Vermillion (The Hundred Days Series Book 1) (41 page)

Doctor Hallick would have the work
of five men when the fighting broke out in earnest. Kate turned his offer to
stay over in her mind, wondering how quickly she could reach the regiment. Her
orderlies were skilled enough, but who knew if men like Private Taylor would
choose to stay on at the hospital with heavy fighting on the horizon. With
Porter reenlisted, she worried for the doctor.

With no idea what to do with herself
and too shot through with nerves to be still, she made her way back toward the
house, but she did not get far beyond the door. A handful of bodies filled the
entry at the front of the ballroom, a good number of men and a few ladies
hovering wide-eyed. They moved about one another like bees, buzzing out what
gossip they had heard or could infer before turning to the next person.

Lady Adelaide separated from the
small crush, gliding over the polished wood floor specter-like in her black
silk with pretty, doe-eyed Georgiana Lennox in tow. Adelaide clenched Kate's
arm with desperate pressure. “Matthew has come in and gone straight to the
Duke. Wellington has asked Richmond for a good map.” She stared expectantly.

Kate breathed in, over and over,
stifling panic threatening to well up from her gut. Adelaide tugged at her arm.
“Miss Foster. What have you heard?”

Behind Adelaide, Georgy pinned her a
lower lip between anxious teeth, clutching her companion.

Kate looked between them both,
summoning her composure. To Adelaide she said, “You should go home at once.
Wake Louisa and pack what you need in order to travel. Be ready to leave for
Antwerp.”
            “Antwerp!” exclaimed Georgy, but Adelaide shushed her with a hiss
of her breath, glancing to see if anyone had overheard.

Then, she fixed Kate with a sentinel
gaze. “I would say you are being excitable, and over-cautious, but I believe I
know you better than that.”

Kate swallowed. “If you understood
how close the French have come, you would appreciate how correct you are.”

Georgy, who impressed Kate as clever
and level-headed, glanced cautiously behind herself before speaking again. “How
close?”

“Above Charleroi, close enough to
strike at Quatre Bras tomorrow if I understand my geography.”

Adelaide reached behind her and took
Georgy's hand. “My son's men are there, you know. He will have to go and
fight.” Suddenly Adelaide looked very tired and very frail. She met Kate's
eyes. “I have over-exerted myself tonight and could sleep a whole day already.
And now you say I must pack and ready for the indignity of a coach to Antwerp.”

Kate realized that after Adelaide's
procedure, the everyday routine was likely exhausting for Matthew's mother.
Tonight, she had overspent her energy to make her presence at the ball, to say
nothing of the agony she must be feeling worrying over Matthew.

Filled with daring, Kate slipped her
arms around Adelaide, embracing her hopefully. “Go home. Entrust your staff to
ready your things and rest. Those are my orders.” She squeezed tighter for just
a breath or two. “And don't despair, not for one second. He
will
come
back to us.” Closing her eyes to convince herself, she squeezed Adelaide's
hands.

There was a rustle, and Georgy
gasped. Kate opened her eyes to find Caroline hovering behind Georgiana, her
haughtiness softened by open worry. She spoke with the expression of a bad
taste in her mouth, clearly hating to humble herself. “Miss Foster. Sir Henry
says you were present when the messenger arrived. Do we have cause to be
concerned?”

We
was twisted by her lips,
as if to clarify to Kate that she was not a part of it.

In her ruby silk and gold filigree
jewels, Caroline inherently had a way of making Kate feel like a counterfeit
imitation, the second-fiddle role she had rejected to Matthew. The urge to claw
at her eyes, to shriek and call her names, was born of her love for Matthew and
a need to defend him. But it was born equally of her own self-conscious
discomfort. She started to turn her back on the woman, who was already pierced
hotly by the gazes of Georgy and Lady Adelaide, when her own words to Matthew
struck her full force. Bitterness towards Caroline was only moving backwards.

Kate realized she had the chance to
be the better person, but was still not entirely certain she wanted to take it.
Sighing, she faced the woman who was still Matthew's wife. “Napoleon is here.
Slipped across the river with the stealth of the devil himself. You should go,
Caroline, and spend this last hour with the man you love.
Whomever
that
may be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

He had paced the room from end to
end for what seemed like an hour, though checking his watch as the men filed
in, Matthew assured himself it had been only twenty minutes.

