Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 03] Page 2
“I hope you ain’t counting on it,” Penthorpe said testily, “for there is Ney now, moving his men on the farmhouse. I know it’s him, because I saw that red hair of his even without the telescope, when he took off his helmet for an instant just before they began to move.”
Gideon chuckled. “I hope you, of all people, don’t condemn the Frenchman for the color of his hair.”
“Well, you ain’t one to talk either,” Penthorpe said with a grimace. “Yours may be dark enough now to pass for auburn, but as I recall the matter, you began life at Eton as Carrots Minor.”
“So I did,” Gideon said cheerfully. “Recollect that Jack’s hair was reddish then, too. He had long since convinced everyone to call him Deverill, however, so he was even more displeased than I was when Carrots Minor stuck, because some of the cheekier lads promptly dubbed him Carrots Major.”
With a thoughtful air, Penthorpe murmured, “I wonder how this lot behind us would enjoy addressing you as Major Carrots.”
“Just you try that on, my lad, and see what you get for your trouble,” Gideon warned, straightening to his full height.
“Oh, I’m mum,” Penthorpe said, grinning, but the grin faded at the sound of a fresh salvo from below, and he added more grimly, “I say, Gideon, try as I might, I can’t get shut of the notion that today’s my last one on this earth. If Boney gets me, will you go to Tuscombe Park and tell them I’m frightfully sorry and all that, but … well, you know the drill.”
“I do, indeed, but don’t be nonsensical, Andy. You’ll make it through this day and whatever follows, if only to go to Tuscombe Park yourself and see if this aged and decrepit lass still looks anything like her miniature.”
A sudden silence fell, broken almost at once by another roll of drums and a trumpet call. Staring into the valley, Penthorpe said quietly, “I hope you’re right, but even though you’ve pulled me out of some awful scrapes in the past, Gideon, I don’t believe you can do it today. I’m no coward, truly, but please—”
“Don’t trouble your head,” Gideon replied gruffly. “I’ll do it if I must.” Wanting to divert Penthorpe’s thoughts and still keep an eye on the activity below and an ear cocked for orders, he said, “How is it that this Lady Daintry’s such an heiress if she’s got an older sister? For that matter, St. Merryn’s fortune ought to go with the property. Isn’t there a son?”
“Oh, aye, to be sure, her brother, Charles Tarrant. Poor fellow went to Harrow is why you don’t know him. He gets the Tarrant estates, of course, but it seems that besides the settlement her father will make, my wench will inherit the fortune of a great-aunt, a truly redoubtable old lady, according to my Uncle Tattersall. In her seventies, she is, though, so she can’t last long. From some cause or other she has money all her own. I don’t understand it myself, because she ain’t a widow, so it don’t stand to reason that she ought to have much—lives with St. Merryn, too—but my uncle assured me the wench is due to come into at least twenty thousand a year from her, just like I said.”
A French horn sounding the charge below diverted Gideon’s attention again, and he saw instantly that the French, under cover of the heavy cannon smoke, meant to break through Wellington’s center to open the road to Brussels. French bombardments were centered on the Dutch-Belgian divisions below, and even as he snatched the reins of his horse from the soldier who held them and snapped at Penthorpe to get to his unit, he saw the foreign troops break ranks and throw down their weapons. In wild confusion, pushing and sliding on the slippery ground, they turned and surged back up the slope toward the safety of the Allied main line with the French appallingly close behind them.
Leaping to his saddle, Gideon shouted to his officers to prepare to support the infantry. The order to charge came a split second later.
Riding powerful horses and waving their long sabers, the British cavalry attacked with murderous fury, cutting through the densely massed French columns to wreak terrifying mutilation and death. The trampled wheat grew red with blood, and even in the thick of battle, above the din of horns, drums, clashing swords, pounding hooves, and gunfire, Gideon could hear the shocking screams and appalling groans of wounded and dying horses and men.
