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When he was done, he guided his cock back inside her, and she dropped her head back on the pillow.

"Do you want that?" he rasped. "Do you want to feel me coming inside you?"

"Yes," she gasped. "I want you so deep, so deep that you never leave."

Rodrick stilled. And that was when she realized she had spoken it aloud.

He buried his face in her neck and drove into her. She gasped and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him closer, anchoring herself against the storm he'd become.

"More," she whispered. "Please."

His body pushed into hers, stripping away thought, pride, language. Her cries filled the space between them, louder with every thrust. Still, she wanted more. Deeper. Harder. Forever.

She shattered with a broken cry, her nails digging into his back as her body clenched around him. The release tore through her in waves, fierce and endless, her hips rocking helplessly as she rode it out.

Rodrick groaned against her neck, his thrusts faltering, turning ragged, and then she felt him pulse. His cock throbbed inside her, his breath catching, his arms trembling where they held her.

It was better like this. So much better—coming apart while his heart beat against hers, his mouth still pressed to her skin like he couldn't bear to let her go.

His arms trembled. He held her anyway.

She felt the wetness on her face and then his thumb moving across her cheekbone. She was crying.

She had failed. She couldn't hold the performance for one hour. She had asked him not to leave, and she was crying, and Lady Trent had seen everything, and there would be no tickets—

He pulled her against him and rocked her. "Shh, Lou."

She pressed her face into his chest. The scarred, real, entirely imperfect chest. She had ruined everything. Lady Trent would laugh at them. At a silly girl who cried when she made love.

She had ruined—

The paper whispered under the door. On the Aubusson, under the candles' golden light, lay the two tickets.

Brussels at night smelled of horse and coal smoke and the cologne of hundreds of English officers who had crossed the Channel with their campaign trunks and were now sleeping off their confidence in billets.

In one of those billets lay a handsome aristocratic man. A dead one. Well, he would be as soon as Rodrick found him.

The Régiment des Chasseurs de Condé quartered their horses in the stables behind the rue de Namur—a requisitioned posting yard, large enough for three hundred animals, busy enough that one more man moving through it at any hour would require no explanation.

A couple of drunk soldiers passed him by, swearing loudly. There was blood in the air. Allies, French. Beneath Brussels' social veneer, he could feel the subtle current. This time there would be no mercy on either side. And Louise would be there. At the ball. Walking into whatever Talleyrand had planned for her. The now familiar prickle of cold climbed up his spine. Another sensation Lady Vane inspired in him. Not least among her other effects were explosive orgasms while being watched.

His arms felt too light at his sides. Empty since yesterday, when she had christened them with her tears. He never wanted to see her crying again. Never. It was too haunting. Too raw.

If tonight's hunt proved fruitful, she never would again. Tomorrow he would take her away from Brussels and back to France. She could curse, bite him, threaten him with a dagger, but he would not relent. If it were not for the arms, the cold spine, and whatnot, he would've congratulated himself on the logical decision. As it was, he just wanted to carry her off. What a romantic he became.

Still, even romantic spies had to keep their promises. First, he needed to find Montmorency.

Talleyrand had made a mistake by revealing that Montmorency was a cavalry officer. To locate a cavalry officer, one found his horse. Rodrick only hoped the bastard had turned fat and gouty and would scream loudly.

Antoine de Montmorency had sat in Maman's drawing room in the summers before the war and talked of his lofty ideals until the brocades went to sleep. His sister had liked Antoine. That was before his friend had—Rodrick walked faster.

He entered the stables at the precise moment of maximum confusion. A string of twelve remounts had arrived. A gelding snapped at a stable boy's sleeve. The boy stumbled. The handler swore.

Rodrick stepped in. He shortened the rein, pressed his palm beneath the gelding's jaw. The gelding's ears came forward, and it settled.

The nearest groom looked at him with gratitude.

"Get him to the second bay," Rodrick said. "Water first, then hay. Not the other way. He's been pushed hard."