Charles Lennox, the Duke of
Richmond, came in first with the Field Marshal close behind. Lennox was
unmistakably Scottish in design, with the icy blue gaze and the ruddy cheeks of
a wind-stung Highlander. Red hair tinged silver hinted at the change of season
to middle age. His lean frame held the fierce courage and torch of an
adventurous spirit. Matthew had personally witnessed him blazing on the
battlefield more than once. There were some in Brussels who underestimated him
because he had been tasked with overseeing as yet unused reinforcements in
anticipation of the city's defense. They were fools, and then some. Lennox
would remain fierce, and
fearsome
, until his last breath. There was a reason
Wellington had positioned the man as a last line of defense for civilians and
soldiers.

“Lennox.” He bowed to the duke out
of deference to his reputation more than any difference in their social ranks.

Lennox slapped a hand on his desk,
smile a grim line. “Webb. Need to change your britches yet?”

“Damn near it.” There was no sense
lying to the man. He was likely feeling just as winded.

Wellington said nothing. He came to
the desk and bent over it, pinning the surface with balled fists. The tousled
hair at his temples was outright disheveled where he had been pulling at it.
The cupid's bow of his mouth pursed tightly, as if at a bad taste. Lennox
rifled through a stand in the corner, pulling out a leather map case and
drawing out the parchment tube from inside. Meanwhile Matthew hung beside them,
waiting for an order, an assignment, some sign from either man that the
situation was not as dire as it seemed.

Lennox laid his map on the desk,
smoothing its curl while Matthew weighted it with an inkwell and a candle
stick, the only things at hand, in order to get a faster look at their new
position.

He leaned over the map beside
Wellington, with Richmond across the desk, and for a long moment they only
looked. Matthew traced a fork in the road near Charleroi, calculating how many
guns the French had, the damp terrain, and how furiously their master must be
whipping them along.

Lennox
hmm'd
, his finger
brushing the map between two routes, along the waterways from Brussels to
Antwerp. The commander was no longer thinking offensively. It was strategy for
the most expeditious retreat. Matthew's gut clenched, mouth too arid to
swallow.

After minutes of intense study,
Wellington struck a point on the map with his index finger, middle finger
fixing a spot nearby so that they vee’d like a sextant's frame.

“The bastard.” Wellington stood,
crossed his arms, then brought them to his hips and took a step away. He
rounded back, stabbing the map again. “He has humbugged me, by God! Napoleon
has got twenty-four hours' march on me.”

“He must have driven them north with
the threat of hell at their heels,” said Lennox.

Matthew searched the map again, his
mind adding green lines and blue lines, trying to picture where the Allies
currently held ground. It was hard to do, not lumping the different forces into
one group, but after a moment of study, pieces began to click together.
Excitement, the barest embers, ignited in him.

“I think we're missing an
opportunity here.” He tapped the crossed lines indicating the road at Quatre
Bras. “My men are here, and I have no doubt that in a few hours I will find him
at my doorstep. But the Prussians are holding fast here –” He circled an area
just beyond Ligny to the east. “Napoleon beat them back today, but not far.”

Wellington leaned in so that his
hooked nose almost touched the map, as though he could spy the true face of the
terrain and divine his enemy's position. He was nodding faster and faster as
Matthew spoke.

“But we can push east, and if the
Prussians run west...” Wellington traced the valley's funnel shape upward from
Charleroi. “We can crush him in the vice, if Blucher will play along.”

Their eyes met, all three exchanging
glances, and Matthew saw his hope mirrored there.

“I will face him
here
.”
Wellington cut a swath with his thumb through the name
'Waterloo’,
“and
here he must be stopped.”

*          *          *

While Lennox went out to douse his
guests with the news, Matthew stayed with Wellington a while longer, writing
orders of his own in tandem with the Field Marshal's ream of dispatches. Wellington
wanted every officer with his regiment no later than three in the morning. By
the last check of his watch, it was one-thirty. Satisfied that his orders to Ty
were complete, he went in search of Kate and his mother.

