Chapter Six
He made it look so easy.
There was no nocturnal wanderlust for Phileas that night, and in the morning, Rebecca found him wide awake in his study. He was actually reading the newspaper, though he sat slouching in his chair without his usual crispness of posture. Still, perhaps a little of the old Phileas had come back. To think all it had taken was one good crack at Chatsworth…
"Good morning, Rebecca," Phileas said from behind the newspaper.
She smiled; his tone sounded a little more animated than was usual these days. "Good morning, Phileas. Did you sleep well last night?"
He lowered the paper, looking at her across the expanse of newsprint with a steady, clear-eyed gaze—sober for the second morning in a row, she noted with satisfaction. Perfectly deadpan, he replied, "Not a wink, actually."
"Oh, Phileas." Rebecca seated herself in the armchair facing his.
"I had some considerable thinking to do." He meticulously folded the paper and set it aside. "You know… I was wondering if you might take some fencing exercise with me."
The abrupt invitation sent up an immediate red flag in Rebecca's mind. Phileas hadn't touched a weapon since the events in Scotland, and she knew why.
He was afraid of what he might do.
Clarity overcame her suddenly. As a broken bone needed to be set before it could heal, Phileas needed to confront his own lethal strengths before he could heal, and accept them again as part of himself. He had to know that he could trust himself.
After what happened in Chatsworth's office, she wasn't so sure he could.
"I don't think your sword arm is up to it," she lied. She knew better. If Phileas could belt Chatsworth the way he had the day before, then the bloody but shallow slash she'd traced into his arm at Castle Banquo was not a problem.
"My arm is perfectly fine," Phileas predictably asserted. Then his expression quirked; he looked away, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair, and turned to her again with a sudden and unnaturally beseeching look. "Don't make excuses, Rebecca. You know what it is I'm asking."
She looked away from that painfully earnest gaze. "Phileas…"
"Rebecca. Please." He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, and switched to a deceptively light tone of voice. "Contrary to common belief about the house, I am not completely unaware that I have been a crashing bore of late. The servants are ready to revolt, Passepartout is absolutely miserable, Verne is afraid to remove himself from Shillingworth and…" He paused suddenly, lowering his eyes.
"…And as I am now, I'm of no use to you whatsoever."
She should have known. It always came back to this; he couldn't let her alone. Perhaps visiting Whitehall was too much of a reminder that sooner or later, she would go back to her work, regularly risking her life for Queen and country. For so long Phileas had helped, had hindered, had followed her to the ends of the earth whether she wanted him to or not—but he had never been content to let her go into anything on her own. Rather than do that, he was even willing to take back what he had learned to fear in himself.
All for her.
Rebecca resolutely denied the sudden, aching wellspring of emotions within her. "Perhaps I don't want you to be of any use to me, Phileas." The words were harsh and impulsive. She didn't mean them, and he knew it.
"In that case, I believe I shall go mad." There was an underlying strain beneath the casual self-mockery, betraying depths of sincerity which Rebecca did not want to hear. He was telling her the truth. She could guide him back to the life he had chosen, the life in which she constantly risked losing him—or she could lose him right now, to something far lonelier.
Oh, she hated it when he was honest with her. Even more than when he lied to her.
The choice was not hers. It was his, and he had made his decision; he only needed her help to follow through. If she didn't help him, he would find another way—but he had come to her first, because she would understand. Because he was willing to let her see the feelings in him that he denied to all others. Even because he trusted her not to let him hurt her… one way or another.
He trusted her.
"The stableyards, one-quarter of an hour," she said tonelessly.
Phileas stood up, giving her a pert, abbreviated bow. "Much obliged," he answered as if she'd given him the time of day, and calmly strode out of the room.
He made it look so easy.
Fifteen minutes later, clad in her leathers, Rebecca made a small circuit of the grounds and came upon the stableyard from the side opposite the house. Phileas, she knew, would have gone ahead to dismiss any servants in the area, but there was no reason to take chances. Not that anyone would really have been alarmed, or even surprised, to see the master and mistress having at each other with some incredibly sharp objects—but Rebecca did have a reputation to pretend to uphold.
