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unavoidable on their part.”
    She stifled a sound of impatience as she looked away, scowling prettily again. “But now that Napoleon has command of Spain’s ships, why does he still want my father’s navy?”
    “Nothing is ever enough for Bonaparte, you know that,” he answered with an exhalation of smoke. “Besides, he still hasn’t amassed the forces necessary to take England. He’s going to need all the vessels he can get his hands on. Frankly, he’ll never carry it off,” he remarked.
    “I hope not.”
    The wind rose, carrying to them the smell of the sea as it raked through the towering hedges. She skipped a step to keep up, brushed a long, blowing lock of her hair away from her mouth, and glanced up at him rather anxiously.
    “I suppose Napoleon thought he could legitimize kidnapping me by forcing me to marry his little namby-pamby, Eugène?”
    “According to my sources, yes, that was the notion.”
    She gave a delicate snort.
    He suppressed a smile. The Jewel of Ascencion was admittedly hard to impress.
    Eugène Beauharnais, Napoleon’s twenty-four-year-old stepson, was perhaps the only contender for Serafina’s hand of whom Darius did not heartily disapprove. The young aristocrat was honorable, loyal, and even-tempered—and any man who dared think of marrying this girl, he knew, would need the patience of Job. Unfortunately, Eugène was on the wrong side of the war. Even still, Darius almost would have preferred him instead of the husband the king had found her to ward off Napoleon’s threatened invasion—the vainglorious golden giant Prince Anatole Tyurinov.
    Desirous of a royal bride to overawe his friends and rouse envy in his enemies, the glorious Anatole, as Darius had come mockingly to think of him, had visited the kingdom several months ago to inspect Serafina’s famous beauty. Darius had been on duty in Moscow during their fortnight’s courtship. The match had been quickly arranged.
    Too bloody quickly, he thought rather bitterly. He had not even completed his background check on the prospective bride-groom for the king, but the bargain was sealed.
    In exchange for her hand, the thirty-three-year-old Russian war hero had pledged to take his army of a hundred thousand troops and bring a rain of fire on Paris itself if Napoleon made any move against the tiny, neutral Ascencion.
    The peace had been preserved by the stalemate, the wedding date set for the first of June, less than a month away, but Darius had already made up his mind that it would never take place.
    He stole a covert glance at the breathtaking young woman by his side.
    He did not doubt that Serafina had beguiled Tyurinov—she did not often use her beauty for the mighty weapon it was, but when she did, a man didn’t have a chance. But he wondered, not for the first time, what her feelings were in return. Between his blue-blooded pedigree, martial victories, and golden good looks, women tended to go insane over the glorious Anatole. Perhaps Serafina had found him worthy of her. Perhaps she had fallen in love.
    The thought coiled his stomach in knots. He decided he didn’t really want to know.
    Just then, a low rumble of thunder rolled across the sky.
    Serafina and he glanced at each other. He was about to suggest that they run, but he was too late. The summer downpour the sky had promised all evening began, steadily pelting them with soft, fat raindrops.
    They both just stood there looking at each other and getting wet.
    “Ah, well,” he said at last with a weary sigh. He threw his ruined cheroot into the grass, and lowered his head as the rain soaked his sleeves and his hair.
    Serafina tilted her face back to catch the rain. She turned her hands palms upward, cupping them.
    He glanced at her standing there in his jacket, which reached almost to her knees. She was bedraggled and barefoot like a waif, basking in the rain like a flower, and out of nowhere, slowly she began to laugh.
    At the rich, careless sound of her