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She loved him.

She loved the spy who mocked every principle she owned, who carried sugar for his horse, who sang alone to discover whether his soul remained intact, who had taught her that loyalty could be offered rather than owed. She loved him, and loving him meant that what she had taken from him hurt almost as much as the thought of losing her father. She loved him, and her heart ached too much. She loved, and she was weak, because loyalty and honor had not protected her from this. Why should saving a father cost so much?

She heard Rodrick's breathing before she heard his steps.

Louise shut her eyes. Napoleon's gray coat weighed across her shoulders, hiding her body beneath its folds. He still thought she was the Emperor.

She could tell him. Her lips parted, but no sound came. If she revealed herself, she would force him to see what she had taken from him. Worse, she would ask him to choose again when she had already chosen for them both. Her fingers curled into the earth. If she possessed one ounce of courage, she would open her eyes and tell him the truth.

Instead, Louise pressed her cheek into the grass and waited, praying that whatever blow came would be quick.

The leader of the squadron raised his saber over Napoleon. Rodrick fired. The pistol kicked against his palm, smoke bursting white before his face. Across the field, the cavalryman jerked, his blade tipping sideways as his body folded into the grass.

Rodrick lowered the pistol. So the Royalists had been unable to locate a red coat willing to perform the assassination and had been forced to subcontract the matter to a Frenchman. National standards were deteriorating everywhere.

He swung down from Brutus before the stallion had fully stopped and crossed the churned ground at a run. The tragic hero had been granted complete operational command. Against every principle Rodrick possessed, the bastard had produced an excellent plan. First, save Napoleon. Second, give Louise her father. Third, return to Brussels. Fourth, explain to Louise Bonnechoix that Rodrick had reconsidered certain aspects of their temporary arrangement and now intended to keep her for approximately the remainder of his natural life.

There were details still requiring negotiation.

Louise might insist upon France. Rodrick possessed estates in Normandy and could compromise. She might wish to remain near Napoleon for a time, which would be inconvenient but survivable. She might object to the word keep, in which case Rodrick could substitute any verb she preferred, provided the practical result remained unchanged.

Rodrick dropped beside the fallen Emperor.

"Come, sire." He shook the gray-coated shoulder. "Your admirers have been dealt with, but I strongly recommend disappointing the rest of Europe somewhere less exposed."

The body beneath his hand moved. Relief loosened the band that had cinched around Rodrick's chest since he saw the saber rise. Alive. He could work with alive. Now, there remained the delicate question of how he should introduce himself. Rodrick de Montfort, Viscount Saint John. British intelligence. Former cavalry officer. Occasional kidnapper of your daughter. Perhaps omit the kidnapping. Possibly the chloroform as well.

The tragic hero, having seized control of operations, had apparently developed ambitions toward the family, and antagonizing Louise's father before negotiations commenced seemed strategically unsound.

Rodrick shifted his grip and helped the Emperor roll toward him. Would he find any resemblance to Louise? The gray eyes, perhaps. The line of the mouth. He had studied Napoleon's portraits, naturally, but portraits were propaganda with frames. Rodrick wanted to see the man from whom Louise had inherited that impossible conviction that the world might simply be ordered to alter itself.

The face turned toward him. Black hair slipped from beneath the bicorne and brushed across his wrist.

Wind moved through the grass around his boots. Somewhere behind him, Brutus blew out a breath, tack creaking as the stallion shifted his weight. Rodrick heard each sound with impossible clarity while the pulse in his throat struck hard enough to hurt.

He was not looking at Napoleon's face. Louise. Dirt streaked one cheek. Tears shone along the other. Her mouth trembled as she looked up at him, while his mind searched for an explanation that didn't require the world to have shifted beneath him.

Perhaps a resemblance. A trick of the coat. Smoke in his eyes.

Then she blinked, and his stomach dropped so violently that he nearly lost his balance. Heat rushed up the back of his neck while his hands went cold against her. Every calculation he had carried across the field ceased to exist. Only Louise lay beneath Napoleon's coat where Napoleon should have been.

"Lou?"

Her mouth trembled, and she lifted one hand toward him. Rodrick watched those slender fingers come toward him as though from a great distance. Her palm settled against his cheek, and his lungs expanded painfully.

The squadron had hunted her across a field. She could have been dead.

But—the gray coat around her shoulders, the bicorne. Six riders had followed this figure away from the road. Six men had believed they were chasing Napoleon. Louise had not happened upon them. She had made herself the quarry.

His stomach lurched, and every muscle in his body braced for a fall.

"You did not betray me," she whispered, tears rolling past the corner of her mouth.

The cold beneath his ribs hardened into sharp glass. She had risked her life rather than risk believing in him, and now she lay in his arms alive only because a pistol ball had reached the chasseur before the saber did.

He drew her hand away from his cheek and turned it over. Then he kissed the palm, one last kiss. He gave himself permission for only that, while inside him, a black thing expanded, and it was an effort not to choke on it.

"And you didn't trust me," he whispered, lowering her hand.