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He grabbed her hand. "You have my eyes."

***

"Your mother was my first love. I had nothing back in those days in Marseilles. She was my little Eugénie."

He looked outside, and the light that entered the carriage caught the lines of his face, making them seem deeper, as if the years had settled on him all at once.

"I would have married her, but when I came back from Toulon, Robespierre had her whole family arrested."

In Napoleon's sorrow, she fancied she could see her mother, not as the fragments she remembered from her lonely days as an orphan, but as a young woman who had her own life and went through too much.

"How is it that you came to me—like this?" He leaned back slightly, and his eyes moved over the uniform, taking in each detail. "And why now?"

She forced her hands still against her knees. "It is a long story, sire, and you do not have time for it. If you are to evade the assassins, it must be done now."

"Bah. A squadron does not catch me on the road unless I allow it. Answer me."

Louise drew a breath and looked back through the window. The road streamed away beneath the willows, empty to the last bend. Perhaps Napoleon's will was so strong he could command everything, even their fate.

"I was raised in London—"

"You were an émigrée. Did they treat you well? A nation of shopkeepers, all of them. If that German king—"

"I was a ballerina. Beneath the notice of the aristocracy. Nobody knew I was your daughter." Her voice came out too loud, sharper than she meant it to be.

He narrowed his eyes. "And how does a ballerina from London end up at Waterloo?"

"Four years ago, I received a letter. From Talleyrand—"

"Then why was I not informed?"

"It is a difficult story, sire, and if you keep interrupting me, I will not be able to finish it."

His eyes flashed. She went too far. The distance between Emperor and subject would reassert itself, and then—

He made an impatient gesture. "Speak."

"Talleyrand told me the Emperor wished me to remain in London until the right moment came for me to return to France. A few weeks ago, he sent for me. When I arrived in Brussels, he assigned me a mission."

Napoleon's mouth tightened. "What mission?"

Her gaze dropped to her gauntlets, and the leather creaked softly as her fingers curled.

"He asked me to attend the Duchess of Richmond's ball…" Her throat closed. She forced the next words through it. "…and kill Wellington."

The carriage shrank around her. The weight of the dagger pressed against her thigh again. She would have done it and destroyed her soul in the process.

Napoleon let out a short breath through his nose. He turned the quill once between his fingers, then set it down. "My former foreign minister keeps you in London for four years—out of sight, out of reach. He sends for you at the moment of greatest risk… and places you in a ballroom filled with half of Europe." His gaze sharpened. "Not to kill Wellington. But to be seen trying. To fail." His tone shifted, quieter now, almost reflective. "And to drag my name through it. And now you are here. So the plan has failed."

His eyes stayed fixed on her. "The true question is why you accepted it."

Louise opened her mouth. The words dissolved before they could reach her tongue. Her hand moved without thought to the inside of her dolman, and she drew out the lithograph, then placed it in his hand.

Napoleon studied the yellowed paper in silence. Sighing, he brushed over the child's engraved cheek, then traced the curve of the globe beneath the boy's fingers.

"You are brave, but if you think killing that Sepoy general would have given you the world—"

"I wanted to serve France." Her voice trembled. "But what I truly wanted… was to see my father."