Chapter Thirty-Six
He didn’t have the slightest idea what she was talking about, but he took the soap from her shaking hand nonetheless and recognized the scent of it as though he had kissed her skin.
Her nakedness was not erotic, though she looked as gorgeous as ever, even shuddering as she was. Instead, he felt as though he were handling a wounded animal, one who would bolt at even the slightest of rough handling.
“Do you need to be clean?” he asked carefully.
“I always wash at the end of the day.” Her pupils were dilated slightly. Panic tinged her tone. This was unlike the Flower he knew. She was upset, beside herself. Beyond herself.
There was no one to help her, save him.
“Tell me. Who is the girl? Who is she to you?” It was the question he most wanted the answer to, and he knew it was this question that would reveal the secrets of Vivienne.
He took her hand, pulled up her arm. Dipping the soap into the washbasin to wet it, he began to rub the soap across her arm. Up, down, slowly. Across her forearm, her elbow. The lightly contoured upper arm. He followed it with a small, damp scrap of linen to wipe away the soap.
“My sister. Anne is my sister.” The words burst from her, as though released from long, tight bonds.
He paused, the soap feeling strangely heavy in his hand. “I thought your family died of a fever. You told me that after the first time we made love.”
“A lie, Maximilian.”
That bloody well stung.
Still, he continued washing Vivienne, moving the soap over her shoulder, following it with the damp linen. Her skin was rough with gooseflesh. “How old is she?”
“Just thirteen, but she is strong. Brave. Anne will know not to anger Marchand. He will not do anything to her, unless it is because of me.” Her breath hitched in, then out, her breasts moving with it. “Because of me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“Because I did not know you.”
“You started to know me.” He kept his voice steady, pushing away the sharp pain in his chest, and focused on the second arm he was washing. Though he wanted to, Maximilian did not look up into her dark, terrified eyes. “You trusted me with your body, why not with the truth?”
“I am not used to— No one knows. Not even Henri. I have kept it a secret from Henri for ten years. If not for Mrs. Asher, I could not have done so and still had Anne near to me.” She pressed her lips together, as though she realized she’d said too much, but it seemed her secrets could no longer be stopped. “I have never told anyone. Maximilian, if it were found out, she could be used against me.”
“That’s already happened.”
A shiver rippled over her body, every muscle convulsing. He looked at her face now, the sharp widow’s peak and serious mouth. Eyes full of secrets and pain.
“I want the truth about Anne.” The churning beast in his chest demanded it.
“There is nothing to say.” There was no heat in her words. Instead, she sounded sad. “No. There is much to tell, but, Maximilian—” Her breath heaved in and out again. “You must not reveal Anne to anyone. You cannot.”
He didn’t see that it mattered since Marchand knew of Anne already, but he agreed if only to learn the facts. “I will not say anything.”
Her arms were clean enough, he thought. Time to focus on her legs. Glorious legs that had wrapped around his waist, he thought bitterly. He dunked the soap in water again, then knelt in front of her and began washing her right foot. Her hands rested lightly on his back, tensed in the fabric of his jacket.
“Anne was one when our mother died.”
“What took her?” He ran the soap over her right calf, all the long, lean beauty of it. Inside him, lust warred with fury, but he recognized that if he stopped moving, she would stop speaking. Dropping the soap into the basin, he used the linen strip to dry her skin.
“An ague of some sort. The method is not important. What is important is she took care of us. She worked hard as a seamstress—she was wonderful with a needle—and worked even harder as a washerwoman, a hawker, whatever she could to make sure we could eat.”
“Your father?”
“A drunkard.” Her fingers dug into his back. Did she even realize it? “He hurt her. Hurt us, sometimes. Not Anne, very often, because I could hide her.” Her voice dropped into a vicious whisper. “I remember the back of his hand on my face. Bruises, too, on my ribs. His boots were sturdy.”
His heart clutched, but he kept his hand steady as he soaped her thigh. Softly, he touched her skin, cleaning off whatever dirt and memories she needed to shed.
“After Mama died, there was no money. No food. Nothing. Sometimes there was no fire even in the very bitter depths of winter. I remember when we couldn’t afford candles. Or soap. I remember being filthy for weeks on end.” She shuddered again, hard, then relaxed her hands against his back as he began to soap her left foot and leg. “Do you know true cold, Maximilian? Or true hunger?”
“No.” Sorrow that she had known both crept through his anger. “What did you do, after your mother died?”
“I became a thief. A pickpocket. I stole food, water, money, watches, jewelry. Anything I could sell. Anything I could take that would keep us alive. Bread from the baker. Meat from the butcher. Anything.” Her words seemed propelled by some unseen force, pushing out of her and into the room. “Because he gave us nothing. He only ate and drank and used the back of his hand.”
Ah. This was the crux of it. Of Vivienne. “How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
He could see it well enough. A young girl with no mother and a drunkard father, doing whatever she must to survive. To care for her infant sister.
“Too young,” he said softly, “to support a family.”
