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Her stomach cramped so violently she nearly folded over the pommel.

The officer took a step forward. "You cannot hold this path alone. Be sensible."

There were things one discovered only in the dark, facing certain death. Louise was not sensible. And she would not move. Not because she was strong. She would do it because she was weak. Weak for a spy who had called her a foolish ballerina. So weak that the prospect of stepping aside and allowing these men to catch Rodrick by surprise made her want to retch.

She would not survive seeing the light fade from his eyes. She might not survive this either, but this was a terror she could meet on her guard.

The officer had stopped two horse lengths from her. His patience was running out. She could see it in the set of his shoulders.

"Soldat," he said again, and his voice had changed. "Your final answer."

The Prussians came down the ridge path in single file, hands bound. They had been defeated but had decided to be professional about it.

Rodrick watched them go. He had taken the battery with fifteen men and lost none, which was, by any operational standard, a satisfying outcome. The gun crews had been surprised from the rear, the demolition party scattered before they could fire the charges beneath the bridge, and the two guns now pointed harmlessly away from the crossing.

He could have cut their throats. It would have been the cleaner tactical decision—no prisoners to guard, no men diverted to escort them down the ridge, no witnesses left to report how the position had been taken. He had made expedient decisions in his career without notable difficulty.

What could he say? He had been in a magnanimous mood.

He watched the prisoners disappear around the bend and noticed, with some surprise, that the brandy glass inside him had not emptied further.

Missions usually cost him a dram or two. Tonight, oddly, the level had not fallen.

Louise would have approved. She would have said something sharp about enemies of the Empire receiving better than they deserved, but beneath it would have been that look of hers. Approval. Which was a non sequitur if ever there was one, because Rodrick de Montfort didn't need Lou's approval.

He certainly didn't need her to look at him like she gazed at Gaetan, in deep admiration of his honor, as if heaven could never produce a more loyal specimen, or a bigger one.

He wanted to see her face. He wanted to see the expression it would make when he told her the battery was taken, the bridge intact, and nobody had died.

The undergrowth cracked beneath his boots as he quickened his pace down the ridge toward the picket.

He had reached the narrow traverse above the Sambre when he saw a rider at the narrowest point of the track, saber raised. Louise.

She faced a detachment of infantry. The first rank was perhaps twenty yards away, two abreast where the path permitted it. More crowded behind them, disappearing around the lower bend. Rodrick counted twelve before the curve swallowed the rest and judged from the depth of the column that there were at least twice that number.

He measured the distance between himself and her.

He measured the distance between the soldiers and her.

He calculated the time it would take him to reach her and the time it would take them to reach her, and the arithmetic was very simple, and the answer was—he was not going to reach her in time. His pistol would not help. One shot from above would start the volley. Running would cover perhaps ten yards before they covered twenty.

He had been draining his soul for fifteen years. Some nights, he had thought the emptiness might be a relief. He had been wrong. He was still well equipped to suffer like every other bastard.

His knees hit the dirt, and a feral wail tore from his chest. She was going to die, and he was going to watch.

Louise screamed. "Vive la France!"

The sound tore off the riverbank and rang back doubled, and she charged, the saber bright above her head, the tricolor flying from her saddle.

The officer wheeled toward his men. "Fire!"

Rodrick's heart stopped. In his mind, he saw thirty reports. Smoke swallowing the path. The stallion collapsing beneath her. Louise thrown backward with half her body opened by lead, black hair in the dirt. His fist went to his coat to claw his heart out.

And then—the muskets did not fire.

The infantry lowered their weapons. One by one. The slight figure on horseback, saber in hand, tricolor snapping from her saddle, had stopped them.

The damned metaphysics of Louise. He had felt it when she tore the tricolor from the gibbet, and seven hundred chasseurs found something in themselves worth shouting for.