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And here he was, kneeling again for his Corsican Princess. Some dismal subject he made. His chin dropped to his chest.

The dock smelled of tar and salt and rotting timber that had been wet too long.

What was this pressure behind his eyes? So strong he could not seem to open them. His body weighed a ton and was as empty as a robbed hull.

He stared at the water, at the refuse floating there. Perhaps he could add one more thing to the Charente's cargo. His useless carcass would hardly register against the waste.

The water was very close.

He was very tired.

The future without her seemed blacker than the surface before him. Damn you, Lou. He pressed his fist against the dock's surface. What did you do to my heart?

He wanted to see her gray eyes again with such force that, if he died on this dock, he would be obliged to haunt her out of sheer professional persistence.

Even that would not do.

Watching Louise from the other side of death sounded intolerably passive. Greedy bastard that he was, Rodrick would still want to touch her, argue with her, make her look at him when she was trying not to, and hear her say his name as though it belonged somewhere in the world.

A rough exhale escaped him.

If he was going to bury himself in an obscure French river, he might as well bury himself on Saint Helena.

He put his hand flat on the dock and began, groaning, to push himself upright. The Danes. He squinted along the waterfront. Those rascals were never far from a port. How much would they charge to follow her to the end of the world?

He was halfway upright when a sound reached him that had no business on a dock—a wet, uneven sniff, followed by the small breath of someone who had cried long enough for the tears to come only in intervals.

Every hair along Rodrick's arms lifted. He stopped, one hand still braced against the quay, and turned toward the sound.

A woman sat at the edge of the dock between two mooring posts, her legs hanging over the water. Black hair. Rodrick's heart struck against his ribs and then forgot the next beat entirely. Afternoon light caressed her pale skin and shone on her dark hair. He drank in every detail, and then closed his eyes briefly, afraid it would intoxicate him.

Louise.

He staggered closer. An Old Guard uniform swallowed her frame, the cuffs folded back to free her hands.

The pressure cinched around his chest loosened by degrees and then gave all at once. Air tore into his lungs in a shudder that bent him forward, and for the first time since seeing the Bellerophon, his body remembered what breathing was for.

She had stayed.

Love expanded inside him with such force that nowhere in his body seemed large enough to contain it. Christ, what an extraordinary amount of nonsense he had told himself over the years. The soul measured like brandy in a glass, rising with every decent act and draining with every sin. The tragic hero doomed by the very thing he loved. The spy's careful arithmetic of allegiance, as though affection were merely another debt waiting to be collected.

He had spent fifteen years trying to preserve himself by giving nothing away, and all this time he had misunderstood the nature of the thing. A soul was not brandy to be hoarded in a glass.

It was a song. It existed only when given breath.

The first notes of Plaisir d’amour attempted to climb his throat. Rodrick clamped his teeth together. Absolutely not. He would not stand on a quay in Rochefort and burst into song like some deranged tenor simply because the woman he loved had failed to sail to the end of the world.

Napoleon was on the Bellerophon. Louise was not. Which meant—

Rodrick's stomach tightened.

She had stayed for him. For the spy who loved her.

His lips started the movement, but he was certain his whole body was smiling. Rodrick de Montfort was, without a doubt, the cockiest bastard alive.

She had stayed.

He would not allow her to regret it.