Her body stilled, like a deer who scented danger but had not yet decided to flee. So he, too, paused in the act of washing to look at her face. Her pupils had regained their normal size and the panic had faded.
“Old enough, Maximilian. There are many younger than I in the rookeries supporting their families.” She said the words almost angrily, as if to goad him into a response. “I was a thief. A good one. Not as great as I am now, but good.”
He wasn’t sure what his response was yet. Except: “You’ve been a thief since I met you. I’ve always known you stole for the government. Logically, stealing information isn’t any different than stealing food. Why couldn’t you tell me of your past?”
“It is not the same. Then, I stole food from people who needed it, or money from others with their own children to feed.” She jerked away from him, sprinkling drops of water over the floor. He was vaguely relieved, as the temper in her eyes he could manage better than the aching vulnerability. He stood and tossed the soap into the basin, watching the water slosh over the edge and onto the stand. He dropped the linen he had dried her with onto the floor beside it, unable to think where else to put it just then.
“We lived in the rookeries, Maximilian. It is dark there, and it stinks.”
He wouldn’t know. He’d never been—saying so wouldn’t be the smartest decision a man could make.
She jerked a length of thin linen from a wall hook and wrapped herself in it, apparently clean enough now. “It is also dangerous in the rookeries. My father died there, in the street, when I was twelve.” She fisted the hand that wasn’t holding the linen. “A knife to the belly. He was in his cups and could hardly stand, they told me. Still, he fought with another drunkard and they both died.”
Secrets. There were so many more. Some piece of her puzzle had yet to fall into place—though he was very much afraid he already knew it.
She transitioned from English to French and back to English again, assuming so many traits and characteristics he could not maintain his balance. Now, when she was vulnerable, she spoke English words with a French patter, as if she could not decide between the two.
Which meant one was a lie.
“Are you French?” He asked the question, knowing the answer and knowing that despite what was between them, she had not told him the truth.
“Non.” She said it in French with a flawless accent, nasal vowels those of the south of France. Fresh fury rose in him, and he gritted his teeth. “I was trained to be French. It is my masquerade so that I may have contact with important men and learn their secrets. Or steal their secrets.”
Through the haze of betrayal, the mystery of Vivienne’s life came clear. The man, Wycomb, who controlled her life but did not make love to her—there could be little doubt as to his role now.
“Wycomb trained you.”
“And others. I picked Henri’s pocket, thinking only to make a profit, but I was not quick enough. He was a trained spy and caught me. He told me I must work for him or be taken up for theft and hanged.”
She had chosen espionage. It seemed so young to make such a choice. He turned away from her tight features to pick up the half-empty water basin.
Hoping he could gather himself.
“I do not even know how to think in English any longer,” she whispered. “For two years, I spoke only French. I lived with my tutor and studied the language, the accent, the gestures. I could not use the chamber pot without asking in French. I could not eat or sleep or bathe unless I said the French words first.”
Setting the bowl in the washstand, he looked once more at Vivienne. She was livid, shoulders tightly held and eyes blazing. Loose hair curled over her pale shoulders to toy with the linen she’d wrapped herself in. “Eventually, it was dancing. Every day until my toes bled.”
She breathed deeply, as if in fortification. He rather needed fortification himself, he thought, gripping the edge of the washstand.
“I was a good dancer,” she continued harshly. “It was natural, and I learned quickly. Knives, too, and fencing and pistols, so that I moved from weapons to dance to weapons. This was easy. These things—I could do them well. And it was a place to belong.”
“Yes, I can understand that.” It explained the strength of her of body, of every sinew and bone and graceful movement. His eyes traced the curve of her shoulder, the outline of her waist and hip beneath the linen. Part of him wished he had never seen her naked so he would have never known what gift had been his.
“I loved all of it.” She spoke fiercely. Almost brutally. “I loved the training, the weapons, the dancing. I loved having a purpose for my country. But every moment, I had to pretend Anne did not exist. I was afraid that if I did not comply, Henri would send me away. To prison or worse. It is horrible to live in fear, Maximilian. I have never lived without it, not now, not in the rookeries. Even when I was proud of my life as a spy, I regretted every moment I was afraid.”
“You could have told me of Anne. Of yourself.” He held up a hand when she would have spoken. Oh, there was temper in him now, too. He could not imagine living the way she had—the rookeries, then the training and secrecy and fear, whether founded or unfounded—but that did not explain the present.
“It is logical you did not tell me in the beginning. I understand that well enough. Still, you could have told me later, when we became friends. Lovers.” He’d been inside her, had kissed her and touched her body. Yet he’d never known the truth.
Vivienne wrapped the linen more tightly around herself and turned her back, the indentations of her spine peeking between the hair slipping over her shoulders. “I have said already I have not told anyone before.”
“Would you have continued to lie to me if I hadn’t followed you upstairs tonight?”
“I do not know.” She’d tucked the ends of the linen between her breasts to free her hands and was now laying out her knives. One under the pillow. Another on the bedside table. Both positioned carefully. Her pistol she set on the other table.
