Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress (3 page)

‘My father used to say it is better to do what one is supposed to do now than to be remorseful later.’

She kept her eyes upon him, and he realised he had brought up the subject he most wanted to avoid.

‘A wise man,’ she said.

‘He was.’ The pain of his father’s loss struck him anew.

She regarded him with sympathy. ‘He is deceased?’

‘He was killed.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You heard, no doubt, of the Luddite riots in Nottinghamshire a few years ago?’ She nodded.

‘My father was the local magistrate. The rioters broke into our house and killed him.’

Her expression seemed to mirror his pain. ‘How terrible for you.’

Suddenly muskets cracked and shouts were raised, the sounds of a siege.

She paled. ‘The French are attacking?’

He paced. ‘Yes. And I must go.’ He hated to leave her. ‘Stay here, out of the way. You’ll be safe. I’ll come back for you after the battle. With any luck I can see you returned to Brussels. Perhaps news of this escapade will not spread and your reputation will be preserved.’

‘My reputation.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘What a trifle it seems now.’ She gazed at him with a new intensity. ‘You will take care, Captain?’

Allan thought he would carry the impact of her glittering blue eyes throughout the battle. ‘Do not worry over me.’

More muskets cracked.

He turned in the sound’s direction. ‘I must hurry.’

‘Yes, you must, Captain.’ She put on a brave smile.

‘I’ll be back for you,’ he vowed, as much for himself as for her.

She extended her hand and he wrapped his fingers around it for a brief moment.

‘Godspeed,’ she whispered.

Allan forced himself to leave her alone in the hallway. He retraced their steps through the house, angry that her foolish act placed her in such danger, and angrier still that he could not extricate her from it.

He had his duty, his orders. Orders must be obeyed.

Allan’s duty was to be Generals Tranville and Picton’s messenger during the battle. He was paired with Edwin Tranville, the general’s son, and both were given the same messages to carry so that if one was shot down, the other might still make it through. Unfortunately, right after the first message was placed in their hands, Edwin disappeared, hiding no doubt.

Edwin had hid from battle countless times on the Peninsula. Afterward he would emerge with some plausible explanation of his whereabouts. This time, however, his cowardice meant
that Allan alone must ensure Tranville and Picton’s messages made it through.

The outcome of the battle could depend upon it.

So he had no choice. He had to leave Miss Pallant here at Hougoumont, which could well become the most dangerous place in the entire battle. The French would need to attack the farm to reach Wellington’s right flank, and Wellington ordered Hougoumont held at all costs.

Allan reached the entrance of the château, Miss Pallant’s clear blue eyes still haunting him. The mixture of courage and vulnerability within her pulled at his sensibilities, making him ache to stay to protect her.

But the soldier in him had orders to be elsewhere.

This was more blame to lay at Edwin’s feet. If Edwin possessed even half of Miss Pallant’s courage, Allan could trust him to carry the generals’ messages, and seek permission to take her back to Brussels.

Outside the château Allan stopped one of the Coldstream Guardsmen, the British regiment defending Hougoumont. ‘What is the situation?’

‘Our men have been driven back from the wood. The enemy is close by.’

Allan ran to the wall and looked through a loophole while an infantryman reloaded.

The woods below teemed with the blue coats of the French, their cream trousers brown with mud. As they broke into the open, British soldiers, firing from the walls, mowed them down. Their bodies littered the grass.

Allan searched for Colonel MacDonnell and found him inside the farmhouse at an upper window that provided a good view of the fighting.

MacDonnell said, ‘You’d better wait a bit, Landon.’

‘I agree, sir.’

The sheer number of Frenchmen coming at the walls and falling from the musket fire was staggering. The enemy regiment was one commanded by Prince Jerome, Napoleon’s
brother, but the walls of the farm offered good protection. The French had no such advantage.

Allan turned to MacDonnell again. ‘May I be of service in some way?’

The colonel looked proud. ‘My men are doing all I could wish. I have no need of you.’

Allan could not merely sit around and watch. He returned to the yard and searched for any weakness in the defence. One soldier was shot in the forehead, the force of the ball throwing him back on to the ground. French ladders appeared at the gap created by the man’s loss.

Allan seized the man’s musket, powder and ammunition and took his place at the wall, firing through the loophole until the ladders and the men trying to climb them fell upon the ground already filled with dead and wounded.

‘Look!’ cried one of the guardsmen nearby. ‘The captain knows how to load and fire a musket!’

