A Reckless Beauty (12 page)

“No! No, that’s not right! It’s Rian, you should be Rian.”

Brede replaced the cheroot and spoke while holding the thing between his straight white teeth. “Ah, but any port in a storm, hmm?”

“No! That’s not the way it is. It’s not! Rian understands. We’re both seeing the world outside of Becket Hall and…I never knew you existed and…and Rian, he just smiles and says—but we’re all in danger now, you, as well. You shouldn’t be here. Where’s Rian?
Rian! Rian, where are you?
”

“Thanking his lucky stars he’s miles away, and can’t hear you screeching for him like some banshee, I’d suspect. My stars, Fanny—you’d wake the dead.”

Fanny struggled to be free of the blanket and sat up to see Lady Whalley standing there, her nightcap askew, her dressing gown misbuttoned. “What…I—Lucie?”

“Not Princess Caroline, that’s definite,” Lucie said, subsiding into the facing couch. “I’ve been poking you until my finger hurts. My stars, you gave me a fright. Screaming like that. But you slept well enough before your nightmare, I imagine. It’s past ten of the clock. Beastly early for me, but who can sleep with all that racket outside? Especially now that the rain has stopped.”

Fanny rubbed at her eyes and pushed her fingers through her hair, got to her feet. She walked over to the window overlooking the street and pushed back the velvet draperies. The streets were still clogged with farm wagons and fine carriages, curricles and people on foot, all of them heading out of the city.

“You’re right, Lucie, the rain has stopped. Soon they’ll be able to fight again, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” Lucie said, fighting a yawn. “Wiggins will be pounding on the door at any moment, ordering us to leave, just as he’s done every morning since—what day is it? I keep counting everything from the night of Lady Richmond’s ball.”

Fanny closed her eyes, tried to think, wishing the memory of her nightmare would leave her. Her nights and days had all seemed to blur together. “The…the ball was Saturday night, and that was two, no three days ago now. So today is Tuesday?”

“Yes, yes, it must be Tuesday. The eighteenth. Oh, and it’s June, my dear, in case you’ve forgotten that, as well.”

Fanny let the drapery fall back into place as she turned to Lucie, feeling suddenly cold. “It’s…it’s my birthday.”
And Rian’s, chosen by Papa for the day he found us.
“I didn’t realize…”

“Well, isn’t that nice? Your birthday, and our day of victory. Now, what do you say you be a good girl and toddle off upstairs for a bath and fresh clothing, hmm? That gown looks as though you’ve slept in it and—my stars, you did, didn’t you? You suppose we’ll hear cannon soon? Would that be a good thing, do you suppose? Wiggins told me that once the rain has stopped, and the sun has dried the ground somewhat, the fighting will begin. Fanny? Fanny, where are you going?”

But Fanny just kept heading for the staircase. It was her birthday. Rian’s birthday. The day they’d always shared. But not today. Oh, God, not today…

L
ADY
R
ICHMOND
’
S BALL
seemed so long ago, and yet it had only been three days since Valentine had kissed Fanny goodbye. Three days, and more than a few officers were still wandering headquarters in the evening dress and thin black leather shoes they’d worn to the ball. There’d been no time to return to their rented houses, to don their uniforms, and no time since the battle of Quatre Bras to ride back down the road to Brussels. Not when Bonaparte was still calling the tune.

The English army was now concentrated near the village of Waterloo; Uxbridge, Hill, Picton, Orange…all of them in place now on the highest ground available to them, and at the ready, with Blücher and the Prussians also solidly in position. The Allied forces greatly outnumbered the French, but when Napoleon Bonaparte led his army, such a paltry thing as mere numbers couldn’t be counted upon to make the two sides equal in strength.

Valentine felt his nerves stretching taut as he stood on the hill with Wellington, waiting for the sun to climb higher into the sky, dry out the ground. The silence was deafening, so quiet Valentine was sure he could hear more than one hundred thousand hearts beating, waiting to live or die.

And then the English line began singing, only a few voices at first, but the song quickly spreading from mouth to mouth, until the air was blasted with the rather crude verse mocking Bonaparte.

“Shall I shut them up, sir?” someone asked Wellington, and Valentine waited to hear the man’s answer.

“No, no, indulge it, sir. Anything that wastes time is good. Indulge it. Normally I don’t like cheering, but there’s always a time to cut cards with the Devil.”

“You see Boney as the Devil?” Valentine asked him curiously.

“If he is, Valentine, then today we send him back to his Hell, eh? I want only that he is less patient than I and makes his move first. I’d rather counter his action than initiate my own.”

Shortly before noon, Bonaparte obliged the Field Marshal by beginning the battle with salvos from his massed artillery, followed quickly by an assault on the Allies right flank.

Wellington clapped Valentine heavily on the back, so that he staggered forward. “Well, that opens the ball.”

Valentine nodded, regaining his footing. “Yes, your grace. And now we dance?”

“Yes,” the Duke said as a soldier brought their mounts to them, “now we dance. Be a good fellow and take a message to Picton for me.”

“My pleasure, your grace….”

