Page 6

Arlesford swore.

Rodrick stepped back. "James, be so kind as to conduct our passenger to the carriage."

James hesitated. "But my lord, you will be—"

"Double the kidnapping allowance."

Arlesford unsheathed his sword.

"Now, James," Rodrick said, uncovering his own steel.

The cart began to move behind him. Its wheel struck the uneven threshold with a jolt, and Rodrick's attention betrayed him long enough to follow the sound.

Sighing, he turned fully to Arlesford. "A sword fight in a corridor? We used to be more original than this."

"We used to be a great many things." Arlesford attacked before the final word had finished echoing.

Rodrick caught the first cut and felt the impact run through his wrist. Sebastian had lost none of the strength Rodrick remembered, nor the irritating economy of his fencing. He advanced, using the narrow space to deny Rodrick room and force him away from the service door.

Rodrick yielded half a step, parried again and refused the third.

"Taking Napoleon's daughter from the Horse Guards is treason." Arlesford drove at him. "Are you really willing to hang for this?"

Rodrick turned the blade aside. "Of course I object to hanging. Such an unnecessarily vertical way to die."

"You find this amusing?"

"I find the British penal code unimaginative."

Governments had accused Rodrick of worse things in better languages, and official displeasure had long since lost much of its novelty. One merely had to survive until yesterday's treason became tomorrow's diplomacy.

Arlesford attacked high, changed line, and forced Rodrick back another pace. "What happened to you?"

Rodrick's blade caught his a fraction later than it should have. Steel scraped steel. He recovered before Arlesford could exploit the opening and shoved him back.

"At present, I'm trying very hard not to kill you." Rodrick smiled through gritted teeth. "If you insist upon resurrecting ghosts, I may have to reconsider."

Arlesford advanced. "You were the best officer in Lord Uxbridge's regiment."

Rodrick met the next attack hard enough to jar both blades. "Then their standards have declined."

Arlesford shook his head. "The retreat from Corunna. Men were dropping into the snow because they no longer had the strength to stand. Then you started singing. Half the damned column had joined you before the next mile. Don't you remember it?"

Remember it? He felt it every day. Snow beneath horses' hooves. Breath smoking white beneath a black sky. Men whose hands had gone too numb to close properly around reins, laughing because someone had begun the wrong verse and because laughter was preferable to listening to another horse fall.

"I could hardly believe the rumors afterward. That you had left the cavalry. That the Foreign Office had made you a liar, a blackmailer, a killer," Arlesford said.

Rodrick attacked once, then again, driving him back. He caught Arlesford's sword wrist, drove his shoulder into the colonel's chest, and hooked a boot behind his ankle.

The colonel fell, and Rodrick kicked his sword away. Then he seized the back of Arlesford's coat and drove him face-first against the stone. His own blade settled between the colonel's shoulder blades.

Their heavy breathing filled the narrow corridor.

"It's true, then. You lost your honor when you left us."

"No, my friend." Rodrick leaned closer. "Lost suggests an accident."

For one moment Rodrick saw another man entirely reflected in the dark glass of the service door—younger, wearing cavalry red, bold enough to sing because silence might have frightened the men more than the snow.