Phileas was there, practice foils in hand. His coat had been laid to one side, his waistcoat unbuttoned and the collar of his crisp white shirt loosened, emphasizing the gaunt leanness of his frame. He looked so much as he had that terrible night—was it really less than a week before?—except that now, instead of confusion, rage and pain, there was calm anticipation in his face.
He was not at all taken by surprise when Rebecca emerged from the trees on the far side of the empty stableyard. Without a word, he thrust the point of one of the foils into the ground and stepped back, positioning himself.
Rebecca uprooted the weapon and followed suit, but her eyes remained on him, watching his gaze slide over his own blade from hilt to tip and back again. There was no discernible expression on his face, but far too much in his eyes. They were his weakness, the proverbial mirror to the soul, ever betraying all that lay within.
She couldn't look at them anymore.
Evidently resolved, Phileas took up his opening stance. "Ready?"
The last time, it had been deadly earnest. The last time, in the grip of Nicol McLean's physical and mental poisons, he had looked at her and seen the enemy—and unknowing, she had exacted payment in his blood for the illusion. She owed him recompense.
Bracing herself, she nodded once, and their exercise began.
Thrust, parry, riposte; Rebecca held her ground without advancing, and watched her cousin. Recent events had done nothing to dampen Phileas' skill. It lay not in his memory alone, but in the very nerves and muscles of his body, trained through the years to act and react until knowledge became instinct—and instinct flowed as naturally as breathing. That was why a part of Rebecca loved to watch him with a sword in his hand. He was magnificent in the fluid steel of his movements, a dancer's lightness and grace belying the raw power of him.
He made it look so easy.
"You're not being much of a challenge." The comment was so offhanded, it might have passed for an observation rather than a complaint—if not for his casual sidestep which caused her to stumble forward in an unchecked thrust. The simple action was itself a criticism.
Rebecca recoiled and slowly circled him, taking new stock of the exercise. Phileas was beginning to play somewhat rougher than she would have preferred, and that irritated her, but not as much as her own lapse of attention. She renewed her focus and made a tactical appraisal of him. Unlike her, he hadn't yet broken a sweat; physically and mentally, he remained cool.
No. He was cold… Too cold.
"Tell me something, Phileas," she said tersely, and lunged at him.
He parried—and drew back a step. "What?"
"Why didn't you tell me what you believed about Chatsworth before we saw him?"
He executed a quick feint and regained the ground he'd given, his foil meeting hers with a greater impact than before. "With all due respect, Rebecca… you wouldn't have reacted well."
"Oh, and I reacted well to your walking in and punching my boss in the face?" Her tone sharpened. "Phileas, what were you thinking?"
"I don't know. I wasn't thinking anything."
"I think you didn't tell me because I'd have deprived you of your excuse to hit him," Rebecca retorted, stepping back from a particularly fierce attack on Phileas' part.
"Piffle. I have no shortage of justification for that. You're the only reason I haven't wrung the neck of that smug… bureaucratic… swine." The clash of his blade against hers punctuated the terse name-calling. He was bristling with ill-temper now, breathing heavily, and he had begun to sweat—from the exertion not of fighting, but of holding back.
"Sir Jonathan Chatsworth is not your enemy," Rebecca ground out. She was on the defensive now in more ways than one. "If he were compromised, Phileas, I would know. He's a decent man, whether or not you agree with the way he accomplishes things."
"Accomplishes what?" The retort was incredulous. "Where is the Secret Service when the League strikes, Rebecca? Where is Chatsworth when Count Gregory is plotting the end of the world as we know it? Where was he when you were strapped to a bloody rocket?"
If Rebecca hadn't jumped back, the last impact of his foil against hers could well have dislocated her wrist. In hindsight, she decided, provoking Phileas had not been such a good idea after all.
But she owed this to him.
She owed this to herself.
Her foil raised defensively, she backed away, and spoke in a voice that was heated with years of pent-up anger. "The Service is not perfect, Phileas. Perhaps you could have made it better than it is, but you chose differently. So step aside and let me do my job, on my own—because now you have to live with that choice."
From behind her blade, she watched the awesome and frightening surge of darkness that passed over her cousin. Poised to attack, he stared at her with the bleak, dead-eyed gaze that she hated and feared, the one that meant all goodness had gone out of his soul like the tide… letting him be, for a moment, capable of anything.
"Perhaps that is just one choice too many to live with."