Other guardsmen laughed, but soon forgot about him as another wave of blue-coated soldiers tried to reach the walls.

Allan lost track of time, so caught was he in the rhythm of loading and firing. Eventually the shots around him slowed.

‘They are retreating!’ a man cried.

The French were withdrawing, like a wave ebbing from the shore.

Allan put down the musket and left his place at the wall. He met MacDonnell near the stable.

‘Get word to Wellington that we repelled the first attack, but if they keep coming we’ll need more ammunition,’ MacDonnell told him.

One of the soldiers brought out his horse and Allan mounted the steed. ‘I’ll get your message through.’ He didn’t know how to say what he most wanted MacDonnell to know. ‘The boy is in the château, but have someone look out for him, will you?’

MacDonnell nodded, but one of his officers called him away at the same time.

Allan had to ride off without any assurance that MacDonnell would even remember the presence of the boy Miss Pallant pretended to be.

T
he shouts of the soldiers and the crack of musket fire signalled a new attack. Marian’s eyes flew open and she shook off the haze of sleep. Her exhaustion had overtaken her during the lull in fighting.

Now it was clear the French were attacking the farm again. The sounds were even louder and more alarming than before. So were the screams of the wounded horses and men.

She hugged her knees to her chest as the barrage continued. Had the captain made it through? With every shot in the first attack, she’d feared he’d been struck and now her fears for him were renewed. One thing she knew for certain. He was gone—either gone back to the British line or just…gone.

She cried out in frustration.

He must survive. To think that he would not just plunged her into more despair.

The hallway suddenly felt like a prison. Its walls might wrap her in relative safety, but each urgent shout, each agonised scream, cut into her like a sword thrust. To hear, but not see, the events made everything worse. She hated feeling alone and useless while men were dying.

She stood and paced.

This was absurd. Surely there was something she could do to assist. She’d promised Captain Landon that she would stay in the hallway, but he was not present to stop her, was he?

Marian left where the captain had placed her and made her way to the entrance hall.

The green-uniformed soldiers were gone, but several of the Coldstream Guards rushed past her. The sounds of the siege intensified now that she’d emerged from her cocoon of a hiding place.

The château’s main door swung open and two men carried another man inside. Blood poured from a wound in his chest.

She rushed forwards. ‘I can help. Tell me what to do.’ She forgot to make her voice low.

They did not seem to notice. ‘No help for this one, laddie,’ one answered in a thick Scottish accent. They dumped the injured soldier in a corner and rushed out again.

Marian looked around her. Several wounded men leaned against the walls of the hall. The marble floor was smeared with their blood.

Her stomach rebelled at the sight.

She held her breath for a moment, determined not to be sick. ‘I must do something,’ she cried.

One of the men, blood oozing through the fingers he held against his arm, answered her. ‘Find us some bandages, lad.’

Bandages. Where would she find bandages?

She ran back to the drawing room where the captain had found the chair for her. Pulling the covers off the furniture, she gathered as much of the white cloth as she could carry in her arms. She returned to the hall and dumped the cloth in a pile next to the man clutching his bleeding arm.

‘I need a knife,’ she said to him.

He shook his head, wincing in pain.

Another man whose face was covered in blood fumbled
through his coat. ‘Here you go, lad.’ He held out a small penknife.

Marian took the knife, still sticky with his blood, and used it to start a rent in the cloth so she could rip it into strips. She worked as quickly as she could, well aware that the man the soldiers had carried in was still moaning and coughing. Most of the other men suffered silently.

She knew nothing about tending to the injured. It stood to reason, though, that bleeding wounds needed to be bandaged, as the wounded soldier had suggested.

Marian grabbed a fistful of the strips of cloth and turned to him. ‘I’ll tend that other man first, then you, sir.’ She gestured to the moaning man who’d been so swiftly left to die. ‘And you,’ she told the man who’d given her the knife.

‘Do that, lad. I’m not so bad off.’ His voice was taut with pain.

Marian touched his arm in sympathy and started for the gravely wounded soldier.

Her courage flagged as she reached him. Never had she seen such grievous injuries. Steeling herself, she gripped the bandages and forced herself to kneel at his side.

He was so young! Not much older than Domina’s brother. Blood gurgled from a hole in his abdomen. Her hand trembling, she used some of the cloth to sponge it away. The dark pink of his innards became visible, and Marian recoiled, thinking she would surely be sick.

