Phillip was adamant he
needed to be working again with three or four months remaining before
the known deadline in order to conceive a plan to protect Wellington.
Under Chan's tutelage he took up T'ai Chi – an activity that
required him to move slowly and stretch each of the muscles in his
body gradually. Initially he could only do a few minutes of
movements, but frequent repetitions and continuous development of the
routine soon extended that time.
At the point that he
came to return to contact sports, he found the routines had prepared
him for ducking, lunging and punching – the muscles in his arms
were not easily tired and, although it was nothing like standard
boxing, the motions for Melissa's style of fighting were recognisable
to him from his own activities. While he wasn't able to do full
combat, he entered into a few light sparring sessions with her.
Three months after she
began at Jackson's, all the men in her entourage were practising this
new style of fighting and the other patrons of the establishment were
becoming more and more curious about what was happening behind those
closed doors. Initially the event had been quiet, but with a large
group of competitive men in there, the final bouts of the day were
now a major event and, with the ability to identify particularly
clever or impressive moves, they had begun cheering and making
friendly bets on likely outcomes. On the other side of the door, the
rapid thuds and heavier crashes of bodies hitting the floor in
wrestling or kicking manoeuvres sounded nothing like the regular
thumps of heavy punches in a traditional boxing match and more than
one gentleman had tried to take a peek as the participants entered
and exited the room.
Finally, the younger
group cracked and Michael's friends cornered him with a demand to
know what was going on in there. He refused to tell them immediately,
but visited Melissa the next day to ask what he was allowed to tell
them.
She was surprised to
hear about their interest but thought it through. She eventually
decided that, given her reputation was at such a risk, she only
wanted the people she trusted enough to know about the device to know
about her involvement in the saloon and requested Michael to keep
their sessions private. If the interest kept up, they would have to
form a private club which Chan and other combat tutors could visit.
When she next saw Phillip she made the suggestion and he rapidly
agreed. When she expressed surprise he told her of the difficulty he
was having arranging a private session for her with a fencing master.
If they had a private club, they could summon one. No fencing master
would offer a private room, or make a call for a single pupil. For a
group of seven however, he was sure one of the Masters in London
would make a group visit. Phillip instructed her to leave it with the
men as her contribution to such a club would be easy enough to trace
and utterly destructive to her reputation.
In a turn of
conversation he informed her of his impending return to work and his
plans for gathering information. His feeling was that he should make
enquiries about the assignments of Napolean's known operators.
Typically the French operated by assigning a high profile victim to
two or three assassins so Phillip had two potential approaches:
either issue an order to his own operatives to secure the identities
of those who had been instructed to target Wellington, or collect the
information about all known targets and sift through the known
operatives to identify who was most likely to go for Wellington.
Melissa's feeling was
that asking about who was interested in killing Wellington might look
a bit too specific and Phillip agreed. However, the other process was
significantly more time intensive and required a lot of research and
guesswork. At her request, he outlined his expectation of the whole
process and she drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair as he
spoke. She was in her male guise – as she had found she preferred,
due to the release from corsetry and expectations of proper behaviour
– and she leaned back and casually crossed her legs.
As she was mulling over
the information, the door opened and, to ideal square footaMelissa's
surprise, Francis was shown in.
He made a brief bow to
them both and Phillip casually waved him to a chair. As he took the
seat Phillip filled him in on their discussion about forming a
private club to avoid the interest of others at Jackson's. The two
men fell into a spirited debate about preferred locations and ideal
square footage. They briefly detoured into a discussion about
potentially splitting off rooms for different exercises – both men
had taken a liking to Chan's meditation techniques and were adamant
that it was something they should include in their future studio.
While they talked,
Melissa let her mind wander and speculated on the best route for
gathering the information they required. A thought occurred to her
and she interrupted the men saying: “We don't need to get concrete
information. We only need the basics of names and last known location
and we can investigate it.”
Francis looked
bewildered and Phillip glanced a brief warning at her before asking
what she meant. She flushed and muttered something about her mind
wandering. Francis had long been aware that there was something tying
the rest of the group together that didn't include him and, knowing
Phillip's role in the government and being reasonably intelligent, he
suspected it was something to do with either the war or ongoing
preventative work with smugglers. That being the case, although he
was intrigued, he didn't concern himself by asking questions he was
unlikely to receive an answer to.
The two men returned to
their conversation and Melissa bowed herself out and returned home.
