Page 99 of The Spy’s Song

Her knees weakened, and she leaned against a tree. She had rehearsed this moment a thousand times—at Covent Garden, at the farmhouse, on the march north.

Pulse beating in her throat, she looked down at her reflection. Her face was streaked with black. Tear tracks had dried on her cheeks. Eyes too large. Mouth too tight.

She knelt by the bank. The water was brisk as she rubbed it against her forehead and cheeks. Through the wavering current, a girl stared back, eighteen again, an orphan who had longed for a father for so long. Why did she have to look so hungry?

He had just lost everything. He didn't need a pathetic girl with puffy eyes and a heavy heart. She pulled the helmet back over her head. The knight stared back at her. She would offer him that.

Her boots dragged over the mud as she walked to the carriage, pulling her mount by the bridle.

An officer leaned over the carriage's back, his shoulders pulling in and out as if he had just run a great distance. White whiskers. A sergeant's insignia.

Louise clicked her spurs together.

"Hold there." The sergeant lifted his head, and his gaze moved over her—coat, straps, helmet. "Name and unit."

She met his eyes as she closed the distance. "Lieutenant d'Arc. Seventh Chasseurs à Cheval."

"Sergeant Moreau. Escort detail." His eyes flicked past her, as if expecting others to follow. None did. "You're a long way from your regiment, Lieutenant."

"Where is the Emperor's staff?" she asked.

He held her gaze a moment longer, then shook his head. "Gone ahead. Or scattered. Those who were still breathing had mounts that could barely stand. The rest—" He closed his eyes. "The horses gave out before the men did."

Cold spread beneath her breastbone. There was no Guard. No mounted escort waiting for orders. No fresh horses stamping in reserve. Only one exhausted sergeant, a coachman carrying water, and a team so spent they could barely keep their heads raised.

Her father was inside that carriage with nothing between him and Rodrick's squadron.

"I carry a message for the Emperor," she said. "It is urgent."

The sergeant knocked on the door, a single hard rap.

"What is it?" A low, sharp voice came from inside. A voice that had commanded things for twenty years and hadn't stopped commanding them simply because the day had gone badly.

"An officer with a message, sire."

"Send him in."

The sergeant reached for the handle. Louise's fingers went cold around the reins. She released them before he could notice and wiped one damp palm against her breeches. The distance she had crossed from England to France had become the width of a carriage door.

The sergeant opened the door. Louise pushed herself inside and lowered onto the leather bench. Napoleon bent over a writing board braced across his knees. He did not look up. The quill moved. A short line. Another.

The carriage jolted into motion, and the writing board shifted once across Napoleon's knees before his hand steadied it.

He sanded the page, shook the grains aside, and spoke without lifting his head. "Eh bien—who posted you here?"

Louise welcomed the question with an almost painful relief. She could stand before him as Lieutenant d'Arc, helmet on, shoulders square, without needing to explain why her heart had begun pounding.

"From the Seventh, sire."

The quill scratched on. A blot formed, spread, and was ignored.

"You are not from my Guard."

"No, sire."

The carriage kept his face in shadow, but each turn of the wheels shifted the light across some new piece of him. The pale forehead she knew from engravings. Dark hair flattened by sweat near the temple. The curve of a cheek heavier than in the portraits. His hand moved across the page, slender fingers stained faintly with ink, and Louise watched it with such fierce attention that her own fingertips tingled inside her gloves.

Her father's hand. She had imagined being held by it when she was foolish enough to imagine such things.