Princess in Love (26 page)

“No one expected him to march so quickly,” Brasseur replied.

Joseph looked up at Rose. His chest was heaving with frustration, but he seemed to
grow calmer as he watched her in the candlelight.

What was he thinking? Did he mean to tell her he would join the fight?

Joseph cleared his throat, then turned his attention back to Mr. Brasseur. “As you
know, my wife is from Petersbourg,” he said. “Do you have any news of the Petersbourg
army? Were there many casualties? In particular”—he paused—“we would like to know
about the cavalry.”

Rose stared at him in shock. Why was he asking the question? Did he know she had been
with Leopold in a back room at the ball? Had he seen through her heart that day? Was
he aware that her thoughts were with Leopold almost constantly?

“As far as I know,” Brasseur replied, “the Petersbourg cavalry did very well. They
were instrumental in Wellington’s success and lost only a few men.”

Rose exhaled with relief and had to bite back the urge to ask specifically about Leopold.
Was he one of the few unlucky ones? Then, to her surprise, Joseph fielded the question
for her.

“I don’t suppose you heard anything about a General Hunt? He is an old friend of my
wife’s family. We would like to know if he is safe.”

Mr. Brasseur thought about it a moment, then shrugged. “I am sorry. I do not know,
but I didn’t hear about the death of any generals. The odds are good he is alive and
well.”

Rose thanked Mr. Brasseur, then excused herself and left the room. She moved into
the dimly lit corridor, rested her head against the wall, and shut her eyes.

Thank God.

She swung around quickly, however, when Joseph appeared in the doorway. “You can relax
now,” he said in a cool voice. “He’s probably fine.”

She took a step forward to try to explain, to reassure her husband that he was most
important to her, but he held up a hand to silence her.

“You don’t need to say anything, Rose.
Please
. Let us not speak of it.”

All she could do was nod in agreement as he left her alone in the corridor.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Hundreds of wounded soldiers were brought into Brussels the following day. Rose and
Lady Rothwell did what they could to assist the doctors and care for all the men who
had fought so bravely at Quatre Bras.

By late afternoon she was exhausted and returned to the hotel to change her blood-soaked
apron and wash the dirt and grime from her skin.

Joseph had still not returned. Earlier in the day, he had ridden to the Duke of Wellington’s
headquarters at Waterloo to learn what he could about the situation. He returned to
town shortly before seven
P.M.
in the midst of a terrible downpour of rain that had begun shortly after he left.

He was drenched to the bone when he entered the room. Rose dashed into his arms.

“I am so glad you are back. I was worried about you, afraid you wouldn’t return. You
must be famished. I will send for a supper tray and arrange a hot bath.”

He held her tightly for a moment, tighter than he’d ever held her before, then stepped
away and shrugged stiffly out of his sopping-wet coat. “It wasn’t easy getting back,”
he said. “The road is muddy and littered with abandoned wagons and all sorts of things,
as if people simply dropped their belongings in a desperate flee to safety.”

“I will be glad when this is over,” she said. “I hope the coalition is successful
and we can end this as swiftly as it has begun.” She started toward the door. “I will
order that supper tray now.”

An hour later they were seated in front of a hot fire sipping wine, thankful for the
meal they had just enjoyed while the troops were camped outdoors in the rain.

For a long while they sat in silence until Joseph leaned forward and laid his hand
on hers.

“I’ve made a decision,” he said, “and there is no point keeping it from you any longer.”

Her heart sank. “What is it?” But she had a feeling she already knew.

Joseph let out a sigh. “I only came back tonight to spend a few hours with you before
I return to the duke’s headquarters at dawn.”

“Why? Do you intend to join the fight?”

His expression was grave. “Yes. You know me, Rose. I am a soldier at heart, and I
cannot bear to stand by and watch others do what I should also be doing.”

She, too, leaned forward and gripped both his hands in hers. “No. You do not need
to do that. You’ve served your people well on the battlefield in the past. Now you
serve them in other ways. You are an important ambassador for Austria. There is much
we can do together in that area. I will not let you go.”

