Page 10 of The Spy’s Song

"Can I not perform one virtuous deed from the goodness of my heart?"

Louise raised one eyebrow.

"Your faith in mankind is inspiring."

"In mankind, perhaps."

"Ah. Merely not in me. How efficiently we understand one another."

She tore a piece of bread.

Rodrick leaned one hip against the table. "Let us say your correspondent promised me something as well. Something I have wanted for a very long time." His hand moved before he noticed, brushing the chain in his pocket.

"What is it? Power? A bargain with the devil?" she asked as she bit into the ham, her white teeth flashing.

He shrugged. "Which one? I know several."

"It must be something considerable to tempt you into treason against England."

"Such concepts are beneath me."

"Indeed?" She chewed, studying him with an irritating steadiness.

"You see, de Montfort is older than England. Norman blood. We arrived before the English had quite settled on being English. One cannot betray Britain if one was never properly British in the first place."

A faint smile touched her mouth. It reeked of condescension, even pity. His jaw set, and he forced himself to smooth away the reaction.

She put down the bread. Then she stood and adjusted the bodice of her costume, smoothed her coat, and crossed toward the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Leaving."

The answer was so absurdly calm that he suspected chloroform had impaired her judgment.

"You cannot leave."

Louise reached for the latch. His stomach dropped with the unpleasant sensation of a horse refusing a fence after the rider had already committed to the jump.

"Miss Bonnechoix. Arlesford has half the Horse Guards searching London for you. You have no safe route to France, no papers I have not arranged, no ship, and, unless you have hidden a Danish captain beneath your costume along with the dagger, no means of crossing the Channel."

Louise's hand remained on the door. "Loyalty, Monsieur de Montfort, is absolute for me. I won't stay with a man who has none."

For perhaps the first time that evening, Rodrick had no prepared response. She needed him to reach France. He had just demonstrated that he could overpower her. And still she was walking away.

There it was. Not Napoleon, though the emperor occupied enough territory in her heart to require cartography. Loyalty. Louise would walk into fire for someone she believed deserved it and abandon shelter if the hand offering it belonged to a traitor.

Understanding should have pleased him. Find the want, find the lever. Except this particular lever appeared to operate from the wrong side of the door. How inconvenient.

A sound came from the street. Hooves. Several horses. Then the unmistakable clatter of men dismounting in haste.

Rodrick crossed to the window. Redcoats moved at the end of the alley. "Sebastian. The man has more obstinacy than a bishop confronted with pleasure."

"Time for philosophy is over. Last chance. I dragged you from the theater once for your safety. If you believe I will do so again out of my non-existent loyalty, you mistake me. Either come with me willingly now, or face the guards."

He extended his hand to her.

Outside, iron-shod hooves struck the cobbles in gathering rhythm, close enough now that the windowpanes rattled.