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"It was kidnapping."

"You are very tedious about terminology. We shall never reach Paris at this rate."

She looked away, and Rodrick smiled. She had no idea who awaited her.

The carriage turned onto a narrower road lined by poplars. Rodrick recognized the bend before the first glimpse of the château appeared between the trees.

His pulse quickened, and he frowned. Hours confined in a carriage did terrible things to circulation. That was all.

Louise leaned nearer the window as the château appeared. Outbuildings spread behind it, and beyond those lay ordered fields running toward a low ridge.

She glanced back at him. "You look pleased."

Rodrick arranged his mouth into its proper shape. "I have been trapped in a carriage with you for several hours. Perhaps I have glimpsed the prospect of release."

The carriage passed through the gates, and a boyish anticipation gathered low in his chest. The French air was clearly affecting him.

The carriage swept around the final curve and stopped before the château steps. Behind the carriage, Brutus came to a stamping halt, black mane tossing as James climbed down from the box and went immediately to his head.

The door swung open, and Rodrick alighted. A hand the size of a small country closed over his shoulder.

Then Gaetan de Beaumont—Count of Wagram, general of France, and the only man alive Rodrick would permit to do this—pulled him forward and held him there with the unhurried certainty of someone who had decided the embrace would last exactly as long as he wished. Rodrick endured the assault with the resigned dignity of a statesman accepting an unwanted decoration.

"You have become emotional in your old age," he said into Gaetan's shoulder.

"You are alive."

"A condition I have maintained with some consistency."

Gaetan released him and stepped back, grinning. The sun caught his hair—that golden mane that had made him impossible to hide in every military operation they had ever shared.

Louise stood at the carriage step, one hand still on the door. She looked from Gaetan to Rodrick and back again. Her lips parted.

An inconvenient warmth moved through Rodrick's chest. Gaetan belonged to that very small category of men Rodrick trusted enough not to call friends. They had met at military school after Eton had decided it could survive without him, and last year Rodrick had returned the favor by finding Gaetan's sister in London and keeping her alive until her brother arrived to reclaim her.

"You see, I do have a friend, and he is not Lucifer. Do you remember Gaetan?"

She blinked once. "How could I forget Hélène's brother?"

Gaetan crossed to her in two strides and bowed the kind of bow men performed before queens. When he straightened, the laugh lines had gone from his eyes.

"Welcome to France, Louise. Had I known last year who you were, I would have brought you home with Hélène."

Her eyes softened in gratitude, directed unmistakably at Gaetan.

Rodrick's hands closed at his sides. Gaetan received that look for standing on his own front steps. Remarkable. Rodrick had crossed a Channel, offended the Horse Guards, and endured several attempts upon his person, but apparently none of these qualified him for such.

A child's voice, pitched high with some urgent domestic matter, came from the house. Louise turned toward the doors. Pulse speeding, Rodrick watched her closely.

Hélène Harcourt, née Beaumont, stood in the doorway.

She was as he remembered—slim, petite, eyes alert—except she wore a day dress instead of tulle. She looked, in short, like a woman who had found the life she was meant for and was still faintly surprised by it.

Rodrick leaned toward Louise's ear. "The Emperor's daughter gains a friend as well. Observe how generous I am. And it is not even Christmas."

Her face opened. Just as it had in the warehouse when she read Talleyrand's letter. Then she was moving. First, the measured walk of a dancer, then the stride of Napoleon's daughter, but midway, she was running.

Hélène descended the step.