He seized her arm, gripping her hard. ‘My mum,’ he rasped. ‘My mum.’ His glassy eyes regarded her with alarm, and his breathing rattled like a rusty gate. ‘My mum.’

She clasped his other hand, tears stinging her eyes. ‘Your mum will be so proud of you.’ It was not enough to say, not when this young man would die without ever seeing his mother again.

The young man’s eyes widened and he rose up, still gripping her. With one deep breath he collapsed and air slowly left his lungs as his eyes turned blank.

‘No,’ she cried. The faces of her mother and father when death had taken them flashed before her. ‘No.’

The room turned black and sound echoed. She was going to faint and the dead young man’s hand was still in hers.

The door opened and two more men staggered in. She forced her eyes open and took several deep breaths.

More wounds. More blood. More men in need.

She released the young soldier’s hand and gingerly closed his eyes. ‘God keep you,’ she whispered.

Marian grabbed her clean cloth and returned to the man who had told her to get bandages. ‘You are next,’ she said with a bravado she didn’t feel inside.

He gestured to the soldier who had given her the knife. ‘Tend him first.’

She nodded and kneeled on the floor, wiping away the blood on the soldier’s head so she could see the wound. His skin was split right above his hairline. Swallowing hard, Marian pressed the wound closed with her fingers and wrapped a bandage tightly around his head.

‘Thank you, lad,’ the man said.

She moved to the first man and wrapped his wounded arm. Not taking time to think, she scuttled over to the next man, discovering yet another horrifying sight. She took a deep breath and tended that man’s wound as well. One by one she dressed all the soldiers’ wounds.

When she’d finished, one of the soldiers caught her arm. ‘Can y’ fetch us some water, lad?’

Water. Of course. They must be very thirsty. She was thirsty, as a matter of fact. She went in search of the kitchen, but found its pump dry. There was a well in the middle of the courtyard, near the stables, she remembered. She found a fairly clean bucket and ladle on the kitchen shelf and hurried back to the hall.

‘I’ll bring you water,’ she told the wounded men as she crossed the room to the château’s entrance.

When she stepped outside, the courtyard was filled with
soldiers. Men at the walls fired and reloaded their muskets, others repositioned themselves or moved the wounded away. The fighting was right outside the gate. She could hear it. French musket balls might find their way into the courtyard, she feared.

Gathering all her courage, Marian started for the well. Before she reached it, a man shouted, ‘They’re coming in the gate!’

To her horror a huge French soldier, wielding an ax, hewed his way into the courtyard followed by others. It was a frightening sight as they hacked their way toward the château. Several Guardsmen set upon them. The huge Frenchman was knocked to the ground, and one of the Guards plunged a bayonet into his back.

‘Close the gate! Close the gate!’

Men pushed against the wooden gate as more French soldiers strained to get in. Without thinking, Marian dropped her bucket and added her slight strength to the effort to force the gates closed. Finally they secured it, but the fighting was still fierce between the British soldiers and the few Frenchmen who had made it inside.

Marian picked her way through the fighting and returned to the well. She pumped water into the bucket, her heart pounding at the carnage around her. When the bucket was full, one of the Guardsmen shoved a boy towards her, a French drummer boy, his drum still strapped to his chest.

‘Take him,’ the Guardsman said. ‘Keep him out of harm’s way.’

She took the boy’s hand and pulled him back to the château with her.

‘Restez ici,’
she ordered.
Remain here.

The drummer boy sat immediately, hugging his drum, his eyes as huge as saucers.

Marian passed the water to the men and told them about the gate closing and about the drummer boy. A moment later, more men entered the château, needing tending.

Eventually the musket fire became sporadic, and she heard a man shout, ‘They’re retreating.’

She paused for a moment in thankful relief.

‘It is not over yet, lad,’ one of the wounded men told her. ‘D’you hear the guns?’ The pounding of artillery had started an hour ago. ‘We’re not rid of Boney yet. I wager you could see what is happening on the battlefield from the upper floors.’

‘Do you think so?’ Marian responded.

‘Go. Take a look-see.’ The man gestured to the stairway. ‘I’ll watch the drummer.’

She could not resist. She climbed the stairs to the highest floor. In each of the rooms Guardsmen manned the windows. One soldier turned towards her when Marian peeked into the room.

‘Where did you come from, lad?’ the man asked.

She remembered to lower her voice this time. ‘Brussels, sir. I came to see the battle.’

