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He calculated her direction. Wellington's table stood at the end.

The muscles across Rodrick's stomach drew tight.

He had spent years telling himself that he was merely Talleyrand with better looks. That the things he had done in dark corridors were the expression of what he was rather than the cost of the bargain he had made.

But Talleyrand had seen Louise Bonnechoix—her loyalty, the fire of a woman who could not leave her father's flag hanging from a gibbet—and he had used her.

He had done to Louise precisely what he had done to Rodrick. Except Rodrick had known what he was selling when he made the bargain. Louise had given her loyalty freely.

"You sent her to kill Wellington," Rodrick said, mouth dry.

His Louise was many things, but she was not a cold-blooded assassin. This would shatter her soul.

Talleyrand smiled. "She was always so good at a spectacle, was she not? I knew it since the first time I saw her in Covent Garden."

Rodrick looked at Louise as the icy realization froze his spine, his heart.

She was crossing the room in Talleyrand's dress, and she was beautiful, and she was about to destroy everything she loved.

"She will never reach him, will she?" Rodrick said, and his voice sounded far away.

Talleyrand smiled. "Of course not. Wellington's staff received an anonymous note alerting them to the danger. Can you imagine the headlines? 'Napoleon's daughter. Sent to assassinate the Iron Duke. How can France follow an Emperor without honor?'"

Rodrick pushed through the crowded ballroom, each breath shallow. The sea of red coats did not part for him as it did for her. It swallowed him whole, hampering his every step. He lost sight of them, Louise, Wellington.

A shoulder crashed against him like a wave. Another followed. A woman's skirts swept wide, tangling his stride.

He inhaled and got powder, wax, wine. It filled his lungs the wrong way. The violins keened overhead, too high, too constant.

He caught a glimpse of the tulle. Twenty-five feet. White—there—then gone again.

If he called out—her name, a warning, anything—she would turn, and the turning would draw every eye in the room, including Wellington's bodyguard. Her name rose to his throat anyway, a pressure he had to force down with his teeth.

If he pushed through the crowd directly, the pushing would draw attention before he reached her.

If he reached her—what then? She was here to kill Wellington. She had made her decision. She would not be redirected by anything he could say in a ballroom in the next thirty seconds.

Twenty feet.

He ran through the exits in his mind. One by one they closed. Doors narrowed in his mind, paths collapsed, options vanished like air pulled from a room.

Even if he reached her, he could not stop her without stopping her visibly, without a scene, without the spectacle Talleyrand had arranged for.

The bodyguard would take her the moment she drew the dagger. Hands on her arms. Her voice cut short. Gone.

His knees threatened to fold beneath him. Once again he was powerless. The cliff path flashed in his mind. Thirty soldiers and Louise in a cavalry uniform, and another distance he could not close in time.

Couples moved around him. The orchestra sawed through a waltz. The candlelight landed on uniform buttons, on jewels, on the tulle of her gown fifteen feet away.

For once, he had a perfect view. Wellington stood near the far wall with three men deep in conversation. Louise was nearing that ring. She was Napoleon's most loyal daughter, and she moved with that determination Rodrick had learned to admire and dread.

He saw her more clearly as the distance closed by inches. The line of her back. The set of her shoulders. The stillness she wore when she had decided something could not be undone. She had already crossed the point of no return.

Napoleon's daughter.

Loyal to the end.

He stopped, as if something inside him had snapped into place. The panic burned out all at once. He reached inside his coat. The pistol rested where he had left it, weight familiar, grip worn to his palm. He drew it without haste, keeping the movement close to his body, his coat swallowing the weapon's line.