Despite his best efforts to keep his units together, they soon became scattered, though the Allied forces held strong. When they regrouped sometime later at the base of the ridge, he did not see Penthorpe, but Wellington was waiting for them, astride his magnificent chestnut war-horse, Copenhagen. Ordinarily reserved in his manner toward his men, the Duke was so pleased that he received them now with a slight lift of his low cocked hat and the words, “Life Guards, I thank you!” Gideon grinned at his nearest officer and saw his own pride reflected in the man’s widened eyes and parted lips.
But the battle was far from over. The British infantry quickly formed squares, turning the ground into a chessboard and entangling the French cavalry, whereupon the British cavalry charged again, driving the French back; but Bonaparte called in his reserves, and his army rallied, threatening Wellington’s center and forcing the Duke to call in his reserves. By half past seven that evening, with the sun nearing the western horizon, the British main line had become badly weakened.
Gideon caught sight of Penthorpe near an inn called La Belle Alliance, but soon afterward Bonaparte hurled a huge wave against Wellington’s line, nearly breaking through, and by the time the French had been repulsed, Gideon had lost sight of Penthorpe again. The center was crumbling, the Duke’s men exhausted, and his reserves were used up. But with bulldog tenacity Wellington had already begun to reorganize his forces.
Bonaparte had the edge, Gideon thought, watching grimly as he signaled his men to regroup. The little upstart’s men still thought they would get to wear the parade uniforms they carried to march into Brussels, but the Duke could yet prove them wrong.
French cannons were fired, the British replied in kind, and the smoke grew so heavy that for a time the enemy troops were lost from sight. Hearing the cry “Vive l’Empereur!” Gideon knew a new charge had begun, but still he could not see. Then, as he raised his saber in warning to his men to expect a command, the smoke cleared briefly, revealing line upon line of flashing bayonets appallingly nearer than he had expected.
“Fire!” he cried, and the command echoed down the line till it was lost in a thunderous explosion of cannon fire. When the smoke cleared again, three hundred of Napoleon’s Old Guard lay dead or dying on the ground. Moments later Wellington galloped along the entire front line on the magnificent Copenhagen, waving his hat aloft and shouting, “The whole line! Advance!”
The battle was won. The French infantry, cavalry, and artillery had merged pell-mell into a great seething mass of panic. Some units tried to hold formation and fight, while others were trying to effect an orderly retreat, but the panicked masses were bent upon fleeing the blood-soaked wheat fields as fast as horses or their own legs could carry them.
The sun had set, and in the gray dusk, clouds of low-lying smoke enveloped whole sections of the field as Wellington’s army pushed its way through the wreckage. Mangled bodies of dead and wounded men and horses lay jumbled together, surrounded by the debris of battle—plumed helmets, shakos, bearskin hats, gaiters, odd shoes, boots, knapsacks, metal breastplates, mess bowls, knives and forks, cannonballs, lances, sabers, torn bits of gold braid and lace, epaulets, flags, bagpipes, bugles, trumpets, and drums—each item telling its own sad story.
Grimly fighting his stomach’s reaction to the gory sight, Gideon forced himself to keep his mind on his duty. Realizing he was near the inn, he looked anxiously around for Penthorpe but did not see him. His men waited quietly for orders, and when Wellington raised his hand, Gideon spurred his horse nearer to hear what he would say. As he did so, he saw an infantryman stoop suddenly to pick up something from the ground, and there was still enough light left for him to see the dull flash of gold. Swerving his mount toward the man, Gideon snapped, “What’s that you’ve found there, soldier?”
The man
looked up, saw his epaulets, and quickly saluted. “Damned if it ain’t a lady’s picture, sir,” he said. “These Frenchies’ve dropped some o’ the damnedest things.”
“Let’s have it,” Gideon said, his stomach clenching in apprehension. The soldier handed up the miniature, muddy but perfectly recognizable. Not bothering to conceal the tide of fear that swept over him, Gideon scanned the nearby ground, his gaze passing swiftly over bodies that could not be Penthorpe’s but lingering wherever a shape seemed at all familiar. Bodies lay all around him, and the dreadful groaning and screams of pain were such that he knew he would hear them in his dreams for years to come. Suddenly, in a hollow not far from where the miniature had been found, a lanky mud-covered figure caught his eye. The man lay facedown in the mud, but his helmet had slipped to one side, revealing a few locks of relatively clean reddish hair.
