Page 92 of The Spy’s Song

"He was at an allied ball wearing a Bourbon white cockade. He changed sides. Your father did not send you on this mission—it was Talleyrand."

She gripped his sleeve. Her stomach lurched so violently that she tasted acid at the back of her throat. "That's impossible. I was about to do it, Rodrick, you see? I was about to do something awful."

He exhaled. "You would never get to Wellington. The second you flashed your dagger at him, you would have been arrested. The news would be—Napoleon's daughter sent to kill the Iron Duke. Napoleon is that desperate."

Louise lowered herself to the bottom step, the wood hard beneath her. Heat spread over her face and down her throat until even the night air against her skin seemed too warm.

"He was using me, then."

"Yes."

"Talleyrand was using me to destroy my father."

"Yes."

She was Napoleon's daughter, and she had almost destroyed him. Was it still the cannons outside? Or was it something breaking inside her?

Louise stared at the stair beneath her feet. "How do you know what would have happened when I reached Wellington?"

"Louise—I was with Talleyrand when you crossed the ballroom."

So Rodrick had seen her. How could she ever look into his eyes again?

***

Rodrick carried Louise upstairs. The cannonade had been replaced by a storm. Rain battered the windows hard enough to smear Brussels into black roofs and reflected lamps.

He kicked the bedroom door shut. Louise Bonnechoix had survived kidnappers, cavalry charges, and Talleyrand. Rodrick hardly needed to lower her to the floor as though gravity posed the evening's greatest threat. Still, his hands stayed at her waist because he had the absurd notion that if he did not handle her slowly, fate might notice they had cheated it out of a tragic ending and come demanding payment.

Christ. She had nearly gone out again. Rodrick ought to have been furious. He should have shaken sense into her, delivered a lecture on the distinction between loyalty and suicide, perhaps locked the door for good measure.

Instead, all he wanted was for her not to leave. And then postpone the act for several mornings. A succession of them, in fact, continuing until the arrangement ceased to suit them both—or, more realistically, until Louise developed the good sense to escape him permanently.

Pathetic.

He took a step back. She crossed her arms over her chest, making a valiant effort not to look at him.

Rodrick wanted her eyes. Wanted that gray gaze lifted to his so he could see what remained there after Talleyrand. But he did not reach for her chin or coax her attention back to him. His Corsican princess had fought quite enough battles for one evening. She needed sleep more than Rodrick needed reassurance.

"Are you cold?"

Louise shook her head.

"Let me get you out of Talleyrand's colors."

Rodrick reached for the gold fastening of her gown. He released one clasp and then the other, letting the white silk loosen beneath his hands. His knuckles brushed the warmth of her shoulder, and Louise drew in a small breath.

The tragic hero stirred, but apparently even he had exhausted his appetite for poetry. Tonight the bastard wanted locks on every door, guards beneath the windows, and Louise kept in bed with Rodrick between her and anything foolish enough to come looking for her.

Something slipped from inside the bodice. A folded paper struck the carpet. Rodrick picked it up. Napoleon stood in profile beside the infant King of Rome, the lithograph creased from being carried against Louise's body.

Louise's fingers closed over the loosened silk at her breast. "I was afraid I would not return to the house after—" She stopped, her throat moving. "After it was over."

She had dressed for possible death and packed accordingly. Her father. The brother she had never known. Everything she possessed of them folded into a scrap of paper.

Rodrick ran his thumb over the crease. Had he been made of heroic material, perhaps by now he would have become something she carried too.

He placed the lithograph on the night table where she could see it. Then he drew the gown past her hips, let it fall around her feet. Sighing, he lifted her from the silk and settled her on the bed.