Carola Dunn (14 page)

He woke with a sense of déjà vu--a crick in his neck and Fanny standing over him, smiling, though this time no sun peered in at the narrow window. Instead it admitted the steady, relentless drumming of a downpour.

“You slept through the most tremendous thunder and lightning,” she said. “There is always a deluge before Old Hookey’s biggest victories.”

Sleepily returning her smile, he thought how much he’d rather have her standing over him than Mrs Prynne who, however obliging, was no beauty. Refreshed by sleep, pretty Fanny in her practical brown cambric-muslin sprigged with green was an altogether pleasanter prospect to wake to.

He saw little of her in the twenty-four hours that followed. Frank developed a fever, a sure sign of infection, and even with Trevor’s huffy aid they were both stretched to the limit. Felix had to practically kidnap a grossly overworked doctor, who could do little but give advice on what he appeared to consider a hopeless case and a waste of his time. Anita had to be kept from the sickroom. And Felix had to continue gathering information for his employer.

The thunderstorm had covered the Allies’ retreat, he heard, bogging down the Emperor’s troops in mud. According to Lord Fitzroy’s latest letter to Emily, “Wellington proceeded leisurely towards Waterloo,” stopping along the way to laugh over the scandal column of the London
Sun
.

So Felix and Frank had been right: a strategic withdrawal, not defeat.

Not until half past eleven on Sunday morning was the sound of guns heard again. At half the distance of Quatre Bras from Brussels, their reverberating bellow was shockingly loud in the city.

All through the afternoon, a stream, a river, a torrent of wounded men poured into Brussels, each bringing a tiny scrap of the story. The Duke of Richmond had popped up from behind a hedge to start a charge of the Household troops with a cry of “Go along, my boys! Now’s your time!” General Picton was dead, as was De Lancey, the perpetually worried Quartermaster-General. Fleeing Dutch-Belgians had fired on Wellington. Two French eagles had been taken. Prussian scouts had been seen but there was no sign of Blücher’s troops. Old Hookey was everywhere, the mere sight of his great chestnut, Copenhagen, putting heart into his men.

The wounded flooded the streets and courtyards and welcoming homes of Brussels. Slender Billy, Colonel Gordon, and Lord Fitzroy Somerset were hit. Ney had broken through Wellington’s center, and still the Prussians did not come.

In the drab chamber at Madame Vilvoorde’s, another battle was fought. Turn and turn about, Felix and Fanny bathed Frank’s burning body, forced him to drink, held him as he moaned and tossed on the narrow bed.

Fanny had just returned from putting Anita to bed when suddenly the constant booming of the guns ceased. She and Felix stared at each other. Still an hour and more of daylight left--then Frank cried out in delirium and she forgot everything but her twin brother’s struggle for life.

Felix went out, hoping for news of Fitzroy and Gordon as well as the battle, but no one knew what had become of them. The Prussians had turned around and marched away. Napoleon had thrown in the Imperial Guard, undefeated in a dozen years. Dusk and darkness came and he heard nothing more. Why had the guns stopped?

He returned home. Fanny was fast asleep in the armchair in Frank’s room, a small, fragile figure with dark rings about her eyes. Dread clutched Felix’s heart as he turned to look at the bed. The captain lay unmoving, his face whiter than the sweat-soaked, threadbare pillowcase. No, not unmoving! The patchwork quilt barely rose and fell with his breathing. The fever had broken.

Slumped on the straight chair by the bed, Felix joined them in sleep.

A heavy-handed thumping on the front door below roused him. As he stumbled to the head of the stairs, lamp in hand, the door opened. A black-faced, tattered, bloodstained man staggered in, crossed the hall, and sank onto the bottom step.

“Who is it?”

The figure hauled itself to its feet, came to attention, and saluted. “Beg pardon, m’lord. Didn’t know you was there an’ I’m a mite tired. Corporal Hoskins reporting, m’lord.”

“Sit down, man! What are you doing here?”

“Cap’n Mercer got leave for me from the colonel to come and see after my cap’n. How is he, m’lord?”

“Better, I think, but in need of your help. What has happened?”

“Boney’s half way to Paris by now. We beat off the Guards, though I won’t say it were easy, an’ blow me if the rest o’ the Frogs didn’t start shouting out ‘
La Garde recule
,’ an’ take off after ‘em. So Boney rallies ‘em, see, but then up comes Ol’ Marshal Forwards just in the nick o’ time.”

