Kasey Michaels - What a Hero Dares

“But of course it is. I plan to crawl to the very tip of the roof in this borrowed dressing gown and then flap my arms as hard as I can and fly away. That blow to your hard skull must have done more damage than I thought. Just remember, if you become dizzy and fall to the courtyard below, I take no responsibility.”

“Yes, the consequence would be on my own head, wouldn’t it? Probably literally. Now tell me why you climbed out here.”

She turned away from him, looking into the seemingly infinite distance of moonlight and shadows. “I dislike closed doors, especially locked doors. After months in a dank cell with little light and constantly foul air, simply standing at the window wasn’t enough to keep me from—but that was never your problem, was it?”

“If I’d found you and dragged you back to London, you would have been hanged for the murder of English agents. I chose the lesser of two evils, and let you go.”

“For you, Max. The lesser of two evils for you. Admit it, I made a fool of you in front of your superiors, your message to them concerning your worry that Anton might be working for the French, while all the time being hoodwinked by your French lover. You washed your hands of me.”

“If it’s any help, you were already gone, and I didn’t really have time to think at all beyond getting our other agents out of harm’s way.”

She knew the answer to her next question before she asked it. “And then you came chasing hotfoot to Paris, looking for me.”

With the moon full above them, she could see a faint flicker of pain cross his features. “My superiors—our superiors—moved all of the surviving agents out of France entirely. I was assigned to the Home Office for a month—”

“Your punishment.”

“Yes, my punishment for all but indicting innocent, bereaved Anton as a traitor while allowing myself to be, as you so incisively said, hoodwinked by my lover, thus losing us eight good agents. Then I was reassigned to the Peninsula with Wellington. And then...and then something else demanded my attention. I did eventually hear that you weren’t on the loose, but in prison.”

“I see. In that case, no, your explanation means nothing to me.”

He nodded. “Understood. Why were you released?”

How she wanted to tell the truth, about everything. But it had been too late for that eight months ago. So she’d keep him concentrated on the present.

“There was an arrangement. Nothing that concerns you.” She pushed herself up on her elbows. “I want to go back inside now. Kindly take yourself out of my way and spare me the indignity of having to crawl over you.”

Max didn’t move, except to turn on his side so he could face her. “Not yet. You traded names to show your new loyalty. You as good as murdered those men, Zoé. What else did you expect from me?”

Don’t, Zoé. Don’t feel sorry for him, or for yourself. You only did what you had to do. You wanted him to believe you, remember? But now it’s over, with events moved long past any hope of salvaging what we’d once had, because what we’d once had clearly hadn’t been enough. The truth will aid nothing, and perhaps make things even worse. Just let it go... Let him go the same way he let you go. He was never really yours.

“Nothing else. I expected exactly what you did. I even prayed for it, something I hadn’t done in a long time.”

“But now you’re claiming innocence? That is what you’re doing, isn’t it, Zoé?”

Too late. Too late for questions, too late for answers.

“I’m claiming nothing. Why I’m here has nothing to do with you. As far as I knew, you died months ago. I told you that on the beach. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a walking, talking ghost from the past. Now move out of my way. If I’m to plead my case to be allowed to leave, it will be with your grandmother. Richard tells me she has great good sense.”

“And I don’t. I suppose you’re right, because I’ll be damned if I can’t still imagine you in my arms, your legs wrapped high about my back as we drive each other out of our minds. My superiors were right to punish me. I never thought I was the sort of fool who, against all common sense, could be led about by his—”

“Oh, Max, just shut up. Please, shut up.”

Without another word, he at last turned away from her and carefully made his way back to the opened casement, neatly easing himself over the windowsill. She followed a moment later, the skirt of the dressing gown and the night rail beneath it carefully tucked about her body.

“Give me your hand.”

“I can manage on my own,” she shot back, but the slates were becoming slippery with dew, so she only issued the complaint before tucking her hand in his. His touch devastated her, and for the first time she could see herself losing her balance and sliding off the edge of the roof.

“Steady, woman.” In a moment he had both her hands safely within his grip, and she was half lifted, half dragged over the windowsill, to end with her bare feet on the floor, the length of her body pressed up against Max’s lean strength.

She could see his dark features in the light from the fire and lit candles, just as she knew he could see hers.

How badly had the time in prison aged her? It had taken her months to fully regain her strength, the weight she’d lost. But even now she knew she would never be the same Zoé Charbonneau who’d been all but flung into that dank cell, the sound of a heavy key turning in the lock presumably sealing her fate. No matter if she bathed in milk and rose petals every day for the remainder of her life. If she had been able to lose the stink of prison that had clung to her, she could never be rid of the new shadows in her brown eyes or the nightmares that still plagued her.

“You look just the same,” Max said, raising his hand to run a fingertip down her cheek. “Life just doesn’t seem to touch you, Zoé.”

She turned her head away. “Now who’s the liar? You look like hell, Max. You probably need some sleep.” She disengaged herself and took several steps away from him, hanging on with her last fraying thread of resolve. “And a shave wouldn’t come amiss, although I’d admit the earring is rather interesting.”

Max touched his ear, and the diamond that winked there. “I don’t know why you women suffer these things. It hurt like hell for three days, having that hole punched in me.”

She sat in the only chair in the small servant’s room. She wanted him to leave, but at the same time she wanted him to stay, so she asked him: “It’s quite the stone. Is it real or glass?”

He stayed where he stood, the sloped ceiling of the room fairly well hindering him from moving too far in any but the direction of the door or single window. “You’d have to ask the man I cut it from about that. No self-respecting wharf rat is without one, I discovered, and relieving the fellow of his earring after I’d milled him down for looking at me too long established me in certain quarters.”

Zoé nodded. “It isn’t enough to dress the part, is it? You have to knock down at least one man before the others learn to mind their own business. Did you have to slice his ear?”

“I wasn’t going to kneel over him until he woke up, fiddling with the damn thing to figure out how to remove it. Besides, I’d already poked the hole in my own ear. Should I keep it, do you think?”

His rakish yet boyish smile curled her toes.

Suddenly the months disappeared as if they’d never happened. This feeling wouldn’t last, she knew, but the moment was too precious to waste. “I’d say no. It makes you much too memorable. If you haven’t had it stuck there too long, the hole should close up in a few weeks. After the swelling goes down, that is. I wouldn’t have made such a botch of the job if I’d done it for—”