Page 49

"I tried to be invisible," she said, and her worried expression was framed by damp strands of black hair.

His shoulders lowered, and he rolled his neck until one vertebra cracked. Apparently some small part of him had spent the last hour wondering whether Louise would greet him in a bicorn and demand Italy.

"You don't have a single transparent tendon in your whole body, Lou. I should have known and planned accordingly."

Louise shrugged out of one sleeve of her coat and hissed. Rodrick's attention snapped to her arm. He reached her before she could finish, caught the coat, and eased it down himself.

With a hand on the small of her back, he guided her toward the bed. The mattress dipped when she sat, and Rodrick took the place beside her. Their hips touched. He tried to note this with a measure of detachment, which lasted approximately one second before his detachment filed a letter of resignation.

He took her arm and unwound the bandage—gently, he hoped. Rodrick knew how to manufacture gentleness. But this was different. He did not want to seem gentle. He wanted, with an urgency he could not explain, not to hurt her. The distinction left him absurdly without expertise, so he watched for evidence instead—her shoulder loose beneath his hand, her fingers uncurling, her breathing unchanged as he eased the linen from the cut. The wound was clean. Healing.

She was silent. As if she was rehearsing things to say to him. He could practically see the attempts pirouetting inside her mind and being discarded. She wanted something, and he was glad she didn't know how to ask for it. He would not have been able to say no.

Napoleon, they said, lived a charmed existence. Unsusceptible to cannon fire, grapeshot, musketry, assassination attempts, cavalry charges.

Let her have it. Whatever charmed existence is on offer, let her have it.

A deep sigh escaped Rodrick's chest. Sitting on a farmhouse bed in France, hoping she had inherited her father's immunity to bullets… Rodrick had turned into a housewife.

He continued bandaging. Her skin was almost offensively white beneath his fingers. When his thumb passed beneath the softer inside of her arm, the fine hairs there rose.

Interesting. He repeated the touch. The hairs rose again, and he smiled. At last, some portion of Louise Bonnechoix was his to command.

Louise watched him wrap the bandage, and her attention changed. If he had been a blushing maiden, his cheeks would have been scarlet. He was not a blushing maiden. He had been a spy for fifteen years.

He wrapped the bandage and tied the knot.

When he lifted his eyes to her, he found her gaze fixed on him. By now he could stand his ground against the Empire's gaze. But this was worse. Searching. It seemed less interested in the face he presented than whatever might exist behind it.

"I didn't hear you cheer," she said.

He knew at once what she meant. The village. The flag. Seven hundred voices striking the stone houses.

"I have a problem with my throat. You see, I was born with a defect that prevents me from screaming nonsense."

"It will not be enough, will it? The flag, whatever that was." Louise shook her head, and her brows were furrowed. "Tell me you felt nothing."

Rodrick's fingers stilled around her arm. Nothing. A useful word. He had spent years cultivating it. Nothing owed. Nothing sacred. Nothing another person could seize and use to pull him where he didn't want to go.

He could tell her the cheer had meant nothing.

He could tell her seven hundred men had merely responded to the sight of a boy doing something suicidal on horseback. Crowds were easy to move. Armies easier. Give men rhythm and an enemy, and they would manufacture transcendence out of mud.

Except he had felt it. The sound had entered his chest. For one absurd instant, he had understood. And now she was too close, and he felt it again.

Her chin trembled. "Why do men go to war?"

Rodrick cradled her face. "They don't have a choice."

"Perhaps that is why one ought to choose the things one can," she whispered.

Louise leaned closer. Her breath touched his chest through the open neck of his shirt, directly over his heart. His arm wanted to close around her. The other wanted to join it. His entire body appeared to have accepted her argument before his mind had finished opposing it.

You don't have a choice.

Nonsense. Choice was precisely the point. Rodrick had spent a lifetime ensuring no loyalty remained inside him that another person could seize. He would not allow Louise to coax the damned thing back into existence. Not when she intended to take everything she was and lay it at Napoleon's feet.

Louise's lips brushed the side of his mouth. Rodrick's heart spasmed. She kissed him again, closer this time, and her mouth opened against the corner of his, searching. Then, with the thoughtless economy of a dancer rearranging her balance, she hooked one heel over his calf and pulled herself nearer.