Valentine labored for the Duke’s pleasure for all the hours of the long, bloody afternoon and early evening, carrying messages, orders, bringing back reports on casualties, on troop strength. Blücher had been and continued to be amazing, the grizzled old soldier surviving having his horse shot out from beneath him, waving his sword in the air and shouting, “Raise high the black flags, my children. No prisoners. No pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him.”

His children.
What mighty fighters. Bit by bit, area by area, front by front, the French lines were splintering, falling back, and Valentine eased his tired mount in alongside Wellington’s, believing he was about to share with the man the sight of Bonaparte’s
Grande Armée
in full retreat. Final retreat…final victory. By God, no more after this!

The Duke had put himself in danger a dozen times, perhaps two dozen, but now he had retired to the area in front of his headquarters, still sitting proudly on his charger, where every man who looked up could see him, know he was rejoicing in what could only be their greatest victory.

Uxbridge was beside him, looking almost dapper, unscratched, although the horse beneath him was his ninth of the day, as eight others had been shot out from beneath him. The man, it would seem, led a charmed life.

“They’ll break now, won’t they?”

Valentine swiveled in the saddle, his heart thumping painfully in his chest as he saw Fanny, in full uniform, sitting astride her mare, her gaze solidly on the scene unfolding below them. “Christ’s teeth, what are you doing here?”

Fanny kept her eyes straight ahead. “Shh, Brede, don’t make a fuss. Did you really think I could remain safe in Brussels when the fighting was taking place less than ten miles down the road? And I’ve only just arrived, waiting down that road until a cartload of wounded came by, cheering, swearing victory would soon be ours. And they were right, weren’t they? Have you seen Rian?”

Valentine nudged at Shadow’s flanks, pushing the horse into Fanny’s mare, turning both animals, taking them some distance behind Wellington and Uxbridge. “I’d put you over my knee, if I thought it would do any good, damn you.”

“Oh, stop,” Fanny said, turning Molly so that she once more faced the battle. “Look, it’s almost over. They’ll raise the white flag at any—Oh!”

Valentine tore his gaze from Fanny and looked down the hill for the first time, at the battlefield strewn with bodies of both men and horses, to see that Bonaparte was making one last, possibly brilliant move. A desperate move, committing his best soldiers, the undefeated veterans he’d been holding in reserve, straight at the British line. “Sweet Jesus.”

“By God,” he heard Wellington tell Uxbridge in some awe, “that man does war honor. Uxbridge, give the order. The whole line will advance.”

“In which direction, your grace?”

The Duke never took his steady gaze from the battlefield. “Why, straight ahead, to be sure.”

“Stay here,” Valentine ordered curtly to Fanny, and urged his mount forward once more. “Orders, your grace?”

“Indeed, yes, Valentine,” the man said as calmly as if he was ordering tea and cakes. “Have the Guardsmen go head-on. Full volleys. No stopping until the French line is broken. It’s now, Valentine. Now is our moment for the ages.”

Sparing only a moment to glare at Fanny, Valentine was off to forward the order, praying she wouldn’t do anything too entirely stupid until he returned.

Fanny watched Valentine go, then closed her eyes tight the moment he and his mount disappeared down the side of the hill, fading into the blue smoke rising from the line of cannon he rode behind, his filthy gray cloak flapping in the swirling wind caused by the fury of the battle below them, his head low over the horse’s neck, just as she’d told Rian to do.

She’d pretended so well, she thought, not flinching at her first sight of the vast battlefield, of all the bodies sprawled everywhere, the screams of wounded men and horses, the shouted orders, the sharp crack of artillery volleys. She hadn’t realized there were so many people in the entire world, let alone enough soldiers to make up the dead who had bled enough that there were small streams and pools of red running through the grass and mud.

The battlefield was the island, multiplied a thousand times, two thousand times. Bodies, everywhere. Blood, everywhere. This is what Rian had mostly protected her from, covering her eyes and running her out of the trees and across the sands to the ships. This was the sort of terrible memory he had tried to keep from searing into her young brain.

So that she only remembered now, in her nightmares.

But he’d always known. He’d been older, old enough to remember. And yet he had sought out a war. Why? What was the difference between men and women, that men would seek this sort of terribleness out, even revel in it? She didn’t understand, couldn’t understand.

For more than two hours Fanny sat with her back against a tree trunk, turned away from the sight of the battlefield, Molly standing beside her, nibbling at the tall, green grass. She did her best to block her ears to the shouts, the screams, the sound of cannon hurling deadly grapeshot, the blare of trumpets, the relentless beat of the drums, the sharp rifle volleys.

She smelled the gunpowder, could even taste the expended powder in the air, believed she could smell the blood and gore. She trembled, couldn’t stop her body from shaking almost uncontrollably, even as she wrapped her arms tightly around her bent knees; even her teeth chattered. She flinched, again and again, when nearby explosions shattered the air, shook the ground beneath her. The sheer randomness of the death those explosions dealt brought frustrated screams against the unfairness of war up from her belly, so that she mashed her closed mouth against her knees, refusing to let them out.

But she would will herself nowhere else.