“Blücher?”

“That’s it, Marshal Bloosher, an’ didn’t he put the cat among the pigeons! We could hear them Frenchies yelling out ‘Noo som tree,’ which is to say ‘We been betrayed,’ an’ ‘Sove key per,’ that’s ‘Save your own skin.’ An’ there was Ol’ Hookey standing up in the stirrups on the ridge, an’ a sunbeam hit him, like, an’ he waves his hat at the French lines, three times he did, an’ this great cheer goes up. So us gunners stops firing and off they goes--our cavalry that is, m’lord. We just stands there and watches ‘em, and the Frogs turned tail an’ ‘opped it.”

“They just ran away?”

“Well, it weren’t quite that easy, m’lord. Them Guards o’ theirs is nothing to sneeze at, but we cut ‘em to pieces.” He grinned, teeth white in his black face. “I heard the Duke asked their general to surrender an’ what he said was ‘
Merde!
’ That means...”

“I know what it means,” said Felix hastily. Fanny had come to join him at the head of the stairs.

“So do I,” she said. “Hoskins, we have won? You are quite sure?”

He beamed up at her. “Like I said, Miss Fanny, Boney’s half way to Paris by now, if Ol’ Forwards ain’t caught him yet.”

Felix looked at Fanny. Her eyes were huge, dark, and fathomless in the flickering lamplight. “I have no one to send to London,” he said. “I must go.”

She turned and hurried back to Frank’s chamber.

* * * *

She had no right to feel deserted, yet somehow the tears would come. These last dreadful days, his very presence--quite apart from his help--had been a tower of strength, a crucial buttress without which she might have foundered.

“Fanny?” Frank’s voice was scarcely a whisper. Concern mingled with the ever-present pain in his eyes.

She took his hand and essayed a smile. She was not very good at smiling these days. “I shall be all right in a moment. Lord Roworth is leaving.”

“Duty.”

Yes, he had his duty to Mr Rothschild, as she had hers to Frank and Anita. She was a soldier’s daughter. She understood duty.

But when he waved goodbye, when he cantered down the street, tall and straight in the saddle, she knew she had struggled against her heart in vain. She loved him.

Chapter 10

Felix stood at the stern rail of the Rothschilds’ ketch, watching the port of Ostend fade into the haze. His mind returned yet again to the shabby parlour in Brussels where he had bade Fanny farewell. Had he done everything for her comfort that he possibly could?

In the dawn that followed hard upon Corporal Hoskins’ heels he had ordered Trevor, after preparing a bath for the gunner, to pack his saddlebags. The valet would follow at a slower pace with the rest of their belongings. Felix felt the less guilt at withdrawing his man’s services because they had always been grudging, and because of Frank’s batman’s arrival.

As for himself, he was torn in two. He yearned to be able to stay to support Fanny but his duty was owed to Rothschild just as much as any soldier’s to his superior officer. There was no one he could send to London with news of the victory.

He had offered her money, intending to borrow twenty guineas from his employer. He’d pay it back somehow. She refused it, even under the guise of a loan. Then Hoskins mentioned that, on Captain Mercer’s orders, he had brought Frank’s horse with him. Jumping at the chance to acquire a decent mount while helping Fanny, Felix bought the gelding. Admittedly, a trooper was not precisely the horse he would have chosen for a fast seventy-mile ride, yet he had seldom been so pleased with a purchase.

All the same, he doubted whether he’d have had the heart to leave had not Frank fought off the fever. He was out of immediate danger, though his ultimate victory over death was by no means assured. He opened his eyes when Felix went to take leave of him, but the effort to speak was beyond him. Every bone in his face seemed about to cut through the skin.

No wonder, then, that Fanny’s eyes were once more red-rimmed when she brought Anita down to the parlour to say goodbye. To spare her embarrassment, Felix had concentrated on the child. When he picked her up, she flung her arms about his neck and gave him a smacking kiss.

“Bye-bye, Tío Felix. I wish you didn’t be going away,” she said dolefully.

“So do I, pet, but duty calls.” In her short life, besides her father, how many honorary uncles had “gone away”?

“That’s what Tío Frank awways says. I don’t like Duty.”

Hugging her, he looked over her head and said, “Miss Ingram, I have left the direction of my London lodgings on the table. I beg you will write to me to let me know how you go on.”

“If you wish, my lord,” she had said with unwonted formality, not meeting his eyes.