His voice was almost a whisper, toneless and lifeless. Lowering his foil, he slowly turned and took two steps away—but Rebecca sensed more than saw the tremors of fury that passed through him, and braced herself for the storm to break.
He pivoted, with a sudden, savage lunge that still caught her off guard. She brought up her foil with both hands, and pain radiated through her arms as the blade met the naked force of his blow. Stifling a grunt, she twisted away from him and went into full retreat. She was too busy defending herself to seek out his eyes, but she was afraid of what she would find there, anyway.
Perceiving an opening that just might let her disarm him, she swept forward in an agile riposte. He was too quick; he sidestepped her, his foil coming down upon hers with a force that threw her to her knees, and her blade was suddenly pinned to the ground by his.
The sunlight and birdsong, the fragrances of fresh straw and damp earth faded away. Her memory dragged her back to a cold, shadowed room in a Scottish castle, and there she crouched on a table with her sword trapped beneath his, tears filling her eyes as she realized she was facing the one man in the world against whom she had no defense.
In the present, Phileas knelt before her, staring at her with his head slightly tilted. Rebecca's gaze slowly traveled up from his heaving chest, to the beads of sweat sliding down into the hollow of his throat, to the firm set of his jaw… and at last to his eyes. At first glance she thought they were empty of emotion, but instead they were full—and for once, utterly unreadable to her. For a moment, she was uncertain whether he might kiss her or run her through.
At the time, either action may have had approximately the same effect on her.
Something in his eyes slowly changed. Their green embers stirred to life again—and Rebecca decided the former absence of light had been infinitely preferable to this ice-cold flame.
"I'm going after him."
It was that soft, deathly tone again, and Rebecca's gut twisted at the first idea of him which her mind churned up. "Count Gregory—?"
"Oh, yes. At the proper time… definitely him. But now…" Phileas slowly released his pressure on her foil, his blade sliding away from hers with a hollow metallic ring.
"For now… Nicol McLean."
Rebecca closed her eyes, feeling sick. She hadn't wanted this. Even Phileas couldn't have wanted this, when he had challenged her to help release what lay within him. A lust for vengeance was his sense of honor at its most twisted. In lethal measure, it was mercifully rare in him—but when it was aroused, there was nothing that could stop it.
She forced herself to look up at him again. "No, Phileas."
His eyes had softened to a pensive quietude. He blinked a few times and stood up, slightly breathless, but as perfectly calm as he had been when she first came out to meet him. Or rather, perhaps, imperfectly calm. He was not passive, but controlled—in true Phileas Fogg fashion. He had failed at his own test, but he did so on his own terms.
"Are we quite done here?" he asked, in a tone of patience tried. As if the entire idea of the session had been hers and not his.
If she tried to answer him, she would have started screaming at him. Instead, she mutely held out her foil to him, avoiding his fingers as he took it from her grasp. Had he touched her at the moment, something highly untoward would have happened… though what that untoward something might have been was anyone's guess.
He transferred her weapon to his left hand, its blade jangling unnervingly against his own, then held out his right hand to her. Rebecca ignored it and rose to her feet unaided. For a moment he stood watching her as she dusted herself off, and she had a strange feeling that there was something he wanted desperately to say, if only she would meet his gaze. She didn't.
At last, with a sigh, he turned to walk away, and only then did she raise her eyes to his retreating figure. "Phileas."
He paused, but he didn't turn; he didn't seek her eyes, and the chance to say what she had chosen not to hear. At least he gave her that much.
"Why do we do this to each other?"
His shoulders shifted slightly; nothing close to a shrug, but not a fidget either. A long, aching moment of silence stretched before his reply.
"Because we can't bloody do it to anyone else," he answered wearily, and started toward the house, leaving her to stare after him in heartsick anger.
He made it look so easy, when it was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
Phileas did not make an appearance for supper that night, and Rebecca dined alone with Jules, who was preparing to leave for Paris the next day. The fact that he had forsaken their last supper with Jules for the time being only increased her lingering anger. She went to bed without tracking down her cousin to wish him goodnight—and then she lay awake for hours, wondering just what it was he had wanted so badly to say to her in the stableyard that day.
She decided she would ask him in the morning.
But when the morning came, Phileas was nowhere to be found.
