Teresa Grant (42 page)

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Simon tossed down a sip of tea as though he wished it were brandy. He had removed his coat and his shirt was soaked with blood. “We talked with one lieutenant who said that from what he had observed he didn’t see how the French could be prevented from cutting straight through to Brussels. Of course he’s only one man and didn’t have a view of the whole field.”
“But it’s good you’re ready to leave if necessary,” David added.
Raised voices drew them back into the hall. A chestnut-haired woman in a blood-spattered white and green dress ran across the floor tiles to Suzanne. “Mademoiselle Garnier,” Suzanne said, taking her hands.
“Forgive me, Madame Rannoch.” Rachel’s breath came quick and hard and her hair tumbled free of its pins. “I’ve found Henri. He was brought in on a cart and simply left in the street. Le Paon d’Or is already overflowing with soldiers, and you were closer. I thought perhaps—”
“Of course. Where is he?”
David and Simon went with Rachel to bring back the young Belgian lieutenant. He had a bandage round his head and a wound in his chest that looked to have been hastily dressed on the battlefield. “Could you get my medical box?” Suzanne asked Aline. “It’s a mercy he’s lost consciousness for the moment, but perhaps you’d hold him steady in case he stirs, Mademoiselle Garnier?”
Rachel nodded, eyes dark, mouth set with determination. Suzanne realized how very young she was. Probably little more than eighteen.
Suzanne cleaned the wound and found some bits of shell casing the battlefield surgeons had missed. Lieutenant Rivaux opened his eyes with a cry of pain when she was midway through. “Hush, Henri.” Rachel tightened her grip on his shoulders and put her face close to his. “Madame Rannoch’s almost finished. Do you want some brandy?”
“Rachel.” His voice was a harsh rasp. “Thought I’d never see you again.”
“Well, that was silly. You know where to find me.”
“Not that.” His pain-glazed eyes focused on her features. “Sure I was done for.”
“You should have had more faith in yourself. I did.”
He gave a weak laugh and tried to reach for her hand. Rachel curled her fingers round his.
Suzanne packed the wound with
boulettes
of lint to absorb the blood and secured a bandage over it. “You’re a brave man, Lieutenant Rivaux. Thank you for making that so easy.”
Aline poured a glass of brandy and gave it to Rachel to hold to Rivaux’s lips.
“Stupid,” he muttered. “Fell when the battle had barely begun. If it wasn’t for Davenport—”
Porcelain shattered on the marble tiles as Cordelia, who had just come in from the kitchen, dropped the cup of tea she’d been carrying. She ran forward over the shards of porcelain and dropped down beside Rivaux, “Harry Davenport?”
“Yes.” Rivaux’s gaze focused on her. “He’s a friend of yours?”
“He’s my husband.”
Rivaux’s mouth curled in a faint smile. “He saved my life. Got me behind the lines. He was unhurt then, madame. It must have been—not long past noon, I suppose.”
Hours ago, but Cordelia’s face broke into a smile. She pressed his hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant Rivaux. Don’t try to talk more.”
Rivaux turned his head toward Rachel. “I asked Davenport to find you if I didn’t make it. Couldn’t give him a proper message, but he seemed to understand what I meant.” He turned his gaze back to Cordelia. “I suppose it must be how he feels about you, madame.”
Rivaux managed another sip of brandy, then collapsed against the pillows and closed his eyes, still gripping Rachel’s hand.
 
David walked into the bedchamber he and Simon were sharing to find Simon bare chested, clutching the bloodstained shirt he’d been wearing.
He seemed not to have heard the opening of the door. David almost retreated. Instead he stepped forward and touched Simon’s arm. “He was beyond our help. You made his last moments easier.”
Simon started. “Who—Oh, you mean the Highlander who died on the drive back to Brussels. Yes, poor devil. Though I think some of the blood is Rivaux’s.” Simon flung the shirt aside and went to the chest of drawers. “How is he?”
“Rivaux? Asleep holding Mademoiselle Garnier’s hand. Suzanne says he’s at risk for wound fever, but she hopes she can pull him through.”
“Suzanne’s amazing. But she can’t save all of them.” Simon yanked open a drawer and tugged out a clean shirt. His hands froze on the linen. “Damn. Damn everything.”
Without pausing to think, David went to his side and put his arms round him. Simon turned in his embrace and clutched him hard for a moment. Then he drew back and set his hands on David’s shoulders. “Believe what you will, David, but try to believe I never meant to hurt you.”