He was watching a stranger. He might know her body, how it moved and the noises in her throat when he made love to her, but he didn’t know the woman beneath at all. She had hidden all of it from him.
“Let me see if I understand this.” His words were sharp and biting. “You’re an English pickpocket from the rookeries who tried to steal from a spy. He caught you, recruited you to espionage, and trained you to be a French opera dancer. You’re now being recruited by a French spymaster because your sister has been abducted.”
“That is an accurate summary. Yes.” She finally turned to look at him. Her face was blank. There was nothing there any longer, nothing of the dancer, the flirt, the lover. Just a spy.
Very well, then. “What are you doing with Lessard?”
“It does not matter.”
“It does.” He was furious with himself. With her. He’d blindly followed her lead, when it was all a lie from the start. He’d known it in his gut and had let himself ignore it, first because he didn’t want to know and then because knowing would be difficult.
Damnation. He was a fool.
“Did you laugh at me, Vivienne? When I asked you of your family after we made love, when I finally placed what I thought to be your natural accent?” Stomach roiling with humiliation, he advanced until he stood in front of her. “Was it a game?”
“It was not a game.” Her hand slashed through air, a Gallic punctuation mark from an Englishwoman. She squared her naked shoulders, ready for a battle.
“I don’t know what country you are working for now, or who you are.”
Or whether their lovemaking was a lie, and he was very, very much afraid it was.
“I am the Flower,” she said fiercely. Her lips were pink and lovely, but anger had crept into her. It darkened her eyes and coated her voice, as real as her body—everything else was a lie.
“Who is Vivienne? What of her passion?” He reached for her, wanting to test them both. To test the truth. She brought her hands up to ward him away, but he needed to know if what lay between them was real. He craved the knowledge. “Who are you, beneath the opera dancer and spy?”
“I am the Flower. That is all.” She pushed at his chest and was damn near strong enough to move him—but not quite. Hair curled wildly around her face as she shook her head. “There is no more to me. Not any longer. Nor is there anything between us.”
“There might have been more.” The visceral pain of her lies hit him hard and low, stealing his breath as if he’d been gutted. Run straight through with a knife and all his insides exposed. “I thought there was more.”
Her face blanked, features becoming unreadable. Holding her gaze, he studied the dark iris ringing her pupils. Damnation, but her eyes were empty.
“Good-bye, Flower.”
…
She did not remember Maximilian leaving the bedroom. She did not remember dressing in her shift or snuffing out the candle or plaiting her hair.
What she knew was that she was in the bedroom Henri had decorated for her. On the hard wooden floor, where it was easiest to curl into herself, arms around ankles, head resting on knees. Here she could simply breathe.
Yet she couldn’t think. She wanted too badly to cry. She had told Maximilian so much of her childhood. It was more than she’d ever said before. The words had been trapped inside her for so long, yet tonight she had given them a voice.
It had not been enough. He wanted more.
She could not give him more. Not Vivienne.
Her chest was tight, throat aching. Swallowing the lump there, she pressed her face into her knees. It was not her past that made her want to cry. She could admit it to herself, if she was very, very honest.
She could not tell Maximilian who Vivienne was, because she did not know anymore.
Who was she?
Her mind blanked. It was a question that had no answer. She was left hollowed out, with a horrible ball in the pit of her belly and no essence of herself to capture and hold onto.
For a moment, there in the darkness of her room, she was nothingness. She was drowning in that nothingness. Her lungs could not gasp enough air; her head was squeezed, her heart pounded with the rhythm of fear. Her mind scrabbled around for something. Anything. Her hands did the same, searching the folds of her shift for purchase, then sliding over the planked floor.
Her hand found the wet linen where Maximilian had dropped it. Her fingers dug into the cold, wet fabric. Gripped.
Maximilian.
Her body shuddered, her lungs heaved, but her mind focused.
Maximilian.
The beat of her heart matched his name as it echoed through her brain.
Maximilian had been here. In her room. He had kissed her. He had washed her. He’d brought her back from the edge. Gratitude flooded her. He had brought her back so that she could concentrate on Anne.
Anne. She must remember Anne.
She needed to think of Lessard and their bargain, not Maximilian. Not the soft rug only feet from her, or the empty hearth that called her to create heat and comfort she did not deserve. Lessard would ensure Anne was well kept and healthy, influencing Marchand with the persuasion skills that made him so important to Marchand. In exchange, Vivienne would do whatever he asked of her.
Whatever he asked.
She shuddered, body scraping against the wooden planks of the floor. She did not know what that meant, but it would not be good. Yet Lessard led to the Vulture, the Vulture to Anne.
For Anne, Vivienne would strike whatever deal with the devil that was necessary.
When Anne was safe, Vivienne would bring down the Vulture.
One more moment she would lie here, then, on the cold floor of the bedroom. Just one moment to hide her face, to squeeze her fists as hard as her heart was squeezed by tears.