He gazed at her raptly while the fire illuminated the highlights in his golden hair
and caused his eyes to glimmer with regret. Pulling his hands from hers, he leaned
back, then stood and walked to the rain-drenched window where the panes were rattling
noisily in the wind.

“My mind is made up,” he said. “I will fight bravely, and I will return to you when
it is over.”

Anger coursed through her. She, too, stood up. “This best not have anything to do
with General Hunt. I hope you do not feel you must compete with him, because that
is completely unnecessary. You are my husband, and I love you. What existed between
Leopold and me is dead and buried.”

The words ached in her throat, but she managed to get them out.

Joseph finished his wine and set the empty glass down on a table. “There is no need
to explain,” he said. “I understand how it is, and I am not joining the fight to compete
with him. I join it because I feel a duty to fight for what is right. We cannot allow
Bonaparte to recapture all of Europe again to satisfy his greed and lust for power.
There is strength in numbers. I must offer my services to the coalition.”

Rose strode toward him. “Please do not go. I will go mad if I must listen to those
guns again tomorrow and think of you in their line of fire.”

He cupped her chin in his hand. “At least you will be thinking of
me,
and not another.”

Her heart broke at the sound of those words, and she fought against a sudden violent
flood of tears. “I am yours, Joseph,” she assured him. “You must believe that.”

He pulled her into his embrace, and she knew in that moment there was nothing she
could say or do to change his mind. He was a soldier, and he would go to battle, with
or without her blessing.

The following morning, when the first light of dawn broke through the opening in the
velvet curtains, Joseph was gone. He had galloped back to the village of Waterloo,
where two massive opposing armies were preparing to wage a new war.

Chapter Twenty-eight

On the crest of the hill at the battlefield of Mont-Saint-Jean—a few short miles away
from the village of Waterloo—Leopold peered through his spyglass at the French troops
on the opposite ridge. The enemy was seventy-two thousand troops strong against the
sixty-eight thousand of the British, Petersbourg, and Dutch-Belgian allied forces.

It was just past eleven o’clock in the morning. The sun was high in the sky and the
men were quickly growing restless, for they had risen at dawn and taken position,
but Bonaparte had yet to fire a single shot.

A young lieutenant of the 22nd Petersbourg Brigade came trotting toward Leopold. “What’s
he waiting for, General? It’s not like Boney to delay.”

Leopold lowered the spyglass. “I suspect he’s waiting for the ground to dry. All that
muck makes it near impossible to move the cannons, and the cannonballs embed in the
ground upon impact instead of bouncing and ricocheting through the ranks.”

“The mud is in our favor then,” the lieutenant replied, “for they outnumber us with
their guns. Perhaps we should get things started ourselves. I’d be happy to light
a charge and shake those Frenchies up a little.”

Leopold chuckled at the lieutenant’s impatience. “I am sure you would, Lieutenant,
but Wellington is quite content to wait. Anything to delay the start of the battle
is also in our favor, for it will give the Prussians more time to reach us, and by
God, we need them.”

Goliath, Leopold’s dependable chestnut charger, tossed his head and nickered. Leo
leaned forward to stroke his shiny muscled neck. “It won’t be long now, boy. You’ll
be doing your duty soon enough.”

The young lieutenant raised his hand in salute and wheeled his horse around to return
to his own regiment, which was sheltered from the enemy fire on the downward slope
beyond the crest of the hill.

Just then, another rider approached from the opposite direction. He wore a black coat
and fawn breeches, which was not the uniform of any of the participating armies. Leopold
watched him for a moment. As he drew closer, Leo recognized the light blond hair and
freckled complexion. It was Archduke Joseph.

A knot twisted in Leo’s gut, for here was the man who had taken Rose away from him,
the man he had dreamed of strangling into a corpse on more than one occasion.

He had been led to believe that Rose’s husband would not be fighting today. It was
Leo’s understanding that the archduke was in Brussels to perform a diplomatic function
only. What the blazes was he doing here on the battlefield?

