Page 90 of The Spy’s Song

He had been too late on the cliff. He would not be late again.

The light was dim at the room's center. The dancing continued around him. Somewhere nearby, a woman laughed.

He lifted the pistol, angling it through the shifting bodies. He looked at the back of Louise's head. The black hair. The Greek-style arrangement he had set with his own hands an hour ago in a Brussels bedroom, the comb placed at the angle that suited the gown, her eyes finding his in the mirror. The hair he had braided long ago in Boulogne.

She will be taken. I will not watch that. I will not stand and watch.

He exhaled slowly. The barrel steadied. His left eye closed. His right fixed on the line he had chosen, the distance collapsing into a single point. Wellington's shoulder presented itself between two men. If he could not stop his Corsican Princess, he would steal her target.

He would hang for this. So be it. He would rather feel the rope around his neck than watch her fall.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

A loud explosion shook the window panes. The sound shot up his arm, jarred his aim, and reverberated in his bones, then rolled through the ballroom like a physical force.

Cannon fire.

Napoleon. The Grande Armée had arrived, and all the Allied officers were drinking and dancing.

The music broke mid-phrase. Conversation snapped into silence, then surged into voices all at once. Heads turned. Wellington's aides closed around him, guiding him away from the ballroom. The target vanished.

Louise stopped, her gaze following the duke as he left the room.

Rodrick lowered the pistol. His hand was steady. He noted it with the detached interest of a man noting a weather phenomenon. He had been about to shoot the Duke of Wellington in the Duchess of Richmond's ballroom.

He uncocked the pistol and put it back, all the while looking at Louise's still figure fifteen feet away, at the white gown and the black hair. This was the woman he was willing to hang for.

By God, he loved her that much.

Antoine had been gone for two hours. Charlotte sat in the armchair nearest the window, her book in her lap, the cannon fire still audible through the glass as it rolled in from the south. She had given up pretending to read at half past midnight. Now she simply sat and listened to the city rearranging itself outside—the carriages, the boots on cobblestone, the military machine that had been waiting for this and was now moving.

She was not afraid.

She was—she named it, as she named everything, because unnamed things had more power than named ones—she was restless. Antoine had said an hour. It had been two. She trusted Antoine's hour the way she trusted his coffee—with the knowledge that the hour, like the coffee, would be exactly right when it arrived.

She was considering exchanging the book for a glass of brandy when someone knocked.

Three raps. Not Antoine—Antoine had a key and used it. She rose, crossed the drawing room, and reached the foyer just as the butler, blinking and tying his robe, opened the door.

She saw Rodie first. He was pale. Beside him stood a woman. White gown. Black hair. Gold clasps at the shoulders catching the lamplight. The woman was shaking, as if she had been cold for a long time.

"Is this not a little late for coffee?" Charlotte asked.

She took them into the drawing room. The fire had been banked, and she built it up by herself.

She did not ask what had happened. She could see what had happened was too large for a foyer at two in the morning.

Rodie was still standing. He opened his mouth, and she recognized the expression he wore when he was about to do something he found awkward and would do anyway through sheer force of character.

"Louise," he said. His voice was level. "This is my sister. She is not dead. I discovered this tonight, and I will reserve the explanation for when my head stops pounding."

The woman's gaze turned to Charlotte. She seemed to have carried a great deal all evening, and there was no room left for surprise.

"Charlotte," Rodie continued, with the air of a man completing an unpleasant task, "this is Louise Bonnechoix. The bane of my existence." The faintest, most exhausted curl at the corner of his mouth. "And yes, I have one of those. She will need to spend the night. Before you object—you owe me."

He dropped onto the couch, and his head went back against the cushions, his eyes closing.

Charlotte crossed to the girl and took her hands. Freezing.