David met his lover’s dark, steady gaze. “You didn’t trust me.”
“That’s not true.”
“What the hell do you call thinking I’d fight a duel?”
Simon gave a faint smile. “You have a point, I suppose. But I saw no need to cause pain where there was nothing to be done.”
Frustration tightened David’s throat. “I’d have known the truth.”
“And where would it have got you?”
David drew a breath. The weight of who and what he was—Viscount Worsley, future Earl Carfax—pressed against his shoulders. It was a burden he’d carried since his uncle had died when David was eleven, so much a part of him he forgot it was there. Simon watched him with that familiar steady gaze that didn’t judge, that had been the anchor in his life since he was eighteen.
There was a streak of blood on Simon’s jaw. David lifted a hand and placed it against the side of his lover’s face. “Looking at Mademoiselle Garnier and Rivaux—If anything happened to you—”
Simon caught his hand and pulled it against his mouth. “Well, then.”
 
By the time Suzanne brought Rachel a bowl of soup and a glass of wine, Henri had fallen into sleep or lost consciousness.
Rachel took a mouthful of soup and set the bowl on the floor beside her, then gulped down a sip of wine. “Will he live?”
Suzanne looked into the naked fear behind that determined gaze and felt the weight of years descend upon her. “The wound is serious, and the fact that it wasn’t attended to properly at first puts him at more risk for wound fever. But if we can hold infection at bay, he has a good chance of recovering.”
Rachel nodded. “Thank you for being honest.” She glanced round the hall. “I’ve seen a lot. But until today I hadn’t seen death.”
“One never really grows used to it,” Suzanne said. “Which in its own way is an odd sort of relief.” She glanced down at Rivaux. He looked even younger with his eyes closed and his face relaxed in sleep. “I’m glad you’ve stopped telling yourself you don’t have a right to fuss over him.”
Rachel brushed her fingers over Rivaux’s hair. “Those sorts of distinctions seem very silly just now. Of course once we get through this—if we get through this—they’ll be important again. But for the moment Henri is mine to fuss over.”
“The moment is all we ever really have.” Suzanne squeezed Rachel’s hand and tried not to think about what might be happening at that very moment on the field of battle.
46
A
n odd quiet had come over the battlefield. At least it was quiet compared to the chaos of the cavalry charge. Shots still sounded to the right from Hougoumont and to the left from La Haye Sainte, on which the French had begun a determined assault. Malcolm swung down from Perdita and ran to help one of the stretcher parties carrying the wounded to makeshift hospitals behind the lines. Across the valley, the French were doing the same.
Eye-stinging black smoke hung over the field. Soldiers marched prisoners behind the lines, put bullets through the heads of horses too wounded to walk, rounded up riderless horses galloping among the injured or cropping the grass with fine disregard for the chaos. Malcolm paused to yell at an infantry sergeant pulling a watch from the pocket of a dead lieutenant. Then he knelt beside a dragoon with blood dripping from his mouth and the light fading from his eyes and took a letter and ring the young man begged him to send to his wife and son. Closer to the lines Malcolm closed the eyes of a lance corporal with whom he remembered sharing a flask of wine before the battle of Toulouse.
“If we lose La Haye Sainte the French will smash right through our center,” Fitzroy said when Malcolm returned to the elm tree that served as Wellington’s command post.
Malcolm glanced to the right. “I still see flames from Hougoumont.”
“They’re managing to hold out. The duke’s told them to hold on as long as they can but not endanger their lives from falling timbers.”
“Wellington looks calm.” Malcolm had spotted the duke riding among the troops on his chestnut horse Copenhagen.
“Looks. He must have taken his cloak on and off two dozen times. Sure sign of disquiet. Good God. The madman.” Fitzroy’s gaze went across the valley to the French ridge. “Ney’s going to send his cavalry at us without infantry support.”
“Perhaps he thought it only sporting to even up the score when we were so reckless with our own cavalry,” Malcolm said.
Shouts of “prepare to receive cavalry” echoed along the Allied line. The infantry began to form into squares. French cuirassiers pounded across the valley and up the hill. Division after division of heavy and light cavalry joined them. Wave upon wave, with no supporting infantry or horse artillery. They met a checkerboard of Allied infantry squares, four men deep, the front lines kneeling with bayonet-tipped muskets pointed, the rear lines holding muskets ready to fire. Confronted with the bayonets, horses reared up and dashed to the side.