He laughed and gestured for her to approach. ‘Well, come see, then.’

The sight was terrifying. On one side thousands of French soldiers marched twenty-four-men deep and one hundred and fifty wide. The rhythmic beating of the French
pas de charge
wafted up to the château’s top windows. On the Allied Army side a regiment of Belgian soldiers fled the field. In between a red-coated soldier galloped across the ridge in full view of the French columns. Was it Captain Landon? Her throat constricted in anxiety.

Please let him be safe,
she prayed.

‘Where are the English?’ There were no other soldiers in sight. Just the lone rider she imagined to be the captain.

‘Wellington’s got ’em hiding, I expect.’ The soldier pointed out of the window. ‘See those hedges?’ She nodded.

‘Our boys are behind there, I’d wager.’

As the columns moved by the hedge, the crack of firearms could be heard. ‘Rifles,’ the soldier explained.

The columns edged away from the rifle fire and lost their formation. Suddenly a line of English soldiers rose up and fired upon them. Countless French soldiers fell as if they were in a game of skittles, but still others advanced until meeting the British line. The two sides began fighting hand to hand.

Marian turned away from the sight. ‘Napoleon has too many men.’

‘The Cuirassiers are coming.’ Anxiety sounded in the soldier’s voice. Cuirassiers were the French cavalry.

Marian felt like weeping, but she turned to watch the Cuirassiers on their powerful horses charging toward the English soldiers while the French drums still beat, over and over.

A battle was not glorious to watch, she thought, closing her eyes again. It was all about men wounded and men dying, not at all what she and Domina had imagined.

‘They’re breaking!’ the soldier said.

Marian could not bear to see her countrymen running away like the French had run from Hougoumont. Her chin trembled and her throat constricted with unspent tears.

‘I’ll be damned.’ The soldier whistled. ‘If that is not a sight.’

Marian opened her eyes.

The French, not the British, had broken from their lines and were running away. ‘I don’t understand. Why did they run?’

‘Who can tell?’ The soldier laughed. ‘Let’s be grateful they did.’

She was indeed grateful, but by now she knew not to ask if the battle was over. The French would try again and Napoleon was known to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.

Marian took a breath and mentally braced herself for whatever came next.

Allan rode the ridge. After taking MacDonnell’s message to Wellington, he searched for Picton, who seemed nowhere to be found. He’d settle for Tranville, then, for new orders.
From the distance he’d seen the second siege of Hougoumont and gave a cheer when the French had again been repelled.

He reached his regiment, the Royal Scots, just as the French attacked. Artillery pummelled the French columns, but still men in the front ranks fought hard in hand-to-hand combat. Allan unsheathed his sword and rode into the thick of it.

The fighting was fierce and bloody. Fists flew and bayonets jabbed and the air filled with the thud of bodies slamming into each other, of grunts and growls and cries of pain. Allan slashed at the French soldiers, more than once slicing into their flesh as they were about to kill. They came at him, trying to pull him from his horse. He managed to keep both his horse and himself in one piece, but blood and mud splattered on to his clothing. By the time the French retreated his arm was leaden with fatigue, and he breathed hard from the effort of the battle.

For a mere moment he indulged in the relief of still being alive, but only for a moment. He quickly resumed his search for Picton and Tranville, but spied Gabriel Deane instead. He headed towards his friend. Gabe, too, would have fought without heed to his own survival and Allan said a silent prayer of thanks that he appeared unscathed. General Tranville had been always been unfair to Gabe, denying him promotion because Gabe’s father was in trade.

‘Gabe!’ he called. ‘Have you seen Picton?’

Gabe rode up to him. ‘Picton is dead. Shot right after he gave the order to attack.’

Allan bowed his head. ‘I am sorry to hear of it.’ The eccentric old soldier might have retired after this. ‘Where is Tranville, then?’

‘Struck down as well,’ Gabe answered.

‘Dead?’ Allan would not so strongly grieve if Tranville was lost.

Gabe shook his head. ‘I do not know. I saw him fall and I’ve not seen him since.’

Orders came for the cavalry to advance upon the retreating
French. Allan and Gabe grew silent as they watched the Scots Greys ride out, like magnificent waves of the ocean on their great grey horses.

‘Perhaps we will win this after all,’ Gabe said.

They
must
win, Allan thought as they watched the cavalry pursue the French all the way to the line of their artillery. The Allies were on the side of all that was right. Napoleon had broken the peace, and too many men had already died to feed his vanity.