Elizabeth Boyle (74 page)

The man’s lips fluttered as if he wanted to answer, but no sound came out.

Webb cursed himself for not following the carriage, for now he feared Lily had been inside it. His anger turned toward the one man who could answer his questions.

As his gaze flicked from the paper in his hand and back to Troussebois, something else caught his eye.

A civil document from the local Prefect for the City of Paris. He thought at first it was the official nature of the document that drew his attention, for the red seals set it apart from the other bland clutter in Henri’s office. But as Webb looked further it was the title of the document that stopped him cold.

A
Registry for Marriage
, dated today.

With the name of Adelaide de Chevenoy written in as the bride, complete with her signature at the bottom.

The groom’s name had been left blank.

A marriage certificate and a will.

Fouché’s plan became only too clear.

“Where has he taken her?” he said, grabbing Troussebois by his flimsy cravat and hauling the man to his feet. “Tell me now, or you will be the one in need of a will.” He shoved the pistol up under Troussebois’s nose and pulled back the trigger.

“To the Tuileries,” the man whispered. “He took her to the palace.”

“The Tuileries?” Webb prodded him again with the pistol. “Do you think I am a fool? He means to kill her. Now tell me where they’ve gone.”

Troussebois began to cry. “Please don’t shoot me. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Then where is the mademoiselle?”

“In a carriage. Just outside the Tuileries. There is a planned assassination attempt tonight against the First Consul. A bomb. It will kill the heiress.”

Damn and hell, why hadn’t he chosen the carriage over the house!

Webb hauled a now-pleading Troussebois out of the study and back toward the kitchen.

“Please don’t kill me, Monsieur,” the man begged. “My clients would be lost without me.”

“It seems your concern for your clients comes a little too late, Troussebois.” Webb opened the door to the wine cellar. “Where is this bomb?”

Troussebois shook his head in an unprecedented show of bravery.

Webb repeated his question, this time with the pistol pointed at the narrow space between Troussebois’s closely set eyes.

Troussebois swallowed. “I’ll only tell if you promise not to kill me.”

Taking a deep breath, Webb nodded.

As if weighing the choice between instant death and life as a traitor, Troussebois, true to form, opened his mouth. “The
Rue Saint-Nicaise
. The bomb is hidden in an overturned cart not far from where the
Rue Saint-Nicaise
joins the
Rue Saint-Honoré
.”

Webb replied by shoving the man into the wine cellar and slamming the door in his face.

Inside he heard the man’s scrambling footsteps on the wooden steps and his bleating protests.

“Monsieur, you promised. You promised you would let me live.”

“And so I have,” Webb told him.

“But you must let me out. You promised you wouldn’t kill me. Fouché will not be so kind if he finds me.”

“That, Troussebois, is where you erred. I promised not to kill you, but I never promised to let you go. I won’t kill you, not tonight. But I made no promise for your good friend, Fouché. I fear you will have to make your own blackhearted deal with him.”

Webb fled from the kitchen, racing through the house toward the front door, his footsteps echoing to the frantic beating on the cellar door.

As he got to the study, he paused. If Lily was still alive, there was a chance he could yet outwit Fouché and give the man the comeuppance he deserved.

Webb snatched up the will and marriage registration, stuffing them into his jacket.

If … no, when, he corrected himself, he found her, Lily would never again be far from his side. And never again in this type of danger.

Dashing down the front steps, Webb looked left then right.

The
Rue Saint-Nicaise
was not close enough to reach on foot, in time to stop Fouché’s bomb. His head swung at the
clip-clop
sound of hooves at the corner. There he spied a man riding past on the intersecting avenue.

Webb grinned. That solved his first problem.

He raced down the street, careful to keep his footfalls quiet, and sticking as close to the shadows of the tree-lined boulevard as possible.

As he approached the man, he realized this was no ordinary citizen but an officer in the Hussars, Napoleon’s light cavalry.

He had hoped to find a country yokel who could be talked out of his nag with the aid of a few gold coins.