Her route between her own home and Phillip's had been simple at first
but she had been unable to justify frequent “visits” to the
hospital. Hence she had begun a routine of taking job horses and
swapping the stables used. There were a number of hostelries that she
had discovered which had convenient small rooms which were frequently
unpopulated which she nipped in and out of. Her costume change she
had turned into a fine art and could practically dress and undress
while moving. Her skirt was easy, she would simply haul it out of the
satchel and shake it like a table cloth before winding it around
herself. The first few weeks her skirt had been terribly crumpled and
she'd noticed a few raised eyebrows at the state of the fabric, so
she had asked Mary to weight the hem at the base in the hopes that it
would pull the fabric taut and eradicate the worst of the crumples.
Her ploy had been successful so far, as long as she wore only matt
fabrics. She'd tried with a forest green velvet skirt one day –
Mary was still trying to return it to its proper state six weeks
after the event.
Now she had a dark red
brocade style fabric which fell in swathes around her ankles. The
matching jacket had a waistcoat inlaid which sat snugly over her
blouse and completed her outfit with minimal effort. She'd found that
switching the youth's black shirt for a white one was the easiest way
to transition between male and female. Additionally, the solid black
had incited a few queries and condolences regarding the fact that she
was in deep mourning and she felt it best to make herself as
unnoticeable as possible.
Arriving home she
retreated to her bedroom and bathed quickly. Although her habits
raised eyebrows among the servants, she couldn't bear the acid smell
of her own stale sweat after it had fermented for a few hours.
She fell back into
contemplation of the possible resolutions to their information
dilemma and had devised a more complete solution which she was able
to murmur to Phillip during the course of their waltz at a ball the
following night. He concurred and she heard nothing more from him for
almost three weeks.
She and Francis had
resolved their differences shortly after she had discovered his
sincere interest in improving his combat skills. They had tried a few
bouts together at the saloon and although she had soundly beaten him,
she had been impressed by his rapid improvement. From that mutual
appreciation it had been difficult to hold onto a grudge. Tonight was
one of their nights together and they lay recumbent and sleepily
satisfied, chatting about nothing in particular when rapid footsteps
outside her bedroom startled them both. Phillip burst through the
door and the two of them sat up abruptly. Mary had clearly heard the
disturbance and came rushing through also: hissing at Phillip that he
could not be here and superbly ignoring Francis' naked form in her
mistress' bed as she insisted that her Lady had a reputation to
uphold.
Phillip, panting,
ignored all that and clinging onto the door frame informed Melissa:
“It's time.”
She leaped out of bed
and he, as a gentleman, averted his eyes. Hauling a robe around
herself she scampered across the room to her cabinet which stored her
male clothing. A new addition was a harness which fastened around her
waist and thighs and held a number of implements, including knives,
shot and a few smaller items that none of the gentlemen locally would
recognise.
Within fifteen minutes
she was dressed, Mary not allowing her role as lady's maid to
interrupt her scolding of all and sundry. Francis had clambered from
the bed as Melissa dressed and hauled on his own breeches in a much
slower fashion. She was fully clad by the time he pulled his braces
over his shoulders and followed both Melissa and Phillip to the door
of her dressing room.
“Sorry, Frank. Mary
will show you out.” Melissa called over her shoulder to him as she
led Phillip through the door. Francis arrived in the open doorway in
time to see them disappear. He shook his head slowly as he looked
around the room.
“Sir Francis?” Mary
held his jacket up to help him into it.
“I... didn't see
which door they went out of.”
“The servants exits
are hidden from sight. Madam likes privacy while she bathes and so
has arranged her private rooms to seem as secluded as possible.”
“Oh, I see.”
Accepting her calm
assurance, Francis dressed and left the property. Mary returned to
the room Melissa had departed from and gazed around it .She knew full
well that there was only one entrance and one exit to this room –
the door Melissa had entered by. She had also been contemplating for
a long time the sudden reappearance of Melissa all those months ago
after she had disappeared without warning. It wasn't difficult to put
the two situations together and she felt certain there was something
her mistress was hiding.
She was alone for
several hours and all that time thought long and hard about what she
should do.
Melissa and Phillip,
however, had a list of names and locations and they were travelling
rapidly around, making acquaintances and having conversations. Some
of the questions they asked would be mentioned later on and recalled;
but as they were hitting all known points within 24 hours their
questioning would be finished at roughly the same time as the alarm
was raised.
By the time they
arrived at Melissa's house once again, it was almost 30 hours later
and Melissa was missing two throwing knives, twelve bullets and
Phillip was sporting a fantastically bruised jaw. Bath were blood,
sweat ad mud stained and utterly exhausted. Yet they both had an edge
of triumph about their persons.
