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Rodrick watched, hands in his coat pockets and his weight easy on one heel, the posture of a man for whom none of this was any kind of occasion whatsoever. The women held each other with the particular grip of people who had been frightened for each other and were now breathing easily. Louise laughed. He had not seen her laugh yet.

She had forgotten him completely. That should have been mildly insulting. He had arranged the stop. He had kept Hélène's presence secret for most of the journey. He had endured an embrace in public for the sole pleasure of demonstrating to Louise that, contrary to her increasingly offensive theories, people occasionally associated with him voluntarily.

Louise pulled back and raised her hand to Hélène's face.

Louise the Loyal. One could engrave it on a crest. A dagger rampant on a field of stubborn devotion. He found himself wondering what it would be to stand on the receiving end of it.

Sentiment of that variety was liable to get a man killed. Or worse—and this was the greater danger—turn him into a bore. He had attended enough dinner parties where some poor fool had caught a feeling.

He looked away and touched the chain in his pocket. He should remember that he, too, had a mission.

"Come," Gaetan said. "There is wine. You look like a man who has been carrying something heavy."

Rodrick glanced once more at Louise.

Heavy. She had weighed nothing. And yet his arms did not seem to have received that information.

"You have no idea how much," he said, and followed his friend inside.

Louise kicked off her tattered slippers and watched Hélène fuss with towels and soap. How did one tell one's best friend that her father was Napoleon Bonaparte?

Hélène helped her out of Rodrick's coat. It was his. They both knew it.

"Well," she said. "This is a new look for you."

It took Louise a full second to understand she meant the costume. She stripped it off. "I didn't have much time for collecting clothes."

Hélène's mouth curved. "You can have all of mine."

Warmth filled Louise's chest. Hélène would give away every stitch she owned and stand cheerfully in her shift, because things were only things and people were everything. It was one of the reasons Louise loved her so much.

Sighing, Louise stepped into the bath, and steam rose around her face.

"I'm just thankful Viscount Saint John brought you here safely." Hélène settled onto the low stool beside the tub. Her voice was perfectly pleasant. Her eyes were perfectly innocent.

"Safe? He drugged me, kidnapped me, locked me in a cabin, smuggled me out of England, and then spent the remainder of the journey behaving as though I were the unreasonable one."

"Sounds like he gave you an interesting adventure."

"Rodrick gave me a headache."

"Is it Rodrick, then?" Hélène said, with a sly smile. "You are on a first-name basis with a spy."

"It would be strange to call a man 'the spy' after he has—"

"After he has?" Hélène asked pleasantly.

"Carried one across London. It loses a certain formality."

She reached for the soap and began attacking her hair with it.

With a long-suffering sigh, Hélène batted Louise's hands aside. "Allow me. You'll tear it from your skull."

Louise surrendered her hair. Hélène's fingers sifted through her strands, and the tension in her scalp eased.

Sunlight filtered through the glass panes. Outside, the paddock was awash with late afternoon light. Rodrick emerged from the stables, tugging Brutus behind. The horse seemed unwilling to leave the pavement for the grass. The ruthless spy appeared to be trying to convince the stubborn creature. Rodrick's hands flexed on the lead, and the coat strained against his shoulders.

She remembered the pressure of those hands at her waist, and heat rushed up to her cheeks.