Felix turned away from the ship’s taffrail with a sigh. If all went well with the Ingrams he might hear from them. If matters went badly, she would turn to her military family for succour. She had too much pride to ask help of an outsider like the Viscount Roworth, now that their accidental intimacy was at an end.

He was going to miss her, her cheerfulness, her courage, her practical kindness, even her teasing.

Though the sea was calm, the ketch’s motion was beginning to make him decidedly uncomfortable, for he was a poor sailor. He went below to his cabin. On the bunk lay the copy of the Dutch
Gazette
he had bought in Ostend. He had picked up enough German in Vienna to understand the Dutch headlines and parts of the article. Corporal Hoskins’ report was confirmed: the Battle of Waterloo was an Allied victory.

Nathan Rothschild would be pleased to learn that his family’s investment in the French monarchy was safe.

Slinging the hammock he always used, since it abated somewhat the horrors of seasickness, Felix retired to sleep away the Channel crossing. By the time they sailed into Dover, he was well rested. At the Ship Inn he ate a quick meal while one of the horses the Rothschilds stabled there was saddled for him, and then he set out on the last segment of his journey.

As he rode across London Bridge into the City, another dawn brightened the skies. To his left the dome of St Paul’s floated serene in a golden mist. After the alarms of the last few days in Brussels, the great metropolis seemed a haven of peace, though Felix knew that in an hour or two it would wake to bustling life. He had lived for years in London, and as much as Westwood it was his home--parts of it, at least. The City was devoted to business and commerce; Mayfair and St James’s were the haunts of the ton. As soon as his business with Rothschild was done, he’d hurry to St James’s Square to see if the Daventrys were back in England.

The Daventrys! Shocked, he realized he hadn’t spared a thought for Lady Sophia in days. His work, the battle, the Ingrams had absorbed all his attention. Nor had he time now to dwell admiringly on the Goddess’s image. Cannon Street-- St Swithin’s Lane--he turned into New Court.

His horse’s hooves rang loud in the stillness and all around the courtyard windows stared down blankly.

After his race from Brussels, Felix was in no mood to wait until the bank opened. Utmost urgency Nathan Rothschild had stressed; utmost urgency he should have. Dismounting, he tied the tired beast to a rail and strode up to the front door of the Rothschild residence.

A sleepy maidservant with a broom answered his imperative knocking.

“I am Lord Roworth. I must see Mr Rothschild at once on urgent business.”

She gaped at him and fled, so he walked in. Weary after the ride from Dover, he dropped hat, gloves, and whip on a half-moon table and sat down. With a sigh he leaned back, eyes closed, wondering when he’d sleep in a proper bed again.

Before he had time to grow impatient, a butler appeared, still buttoning his waistcoat. “My lord, my apologies for that stupid girl. Mr Rothschild’s man has gone to inform him of your arrival. If your lordship will be so good as to step this way...Might I enquire if your lordship has breakfasted?”

He was ravenous. Was Fanny eating properly now that he was not there to coax her?

Felix was digging into a plateful of cold beef and fried eggs when Nathan Rothschild, in a plain cotton caftan and nightcap, joined him in the dining room. A stocky, balding man of about forty, he grunted a greeting as he sat down and helped himself to eggs and toast. The butler poured coffee and discreetly vanished.

“Well, my lord?”

“Victory, sir.” Accustomed to his employer’s terseness, he responded in kind. “On Sunday, at Waterloo. I have a newspaper.” He reached for his inner pocket but Rothschild stopped him with a wave.

“Your word is good enough.” The banker still spoke with the accent of the Frankfurt ghetto, despite nearly two decades in England. “The government must be informed. We’ll go to Herries.”

“Not at this hour, sir!”

“No.” The faintly amused expression that generally confined itself to his full lips reached the dark, piercing eyes. “Public officials do not understand the importance of speed, as you and I do.”

He applied himself to his breakfast. Felix followed suit, very much aware that behind the placid amusement a remarkably shrewd mind was planning a strategy as complex and as flexible as Wellington’s.

A little after eight, Mr Herries, the Commissary-General, received them in his dressing gown. He was reading a report in the Times of the Prussians’ defeat at Ligny and Wellington’s retreat from Quatre Bras. “Shocking news, gentlemen,” he said gravely, shaking their hands. “Since you are here, Lord Roworth, I assume the French have taken Brussels.”