Page 94 of The Spy’s Song

"If you want me to stay," she whispered, "I would rather you stay inside me."

"Louise, you don't have to give me this. Not now, I—"

"Good." She caressed his cheek. "Because I was thinking of what I need."

Rodrick let her undress him. First the coat from his shoulders, then the waistcoat opened beneath her impatient fingers, shirt dragged free.

Rodrick eased inside her and felt Louise open around him by degrees, until the last distance disappeared and he lowered his head into the curve of her neck.

Yes. This. Let him remain here. Let the storm spend itself against Brussels, let armies march, and emperors rise or fall beyond these walls. For once he wanted time to stop with nothing required of him except staying inside this woman.

Louise kissed his forehead and lifted his chin. "Don't stop looking at me, please."

Of all the things she might have asked, she wanted these eyes that had seen so much, little of it good? He could think of very little in them fit to offer Louise.

Rodrick braced his weight on his forearms so he could watch her.

"I won't, Lou." He kissed the corner of her mouth and drove deep again. "I won't look away."

Then he began to move, slowly enough to see every change pass through her face.

Louise kept her gaze fixed upon his as he withdrew and returned, and each long stroke seemed to draw another measure of fear from her. Her fingers tightened against his shoulders, yet she never looked away.

If his gaze could nourish whatever Talleyrand had starved inside her, then let her take all of it. If she needed a beacon while every certainty around her collapsed into darkness, he would keep the damned light burning. If looking at her could quiet whatever still raged beneath that stubborn breastbone, he would look until his eyes failed him. And if all she required was a witness—someone who saw what she had done, what had been done to her, and remained—then Rodrick could finally put years of observation to honorable use.

He moved inside her, resisting every impulse to close his eyes when pleasure tightened through him. Her breath broke against his mouth, her fingers clutched him, and still, whenever her lashes fluttered open, Rodrick waited there.

She came looking at him.

Rodrick held her through it, watching the strain leave her face and something softer take its place. When her body finally relaxed, he gathered her against his chest. Louise curled into him beneath the blankets while the storm diminished outside, and Rodrick kept watching as sleep began stealing the tension from her features.

Her eyes had almost closed when he brushed the hair from her cheek.

"Lou?"

"Mmm?"

"Why do you need me to look at you?"

Louise nestled closer, already halfway into sleep. Then her fingers closed weakly in the hair at his chest.

"Because I'm afraid of the dark," she whispered.

Outside, thunder rolled farther away across Brussels. He drew the blanket higher around her shoulders and kept his eyes open.

Louise woke to cannon fire. The bed was empty. She pushed the covers aside and sat up, blinking into the afternoon light pouring through the curtains. Afternoon. She had slept through the morning, hours longer than she had intended. The cannon sounded again, the rhythm carrying through the walls. The battle had not waited. Somewhere in those lost hours, while she lay in a rose-colored room in Brussels with her face against a spy’s neck and her arms around him, her father’s army had begun the battle that would decide everything he had built.

Clothes lay folded on the chair near the bed. One of his sister's dresses. She pulled it on quickly, fastened the hooks, and smoothed the skirt down, then splashed water on her face and felt it cut through the last of sleep.

Then she went downstairs to find Rodrick.

The drawing room was empty. She followed voices to a door half-open at the far end. Through a slit she could see Rodrick, standing with his back to her. Across from him was an older man in an English field uniform, dusty as if he had been on a battlefield this morning. His right leg was bandaged.

She should turn back. Yet her hand hovered near the wall, then fell to her side as she leaned a fraction closer.

"You resigned your commission," the man said, his tone even, almost casual, "but I never accepted the resignation. I had it set aside instead of sending it up the chain, which means, as far as the army is concerned, you are not quite as finished as you believe."

Rodrick tilted his head. "Uxbridge, how provident of you. I confess I'm still deciding which of us you intended to benefit."