The dining room lacked its earlier
glow of festivity, absent the laughter and conversation that had woven together
the merrymakers on his arrival. Couples paired off, embracing openly without
bothering to seek the privacy of a dark corner or a hall, seeking comfort in
each other's arms. A grandmother and her matronly daughter patted and fussed
over their young heir, three generations squeezing hands, entreating him a safe
return.

Passing the parlor, Matthew observed
a young lady crumpled with sobs, two male relatives bearing her from the room
while her gallant Hussar begged her to be strong. Every room was punctuated
with a few nearly lifeless souls, faces frozen in drawn-up anguish, posed like
sepulcher statues waiting in suspense.

This, he resolved, was the most
compelling reason for keeping military and social life separate. Lords and
ladies of the
haute ton
meant well. They were spirited and patriotic,
eager to show support for their lads. And in London, such a thing would be well
and good, away from the press of an immediate threat, but tonight... Matthew
shook his head, cutting between two milling groups of officers and their
ladies. Tonight, they had decorated for a wedding in order to hold a funeral.

On the eve of battle in the
regimental camps, there was camaraderie, a settling of accounts financial,
personal and spiritual. The men sang or read the Good Book aloud, shouting down
a drunken piper or the raucous laughter of one last game of dice. The men who
could write penned letters, and an even scarcer few snored away contentedly, at
peace with whatever came on dawn's heels. Every diversion, each activity was
underscored by the brotherly understanding of shared sacrifice, and of a
grateful dependence upon the musket beside you. What lay ahead was swallowed
down with grog and grim determination.

The heart-wrenching misery
surrounding him now, the tears flowing violently or stoically all around,
though perfectly merited, were of no use to a soldier. At a moment when a man's
spirits needed bolstering, even outright bravado, such an abrasive emotional
scene was tantamount to declaring him already dead.

All along his grim path, Matthew
looked for Kate. It was not hard to sort through the faces. A small crush of
guests were concentrated at the cloak room, collecting hats and cloaks with all
the shouting of a horse auction. A good many more had already left.

He found Kate at last in the hall
proper, on her knees in front of the door to the makeshift ballroom. An old man
Matthew did not recognize, two young women, and Lady Richmond bent with concern
over the prone form in front of Kate. Reaching her side, Matthew eyed the
trickle of blood from the girl's mouth, stark against the pallid cast of her
face. Had she been struck in the crush of people quitting the house?

Kate tossed him a cursory glance,
pretty features as severe as he'd ever seen them, then fixed the old man with a
pointed look. “A fit is natural, under duress. Particularly if she has had them
before. But you must not put anything into her mouth.”

“She'll bite her tongue off!” he
sputtered.

Kate's mountain of curls was already
shaking in opposition, and Matthew could see her back teeth grind. “She may
bite her tongue, as she clearly has this time, but she is far more likely to
choke on a foreign body in her mouth than to align her teeth for any real
harm.”

She held out a hand, and Matthew
lifted her up. Kate shook out her skirts, then waved down a stout young
corporal passing them by. “Help Lord Chapel move his granddaughter to the
carriage, please.” Laying a reassuring hand on the old man's shoulder, Kate
observed the girl carefully a moment while the soldier lifted her. “Her
breathing is slow, but regular. She will be tired and confused after such a
fit; that is expected. Keep her in bed, and as calm as you can manage.
Excepting her emotional wound, she will be fully recovered in a day or so.”

Lord Chapel pressed grateful little
kisses and tears into Kate's gloves until she patted him gently along,
encouraging his exit.

He could see how much being useful
had sustained her when she turned back with haunted eyes, bruised gently
underneath with exhaustion. “Is it true?” she whispered.

Matthew glanced around them. They
had relative privacy, but it wasn't enough. Gripping Kate's hand, he pulled her
behind him, past the stairs and into the ground-floor study, shutting the door
behind them.

He pulled her in, taking a brief
moment of comfort, then drew her out at arm's-length. “Where is my mother?”

