloved hand in his. Even through the worn kidskin, she could feel the familiar heat and strength of him.
 

She glanced uncertainly up at him. His harsh, scarred face was unreadable in the watery morning light, but as his fingers closed over hers, a muscle ticked once in the strong line of his jaw. He desired her.
 

She looked away as she descended the steps. She had known him for too long not to recognize that look, the intensity of his gaze, the tension in his jaw. Though six years had passed and he did not remember her, he still wanted her.
 

Heat and trepidation pooled in her belly. She fought back a confusing welter of emotions: satisfaction and panic, a powerful yearning for this man she had never stopped loving, and an even more powerful fear that this time, she could not resist him.

“You ought to have stayed at Montague House,” he said. “You should be resting. You will hurt yourself even more with all this gadding about.”

Since Tessa had been hearing this argument, or some variation of it, all morning, she ignored him and concentrated instead on the unprepossessing exterior of the townhouse.

They were here to retrace Sevigny’s steps and his attempts to discover the names of the Omega Group’s members. They had decided to begin by reading the dispatches Sevigny had mentioned to Sebastian the night before.

Tessa furrowed her brows as she transferred her attention to Sebastian. He leaned more heavily than usual on his walking stick as he made his way up the steps to the front door and knocked. No doubt his leg pained him after last night’s escapade through the streets of London.

She repressed the urge to ask him how he had slept. It was not the sort of question a lady might pose to a gentleman she had ostensibly just met. But she remembered only too well the nightmares that haunted him in the darkest hours of the night. How often had she slipped into his tent to hold him close? How often had they slept together, tangled in the skeins of her hair, their limbs entwined, their hearts beating perfectly in time?

She looked away from him. Though she had wanted it, she could not bear looking at him and knowing he did not remember.

It seemed a very long time before an ancient porter opened the door a crack and peered at them through rheumy eyes. “Yes?”

“The Earl Grenville, with a lady,” he said. He handed over a letter stamped with Wellington’s signet, allowing him access to the dispatches kept here in secret. Apparently, he had paid a call to his old commander before Tessa had even risen that morning and obtained permission to enter the secret annexes where, among other top secret documents, dispatches related to the Omega Group were kept.

The porter accepted the letter, tore it open and regarded its contents with suspicious eyes before finally stepping grudgingly aside to allow them in. Tessa followed Sebastian inside and found herself in a small, dark hall.

“This way,” said Sebastian, evidently familiar with the place.

She followed him down the hall and up a set of narrow dingy stairs. They passed several closed doors, behind which she could hear pens scratching as well as voices speaking in low, hushed tones.

At last they came to a door at the end of yet another long hall. Sebastian knocked. No one answered for a long time, but when Sebastian knocked a second time, the door swung open to reveal a fat, balding man, even shorter than Tessa. He wore a red waistcoat, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, and a truly ferocious scowl that made him look like an outraged mole rat.

“Hello, Brears,” said Sebastian calmly.

The man’s scowl somehow managed to deepen when he saw who stood in the doorway.

“What the hell are you doing here, Montague?” he demanded, baring all his long teeth.

“I have permission from Old Hooky himself to come here,” he said. “And I brought a lady, Brears, so you may wish to reconsider your language.”

Brears scowled at Tessa as well. “Who’s she?” he asked, looking even more suspicious.

“She is my assistant,” said Sebastian, which made Tessa scowl at him as well.

Brears snatched the letter, read it closely and finally took a grudging step back. “Very well,” he said, sounding as though he considered it a personal insult to invite them inside. “You might as well come in then, since the General says I’m to let you look through whatever you like.”

They followed him into a large, cavernous room filled with rows and rows of wooden crates, as well as shelves crammed full of books. Tessa blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness. There were no windows.

“Tell me, Brears,” said Sebastian, as he looked around him. “Did Sir Francis Hughes ever come here?”

“Hughes. Hughes.” Brears frowned, and then his brow cleared. “Ah yes. That ass from the War Office?”

“Ah, yes. Youngish sort of chap. American accent.”

Brears snorted as he unlocked a door at the back of the room. Beyond him, Tessa could see a room full of even more crates. “That’s the one. He certainly did.”

Tessa exchanged a quick glance with Sebastian. Excitement coursed through her.

“When was Sir Francis here?” she asked.

The old man shrugged. “He was here several times,” he said. “Started coming, oh, over a year ago, I suppose. But I haven’t seen him in quite some months.”

“What did he want to look at?” asked Sebastian. “War dispatches?”

The corners of Brears’s mouth drooped into a considering frown. “War dispatches? I suppose he went through some of those, yes, but mostly he was interested in documents the American consulate sent here a year and a half ago.”

The answer was so unexpected that Sebastian came to a dead halt in the center of a room. “What documents?”

Brears shrugged his sloping shoulders. “Some papers by a man named Robert Fulton. The Americans didn’t want them, so they sent them to us for safekeeping.”

“And Francis wanted to see these papers?” asked Sebastian.

“Yes.” Brears shrugged again. “Don’t know why. A lot of nonsense.”

“Can we see them too, Mr. Brears?” asked Tessa.

“I suppose so,” said Brears grumpily. “The General said you were to see whatever you wanted, didn’t he? Come along then.”

He led them to a table on the far end of the room, waving a hand as though indicating they should sit. Then he brought over a large box full of papers and slammed it onto the table, narrowly missing Tessa’s hand.

She snatched her fingers back, alarmed.

