Read Chapter 16: The Dance of Lies

The music swelled around them, a Viennese waltz that felt absurdly civilized given the circumstances. Élise kept her smile fixed, her hand light on Ashworth’s shoulder, aware of a dozen eyes tracking their progress across the ballroom floor.

“You dance remarkably well for a man under guard,” she murmured.

“And you lie remarkably well for a nurse,” he replied, guiding her through a turn. His grip was firm, his face carefully pleasant. “The Comtesse de Villiers. Tell me, does the bishop’s niece from Ghent know she has a rival claimant to that name?”

Élise’s blood went cold, but she did not stumble. “The bishop’s niece is in Ghent. I am in Brussels. Distance makes for poor testimony.”

“Distance is what you’re counting on.” Ashworth leaned closer, his voice dropping. “What are you really doing here, Élise? And do not insult me by pretending it is for the music.”

She met his gaze. In the candlelight, his eyes were gray as winter slate, and there was something in them—not hostility, exactly, but a sharp, watchful intelligence that made her feel stripped bare.

“I am looking for my brother,” she said. “Just as you are looking for your sister. We are not so different.”

“We are very different.” He spun her, and when she came back to him, his face had hardened. “I am an officer of the British army. You are a woman who carried a French letter onto a battlefield and nearly got me hanged for it.”

“You were never going to hang. You were going to be questioned, and you chose to reveal your own secrets rather than let me take the blame.” She tilted her head. “Why?”

For a moment, something flickered across his face—surprise, perhaps, or the discomfort of being seen. Then it was gone.

“Because Margaret’s accusation was a lie,” he said. “And I do not stand by while innocents are destroyed.”

“Innocents.” Élise laughed, a sharp, bitter sound she disguised as delight as she turned in his arms. “There are no innocents here, Captain. Or should I say… what should I call you now? Mister Ashworth? Monsieur?”

His jaw tightened. “Ashworth will do.”

“Ashworth is nothing but a name you chose,” she pressed, emboldened by the crack in his composure. “You were raised in France. You speak French like a native. Your map—” She stopped herself, but the damage was done.

His eyes narrowed. “My map.”

“The map you carry. The one with Château Laurent marked upon it.” She watched his face carefully. “I have seen such a map before. In my brother’s belongings, before he went east with the Grand Army. Tell me, how does a British officer come to possess a French map of a chateau in the Loire Valley?”

The music shifted, and they moved through the steps in silence. Around them, couples laughed and twirled, colors blurring in the lamplight. Élise felt as though they were in a bubble, separate from the revelry, two people circling each other like duelists without swords.

“My father was a diplomat,” Ashworth said at last. “Stationed in Paris before the war. We lived there for years. I was educated there. The map is from his library.”

“A diplomat’s son who chose to fight against the nation that raised him.”

“A diplomat’s son who knows where his loyalties lie.” His voice was cold. “I served Wellington. I bled for this army. And now I am being marched back to England in disgrace because of what I did to protect you.”

They turned again, and Élise caught sight of the edge of the room, where a man in a dark coat stood watching the dancers with too much interest. Étienne’s warning echoed in her memory: *There is a network. Old soldiers, loyalists who never accepted the peace. They are watching, waiting.*

“I did not ask you to protect me,” she said quietly.

“No. You asked me to lie for you. Which I did. And which has cost me everything.” He pulled her closer than was proper, his voice a whisper against her ear. “I am leaving for France tomorrow. I will find my sister, and I will find Whitmore, and I will learn the truth of what happened to him—with or without the army’s blessing.”

“You cannot leave. You are under guard.”

“I am under guard by men who have served with me for three years. Men who know the difference between a traitor and a scapegoat.” His smile was thin, sharp. “Tomorrow, at dawn, I will walk out of that merchant’s house, and no one will stop me. The question is—what will you do?”

The music began to slow, the final bars approaching. Élise’s mind raced. France. He was going to France, to Château Laurent, to the place marked on Théo’s letter. If she went alone, she would have to navigate the border, find passage through a country still crawling with Prussian patrols, make her way across a hundred miles of unfamiliar territory with nothing but her wits and a dead brother’s letter.

Or she could follow him.

She looked at him—at the hard set of his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the way he held himself like a man who expected betrayal at every turn. He was not her ally. He had made that clear. But he was a path forward, and she was done walking alone.

“I will find my own way,” she said.

His laugh was low and humorless. “You will be caught within a day. You have no papers, no escort, no—“

“I have more than you know.” She thought of Étienne’s token, tucked into the lining of her borrowed gown, the scrap of paper with its promise of safe passage. “I am not so helpless as you imagine.”

The music ended. They stood motionless in the center of the floor, hands still joined, the silence between them louder than the applause that rippled around them.

“Élise.” His voice was rough. “Whatever you are planning—do not do it. Whatever web you are caught in, France will only tighten it. Return to the hospital. Let Matron Voss’s anger cool. Let me find Whitmore and learn the truth, and then—“

“And then what? You will come to me with the truth, and I will trust you because you once spared me?” She shook her head slowly, withdrawing her hand from his. “I trusted you, Ashworth. I put my brother’s fate in your hands because I believed you were honorable. And you repaid that trust with secrets and lies—the same lies that have followed me since Waterloo.”

Something in his face shifted. Pain, perhaps. Or regret.

“I told you,” he said quietly. “We are not allies.”

“No,” she agreed. “We are not.”

She turned and walked away, weaving through the crowd, feeling his gaze burning into her back. At the edge of the ballroom, she paused beside a garland of white roses, her hand straying to the token hidden in her bodice. Étienne had said it would buy her passage across the border—a boat, a guide, a way through the back roads and forest paths that the military did not watch.

She had meant to leave tonight, alone, for France.

But now she knew Ashworth would be there. And if he was tracking Whitmore, he would find Château Laurent before she did. He would find whatever answers waited there, and he would decide whether to share them with her. She could not bear the thought of standing at the gates alone, waiting for a man who had already told her, twice, that she could not trust him.

She would have to follow him. Not beside him—never beside him—but close enough to see where he went. Close enough to arrive at her brother’s fate before he could bury it.

A servant passed with a tray of champagne, and Élise reached for a glass to steady her nerves. As she raised it to her lips, she caught sight of a figure across the room—a woman in an emerald gown, her hair piled high, watching the dancers with a familiar, calculating gaze.

Margaret.

She was here. Dressed as a guest, not a nurse, her expression cold as she scanned the crowd. For a moment, their eyes met across the ballroom, and Élise felt the floor tilt beneath her.

Margaret smiled. It was not a kind smile.

Then she turned and disappeared into the crowd, and Élise was left standing alone, her champagne glass trembling in her hand, the token burning against her skin.

Margaret had seen her. Margaret knew her face, her alias, her presence in Brussels. If she spoke to the wrong person—if she chose to make Élise’s lies known—

Élise set down the glass. She had to move. She had to move now.

She slipped toward the door, her heart pounding, glancing back once to where Ashworth had been. He was gone from the floor, swallowed by the crowd of officers and nobles.

Whatever came next, she would face it alone.

She had made that choice. And now she would live with it.