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Rodrick exhaled through his nose. So, the Emperor meant to give them battle. Of course he would. What else would he do, take up watercolors? Write his memoirs? He'd already done that part—it was called the last twenty years of European history.

"He will face them again in the field of glory, how very unpredictable of him. And you follow him. Blindly."

His friend's eyes lit with that particular blue fever, the look Rodrick had first seen at military school when a seventeen-year-old French aristocrat had told him that serving Napoleon Bonaparte was not employment but a calling. That Rodrick would understand if only he had met the man.

Rodrick had politely declined. Not because, at eighteen, he could recognize a man drunk on loyalty and glory, but because he had just been entrusted with his own squadron, drafted with the specific goal of wiping out the man his friend so adored.

"If I knew Wellington's plans, then I could—"

Rodrick grabbed Gaetan's arm. "Go south. Take Hélène. Take the child. Go to your estate in Saint Cloud and stay there." He refused to think of this giant as gray and lifeless. "Half of Napoleon's generals refused. A man can love his Emperor from a distance."

The fire in Gaetan's eyes didn't dim. If anything, it turned brighter.

Rodrick let go of his arm. "These animals have no say in where they go or what they carry or which field they die in. But you don't have to be cannon fodder."

Something pushed into Rodrick's left coat pocket. An old horse was nuzzling his coat. Rodrick recognized the white star on the beast's forehead.

Rodrick had been there the day Gaetan bought him. A holiday from the academy, two officers at large in Vienna with more money than sense and considerably more youth than either of them had understood then. The horse had been four years old and barely manageable on a good day. Of course Gaetan had named him César.

"He remembers you," Gaetan said. "You fed him every sugar lump you could steal from the kitchen. He ate every one. And the moment you stopped, he walked straight back to me."

The old animal's breath warmed Rodrick's palm. You should be dead. You should be somewhere between Austerlitz and Moscow, in a ditch or a fire or a snow field. You should be boots and belt leather and emergency rations. That was what happened to loyal things.

"Why do you still keep him?" Rodrick asked.

"He'd done enough," Gaetan said quietly. "After Austerlitz, I retired him."

Rodrick stood with his hand on a horse and felt something move through him that had no operational name. So what? He wouldn't get sentimental because Gaetan had ridden a foolish horse through campaigns that should have finished them both, and then brought him home.

Yet something whispered in the air, and that something had Louise's voice.

You wouldn't know loyalty if it pressed a dagger to your throat.

Rodrick withdrew his hand. He had no time for ridiculous chicken-egg questions about who came first, the tyrant or the foolhardy follower. He still had a mission, and Napoleon's march had just complicated it.

"I'm going with you," Rodrick said. "North. With your regiment."

Gaetan shook his head. "Light cavalry moves fast, travels lean. My men are soldiers, not nursemaids."

"I know how chasseurs move, Gaetan. Are you already so deep in your dotage that you don't remember I had my own squadron?"

He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.

Gaetan frowned. "And you would have an army corps if the Foreign Office had not decided to use their best officer as a bloody spy."

Rodrick didn't flinch from his friend's gaze. It was what everyone believed, was it not? That the Foreign Office was the devil, and he the wretch who sold his soul for some blood-stained coins.

"You should be thankful I was not in the field. Your troopers would turn tail and run if they ever faced me in battle."

Gaetan studied him. "I cannot take a woman with me."

Rodrick opened his mouth. A sensation crawled across the back of his neck. Someone was watching him. He looked toward the château.

Louise stood at an upper window, and his pulse gave a ridiculous leap. A lapdog demonstrated greater dignity after a week's separation.

Someone had found her a white dress. Against it, her black hair looked darker, and she possessed the same irritating quality Gaetan did in sunlight, as though whatever goodness lived inside them had never learned discretion. Rodrick distrusted people whose souls advertised themselves. It encouraged predators. His hands tingled to muss that hair, to put her back in his black coat, the spy's coat, so she didn't look so damn good.

"Who said anything about a woman?" Rodrick asked.