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At last, the door swung open, and an aide stepped inside.

“The commander will see you now, Major. Please come with me.”

Crispin nodded and followed.

Wellington’s office was just as one might expect. Cramped but organized. There was a substantial desk and padded chair, but the duke was not seated. Heavy-browed, hook-nosed, sun-browned, he radiated energy.

“Ah, Major Taverston,” he said, then nodded a dismissal to the aide.

Crispin bowed. “Your Grace.”

“You are with the fourth division?”

“Yes.”

“What do you make of the men?”

“Raw.” Crispin had been in Belgium since late April, and it was now early June. His company consisted primarily of new recruits. They were frighteningly ignorant. “But making progress.” Progress that had been interrupted when Crispin was pulled from the field to answer a summons.

“Good.” Wellington paused as if looking him over. “Are you still reliable? You didn’t come to Paris when I asked.”

“I am reliable.” Crispin knew the duke did not like it when men made excuses, so he gave none.

Wellington turned and went to his desk. He didn’t sit, but bent over it to shift a few papers about. Then he straightened. “I’m reassigning your company to Major Lowell. I’d like you to report to Colonel Grant.”

Crispin stiffened. Lieutenant Colonel Colquhoun Grant was the Head of Intelligence. Crispin knew him all too well. “Your Grace, I had hoped to return to the battlefield.”

He grunted. “Major, your hopes are not my concern. Napoleon is. I need information. Reliable information. I need to know his current location and where he means to go next.”

A ridiculously tall order. Yet he nodded.

“If that is what you require, Your Grace.” Wellington would approve of the confidence he projected, but while Crispin felt a whirl of emotions, not one of them was confidence.

Only pride that the duke had faith in him.

Excitement over the challenge. And self-disgust—spying was a filthy business.

Once again, he would have to ignore his conscience, ignore that inconvenient part of himself that felt things.

“Good.” Wellington stepped past Crispin and opened the door. “Grant’s office is two offices down. On the left.”

Crispin walked down the hall, knocked, and entered.

“Crispin!” Grant rose and came forward, hand outstretched. They were old friends, of a sort. Since arriving in Brussels, Crispin had made sure to avoid him, hoping that out of sight would be out of mind.

“Colquhoun.” Crispin shook his hand. He found Grant to be a strangely flat-faced man.

One with a knobby nose and a wisp of a curl perennially plastered on his forehead.

He always appeared to be smirking. Maybe he was.

He enjoyed the sport of espionage far too much. “The duke says I am to report to you.”

“Of course.” Grant laughed. “Did you imagine you would get away with teaching green lads how to march and form squares?”

“One can always hope.”

“Listen. Wellington and I have spent the last few weeks sorting through intelligence from sources that contradict each other. We have no idea whether Boney is still in Paris, or at the border, or even already deep inside Belgium. We need you to lay eyes on the man and report back. His last known location was Paris, but that was over a week ago. He had some sort of celebration there on the first. That much has been confirmed. Take a good horse and sweep toward Paris until you find him.”

“I am to cross the border?” He wanted to be sure of his orders. Entering France as a soldier was a provocative move, considering they were not yet officially at war.

The cheer fell from Grant’s face. “If need be.” He cleared his throat.

“You know how this works. You’re an officer.

In uniform, you will undoubtedly be spotted and taken prisoner.

You’ll be well-positioned to learn things, but it may be difficult to escape with the information.

” This was Grant’s own modus operandi —one that Crispin disdained.

“Particularly since I will be honor-bound not to.” Those were the rules of a gentleman’s parole. If captured, one agreed to stop taking part. Surrender meant surrender. Unless one was Napoleon.

Grant’s smirk turned into a sneer. “You know there is no honor in war.”

Crispin’s face heated. Grant had assigned him far worse tasks. Moreover, he had no high horse to ride. He’d proved himself dishonorable in peacetime as well.

“I’m not eager to sit out the war in French custody.”

“Your other option is to masquerade as a civilian. And be shot if you are caught.”

“So I mustn’t be caught.”

Grant shrugged. “Tricky. Your French is better than passable, but you don’t look French. You might do for an American, but your accent is terrible. And you are not inconspicuous.”

“All true. I don’t know why you want me for this job.”

