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"Madame, I have eight hundred and forty-three prisoners. Seven clerks, two of whom are ill, and records compiled by two governments in as many weeks. I cannot manufacture a name because a minister has signed a paper."

William stepped forward. "I am the Duke of Albemarle. I speak on behalf of a British subject detained without record in a French prison despite the terms of the armistice. I suggest you search again, beginning with prisoners received without formal processing. I am quite patient. I have nowhere else to be."

The warden looked at William. Then at Louise. His chair creaked as he leaned back. "You may look yourselves. East gallery first, then the upper floors. I cannot spare a guard."

Her legs were already carrying her toward the door when Antoine caught up. "Mademoiselle Bonnechoix. Perhaps the Duke and I might conduct the search. You could wait in the carriage."

"I could not."

"The smell is rather—" Antoine stopped himself. "Would you like a handkerchief?"

"I do not need a handkerchief, Antoine." She needed Rodrick.

When she entered the first gallery, William said something about beginning at opposite ends and proceeding systematically. Under other circumstances Louise might have approved. Instead she moved toward the first cell and raised the candle.

Faces turned toward her. An old man with a swollen eye. Two soldiers sharing a blanket. A man whose beard had grown so thick she could scarcely see his mouth.

None belonged to Rodrick.

Louise moved to the next cell.

The noise thickened as they went deeper. Men spoke through the bars. Someone prayed in a low continuous murmur. Farther away, a prisoner coughed until the cough became retching, and above them iron struck iron again and again.

She kept the candle level.

Another face emerged into the light.

Not his.

The next cell held four men, all of whom stared at her with the same exhausted interest.

Not his.

The second gallery bent away from the courtyard, and the darkness thickened. Louise raised the candle, but its flame reached only a few feet before the stone swallowed the light. Beyond that small circle, the passage seemed to go on without edges. She searched another cell. Then another, carrying the candle high.

The smell was merely a smell. She could master that. But darkness was different. Her stomach tightened and her next step stalled before she could command it. Louise gripped the candlestick until the metal bit into her palm, then made her foot move. One step. Then another. She could breathe through the stench. She could hold a candle. She could inspect eight hundred and forty-three faces.

A prisoner came suddenly to the bars, his fingers curling around the iron inches from her face. Louise jerked back, the candle jumping in her hand as her pulse kicked hard beneath her jaw. She saw only the knuckles around the bar and his dark shape beyond it. Then she forced her feet still, lifted the flame, and looked properly.

Not Rodrick.

Her chest ached. Would she ever see him again? Back in Covent Garden, the first time she had looked at him, a warning had traveled down her spine. She had watched the angle of his mouth, the eyes that seemed to measure whatever stood before them, the expression that shifted before she could decide what lay beneath it.

She had been very careful of him.

Afterward she had let him braid her hair before a farmhouse mirror. She had watched him become Captain de Montreval among cavalrymen and Edmund Vane beneath chandeliers. She had slept with her cheek against his chest in a moving carriage and learned exactly where laughter altered the lines beside his mouth.

She would know him in darkness.

She would know him old.

She would know him dead.

Louise gasped, and the candle turned. Wax spilled over her glove and burned the side of her thumb. She hissed and steadied the flame. He was not dead. Talleyrand had given her a release order. If such an order existed, it was because someone needed releasing. Rodrick was here.

She turned into another corridor. The cells continued. By the third gallery, she had lost William and Antoine.

Forward.