She’d ridden Molly down the streets of Brussels, straining against the tide of wagons and carriages going in the opposite direction, fleeing the city. Past families dragging their hastily gathered possessions in any cart or barrow they could find. Wiggins had come for them, but Fanny had slipped out the kitchen door in her uniform even as the servant had pounded on the front door, Brede’s carriage in the street, Molly tied behind it. In a moment she was astride the mare, in two moments, she was hidden from view by the crowd.

Let Lucie run; she’d be no help to anyone anyway. But Fanny couldn’t run, wouldn’t run. Her life lay ten miles down the road, on the battlefield.

She’d passed wagonloads of the wounded being transported along the roadway, slowing Molly to peer into each wagon, looking for Rian, looking for Brede, not sure if she wanted to see them or not. To be in one of the wagons meant they were out of the fight, but to not see them there didn’t mean they were still alive.

Pushing Molly into a gallop, she’d approached the battle from the rear, shouted, “Message for the Field Marshal!” to anyone who looked eager to question her presence, but only two did. Everyone was too busy concentrating on staying alive.

When she’d seen Brede, seen his ugly gray greatcoat, his rangy gray stallion, she hadn’t hesitated, even though Brede was at the very crest of the hill with Wellington and Uxbridge, all three of them boldly exposed to enemy fire. And, from that vantage point, she had looked down at the wide fields, the massive, rolling farmland turned battlefield, and felt bile rising in the back of her throat.

Not that she let Brede know how frightened she was, how horrified…

Eventually she realized that, mixed with the gunfire and the sharp sound of metal against metal as swords clashed in the distance, she had begun to hear scattered cheers. English cheers she could hear because cannon fire no longer rhythmically boomed from the ridges, raining death below.

“We broke them!” someone was shouting, running past her, pumping his arms into the air. “We broke their lines! They’re in retreat!”

Fanny got up from her hiding place and trotted toward the edge of the hill, to the place where Wellington and Uxbridge, after riding at the head of the troops these last fateful hours, were once more side-by-side on their mounts. Their presence, she realized—daringly out in the open, unprotected—had been a rallying point for the soldiers throughout the long day.

The two were speaking to each other, pointing, gesturing toward a distant hill, when the eerie whistle of grapeshot had Fanny instinctively diving toward the ground. She lay with her face in the dirt, her heart pounding, barely able to breathe as small explosions kicked up the dirt and grass around her.

She looked to her left, her cheek still in the mud. Wellington and Uxbridge hadn’t moved, hadn’t cravenly grabbed for the ground as she had done. Feeling stupid, cowardly, Fanny scrambled to her feet.

“My God, sir,” she heard Lord Uxbridge say with a deadly calm, “I’ve lost my leg.”

Fanny stood blinking at the two men as she wiped clots of mud from her face, both of them still sitting tall atop their grand chargers. The Duke of Wellington stood in the stirrups and leaned across toward Uxbridge. “By God, sir,” he said, just as calmly, “so you have.”

Fanny pressed her hands tightly over her mouth, fearful she would be guilty of an insane, hysterical giggle. How absurd! A pleasant exchange—
I’ve lost my leg. Yes, you have.

But then the clock in Fanny’s head, that had stopped when she’d thrown herself against the ground, began to beat on, and she watched as soldiers raced to Lord Uxbridge, catching him as he began to slide from the saddle. Taking care to hold tight to his leg that did, indeed, seem ready to fall off, they carried him away just as Valentine appeared, gracefully hopping down from the saddle to take her by the shoulders, block her vision of the gravely wounded Uxbridge.

“I…someone said it was over,” she said, looking at the buttons on his sweat-soaked shirt, fingering the second one from the top, needing to see something ordinary, touch something she understood. She understood a button, its purpose. She didn’t understand war or its purpose. “Oh, God, Brede.
Why?
”

He pulled her close against him, held her tight. “I don’t know, Fanny. I stopped asking that particular question many years ago. But we’ve got him on the run now.” He turned her around, pointed in the same direction the Field Marshal and Lord Uxbridge had been pointing as she had approached them. “Can you see him, Fanny? That infamous hat, that damned green coat. Look hard, Fanny, see a man who knows that, with this one decisive battle, his world is over.”

Fanny strained to find Bonaparte in the small knot of soldiers in the distance even as Valentine handed her a spyglass.

“Don’t look too high, Fanny, there’s a reason they call him the Little Corporal.”

She pressed the glass to her eye just as a slight, stooped-shouldered man in a heavy green wool coat that fell past his knees halted in his progress across a grassy field. He clasped his hands behind his back and then turned, glared down at the battlefield, his face nearly gray, his bloodless mouth moving slowly as he said something to the gaudily decorated soldier beside him. Then he nodded a single time, turned, and pulled himself up into a plain black coach, the door closing behind him even as the driver cracked his whip above the heads of the team. Within moments, the coach had disappeared below the rim of the hill.

Fanny lowered the glass, confused. That was the great Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, hopeful conqueror of the entire world? He looked so small, so ordinary; even ill. “Where will he go now?”

“To Paris,” Valentine said quietly, his jaw tight. “To say his farewells to his ghosts, I suppose. When we lock him away this time, Fanny, it will be in a much stouter cage.”