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She stared at her folded hands. "I'm glad you found your sister instead of revenge."

"Revenge has its merits. It is considerably less complicated than resurrection."

Rodrick bent over her leg to remove her dagger. Louise's breath caught as his fingers found the sheath strapped high around her thigh. Teaching her the correct placement had been easy. Considerably more troublesome was sliding two fingers beneath the strap while her bare skin warmed his knuckles.

"She seems happy. Your sister."

"An unforgivable lapse in judgment, considering whom she married."

He should go. She was undressed, and she was now lying in bed. Short of putting his own dagger to Morpheus's throat, he had done all he could to make her sleep. He pulled the blanket over her legs.

"She was kind to me when she really didn't need to," Louise whispered, and lifted her eyes to his at last.

The look went straight beneath his ribs. He had wanted those eyes on him since they entered the room, and now that she had given them, he wished he could not see the sadness underneath.

"I will help you find your father, Louise," he said suddenly, the promise finding its way out of his throat.

"Why would you want to continue this?"

Rodrick detested how anguished she sounded.

She lowered her chin. "Your mission is over. You have no reason to keep me."

No reason to keep her? Tonight he had been willing to hang for her. If that did not count as reason, then the fact that her own pain hurt in his bloody chest had to be. The tragic hero was clawing at his already bruised insides, wanting to tell her he fucking burned for her.

He caught her face. "The mission is over when I do what I promised to do."

Louise shook her head. Good God, what was he, an accountant? Fifteen years of espionage, and confronted with the woman he wanted in his bed for an indefinite sequence of nights, he had managed to sound like a solicitor disputing carriage insurance. She was undressed before him, and he was the one caught naked.

"What do you want, Rodrick?"

"Your trust."

Louise stared at him. "You are a spy."

"Yes. An unfortunate defect in the proposal."

"And after tonight you expect me simply to trust people?"

"Not people." The answer came too quickly. Rodrick felt it expose something and had no useful way to retrieve it. "Me."

Her expression changed.

Christ. Apparently they were going to have this conversation after all. "You gave Autun four years of faith without ever seeing his face. You gave Bonaparte your entire life before he had once spoken your name. I have spent a great deal of time explaining why that sort of devotion is idiotic." He drew a breath. "It turns out I object rather less to the principle than to the distribution."

"Why do you place any weight on what I think?" A tear slipped down her cheek. "I nearly murdered Wellington because I was too foolish to understand that I was being used. How can you bear to look at me?"

"How do I fucking bear it? You are indeed a fool, Louise, if you believe there is something you could do that would make me stop looking at you."

Her eyes flickered toward his and away again.

"Is that why you keep looking away from me? Christ, woman. The only way you are going to prevent me from looking at you is to gouge out my eyes, and even then I would probably know where you were by the way my skin behaves when you enter a room."

He leaned closer, his pulse hammering beneath his collar. "You can topple every monarchy in Europe, Louise. You can set fire to the Congress of Vienna, assassinate every prime minister in sight. And I will still be standing in the ruins looking at you."

His breaths were louder than the storm now. "Stay this night, Lou. Stay several nights."

She gasped, and then her gaze, the empress's gaze, the powerful Napoleon's gaze, did something that raked his guts. It opened and swallowed him whole. He wanted her to look at him, didn't he? The question was whether he would survive it.