“I sent her home to pack. I thought
it would be safest if she and Louisa departed for Antwerp.” She wrapped his
hand, draining away some of his worry. “The French might treat her with
courtesy, but she's fragile. I'm not convinced she would survive the
indignities of an occupation.”

He grabbed her sleeves, kissed her
and crushed her against him, almost bursting with gratitude. “I don't know why
I spent even a moment of worry. Trust you to have things capably handled.” It
seemed impossible that he could love Kate any more, and yet his heart swelled
at her concern for his mother.

Her lips darted over his chin, and
she pulled away. “Where should I go? To the regiment, with Doctor Hallick? Or
do you think there will be more of a need at the front? I could wait –”

“Kate.” He took her arms, but she
pressed on faster.

“...Until tomorrow, and then strike
out for the rear. By then positions will be –”

“
Kate
.”

“What!” Her shoulders slumped.

Matthew could see that she knew that
she was caught. “I need you to go with mother, to Antwerp.” He had expected a
fight when the moment came, but days of preparing had not presented a solution.
Now, the reason slipped easily off his tongue, as though he had planned it from
the start.

Even so, Kate balked. Her mouth
firmed, signaling she was entrenching. “I'm not leaving. We already discussed
this, and my answer has not – will not change, Matthew.”

He pulled her a half step closer,
lowering his voice to a persuasive lull. “You do not have to leave Belgium, but
I need you to take her there, Kate. Louisa is of use at dinner, or when my
mother wants to gossip, but she's too timid and infirm to be of any help in a
dire moment. I need
you
, Kate.”

His heart sung painfully at the
omission. He did need her, that was true. Next to Kate, his mother was his only
treasure, and he could trust no one else with her well-being. But Kate
was
leaving Belgium for good. Once she reached Antwerp, the checkpoints and patrols
would keep her there.

Kate was quiet a long time, chewing
her lip and weighing his bargain. Then she held a finger up. “Half way, to
Ruisbroek. I'll see her safely across the canal. She'll be well out of danger,
and I won't be gone long.”

“You have a bargain.” He held out
his hand and they shook on it, Matthew doused by shame and relief. What she
offered was as good as his original proposal. Guards posted at the Zenne's
crossing would never allow a civilian, especially a
female,
to travel
south once fighting broke out. They would have hands full
keeping
her at
the river, but in short order Kate would have little choice but to travel on to
Antwerp. Matthew swallowed down cold guilt, knowing that whatever he did, it
was to keep her safe.

She nodded toward the doorway.
“General Maitland says all the men are due at their regiments by three.”

Matthew took a deep breath, bracing
himself to break her heart. “I must leave at once. My men particularly will see
the thick of it by morning. If Major Burrell and Captain Westcott have things
settled, I may yet get an hour's sleep.”

Kate scrubbed her hands over her
face. “I don't want to talk about sleep, or the army.”

He swept a few chestnut strands from
her temple. “What would you rather I say?”

“I don't know.” She was unraveling.
He could see it in the stiff corners of her mouth, the quick pace of her chest,
hear it in the ragged clip of her words. “What should fill the time we have
left, if we're counting words? That I love you? You must feel it by now. That I
am terrified of tomorrow and that the days cannot pass quickly enough, or that
I would rather they didn't pass at all and we could fix ourselves in this
moment before anything terrible can happen? Nothing feels enough to occupy our
last few moments.”

He tried to rally her, at the same
time fighting an ache that was beginning to grip his throat. “Kate, this is not
like you. Where's your hope? That damnable defiance I can never get around?”

“You stole them from me.” She was
crying in earnest now. “Ty, Porter, I love them, but it's not the same. Losing
them, I could go on, somehow. I cannot...”

Her head shook while he caressed her
cheek. “Katherine Foster, the name of my heart. Our love is impervious to any
death blow. If my body leaves this earth tomorrow, my soul will remain with
you. I will be with you in the gray moments before dawn, when you stir and
swear you feel me beside you. When a summer wind brings a scent to you,
something that reminds you of our days together, it will be me, pressed close,
watching over you faithfully until we can be together again. I cannot die,
Kate, not as long as I have your love, and that lends me more courage than I
have ever had.”