“There you are,” said Brears. “Good thing for you I knew exactly where they were. Will you need anything else?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, already reaching into the box. “Bring over all dispatches that were classified
Omega
.“

Brears glared at him. “At your service, your lordship. Anything you want, your lordship. Not that I have anything else I have to get done.”

When the man had disappeared down an aisle to rummage through boxes, Sebastian let out a breath.
 

“What else can he possibly have to get done here?” he whispered.

Tessa couldn’t repress a smile, her heart lightening for the first time in days. “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “Perhaps he needs to make a nest or a burrow somewhere.”

Sebastian snorted. He pulled a large envelope out of the box and handed it to her. She managed to take it without touching him, an achievement that gave her a certain amount of satisfaction.
 

As he rummaged through the box, Tessa watched him, remembering the many times they had sat thus across from each other at a table in Wellington’s headquarters, pouring over dozens of intercepted messages, trying to decipher them. She remembered their laughter and their easy conversation, the warm, secret glances they had exchanged.

She had not forgotten a single one.

“I wonder why the American consulate would send papers here,” he said, breaking her reverie.

Tessa shook her head slightly to force away the fresh pang the memories brought. “I don’t know,” she said.

Brears reappeared at their side like an evil elf. “Someone broke into the consulate about a year and a half ago,” he said, slamming another box down onto the table. The word OMEGA was stamped into its side.

“Oh, yes, I recollect now,” said Sebastian, frowning thoughtfully. “A guard was shot, I believe. The Americans believe the thief was interested in these papers?”

Brears nodded. “They thought it best to rid themselves of it,” he said. “They didn’t want the papers, and they didn’t want any more of their men getting shot.”

When he had gone, Tessa lowered her voice again and leaned closer to Sebastian. “So they sent it here to be guarded by two cranky old men?”

“I’d like to see you try to steal something from Brears.” His breath was warm on her ear, his tone low and deep. She suppressed an involuntary shiver.

“He seems perfectly capable of gnawing off one’s arm with his teeth if he suspected thievery.”

He grinned and the lines of his face relaxed. For a moment he looked like the boy she had known in Spain and her heart turned.

Resolutely she turned away from him and picked up a sheaf of papers. They rummaged through the box for some time. Finally, Tessa opened yet another envelope and found a pile of meticulously drawn blueprints of a peculiar-looking, tear-drop shaped ship with a single, large, fan-like sail and a large propeller at the end of a long ribbed hulk.

For a moment she stared at it, uncertain of what she was seeing. Then, as the full implications of the device struck her, her hand began to tremble.

“Seb—my lord,” she said, her voice faint, “I believe I have found what Sevigny was looking for.”

An hour later, surrounded by over half a dozen more boxes that a resentful Brears had unearthed for them, Tessa leaned back into her chair and examined the notes she had made on a piece of foolscap.

“So in 1793,” said Tessa, “an American inventor by the name of Robert Fulton designed a submersible underwater vessel called the
Neptune
. The
Neptune
could operate beneath the surface of the ocean and tow along a carcass of mines that could be attached to enemy ships and detonated.”

Sebastian consulted his own notes. “The French Minister of Marine then granted Fulton permission to build this vessel at the Perrier boatyard in Rouen. The
Neptune
was first tested in the Seine near Rouen in 1800. By 1801, Fulton, with two crewmen, could take the
Neptune
twenty-five feet deep for five hours. But Napoleon wasn’t interested.”

Tessa picked up the blueprints and studied them again. “Napoleon has always been surprisingly short-sighted about marine warfare,” she said, examining a peculiar device on the top of the ship’s drome that appeared to feature a spiked eye.

Sebastian nodded and picked up another piece of paper. “Meanwhile, the Crown, while perfectly aware the French were not interested in this device, decided to pay Fulton eight hundred pounds to bring his design to England. He set up a workshop near Walmer Castle in Kent, where he built a second
Neptune
.”

“And the list of craftsmen who worked on this
Neptune
includes a pair of Kent craftsmen who also served Fulton’s crewmembers.” Tessa closed her eyes briefly. “Ron and Peter Howard.”

Sebastian nodded grimly. “Yes,” he said. “The first of the old Omega Group to disappear.”

Tessa nodded.

“The British, however, also lost interest in Fulton’s work after Trafalgar destroyed the French navy,” said Sebastian, once again consulting his notes. “Deeply frustrated, Fulton returned to America in October of 1806. But before he departed, he left his papers with the American consulate in London.”

“Sevigny must have been the one to break into the consulate,” said Tessa slowly. “And when he failed to retrieve the papers and the Americans moved it here, he kidnapped Sir Francis and possessed him in order to access them here. My lord…” Her voice trailed off for a moment. “I believe Sevigny intends to recreate the
Neptune
. He has the Howard brothers, after all. With their particular Gift for metal work and their previous experience with Robert Fulton and the second
Neptune
, the task would not be difficult.”

Sebastian was silent for a moment. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said at last. “The war is over. Napoleon is in exile, the Omega Group was disbanded years ago. And yet Sevigny is rebuilding the
Neptune
. Almost all the other members of the Omega Group have disappeared or died.” He shook his head. “Why? Why would he want to do this?”

Tessa turned back to look at him again. “Can you think of no one who could use such a vessel, my lord?” she asked. “Can you think of no reason he might wish to ensure the Omega Group ceases to exist? Can you think of no use to which Sevigny might put the
Neptune
and Dr. McGrigor, the only known Gifted healer in the world? Sevigny, who served Napoleon so faithfully through seven coalition wars and would have continued to serve him in an eighth?”