But luck was on his side, for as he drew closer to the officer plodding along aboard his fine horse at a casual amble, Webb heard the slurred refrain of a Christmas carol coming from his target.

“
Noël nouvelet
,
Noël chantons ici
,” the man sang. Christmas comes anew, O let us sing Noel.

How had he forgotten? It was Christmas Eve.

He made his own wish for the holiday, a silent one offered up on this holy night.

The man swayed in his saddle and started the next line of his song. “
Devotés gens
—”

“
Excusez-moi
, Monsieur,” Webb called out. “I am lost. Could you possibly give me directions to the
Rue Saint-Nicaise
?”

As the man turned in his saddle, Webb caught him by the front of his elaborately decorated dolman jacket and pitched him out of his seat. The man fell to the street in a heap.

“I’ve had too much to drink,” the man declared, staring up at Webb, his expression bleary-eyed and stunned. “Be a good fellow and help me to remember the next line.” He scratched his head and then began to sing, “
Chantons Noël pour le Roi nouvelet, Noël
.”

Webb hated to do it, but he had no other choice. He slammed his fist into the unwary man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious. Grabbing the reins of the now nervous horse, he spoke to it softly.

“Easy, my friend. Easy there.”

The horse side-stepped and pranced amongst the puddles, its wild gaze going from its fallen master to the stranger holding its reins.

Webb mounted the animal in one fluid movement, quickly gaining control of the nervous beast. Taking one last look at the fallen officer, Webb felt a pang of guilt.

Stealing a man’s horse on Christmas Eve, he should be ashamed of himself. Quickly he cut the officer’s leather
sabretache
from where it hung on the saddle, so at least when he awoke he would still have his personal effects. As one last gesture of goodwill, Webb plucked a small pouch from his jacket and tossed it down so it landed beside the man’s elbow.

Enough to cover a new horse and another round of Christmas cheer.

With that, he reined the horse around and rode hell-bent for the
Rue Saint Nicaise
. He raced past holiday revelers, all but deaf to their drunken cries of well wishes.

It was the first time in years Parisians were openly celebrating the holiday, and they were making the most of it— drinking in the local taverns and making rounds of visits to friends and family.

As he galloped down the
Rue Saint-Honoré
, he offered his prayer up one more time.

Please, let Lily live.

But as he turned onto the
Rue Saint-Nicaise
, he saw a carriage he recognized as the First Consul’s hurtling toward him. The driver was whipping his horses, and as Webb reined his horse to a stop, the fast moving carriage and the accompanying guards careened wildly past an overturned cart laying haphazardly in the middle of the road.

The overturned cart. The bomb.

For a moment Webb rejoiced that he’d made it in time to stop Fouché.

But in that instant, a second carriage, this one a black hackney, turned out of an alley and whipped toward him at the same breakneck speed.

As it sped toward the cart, he watched in horror as the driver jumped from his perch, rolling to safety.

The horses continued pulling the hackney toward the cart, their movements erratic without the firm control of their driver.

“Lily!” he screamed, spurring his horse to follow the hackney.

And in that instant the cart exploded, sending flaming debris and wreckage through the clogged street—wreckage from a black hackney now destroyed and smoking amidst the carnage.

T
he first explosion threw Webb from his horse and the second blast covered him with debris.

As he struggled through jagged pieces of carriage and shattered glass from the adjacent shop windows, he tried desperately to see through the smoke and flames toward the hackney.

The scene he witnessed wrenched through his gut. Mangled bodies, the sweet smell of blood, the crackle of fire, and the acrid stench of burnt flesh. His ears rang with the cries of the wounded and those struggling to find the loved ones who just moments before had been walking down the promenade beside them.

Webb stumbled to his feet, his head pounding in protest, his vision swimming at the quick movement. He put his fingers to the sharp pain in his forehead and came in contact with the warm, sticky feeling of blood.

Wavering on his feet, he cried out, “Lily! Lily, where are you?”

Somehow the horse he’d stolen had survived the blast and was only a few feet away, standing dumfounded and stunned amongst the broken pieces of siding and lumber. He caught the animal’s reins and tied them to a twisted lamppost.