Flinging himself from the saddle, Gideon rushed to the fallen man, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled. The thick, oozing mud clung to its captive, reluctant to release him, and although Gideon’s strength prevailed, his effort was futile. Bile surged into his throat. The man’s face had been blown away.
Just then Wellington cried, “Bonaparte’s taken horse to Quatre Bras! After him, lads!”
Fighting down his nausea, Gideon turned back to the waiting foot soldier and indicated the body. “He was a friend,” he said. “The picture belonged to him, so I shall keep it, but I must go. You stay here to protect the body from looters and see it gets a proper burial. Here are a few yellow boys for your trouble,” he added, digging for guineas. Tossing them to the man, he tucked the miniature safely away inside his jacket, flung himself into the saddle, and forced himself to concentrate on his badly depleted brigade and the mission that lay before them.
The battle of Waterloo was over, but pursuit of the French would not be abandoned, for the Duke was determined this time to drive Napoleon all the way back to Paris if necessary, and then to occupy the city. Only the dead on the blood-soaked field would rest tonight, Gideon thought.
Sending up a silent prayer for Penthorpe’s soul, and ruthlessly repressing a vision of tears replacing the laughter in those blue eyes in Cornwall, he looked back one last time and saw, scattered here and there in the mud where they had fallen from torn French knapsacks, a vast number of still colorful red and blue parade uniforms.
Two
September 26, 1815
LADY DAINTRY TARRANT, HAVING finished the final episode of the romantic tale she had been reading in the Ladies’ Monthly Museum, sighed, cast the issue aside, and said to the only other occupant of the morning room, a stout, gray-haired lady, “I simply do not understand, Aunt Ophelia, why every silly female ends her tale expecting to live happily ever after only because she is getting married. It puzzles me how so many women—in stories, at least—find just the right man and, at no more than a nod or a wink from him, fall quite desperately in love.”
Looking up from the journal in which she was writing, Lady Ophelia Balterley said, “One does not fall in love, dear child. One steps in it, rather like one steps into something in a stable yard. ’Tis a fact you should recognize yourself by now, having sent three no doubt eligible suitors to the right-about before getting yourself stuck with a fourth young man.”
Daintry sighed again, pushed back a stray dark curl that was tickling her nose, and turned to glance out the nearby window at a dreary prospect that looked more like February than late September. Gray clouds drifted low over the trees of Tuscombe Park, and a light drizzle dampened the landscape. One could not call it rain, for the water in the quiet courtyard fountain showed not a single ripple and the lake beyond the vast sweep of the front lawn looked like a slate-colored mirror. But it was not yet a day for riding, so here she was, sitting on a sofa with nothing more interesting than a magazine to occupy her time.
Glancing at her great-aunt, seated too near the hearth but seemingly unaffected by the heat from the roaring fire, she saw that Lady Ophelia was still watching her, having abandoned the journal resting on the wide right arm of her writing chair in hope of conversation. Short of stature and square in shape, Lady Ophelia was solidly built and enjoyed long walks each day as much as she enjoyed her studies. Having entered her seventy-seventh year, she was remarkably well-preserved, still able to read and write perfectly well without the assistance of spectacles, and possessed of a mind that was sharper than most minds of any age whatever. Lady Ophelia was an acknowledged Bluestocking, an admirer of such radical females as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Anstell, and not the least bit likely to apologize for the fact.
Smiling, Daintry said, “Do you suppose there really is such a thing as true love, ma’am—between a man and a woman, I mean? I do seem to be attracted to certain gentlemen, to be sure, which is just as well, since Papa is determined above all things to see me married to one, and I try to believe each time that perhaps this man will do; however, in the final event, I find he won’t do at all, so now here I am, betrothed to a man I have never even clapped eyes upon, merely because Papa has decided I am incapable of choosing a husband for myself.”
“Your father is scarcely a better judge of men than you are, for goodness’ sake,” Lady Ophelia replied. “Only look at the specimen he picked for your sister, Susan, for no better reason than that Seacourt Head lies opposite Tuscombe Point.”
