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De Brissac hit his horse with his heels and the animal launched through the gaping men like a battering ram through a market crowd.
Gaetan had ridden ahead with the scouts and most of the senior officers, which left Rodrick alone between Louise and whatever displeasure de Brissac intended to unleash.
The Gascon reined in before her and loomed from the saddle, his glare sufficient to make most subordinates reconsider their profession.
Rodrick's hands closed into fists. Absolutely not. No one but he was permitted to loom over his Corsican princess. He drove Brutus forward.
"Lieutenant." The Gascon's voice carried to the back of the column and possibly into the next province. "Explain yourself before I decide you've taken leave of your senses and beat them back into you."
Louise's chin went up. "France's tricolor was hanging from a gibbet, sir. I removed it."
De Brissac gazed from Louise to the flag, then he threw his head back and laughed.
"Removed it," de Brissac boomed, turning to look at the men around him. "He removed it—as if he plucked a bloody apple from a branch—You reckless little hellspawn. That is exactly the kind of lunatic courage that keeps this cursed army from rotting where it stands."
"Look well, you miserable wretches!" The riding crop pointed at Louise. "This is how a soldier answers an insult. Not with drooping heads. Not with whining. With audacity so outrageous it makes the enemy look like fools for having tried. Now back in line, Lieutenant. And next time warn me first, so I can enjoy the show properly."
De Brissac rode away, and the regiment erupted.
"Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!"
The cry ran backward through the column like flame finding dry grass, each rank feeding the next until seven hundred voices became one sound. It struck the closed shutters of the royalist village, broke against the stone houses and climbed over the roofs into the June sky. Men who minutes before had slouched beneath their shakos now sat taller. Sabers lifted. Even the damned flag looked less pathetic in Louise's hand.
So this was Napoleon's great secret? Seven hundred men roaring themselves into belief because one impossible girl had rescued a torn scrap of cloth?
Metaphysical nonsense.
And yet the cheer went through him, tightening his throat and lifting the hairs along his arms. Then his mouth, without authorization, opened into a grin. A full one.
Good God.
He had not realized the mechanism still functioned.
Rodrick could only hope his teeth were clean, since apparently he meant to exhibit the entire collection to France.
***
The farmhouse had been built for a prosperous family and billeted for officers, which meant every room now held three times as many boots as furniture and smelled of wet wool, tobacco, horse, and men who had stopped expecting privacy somewhere south.
Rodrick climbed the narrow stairs, de Brissac's voice still ringing in his skull. They would cross the Sambre in the morning. It might be hot, the chef d’escadron had said, using the cavalryman's euphemism for the possibility that someone would attempt to kill them. Patrols had reported movement ahead. The roads north were filling with troops, wagons, and rumors at approximately the same rate.
Rodrick stopped outside the room. Captain de Montreval was written in chalk on the wooden door.
She was inside. His aide-de-camp.
Jean naturally required quarters with his commanding officer. Rodrick had arranged it because allowing Louise to bivouac among several hundred troopers while disguised as a boy carried obvious risks. Discovery was one. The greater danger was that by sunrise she would have recruited half the regiment, deposed de Brissac, and ridden off to establish an independent principality somewhere beyond the Meuse.
Sharing a room had seemed the obvious solution. That had been before before seven hundred men had shouted themselves hoarse for her while Rodrick stood among them grinning like an idiot.
Who faced the greater danger: himself, or the seven hundred guileless troopers outside who had already shown an alarming willingness to follow Louise anywhere?
Napoleon had other regiments. He could probably spare the Seventh.
Enough. Retreating from a bedroom because Louise Bonnechoix occupied it would constitute an unacceptable surrender of territory.
Rodrick opened the door.
Louise stood at the washstand, wiping her face with a cloth.