With no supporting infantry to batter the squares, the French cavalry wheeled and slashed, retreated, re-formed, charged again. And again and again. The squares held steady. When a soldier fell, his fellows pulled him into the center of the square and closed ranks.
“Oh, Rannoch, good.” Wellington thrust a paper at Malcolm as shots whistled by. “Take this to Maitland. I’ve lost too damned many aides-de-camp.”
Malcolm tucked the paper into his coat and galloped toward General Maitland, by instinct as much as sight. Guns thundered. Bullets hammered against metal breastplates, sabres rang against bayonets. Cannon smoke choked the air. Men screamed, horses flailed, blood spurted, piles of dead and dying men and animals littered the ground.
He delivered the message to Maitland and made his way back to Wellington, who was moving among the squares, pausing to exhort the soldiers and offer encouragement. Wellington thrust another message at him, and he galloped on again in the choking inferno, this time to the Prince of Orange. Sweat soaked through his shirt. Smoke stripped his throat raw.
“We tried to save La Haye Sainte,” Billy said when Malcolm reached him, eyes fever bright in his pale face. “Alten ordered two battalions of the King’s German Legion to attack in line. Ompteda objected, but I told him—It should have worked.”
“It’s done, sir.” March laid a hand on Billy’s arm. “You can’t refine upon it.”
Malcolm held out the dispatch. “Remember, sir. One moment at a time.”
March, his face set in harsh lines, rode part of the way off with Malcolm. “When Billy insisted Ompteda follow Alten’s order to form line, Ompteda stared at him as though he’d received a death sentence. After a moment he said that then he would try to save the lives of his two nephews. Fourteen and fifteen.”
“Did they survive?”
“Yes, but Ompteda and dozens of others didn’t. And God knows how many were taken prisoner.”
“Try to keep him steady, March. It’s all you can do.”
March nodded. “The others?”
He meant the rest of the “family,” Wellington’s staff from the Peninsula. “Fitzroy’s fine,” Malcolm said. “I just saw him with the duke. I saw Gordon about an hour ago rallying some Hanoverians and Canning half an hour or so before that. I saw Freemantle and Davenport some time after the cavalry charge. The time starts to blur.”
March gave a brief nod.
“Your brothers?” Malcolm asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen George since the start of the battle.” George Lennox was also an aide-de-camp to Wellington.
“I haven’t, either. I can only hope Father and William have the wit to keep out of fire. Edgar?”
“I haven’t seen him since this morning.”
On the way to deliver another message to Sir Colin Halkett, Malcolm turned his head to see a French cuirassier galloping straight at him. He dashed into a nearby square, which opened to receive him, then quickly drew closed. The ranks were thinned, scarcely two deep now. Inside, red-coated men lay on the ground, some twisted in an agony of death, some groaning with wounds. A man in his shirtsleeves bent over them.
“Geoff.” Malcolm swung down from Perdita.
Geoffrey Blackwell’s gaze skimmed over Malcolm as he finished tying a bandage round the arm of a young private. “Are you—”
“Unhurt.” Malcolm dropped down beside Blackwell. “Just delivering messages.”
“A lot of message deliverers have lost their lives today.” Blackwell cast a glance round the square. “I’d give a great deal to have Suzanne here.”
“So would I.” Malcolm shook his head. “Odd. A man should want to protect his wife from this.”
“Not a man who knows his wife as well as you do.” Blackwell crawled over to an ensign who was curled on his side, his ribs exposed. “Let’s have a look at you, lad.”
“Shall I stay?” Malcolm asked.
“Get your message delivered. I’ll manage.”
A quarter hour later, Malcolm drew up beside Wellington and Fitzroy. “Billy ordered another line attack. Or rather Alten ordered it, but Billy backed him up.”
Wellington grimaced. “Ney’s going to come straight at our center now La Haye Sainte has fallen. And we don’t have the heavy cavalry left to oppose him. If—”
A hail of sniper fire came from La Haye Sainte. “A bit hot,” Wellington murmured. And then, in a different tone, “Fitzroy?”
Fitzroy was clutching his right arm. Malcolm grabbed his friend as he swayed in the saddle. “I’ll be all right, sir,” Fitzroy murmured, face drained of color, blood spurting from his arm.
“So you will when you’ve seen a surgeon,” Wellington said. “Get him behind the lines, Malcolm.”
Pounding feet and shouts echoed through the Rue Ducale.
Cordelia looked up from changing Christophe’s dressing. “I think they’re saying,
‘Les français sont ici,’
again. I suppose one of these times it could prove to be true.”
