Page 19 of The Spy’s Song

His gaze turned dark and unreadable. Whatever he wished her to believe, the killing had not been casual to him. What did he want from her? Absolution?

"He deserved it," she said, and her voice cracked.

"Oh yes," he said softly. "The moral judge speaks. Murder earns absolution, but betrayal damns the soul. Your commandments are wonderfully specific."

Louise stiffened. "Don't presume to know me—"

"Oh, Princess." His voice was a secret slipped beneath the skin. "I never presume. I know you came to London with three other girls. I know Langley took you in at Covent Garden."

Rodrick's fingertips moved over the curve of her shoulder.

"I know you named yourself their protector before you'd even grown breasts. That you fought boys twice your size and danced through sprained ankles because you believed no one else would stand for them."

Louise closed her eyes, remembering Hélène sick with fever. Celeste afraid of shadows after Keller.

His hand slid lightly down her spine. "And I know," he said near her ear, "that it wasn't until you were eighteen that you learned who you really were. The Emperor's daughter."

Louise tried to step away, but her feet refused.

"I can see it now." His breath stirred the hair at her nape. "The spark in your compelling gray eyes when the girl who'd always been overlooked suddenly had a destiny large enough to match her rage."

Her chin trembled again, and Louise turned her face away. She would not remember the letter while he watched her. She would not let him see the joy that had erupted inside her. How she'd reread each line until her tears blurred the ink. How everything had made sense, all at once. The way she'd always felt displaced, miscast—like she'd been rehearsing in the wrong theater, waiting for a cue that never came.

"Don't," she said thickly. "Don't make it ugly."

Rodrick's lips moved across her throat as he inhaled. "I knew your scent was unique. Gardenias. And fury."

Her skin prickled, and her heart fluttered against the corset like a trapped thing. She hated that he had this power over her.

"You're trembling," he murmured.

Louise drew herself straighter. "I'm cold."

"Liar."

His hand tangled in her hair, and his thumb rested in the tender hollow behind her ear. She should have slapped him. She should have driven her fist into his ribs. But her arms stayed limp at her sides.

"You sound like the most foolish little girl I've ever met," he said, voice low. "I wonder how you taste."

Her breath caught. "I bit the lip of the last man who tried to kiss me."

He lowered his head slowly, and Louise stopped breathing. "Then I shall endeavor to remain on cordial terms with your teeth."

He didn't. Not quite. His lips brushed hers, just enough for her to inhale him—brandy, salt, the cold air still clinging faintly to his skin. Louise tried to summon the image of Nikolaj dragged toward the British cutter. Tried to remember Rodrick's cold declaration that he would have paid that price. Tried to reconstruct every reason she had possessed only minutes ago for despising him. Still, his mouth touched hers again, slower this time, and her knees weakened.

His tongue traced her lower lip, and she opened for him. Rodrick's hand tightened in her hair while his other moved along the curve of her neck, down over her collarbone to the base of her throat. Louise felt the rhythm of his breathing alter against her mouth, and something in her answered. Suddenly her arms didn't want to be limp anymore, and she lifted them around his neck, drawing him closer.

She had expected kissing to be something done to her, perhaps endured, perhaps resisted. She caught his lower lip between hers and, remembering her own threat, let the tip of her tongue find the edge of his teeth.

Rodrick groaned, then drove her backward until the bulkhead met her shoulders, one hand still buried in her hair, the other closing around her waist. The ship swayed with the waves, and she tilted toward him. Because she was tired. Because his scent was drugging her.

Because when his palm flattened just above her hipbone, she couldn't think. Breathless, Louise clung to him. His erection pressed between them, and her stomach tightened.

Rodrick pulled back.

Louise stared up at him, dazed.

"As much as I know about you, Princess, there's one thing I can't quite understand. Why are you still a virgin?"