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Her hand flinched on his arm. “I suppose it was.” She was quiet a moment, then sighed. “My parents gave her a fortune in jewels to bribe her way out. She must have told a great many lies as well. She has never said much about it, just the bare details.”

“She must have been devoted to you.”

She smiled. “Not to me. I was only an infant then. Mélanie was devoted to my mother. She still is! She worries over me as a hen might over her chick, fretting that she will have betrayed my mother’s memory if she permits something to happen to me.”

“That sounds like devotion to you, not only to your mother,” Nate murmured.

“We had no one but each other. I cannot even remember my mother’s face, and Mélanie lived many years in fear that her flight would be punished by those still loyal to la Révolution. She saw Napoleon as a great savior, come to restore order to France.”

“Does she know what you do?”

“Yes.”

Nate glanced at her, surprised.

She looked back, her lips curved with faint amusement. “Does your mother know what you are doing now?”

“She does, as a matter of fact, and she approved.” He grinned. “She insisted Prince come along, thinking we could help each other. I’ve no idea what she’ll think when she hears what really happened.”

Again her eyes flickered toward him, and he knew what she was thinking: what would he tell people about her?

Nate had no idea. Maybe nothing, for her own protection. But saying nothing of her would leave a large hole in his explanation for why he must return to London without even seeing Jacob Dixon stand trial, not to mention leave people under the impression he’d found Dixon on his own. And that wasn’t even the most important thing about Angelique he wanted to tell people. He thought his parents would be quite taken with her. “She’ll not be surprised to hear a woman had to step in and help us both, of course,” he added lightly.

“No woman is.” But she smiled at him—her true smile, nothing false at all. Her eyes lit up and her nose crinkled just a little, and she looked so lively and happy he could almost forget the other sides of her. Of course, there was no side of her that didn’t fascinate him. Even when he didn’t understand her moods, they were all part of her, and he loved them all.

He loved her.

God help him, he was in love with her, this dangerous woman who spied for a living. Who probably had a dagger hidden somewhere on her person right now—he had noticed she preferred knives to pistols or other weapons—and was ready to use it. He was in love with a woman who could be cold and calculating, sensual and dominant, clever and practical, and then tender and thoughtful. He was mad—and as proof, he wanted to shout for glee and throw his hat in the air.

That would be the wrong thing to do, naturally. He had already wondered how he could win her, and now he realized that it was her heart, not only her mind, he wanted aligned with his. Which meant he had no time at all to lose.

“Tell me more about what you will do once you’re done with this work,” he said. “You’ll visit Mélanie more.”

“Yes.” She smiled again. “I will. I shall take a small cottage somewhere quiet, where I can lie in bed all day if I wish. Read a great many books. Learn to play a violin, or create humble little watercolor sketches of my cottage. Perhaps I shall get a dog and spend my days wandering about the countryside taking the air.”

“Hmm. That sounds…” He glanced at her, his eyes dancing. “Dull.”

“Do you not read, sir? How uncivilized Americans are.” She was teasing him again.

“Oh, I read,” he said. “And enjoy it greatly. But after this life? Reading will seem tame and sedate. Wandering the fields with your dog? All alone?”

“You speak as if it is a bad thing, to be alone.”

“Not always,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “But do you wish to be alone for the rest of your life?”

She tilted her head in reflection. “No. But I am used to it. My life has not admitted much in the way of companionship.”

“Just Mélanie.”

“Mélanie is my family.”

Nate seized on the word. “Do you want to have a family of your own, though? Wouldn’t Mélanie wish that for you?”

“Mélanie would wish a great many things for me,” she said. “To marry a Frenchman. To return to France and reclaim my father’s lands. To raise a pack of children for her to fuss over, since she had no children of her own. But she also still wishes, after all these years, to see Jean-Paul Marat’s body unearthed from his grave and dragged through the streets before it is torn apart and fed to rabid dogs. She is bound for disappointments.”

“But what do you want?” he asked again. “Do you wish to marry?”

She stopped walking and faced him with a slight smile. “No one has ever asked me.”