Page 30 of The Spy’s Song

Louise braced for contact, but he stopped before his fingers met hers.

"I almost forgot you forbade me to touch you. And since I'm trying so hard to be a good spy, I can't correct you like this. Unless, of course, you wish to lift the ban…"

"I can manage," she whispered.

"Very well." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Transfer the reins to your left. Your right is for killing the man in front of you."

Louise obeyed while he watched her with his dark eyes. Really, since when was she so conscious of her own hand?

He stepped closer to inspect her seat, bringing his chest beside her calf. The spice of his cologne reached her, mingled with sun-warmed wool and something cleaner beneath it. Him, apparently. She had never before considered that Rodrick had a smell. This seemed information a woman ought not possess about a man she had forbidden to touch her.

Rodrick's gaze dropped to her seat. "You're gripping him too tightly."

"I am not."

"Lou, I can see the horse reconsidering his life choices. Relax your thighs. Let your weight sink into the saddle. When the line breaks, you won't have the luxury of balance. A horse stumbles. A body hits you. If you're not seated, you're thrown, and a horseless cavalryman is a dead one."

Louise forced her knees apart by a fraction, opening a part of her that skirts had always kept irrelevant. Now it seemed exposed to the sun, the horse, and, most inconveniently, Rodrick. His shoulder hovered a breath from her knee, and her skin prickled. The breeches were clearly defective.

His palm approached the outside of her thigh. The space between his palm and her leg could not have measured more than two inches. Louise felt every one of them.

He would ignore her rule. Her belly tingled, which was outrageous enough. More outrageous still was the stab of disappointment when his fingers curled into his palm instead.

"Better, but you're still strangling the poor animal. A man between your thighs ought to know you want him there, not fear for his life."

Louise glared at him. "You are inventing this. Since when does a spy know anything about cavalry?"

"Of course." His eyes came back to hers, wickedly amused. "My mistake. I had forgotten you possess no practical means of judging the quality of my advice."

Her face burned. "I was speaking about the horse."

"So was I, Lou. Do try to keep up."

Heat struck her face so quickly she felt it reach her ears. She opened her knees as wide as they would go and forced her legs to relax. "There. Better now?"

He inspected her with insulting thoroughness. "It will do. I've always maintained that enthusiasm can compensate for inexperience."

Before she could throw something at him, he mounted the brown horse. His body settled into the saddle, shoulders square, hands quiet on the reins. Even mounted on an animal fit to drag vegetables through Paris, he looked dashing.

"On my knee," he said.

Heat climbed to her cheeks.

"Don't get ideas, Lou. It is cavalry language. It means match my pace. Hold the line. Ride close. Though I admire the direction your imagination took."

Louise urged Brutus sideways until the horses traveled nearly abreast. Their knees approached. She instinctively gave herself more room.

Rodrick corrected the distance at once. "You do not choose your pace. You take mine."

That sounded less like horsemanship and more like Rodrick de Montfort's opinion of civilization. Louise brought Brutus back into line.

Rodrick set the pace at a trot. For the first circuits, Louise had to fight every instinct that had served her as a dancer. Her body wanted to anticipate, adjust, add something of its own. Rodrick demanded the opposite. If he slowed, she slowed. If he changed direction, she held the space beside him. When Brutus lengthened his stride, she checked him rather than enjoying the speed.

They rounded the lower edge of the field, their horses moving close enough now that her knee brushed Rodrick's.

"You did that before, didn't you?" she asked.

"What? Instruct Corsican princesses in the noble art of horsemanship? You are very much my first."