Page 84 of The Spy’s Song

Rodrick inclined his head toward them. "And there, I suspect, is the Duchess's contribution to international diplomacy. Nothing reassures Europe quite like displaying Scotsmen in skirts before dinner."

Louise didn't smile. He felt every shift of her fingers through his sleeve, every adjustment of her posture. As Lord and Lady Vane made their way across the glittering assemblage, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, except the ocean was made of red coats, and they did not do it for Moses but for a girl in a white tulle dress.

Talleyrand did nothing without purpose. Whatever her side of the mission was, it required a spectacle.

"Do you think they suspect?" she whispered.

"Oh, my foolish princess, they don't suspect. They know."

"Then why—"

He drew her through a figure, and then guided her back to him, his hand settling at her waist. "They know you are the most ravishing creature at this ball."

Something tapped his shoulder.

Lady Trent stood before him, her hair a cascade of curls. Her gown clung where it shouldn't and flowed where it couldn't help itself.

Rodrick let his gaze drop to her hand on his shoulder. "Being acquainted with the state in which I entered this world does not, I fear, entitle you to continued access to my person."

"How wicked you are." Lady Trent laughed. "Where did you find a husband such as this, Lady Vane?"

Louise arched her brows. "He found me, I'm afraid. It was an intoxicating occasion."

Rodrick shrugged, his lips twitching. He liked this saucy side of Louise. "What can I say? Love at first sight can be brutal."

Lady Trent gazed from him to Louise. "So, we meet again."

"Do we?" he replied smoothly. "How fortunate. I had feared the evening might lack repetition."

"Lord Vane, let me introduce your wife to my friends. They are dying to meet her."

"Perhaps later," Rodrick said. "Lady Vane promised me a dance."

"Oh, please." Lady Trent smirked, assuming the aggravating expression of a woman who had watched them through a peephole and had therefore forfeited the right to pretend she didn't know what she was looking at. "I did not take you for the bourgeois husband who dances with his own wife. Stop devouring her with your eyes and be a good gentleman. Go lose your fortune at the gaming tables while we ladies gossip."

They exchanged a look. Louise nodded and began to draw her hand from his coat.

Rodrick's fingers tightened around hers before he could stop them. Ridiculous. Lady Trent meant to take her twenty feet across a ballroom, not across a border. Rodrick could see the women waiting beyond the dancers. Yet, the observation didn't prevent the tragic hero from raking his claws down the inside of his chest with the sudden conviction that if he released Louise now, fate would seize upon the opportunity and he would never touch her again.

He made himself loosen his grip.

Louise glanced down at their joined hands, then back at him. Rodrick bent to her ear before she could ask what possessed him. Her hair carried the gardenia scent he had been tracking since a stairwell in Covent Garden, where he had pressed a cloth to her face and assured himself the interest was operational.

"Try not to burn the place down."

He kissed her cheek and lingered there half a second longer than the jest required, breathing her in.

"I'll do my best," she whispered.

Then Louise slipped from his grasp and went with Lady Trent.

Rodrick followed every step, absurdly alert to the flashes of her gown between turning couples, until Lady Trent drew her into the little knot of women gathered beyond the dancers.

Rodrick forced himself to look away, and after taking a glass from a passing tray, he moved among the guests with the careless drift of a man who had nothing to accomplish and all the time in the world to waste.

His sweep of the room was interrupted by a vision from his past. Lieutenant-General Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge, Wellington's cavalry commander, stood with four of his officers at the room's edge, their legs slightly bowed, as if riding had permanently changed them.

His former superior had not changed. He had the emotional warmth of a cabbage, but was intelligent and fair. He could not say the same for most of his acquaintances.