“Because I have to be here . And there is no better second best than you.”

*

Fourteen hours later, Crispin had to remind himself that there were many kinds of filth in the world, and this was by no means the worst. He was somewhere near Beaumont, a town at the southwestern border with France.

Wearing tattered clothes hurriedly purchased in a second-hand shop in the Brussels stews, he was lying on dirty straw in a cowshed that had never seen a shovel.

The stench of manure made his eyes stream.

It brought back a long-ago memory best forgotten.

He closed his eyes to run again through the maps Colquhoun had shown him.

The prevailing intelligence indicated Napoleon intended to enter Belgium through Mons.

Wellington suspected he would then try to flank the British to the right, cutting off their supply lines and their retreat route to the north.

Colquhoun thought the opposite. That Napoleon would head to the south, into the gap that remained between the British forces and the Prussians under General Blücher.

Boney would drive a wedge between the two armies and defeat them one after another.

No one was foolish enough to imagine he could not do it. He was a master of the tactic.

Wellington was wedded to the idea of protecting the northern border as long as doubt remained.

Colquhoun wanted proof that Napoleon would head for the gap, so that the British corps could be shifted south to narrow it.

Therefore, Crispin was sneaking—there was no better word for it—along the River Sambre, creeping closer to Blücher.

Before dawn that morning, Crispin had seen a Prussian patrol, six men. They either didn’t see him or took no notice of him, either of which was concerning. What if he were French reconnaissance? Boney certainly had scouts floating about. Would the Prussians ignore them too?

He resisted the urge to roll over and find a more comfortable position in the straw.

If he moved, he was sure to coat himself in crap.

But he needed to sleep. He was fatigued and had hours to kill.

It was midday, and he was waiting out the sun.

When darkness fell, he would make his way on foot to Beaumont, where a tavern keeper in Colquhoun’s pay would, hopefully, have something useful to say.

Crispin groaned at the prospect. He was already footsore. He’d left his horse behind when he got close to the border. He was supposed to be a tramp and tramps did not ride. Colquhoun had better be right about Napoleon. Or he was just wandering in the dark to no purpose.

Closing his eyes again, he tried clearing his mind so he might sleep.

But the problem with banishing thoughts of war was that it made room for Camellia.

Her uncanny beauty. The outline of her shape in the dark.

Her easy smile and deep-throated laughter.

The way she waltzed. The way she’d felt in his arms. Her generosity and cleverness.

Her false innocence. Drifting, he heard her voice.

No better proof of devotion could there be, than loving you till you loved me.

He started awake. He’d heard something. Scuffing. Breathing. The door to the shed creaked open. A wiry, grizzled man in peasant clothing stood in the doorway, outlined by sunshine. The man stared at him. He squinted back.

“ Merde! Qui êtes-vous ?” The man’s hand slipped inside his shirt.

“ Nul. Personne .” Crispin sat up slowly, shaking his head, pretending drunkenness while straining his ears for the sound of the Frenchman’s companions. He let his hand rest on his pistol under the straw.

The man pulled a gun. Crispin put a bullet in his forehead and the poor devil dropped to the ground.

Crispin swore. He grabbed his second pistol and waited. After several minutes, he relaxed. He laid down his loaded gun and reloaded the other. Then he crept to the corpse. He rifled through the man’s clothing, looking for missives. Nothing. There was nothing.

He’d just killed a man for speaking French.

Crispin’s hands started to shake. Sweat broke on his brow. He rubbed his face. Counted to twenty. Then to one hundred. His heart finally stopped racing. He made himself look back at the body.

The gun lay beside it. The gun was real.

Still, the frog-eater could be anyone. He could be the owner of the cowshed for all Crispin knew. He had to go. But he couldn’t leave the dead man in the doorway for someone to stumble over. A wife. A daughter. Damn, damn, damn .

He crawled to the door and peered outside.

The surroundings remained deserted. So he rose and hooked the corpse’s feet under his arms to drag him into the back corner of the shed.

In doing so, Crispin noted the feet. He was slipping—he hadn’t checked the boots.

Expecting little, he pulled off first the left boot, then the right.

Mashed into the right boot was a bit of paper.

Crispin’s miserable cloud of guilt lifted. A French spy after all.