Simon and David ran outside to check and returned to report that the Cumberland Hussars had apparently fled the battlefield and galloped through the forest of Soignes and into Brussels through the Porte de Namur.
“They went pelting down the Rue de Namur and through the Place Royale with scarcely a thought for the people in their wake,” Simon said. “Shouting that the French were hard on their heels. No French have yet materialized.”
Suzanne nodded, scarcely sure whether to be relieved or alarmed.
“Right,” Cordelia said. “If we don’t need to take immediate flight, we should see about dinner. Has anyone eaten today?”
None of them had, at least not more than a mouthful. Suzanne was usually good about forcing herself to eat even during a crisis, but food had been the last thing on her mind all day. Yet when Cordelia and Simon assembled leftover soup, slightly stale bread, and scrambled eggs, she managed to force down a few bites.
They were still at the table when Addison came in with the news that fifteen hundred French prisoners had been marched into the city, along with two captured French eagles. “I saw complete strangers shaking each other by the hand at the sight,” he said. “However, I also spoke with Mr. Legh, the MP for Newton, who had been at the battlefield. He said the battle looked to have been going as badly as possible. He intends to keep his horses at the door, so he can take flight for Antwerp at a moment’s notice.”
“Any other news?” Aline scanned his face with anxious eyes.
“Not about any one of our friends in particular, Mrs. Blackwell. But—”
“It’s all right, Addison.” Suzanne touched his arm. “Bad news is better than our imaginings if we have no news at all.”
Addison gave her a faint smile. “I stopped at the Marquis Juarenais’s and found Mr. Creevey also there in search of news. He told me that on his way round he’d met a Life Guardsman who had just come in from the battlefield and gave it as his opinion that he didn’t see what there was to stop the French coming straight through to Brussels. Then we were shown into the drawing room, where we found Madame de Juarenais nursing a wounded officer from the Foot Guards. Griffiths, I learned later. A corporal knelt beside him picking bits of his epaulette out of his wound while Madame de Juarenais held her smelling salts to his nose. He murmured that he wouldn’t trouble her for long, as the French were sure to be in Brussels tonight. Then he fainted dead away.”
“It’s difficult for any one soldier to have a sense of how the battle is going,” David said into the silence that followed.
“Quite,” Cordelia agreed. “Could you pass the wine, Simon? Addison, do take a glass.”
Nothing to do but wait. Simon and David, who seemed much easier together since the afternoon, drove back toward Waterloo. Their rapprochement was a small bit of hope to cling to. Suzanne suspected she’d have gone mad without the wounded to tend to. Christophe continued to improve. Angus’s wound was disturbingly red and oozing yellow pus. She wished quite desperately that she had Geoffrey Blackwell to consult with.
“Steady hands and clean instruments,” Aline said, kneeling beside her. “That’s what Geoff always says is most important.”
Suzanne grinned at her young cousin-by-marriage. “How did you know I was wanting him quite desperately just now?”
Aline’s hand curved over her stomach in that instinctive gesture Suzanne remembered so well from her own pregnancy. “Perhaps because I was. And for once for medical reasons. Among others.”
 
Malcolm returned from taking Fitzroy behind the lines only to be dispatched by the duke with a message for Lord Edward Somerset, Fitzroy’s elder brother, whose brigade had played a prominent role in the cavalry charge. He found Lord Edward by the side of the road with only two squadrons. “Pressed into service, Rannoch?” he asked, lifting his hand to shield his eyes against the slanting rays of the sun.
“Wellington’s running short of aides-de-camp,” Malcolm said. “Fitzroy took a bad shot to the arm. But he was conscious and in good spirits when I got him off the field.”
Edward drew in and released his breath. “Thanks.”
Malcolm held out his message. “Where’s your brigade?”
Edward glanced at the few men surrounding him. “Here,” he replied.
Malcolm returned to Wellington to find him riding among the Brunswickers, attempting to rally the younger troops. Cannon and pistol smoke choked the air and bullets whistled by. Alexander Gordon had pulled his horse up beside the duke. “For God’s sake, sir, you’re an open target. This isn’t fit for you.”
Wellington wheeled Copenhagen round. “It’s work that needs to be done, Gordon. Oh, Malcolm, good, I need you—”
The sound of a ball connecting with flesh interrupted him. Gordon tumbled from the saddle. Malcolm flung himself down beside his friend. Gordon’s leg was a mess of blood and torn flesh.

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