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help.”
    A N IMMEDIATE REFUSAL sprang to Christopher’s lips. Force of will kept it back, however. For all her audacity, Louisa wasn’t foolish. She wouldn’t ask for help unless she truly needed it.
    If she hadn’t spotted his airship, if he hadn’t been there to see her distress signal, she would be dead. Either from enemy gunfire or by her own hand. His implants kept him from reacting to cold, yet the thought of her sprawled in the dust, dead, was a bitter chill.
    Men who were selected to become Man O’ Wars underwent thorough testing to ensure they had strong willpower and self-control. They needed it, for the implants amplified emotions.
    Seeing Louisa again, hearing her voice, and even, God help him, touching her—he needed every ounce of his self-discipline to keep himself from sinking into a vortex. Anger, fear, desire. He felt them all at once. Yet he knew in the depths of his heart that what he felt now had nothing to do with his implants.
    It was her. She’d always brought out feelings in him, feelings that a lifetime of naval discipline had all but beaten out of him.
    And she was here now, on his ship, seeking his help.
    “To complete your mission,” he said. It wouldn’t be for anything else. “Which you still haven’t disclosed to me.”
    “Before we were surrounded, my contact gave me this.” She gripped the hem of her skirts and lifted.
    Two choices: look away like a frightened prude, or torment himself by seeing her legs. Self-preservation had never been one of his qualities.
    Her dark wool stockings hid her bare flesh, but the shape of her legs beguiled him. Louisa’s legs were long and sleek, temptingly muscled, the limbs of a woman seldom at rest.
    He’d first seen her, and her legs, one night at the Admiralty’s ball. He’d been a sea captain back then, with the Man O’ War program in its earliest stages. Having grown up at sea, he hadn’t yet thought to look toward the skies.
    At the Admiralty’s ball, however, his attention had been fixed solely on the terra firma. On Louisa. Compared with the officers’ wives and daughters, she had been a restless flame, more electric than the recently installed lights. She had been different from the other women who worked for the Navy, as well. Those women seemed compelled to conduct themselves with an excess of gravitas and spoke in quiet, restrained voices.
    In her sapphire silk gown, Louisa had circled the room, her gaze alert, an intriguing half-smile playing about her lips. She had watched the dancers waltz to the clockwork orchestra as though observing the rituals of primitive animals.
    “Who is that?” Christopher had asked a fellow captain.
    “Louisa Shaw. Intelligence operative. Surprised to see her here. She never comes to these little fêtes.” The other man shook his head. “Don’t bother, Redmond. Every man who asks her to dance winds up cradling his stones and howling for mercy. Metaphorically.”
    Even if Christopher hadn’t been instinctively compelled to go after a challenge, resisting the allure of Louisa Shaw would have been impossible. He’d crossed the width of the ballroom, steering around the mechanized servers handing out flutes of champagne, until he had reached her. Women often appreciated the sight of him in his ball-dress uniform, but, given that almost every man in attendance had been wearing ball-dress uniforms, he hadn’t been able to rely on that advantage.
    At his bow, the first words from her had been, “What makes you think you’ll be any more successful than the others?”
    “None of them is me.” He had offered her his arm.
    She had laughed, a rich, low sound that made every man with functioning hearing and a pulse turn and stare. She had taken his arm, and together they had walked onto the dance floor. He’d felt the strength of her, then, as they danced, how she moved with a swift feline power.
    But others at the ball hadn’t been as graceful. A lieutenant and his dancing partner had