“But Seacourt is a most charming gentleman,” Daintry protested. “He is very handsome, and Papa still says—even after ten years—that it was an excellent match, since it brought all the land around St. Merryn’s Bay into the family.”
“Well, it did not do any such thing, since the Seacourt portion will no doubt go to Sir Geoffrey’s son, if he ever has one, but property and money are all that matter to the English male. It was precisely the same when I was a gel. Fortunately for me, my papa was a man of foresight and vision who saw no good reason for me to live, after his death, in another man’s pocket—or under his thumb, which was most likely to have been the case, of course. I’ve got a perfectly good man of affairs in Sir Lionel Werring, but I call the tune, and really, my dear, there is no urgent need for St. Merryn to cast you into marriage at all, for you will inherit half of my fortune, after all, which will make you quite independent of any male.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I have not inherited it yet, nor do I desire to do so in the near future,” Daintry said, twinkling at her. “And until I do, it is my duty to obey Papa.”
“A duty made up by males to suit themselves,” Lady Ophelia retorted. “Men created the entire world to suit themselves.”
Daintry chuckled. “You know Mama has a spasm whenever you say such things, and Reverend Sykes does not approve either.”
“Oh, quite, but that does not alter the fact that men have it all their own way. Do not tell me that any woman had a hand in deciphering the word of God, for I know she did not, nor did any female write the Bible or dream up the nonsense written about the Creation. Moreover, women used to have a great deal more power than they have today, for recollect that amongst the Greek and Roman gods females were quite as powerful as the males, and in even more ancient societies, females frequently ruled the roast. It was thought, and not unnaturally,” she added dryly, “that man was born of woman, rather than the other way round, making Eve, not Adam, the first inhabitant of this earth. But men, once they began to sort out religion to suit themselves, promptly decided to make Eve a villainess, blaming her for that whole stupid apple affair just as if Adam had had nothing to do with it. I am quite thankful to know that had it all happened in England, the courts would have held him responsible, though they would have done so out of the foolish notion that only men are wise enough to make the important decisions in life.”
“Yes, ma’am, so you have frequently told me,” Daintry said, making no attempt to conceal her amusement, “but I am not certain that an English magistrate would go so far as to admit to anyone, ever, that he would have supported Eve in that particular case.”
“Yes, well, I am glad
to see you still think for yourself,” Lady Ophelia said briskly. “For that you must thank me. Your father would never have taught you to do so, nor would he have been stirred to provide any governess who could teach you more than the basic accomplishments thought suitable for a female to learn. You would have learned no Greek or Latin, though you might have got a bit of Italian, and I daresay he would have let you learn French. Despite that rascal Napoleon, the language still enjoys favor with the beau monde, though not as much as it once did, to be sure. Perhaps it will come back into fashion now that the Continent has been made safe for travel again.”
Daintry laughed. “Only if that dastardly Bonaparte does not break free again as he did last year. And as for my learning Greek and Latin, ma’am, you know perfectly well that I have not got the least turn for either language.”
“You know as much as most men who fritter away their time at Oxford or Cambridge,” Lady Ophelia said acidly, “and much more than most women. If we are ever to regain our proper place in this world, women must be better educated. ’Tis absurd to teach them only to be entertaining and decorative. Why, in ancient Celtic tribes, women fought right alongside their men in battle, and I can tell you that if a woman had locked up that dratted Napoleon, he would not have got loose again for a hundred days or more to work his dreadful mischief. Only men are stupid enough to believe that others will play by rules that they themselves have ordained, just as only a man can be stupid enough to believe that a gel who has unbetrothed herself three times in as many years is likely to remain betrothed to a fourth man only because he commands her to do so.”
Daintry was accustomed to her great-aunt’s penchant for changing a subject mid-sentence, so she didn’t blink, saying only, “Papa threatened dire consequences if I fail to obey him, ma’am, and you know he is perfectly capable of keeping his word. I doubt I have the courage to jilt Penthorpe, in any case, since I do not even know him. What possible reason could I give?”