Staggering, he continued past the wounded, toward the wreckage of the hackney. He stumbled once and looked down to see Fouché’s henchman, the driver who’d thought to save his own life by leaping from the racing carriage.

The blast had thrown a piece of metal into his chest, and now it protruded from his blood-soaked jacket. His lifeless eyes stared up at the night sky.

Webb pulled aside a tangled wheel, the springs from the leather seats. He fought his way like a blind madman, for his vision was now clouded in the red of his own blood. But there was only one thing that could stop his mad pursuit.

Lily
.

He had led her to this. Insisted that she come against her wishes. Blackmailed her into it. Her secrets, the past that she refused to share, they mattered not at this moment.

If only she lived, so he could tell her. Tell her he loved her.

The remaining shell of the carriage was upside down. One horse, still caught in the traces, screamed and struggled to break free. The other horse lay silent, its legs jutting out at odd angles.

Webb pulled at the carriage, trying to find a way to right the smoking pile.

For Lily, he knew, was somewhere underneath all this.

From out of nowhere a man approached him.

“You are hurt, Monsieur, you must get help,” the kindly stranger said, gently pulling at Webb’s sleeve.

“No!” Webb roared. “Get your hands off of me. I won’t leave her.”

The elderly man’s eyes went wide with fright, but he did not back away.

Struggling to regain his composure, Webb reached for the man. “Help me, please. I must find her.”

“Of course you must, my son. I am Father Michel.” The man bowed his head slightly and then called out to another man who knelt beside the body of the driver. “Father Joseph, we need your assistance and your good back.”

The three of them put their shoulders to the wreckage and righted what remained of the carriage.

Webb stepped back and, to his horror, saw a pair of white arms sticking out of the wreckage, the wrists bound in rope.

On one finger winked the strange little bumblebee ring Lily always wore.

“No,” he sobbed, dropping to his knees, pulling away at the scraps of wood and metal, and desperately trying to free her. She was wrapped, almost shroud-like in a thick horse blanket that Father Michel quickly cut away with a knife he pulled from his robes.

The priests continued cutting and pulling away the heavy wool covering until they had completely uncovered her.

“It seems we have discovered an angel,” Father Joseph said, making a sign of the cross over Lily’s head.

Webb reached for her, his fingers caressing her warm skin.

Please let her be alive. Please, I’ll never doubt her again, if you only let her live
, he silently prayed.

He looked up and saw a single star peering through a break in the clouds. It twinkled once, as if in response.

And then beneath his fingertips, he felt it.

Lily’s pulse. Steady and true.

He looked up and saw that palace officials and guards had begun arriving. Fouché hadn’t killed her, at least not yet, and Webb wasn’t going to give him a second chance.

Father Joseph’s gaze followed his. “I suspect you need to get her out of here.”

Webb nodded, lifting Lily from the street and into his arms. Her weight combined with his own loss of blood left him swooning, and he would have fallen if Father Michel hadn’t stepped forward and caught him by the elbow.

“You need a doctor, my son. You both do.” The priest steadied Webb with a firm, solid grip.

Father Joseph got on the other side of Webb, offering his support as well. “We’ve only just returned to Paris. I’m afraid I don’t know where we can find one for you.”

Still, they guided Webb out of the street.

“There is a surgeon not far from here,” he managed to say. “Dr. McTaggart. He will help us.” He nodded toward his horse. “Bring him. I should be able to ride.”

Father Joseph laughed. “You can barely walk, my son, let alone ride double with an unconscious woman.” The priest untied the reins and led the horse after them.

“Where is this doctor?” Father Michel asked.

The pain in his head was starting to become more than he could tolerate, and he knew the two priests were right. He’d never make it to McTaggart’s alone.

“He lives above the Flaming Thistle, a tavern run by a Scot. Do you know of it?”

Father Joseph laughed. “I’m a Dubliner by birth, my son. I know where to find the nearest thing to Irish whisky there is in this God-forsaken city. I’m only too familiar with the Flaming Thistle.”