A brand-new anger rose up inside him, for he had an army to lead and an enemy to defeat.
He could not afford to become distracted by the heat of his jealousy and the appalling,
devastating failure of his ill-fated personal life. He must be confident when he called
out his orders. He must be focused.

The archduke trotted up alongside him and reined in his mount—a handsome white trooper
with a shiny black mane.

“Good morning, General,” the archduke said, fingering the brim of his black hat.

Leo clenched both fists tight around the leather reins to keep from leaping off his
horse, dragging Joseph from the saddle, and swinging a punch that would start something
similar to a drunken taproom brawl.

“Good morning, Your Royal Highness,” he replied, curious as to why Joseph was here
at all. The Austrians had not brought an army to Belgium. They had marched south to
protect the Rhine.

Joseph glanced to the left to inspect the size and placement of Leopold’s regiments.
“Your men look well,” he said. “It wasn’t the best of nights, was it?”

Torrential rains had pounded the countryside without mercy for hours upon hours, while
most of the troops had slept out in the open.

“No, but at least we’ve been blessed with good weather this morning.”

“Indeed.”

Leopold regarded the archduke closely in the late-morning sunshine. He took in the
fair color of his hair, his strong jawline, and the freckles on his cheeks. He was
tall and muscular and carried himself with pride. A handsome man by any standards,
which made Leopold’s gut twist sharply with rancor. He was sickened by the sourness
of it.

This man had claimed Rose as his own. Her heart belonged to
him
now. He had slipped a ring on her finger a few short months ago and taken her innocence
on their wedding night.

God. Oh God
 …

Leo’s stomach turned over at the thought of it and the agony was almost debilitating.
He couldn’t bear it. Why was Joseph here? To torture him with a reminder of all that
he had loved and lost?

Leo experienced a sudden, shameful compulsion to break away and gallop into the valley
below and challenge those bloody French gunners to bring on their worst. He could
give them a fast-moving target to whet their appetites. That would get the battle
started, wouldn’t it?

He took a deep breath, however, and fought to focus on the men in his care, and the
necessity of defeating the true enemy here today, which was Napoleon, not the rival
beside him.

The archduke gazed at him for a long moment, probably feeling the same sort of bitter
loathing that Leopold had just been wrestling with—for Leopold was Rose’s
first
love. No matter that her affection was now extinguished, he would always be that.

“She was worried about you,” Joseph said, “when we could hear the guns at Quatre Bras.
I thought you should know.”

Leopold frowned in confusion. It was not what he had expected to hear. First off,
he was surprised that Rose even cared. But what had she said about it? Did she actually
confess such a thing to her husband?

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

Joseph glanced back at the troops who were waiting eagerly, some apprehensively, for
the bugle call. “I’ve fought battles before,” he said. “I know what it’s like to face
death. I just thought you would want to know that.”

Leopold swallowed uneasily. The bitterness he had felt a moment ago diminished somewhat
as he contemplated the fact that he was indeed grateful to know that Rose did not
wish him dead, that a part of her still cared for him. Undeserving as he was to receive
such a gift.

Another part of him, however, cursed this man for such a selfless act. It was not
Joseph’s duty to deliver such a message.

Unless …

“Did she send you here to tell me this?”

Could it be true? His hopes soared.

Joseph shook his head, however, and looked down at the ground. “No, she didn’t want
me to come at all. She tried quite heroically to stop me.”

“Then why
did
you come?” Leopold asked bitterly, for if he was ever blessed with Rose’s love and
devotion … if she ever pleaded with him to stay with her, he would never leave her
side again.

“I am a trained officer of the Austrian army,” Joseph explained. “I fought at Leipzig.
I couldn’t simply stand back and watch thousands of men sacrifice their lives in the
name of duty and honor while I did nothing. I had to join the fight. My conscience
demanded it.”

Leopold regarded him steadily in the blinding sunlight.

While part of him hated Joseph for behaving so honorably—for he had spent the past
few months taking a rather perverse pleasure in visions of his cowardice and weakness—another
part of Leo was baffled by his selflessness. Not only did Joseph wish to join the
fight, he had come here to tell Leopold that Rose still cared for him.