Page 31 of The Spy’s Song

"I mean the cavalry. You've been in the army before."

Rodrick shrugged. "Spies have to sprout from somewhere, have they not? Or did you think I sprang evil from the womb, with a forged passport tucked beneath my arm?"

The words came lightly, but his shoulders stiffened, and his right hand left the reins to touch the pocket near his breast before falling again.

What did he carry there? A letter? A medal? Something left from the man he had been before the spy swallowed him?

"But if you were a part of this, why then did you—"

"This is not as noble as you think." His eyes hardened. "And a trooper who speaks too much rarely lives long enough to finish the argument."

No smile lurked at the corner of his lips, and for once she missed it. She hated that he had tasted glory and loyalty, only to be required to become something else entirely.

Louise turned her attention back to the field and did not ask again. They worked until the sun climbed high enough to burn the mist from the grass. After passing from walk to trot to canter and gallop without losing formation, he called a halt.

She wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. "I can keep going."

"The horses can't."

They walked in silence to the stables. When the groom came out, Rodrick dismissed him.

"A cavalry officer looks after his steed."

He dismounted and offered her no help. She needed none. After three hours on horseback, her balance was off. She removed the saddle with less grace than she would have preferred, nearly catching the edge against the stall. Rodrick said nothing. Louise placed it where he indicated, took a cloth, and began rubbing Brutus down.

"You ride well," he said.

Louise stopped. She had spent the entire morning trying to extract a compliment from him, and now that it came without mockery, a strange warmth spread through her chest.

Rodrick leaned one shoulder against the stall. "At what point in a fugitive ballerina's education does one acquire horsemanship?"

Sighing, Louise caressed Brutus's long mane. "During one particularly bad season, Langley decided Covent Garden required horses. We learned to ride without saddles, stand on the horses' backs, and vault from one side to the other. I once jumped through a hoop while my horse was cantering."

Rehearsals had been chaos. Celeste had hated the smell. Hélène had tried to escape to another company. Louise had spent weeks with bruises along both thighs and considered every one of them worth acquiring.

Rodrick's brows rose. "Like the circus?"

The hay still smelled the same. Brutus still shifted beneath her palm. Somewhere outside, a groom called to another man across the yard. But the warmth inside Louise vanished. A circus. Of course. Not blood, not instinct, not Napoleon. She rode well because she had been a circus performer.

"Yes, like that," she said and then left, her back straight, the borrowed breeches pulling at her legs with each stride.

Rodrick watched the Louise's white shirt disappear through the doorway. It was best that she took whatever it was she was feeling somewhere he couldn't see it.

Brutus regarded him accusingly.

"You should not be on her side. She vaulted onto your back without permission, and you object violently when I do that." Rodrick pointed a finger at him. "The one time I tried it, you kicked my arse so thoroughly I caught a glimpse of heaven before Saint Peter claimed I lacked the references."

Brutus did not answer. Just as well. Insolence was a dangerous habit in a horse dependent upon imported oats.

Louise had ridden magnificently. Rodrick had already committed several regrettable thoughts concerning Louise's legs. Watching them control seventeen hands of black-tempered horseflesh introduced an entirely new category of regret. So she had learned in a circus. Who cared? If a swordsman had learned in a salle or behind a tavern, what mattered was that he remained alive at the end of the encounter.

Rodrick didn't quite know what the issue was with her, really. But if Louise remained hurt, she would brood. If she brooded, she would become silent. If she became silent, Rodrick would have to spend the next several days in a saddle beside a woman pretending he did not exist.

Operationally disastrous. Quite clearly he had no choice.

He set the brush down.

The path beyond the stable curved between a kitchen garden and an old orchard before dropping toward a meadow enclosed by a low stone wall. Rodrick found Louise there, seated on the top course with her back to him, one boot braced against a lower stone and the other hanging toward the grass.