Page 108

She struck his wrist. His fingers did not open.

"Look at them, ventrebleu!" de Brissac roared, hauling Brutus's head around. "One rider. Open ground. Forty muskets. What is the second part of this magnificent strategy, eh? You sprout wings after the first ball goes through your chest?"

A scream tore out of her throat. She tried to wrench the reins free again, and when de Brissac held on, she struck at his forearm, anything that might make his fingers open.

Around them, the Seventh had slowed.

Lefèvre cursed behind her. Three chasseurs watched, their faces sharpened by the struggle.

Louise twisted toward them. "Will you allow this? Will you watch the enemy walk away with him?"

One trooper closed his hand around his saber hilt.

"Sacrebleu, do not even think it." De Brissac's voice cracked across them with such force that the trooper startled.

Louise seized the hesitation. "He came back for us. He could have escaped, and he came back. Are you going to stand here while they take him?"

A murmur moved through the remnants of the Seventh.

"D'Arc." De Brissac's voice dropped behind her. "Close that infernal mouth."

"Why? Because they might remember they are soldiers?"

"Because I have buried enough of them today!"

De Brissac hauled his horse around until he faced the handful of men who remained. His face had gone dark beneath the dust.

"Look around you, you collection of heroic imbeciles. Look properly. This morning I commanded a regiment. Now, parbleu, I could seat what remains of the Seventh around a supper table and still have room for the cheese." His fist closed harder around Brutus's reins. "You want another charge? Magnificent. Let us kill the rest, and I can carry the Seventh home in my saddlebags."

No one moved.

Louise's arms had begun to shake too badly to pull. Breath scraped in and out of her chest. "He came back for you."

"And I will not repay the man by murdering every soldier he saved." De Brissac turned on her, his voice still rough but stripped now of bluster. "Use the head God gave you, boy. They are not going to kill him. He is an officer. He surrendered alive. That makes him worth more breathing than dead, and even those Bourbon jackals possess enough sense to understand that." His grip eased a fraction on the reins. "They will take him to Paris. Question him, bargain with him, parade him before some powdered ass at the Tuileries. But they will take him alive."

"Paris?"

"Yes, Paris, mordieu. So stop trying to get yourself killed and live long enough to go steal the bastard back properly."

Her fingers loosened by degrees. She turned back toward the clearing. The Royalists had closed around Rodrick. She could see only fragments of him between horses—one shoulder, the dark line of his head above another rider's arm.

Then even that disappeared.

Paris. She fixed the word in her mind because everything else inside her was coming apart.

Paris.

She would find him there.

Paris, two weeks later

Louise had been waiting in the Tuileries antechamber long enough to memorize the crack running through the gilded door. She looked at the clock. Had it been only forty minutes? It felt like forty hours. She paced and hoped her shoes did some damage to the fleur-de-lis etched in the carpets.

Antoine de Montmorency had done everything the proper channels allowed. He had spoken with the Allied generals, with the provisional government's liaison, and the minister's secretary. All prisoners of war had been accounted for. No record of a Rodrick de Montfort, a Captain de Montreval, or any British officer matching the description was held anywhere in Paris.

Nothing in this city happened without Talleyrand's knowledge. She had learned this at eighteen in his first letter and had spent four years believing he was her closest ally and not a bastard who stole her father from her.

The door opened. Suddenly, her legs weighed more than cannons. She had hardly slept the past few days. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Rodrick standing in the field while white cockades closed around him.