Page 45 of The Spy’s Song

Gaetan coughed into his fist.

Louise looked from one man to the other. James rode toward an army because Rodrick rode toward it. He could have stayed behind. Yet he carried pistols and a saber and followed a man who insisted loyalty was merely another word people used when they wanted something from you.

The day warmed as they rode. Dust gathered along the hem of Louise's coat and settled into the creases of her gloves. The borrowed uniform felt different after several hours in the saddle. In the château, before a mirror, it had been costume. Here the leather belt pulled at her waist, the saber struck her boot when her horse changed pace, and sweat collected beneath the collar.

Early that afternoon, she noticed a pale haze above the road beyond a low rise, too broad to have been raised by a wagon or a handful of riders. Then a dull rhythm rose above the ordinary countryside noise.

Louise's heart pounded. She touched her heels to the horse's sides, and he sprang forward into a gallop. The wind caught her coat and flattened it against her body. When she gained the crest, she reined sharply.

Green coats filled the road below, emerging through the dust in rank after rank, horses packed knee to knee where the road narrowed and spreading into the verge where it widened. Sabers caught the afternoon sun. Brass flashed at collars and harness. Standards lifted above the column, appearing and disappearing as the ground rolled beneath them, while the sound she had heard from the other side of the hill rose around her now—the weight of hundreds of horses, leather creaking, metal striking metal, men calling to one another through the haze.

Rodrick brought Brutus to a halt beside her. Then he leaned across the space between them and closed his hand over her leg. "Understand this, Louise. Once we join that column, you are on your own. If you disobey an order, break formation, or draw attention to yourself, I cannot shield you from the consequences of your decisions."

He released her. She caught his hand in hers, pressing his fingers, trying to feel skin and warmth under the leather of their gloves.

"What about you?"

If she were discovered, she was a woman—French and Napoleon's daughter—but him? An English spy in a French regiment? Seven hundred chasseurs would relish hanging him.

He frowned at her hand on his wrist, then his gaze lifted to her face. And the smile arrived. The wicked one.

"What is this? Concern for your devilish spy? Careful, Lou. You will make me believe that you care."

***

She fell into place behind Gaetan and Rodrick as they descended toward the column, concentrating upon the lessons Rodrick had spent a week forcing into her body. Sit deep. Hands quiet. Do not perform.

When they reached the head of the regiment, Louise made herself smaller in every way that mattered. Lieutenant Jean did not look about like a girl entering the pages of military history. He had seen soldiers before. He did not stare at uniforms, standards, scars, or the men who had followed Napoleon across half of Europe.

Rodrick changed the instant they reached the column. The man who had mocked her on the road disappeared beneath the uniform. He allowed Gaetan to ride ahead without contest, kept Brutus half a length behind, and watched without seeming to watch. Even his face had acquired a different stillness.

The regiment adjusted around Gaetan as water adjusted around a stone. Men straightened in their saddles. Loose files tightened. Voices dropped as word of the general's arrival passed backward through the column.

A rider detached from the front and came toward them. He was a large man even among cavalrymen. Olive skin and black hair marked him as southern, and his nose had been broken at least once.

"General." He saluted Gaetan. "I'm glad you found us at last. I was afraid the Seventh would have to tickle the English without you."

"How is the road?" Gaetan asked.

The man who had refilled everyone's wine at dinner vanished. This voice belonged to the officer whose arrival had straightened seven hundred backs.

"Clear ahead. The villages less so," Brissac said.

Gaetan gestured toward Rodrick. "Captain de Montreval. Recently returned to service. This is my Chef d'Escadron de Brissac."

Rodrick acknowledged it with the smallest possible movement of his head. Nothing in him shifted. He might have been carved from the same stone as the road.

De Brissac looked at him a beat longer than courtesy required. Louise stopped breathing. If this went wrong, Rodrick would hang. The thought moved through her chest like cold water.

"And the aide. Sous-lieutenant Jean d'Arc."

De Brissac gazed at her. She resisted the urge to straighten further, to lift her chin, to be more in any direction. Invisible, she reminded herself.

"Lefèvre," de Brissac barked.

A rider trotted closer. Young, with hair the precise red of a fox's coat and a complexion that suggested the sun had strong opinions about him and he had not won the argument.

"Sir."