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Heat flooded her face. "Because I'd sooner stab an Englishman than let one between my legs."

Rodrick chuckled. "A hatred for the race, then? You lie."

His face had changed again. The heat was gone. Whatever she had glimpsed in the kiss had been buried. He looked angry with himself.

"Beneath your notions of grandeur and your dagger-wielding pretensions, you're not an emperor. You're not a general. You're a virgin ballerina with a dagger." His smile returned, polished and empty. "And the despicable spy is too tired to continue your education."

Louise's hands turned into fists, but he turned away before she could think of something cutting enough to say.

Rodrick opened the door. Nikolaj was passing in the companionway. He stopped, and his gaze moved from Rodrick to Louise.

"Saint John, next time you arrange my arrest, tell them to bind the right wrist. The left is considerably easier to escape with."

Rodrick brushed past him.

Louise stared. "Arrange?"

Nikolaj shrugged. "Old trick. He gets one of us aboard the enemy vessel. We make certain it can't follow."

He said something more, but Louise no longer heard him. She was staring into the dark passage where Rodrick had disappeared.

"Land ho!"

The cry carried from the bow. Men had already begun gathering along the rail when she reached the quarterdeck. The dawn was pale and cold, but ahead a line had appeared where the sea met the sky. At first Louise saw only gray. Then the light strengthened and gave the distance shape: a rise of land, roofs gathered along the coast, the faint suggestion of a town beneath the morning haze.

The captain braced against the rail. "Boulogne-sur-Mer."

For years France had existed in newspapers and memories too old to trust. Now it lay before her. Somewhere beyond the low coast lay Paris, and beyond that… her father.

Her eyes burned, and Louise escaped below before France's first glimpse of her would be of a weeping girl.

She reached the cabin and raced to the mirror. All her life she had waited for this moment, and she would face it in ripped tulle and stage makeup.

She found a cloth, dampened it in the basin, and attacked the powder covering her cheek.

The door opened behind her. Rodrick entered and closed it quietly. He said nothing. He had hardly spoken to her since he—since last night.

She watched him through the mirror. Who was this man? Nikolaj trusted him. Brutus followed his pockets for sugar. Baron Keller was dead because he had decided he deserved to be.

It did not matter. Soon Rodrick de Montfort would become what he ought to have remained from the beginning—an unpleasant episode between England and home.

Rodrick stopped behind her. Even in the reflection, he occupied too much of the cabin. Louise looked away from his body before memory supplied what it had felt like pressed against hers.

Their eyes met in the glass, and her heart sped.

Rodrick did not smile. That made it worse somehow. His gaze remained upon hers for another moment, quieter than the mockery she knew how to answer. She forced herself to look back at her reflection. She was on her way to her father, and she was worrying about a turncoat spy.

Just a foolish ballerina.

She attacked her cheek, rubbing it fiercely. The skin beneath it stung.

Something dark settled over her shoulders. His coat again. Rodrick drew the heavy black wool around her, covering the ripped tulle and most of the ridiculous remnants of her costume. His hands rested upon her shoulders when he finished.

Louise went still. Dawn had begun filtering through the small window beside them. It caught one side of Rodrick's face, defining his cheekbone, brow, and the dark line of his eye, while the other remained in shadow.

"There will be clothes for you at the next stop. I won't force you to meet your father in rags."

Next stop? How many would there be? "When will we reach Paris?"