Page 83

He gathered the strands, drawing them up and back, shaping them into the loose style the French favored. Then he pinned them in place with the comb.

"I could carry you off, Lou. You know that, don't you?"

He could take her from this room. From this house. From whatever waited beyond it.

Their eyes met in the mirror. He could remove her from the board. But he would not win. Not against her will. Really, what a bore he was, considering her feelings above his own.

He sighed. "I have to be at the ball," he said, finally stepping back. "And so do you."

Her chin trembled. One small movement. She controlled it immediately—the chin coming back up, the composure reasserting—but he had seen it.

"Damn Talleyrand, that conniving bastard." He turned her from the mirror and took both her hands. "I have money. A great deal of it. Not London money—real money, the kind that crosses borders without questions. We leave now. Before this city burns. Before the ball. Before—"

"Rodrick, I—"

"Calais. Ostend. Rome, if you insist upon ruining my digestion. Constantinople—you've never seen Constantinople. We could—"

She held his lapels and kissed him the way she had charged thirty soldiers on a mountain path, and he stopped because he could not, it turned out, do anything except kiss her back.

"Promise me. When it is time—When it is time, you will leave." Her thumbs caressed his cheekbones. "Whatever happens. You will not look over your shoulder. Forget you ever knew me."

He gazed at her. The chin. The gray eyes, so like her father's, could compel masses to sacrifice, but they could not compel a turncoat spy to do this.

The tragic hero would deliver a speech here. Something in verse that the audience would carry home and quote to each other over supper. Something about love and fate and the nobility of sacrifice.

He pressed his forehead to hers. "Shh. I'll leave."

Yes. I'll leave. No rock left standing if anyone ever hurt you.

Rue de la Blanchisserie had surrendered to traffic. The moment their carriage turned into it, they joined a procession of private coaches and mounted officers inching through the darkness toward the same destination. Coachmen shouted over one another while servants darted between wheels carrying lanterns.

Rodrick's chest had been tight since they entered the street. The tragic hero had spent the entire journey insisting that every yard brought Louise closer to the moment she would cease to be his, and Rodrick had spent it informing the bastard that a ballroom was not fate.

Their carriage finally stopped before Number Twenty-Three, a three-story red-brick house remarkable principally for its lack of anything remarkable.

Louise peered through the window. "Is this the right address?"

Rodrick stepped down first, then turned and offered his hand. He could feel how cold her hands were even through their gloves.

"Indeed. The Richmonds have rented a coachbuilder's house in one of the lowest parts of Brussels, and dukes, princes, and generals are queuing at their door to dance."

They entered with the next cluster of guests. Footmen worked just inside the hall attempting to process the British peerage before midnight. One relieved Rodrick of his hat while another reached for Louise's wrap. Names passed forward through the press of bodies—titles, regiments, families, every syllable a declaration of importance—until Lord and Lady Vane joined the stream moving toward the rooms beyond.

The anteroom opened into a space already thick with uniforms and silk. Trellised roses repeated across faded paper, a garden attempting valiantly to bloom beneath chandeliers and military shoulders. Crimson, gold, and black hangings descended in such quantities that one could have clothed a regiment with the material and still possessed enough left over to surrender formally.

Rodrick had crossed drawing rooms with better decorations and men considerably more dangerous than anyone presently drinking champagne. Within seconds he had counted the doors, judged the windows, guessed the servants' passages, and found three routes out. His pulse settled as the room reduced itself to angles, distances, and contingencies.

Fate would not interfere with the night's double goal—kill Antoine de Montmorency and keep Louise alive. He would accomplish both. Everything else in Brussels qualified as collateral.

Rodrick offered Louise his arm. A ballroom, after all, was a battlefield with better lighting.

"What is that noise?" she asked.

He followed her glance toward the musicians. "The Coldstream Guards. Twenty-two men presently engaged in proving that military discipline survives even the reel."

The band had struck into the dance with enough brass and bow to make conversation along the walls an exercise in strategy.

Several Gordon Highlanders danced in full kilt, tartan swinging with each turn, while foreign officers watched with the fascinated attention usually reserved for artillery demonstrations.