By the time the seating arrangements were mostly settled, the clock had crept past ten.
"Oh, it's gotten so late." Mrs. Parker pressed a basket into Eloise's arms—far heavier than it had any right to be.
Eloise staggered under the weight. Ryan, already changed for the road, lifted it from her without a word.
"I'll carry this until we arrive." He swayed dramatically, as though the basket might topple him entirely. "Good Lord."
Mrs. Parker laughed.
"We'll send your carriage back tomorrow with our coachman," she said, "but tonight it's better to go on horseback."
"Agreed."
The night road made a carriage unpredictable—a stone hidden in shadow, a rut in the wrong place, and suddenly what should have been a simple journey became something far more difficult to manage.
The groom brought two horses from the Blissbury stables, both well-suited for night travel. Eloise's face brightened the moment she saw them. She went to them immediately, stroking their noses with easy familiarity.
"Eclipse. Silvermoon." She spoke as though greeting old friends. "Tonight, I'm counting on you both."
"You know their names?"
"Of course. I've looked after them since they were foals."
As if to confirm it, both horses pressed their faces toward her with warm, eager recognition—nudging and whinnying as though reproaching her for staying away so long. She mounted with practiced ease and turned back to wave at Mrs. Parker.
"Goodnight!"
"Goodnight! Come and visit more often!"
Eloise didn't answer that—only smiled—and set out from Blissbury with the groom's assurance that the cart would be seen to by morning.
The field that opened before them was alive with the steady chorus of grasshoppers. Above, a near-full moon hung bright and unhurried, casting the road in pale silver light. If she'd been riding alone, she wouldn't have dared to go so slowly.
*There's been talk of a deserter again.*
The story had circulated through Feltham and Cambon alike. North of Cambon, an elderly gentleman traveling after dark had been ambushed by someone who'd leapt from the bushes without warning. The attacker had taken his money, his belongings, even the clothes off his back. And then—worst of all—had killed his horse.
The reasoning was obvious and chilling: a man on foot reaches the village far more slowly. It buys time.
*But killing a horse is no simple thing.*
A horse is large, intelligent, and attuned to its rider's distress. That the attacker had managed it at all said something—and nothing reassuring.
The gentleman had survived by fleeing on foot. But the next person might not be so fortunate.
The general opinion in the village was that the deserter had moved further north. The guards had begun combing the surrounding woods, and it was assumed he'd cut his losses and made for one of the industrial cities—the kind of place where factory owners asked few questions, where ten strangers shared a room and never learned each other's names.
*The perfect place to disappear.*
Feltham lay south of Cambon, closer to the capital, better patrolled, its roads well-kept. The likelihood of a fugitive choosing to hide here was low.
*Still. Until I hear he's been caught, I should be careful.*
With that thought settling quietly at the back of her mind, Eloise let her gaze drift sideways.
Sergeant Thornton's face in the moonlight was something she hadn't quite anticipated. The shadows fell sharply along his features, and she found herself thinking—not for the first time, though she would never say it aloud—that he was genuinely, objectively, unreasonably handsome. Any other woman from Feltham would have been hopelessly lost by now.
"What are you looking at?"
He'd noticed. Of course he had. He turned his head, and from the front he was somehow even worse.
The weight he'd lost recently—a consequence of his poor appetite—had only made his features more defined.
"Your face," Eloise said, without looking away.
She knew it was rude. But considering everything that had already passed between them, what was one more impropriety?
She had already, in a moment of spectacular abandon, confessed to sketching a nude portrait of a man she barely knew. After that, the ordinary rules of decorum felt rather beside the point.
"Because it's beautiful?" he asked.
"Modesty doesn't appear to be among a soldier's virtues."
"You're not denying it."
"If I denied it, you wouldn't believe me. And besides—you hear it from others constantly."
There was no point in the denial. The truth would persist regardless of what she said.
Eloise looked away, and as she did, she noticed something unexpected: he still irritated her, yes, but not in that sharp, panicked way he had when she'd first arrived at Blissbury in a state of complete alarm.
*Perhaps because I said everything.*
She had thrown propriety aside entirely and laid herself bare—her secrets, her embarrassments, all of it—and in doing so had somehow stopped being afraid. There was nothing left to guard.
And strangely, that was a relief.
He was also, she realized, the only person who had ever seen her like that. The only one who knew what she carefully kept hidden from everyone else.
*It's fortunate he'll return to the capital eventually.*
He was here to recover—nothing more. A man like that would grow bored with a village this small within weeks. Once he was back in the capital, Blissbury would fade from his memory in days. She would fade with it.
*He will forget. Won't he?*
The thought should have been comforting. It was, mostly. And yet—
*Completely* forget? Even Blissbury?
That, for some reason she couldn't quite account for, sat less comfortably. It wasn't about her, she decided. It was the place. Blissbury was lovely. To forget it entirely seemed a small injustice.
*It's quiet here, and perhaps nothing remarkable happens—but to forget somewhere so beautiful seems wrong.*
"A striking appearance isn't always an advantage," Ryan said, cutting into her thoughts. "On covert assignments, it becomes a liability. You have to work harder to blend in."
"Covert assignments?"
Eloise's attention sharpened immediately. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
"There it is. Mention the army and your entire manner changes."
"I can hear battle stories from half the retired officers in Cambon—but covert missions? Those I've never heard properly described." She leaned forward slightly. "Tell me. Where did you infiltrate? Was Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave involved?"
"...He was there."
Evasive. Eloise began pressing in earnest.
---
The ride that would have been tense and hurried if she'd made it alone passed, instead, in a stream of easy conversation that carried them all the way to the edge of Feltham without her quite noticing the distance.
"Wait—so the victory at the Battle of Halifax—"
"Yes. Our unit played a significant part in it."
Eloise's eyes were bright. Ryan was recounting one of the 57th Infantry Battalion's lesser-known feats—a story that had never made the military papers, largely because his father, Earl Wallace, commander of the Thirty-first Division, had seen to it that the credit flowed elsewhere. In the army, the truth was understood and quietly set aside. But for Eloise, hearing it for the first time and in full detail, it was nothing short of a saga.
"Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave," she murmured, awed. "He really is extraordinary."
"So," Ryan said. "Will you be writing him another letter?"
Eloise's delight collapsed into outrage.
"Ryan Thornton!"
He laughed and veered his horse sideways to avoid her. And in that undignified, half-laughing near-chase, they rode into Feltham.
---
"My lady!"
"Emily? What are you doing out here?"
Emily stood at the village entrance, lantern in hand, her expression caught between relief and reproach.
"How could I sleep when you hadn't returned? And the landlady's been anxious about all this deserter talk—I thought I'd come out just in case."
"Deserter?"
Ryan straightened in his saddle.
Emily told him everything she knew—every rumor, every detail that had filtered through Feltham. As she spoke, the easy humor that had carried him through the ride drained steadily from his expression. By the time she finished, his face was composed and unreadable in the way that suggested he was thinking carefully.
He turned to Eloise.
"Why didn't you mention the deserter? If something had happened tonight—if I hadn't been able to see you home—what would you have done?"
"I suppose I would have ridden as fast as I could."
"Miss Eloise."
He said her name quietly, with a gravity that made it clear this was not the preamble to a joke.
Eloise sighed inwardly.
*Here comes the lecture.*
She composed herself, prepared for a thorough accounting of every reason she should have told him earlier—and looked up at him.
"This won't do," Ryan said. "I'll escort you home every evening."