Bernard Cornwell: Sharpe’s Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 15–18 June, 1815

‘Two, Bristow. Two, two, two. Pretend you cannot read. I insist upon two. It has to be two! Or do you want me to wreak havoc on the supper tables?’

Bristow smiled. ‘I’m sure we can manage two, my lord.’ Bristow was butler to the Duke of Richmond whose wife was giving the ball in this large rented house. Competition to attend was keen. Much of London society had moved to Brussels for the summer, there were army officers who would be mortified if they were not invited, and there was the local aristocracy who had to be entertained. The Duchess’s answer to the eagerness of so many to attend her ball had been to have tickets of admission printed, yet, even so, Bristow expected there to be at least as many interlopers as ticket holders. It was not two days since the Duchess had issued instructions that no more tickets were to be given away, but it was hardly likely that such a prohibition would apply to Lord John Rossendale whose mother was an intimate friend of the Duchess of Richmond.

‘Her Grace is already having breakfast. Would you care to join her?’ Bristow asked Lord John.

Lord John followed the butler into the private rooms where, in a small sunlit salon, the Duchess nibbled toast. ‘I never do sleep before a ball,’ she greeted Lord John, then blinked with astonishment at him. ‘What are you doing here?’

Lord John kissed the Duchess’s hand. She was in a Chinese silk robe and had her hair gathered under a mob-cap. She was a quick-tempered woman of remarkable good looks.

‘I came to collect tickets for your ball, of course,’ Lord John said airily. ‘I assume you’re giving it to celebrate my arrival in Brussels?’

‘What are you doing in Brussels?’ The Duchess ignored Lord John’s raillery.

‘I’ve been posted here,’ Lord John explained. ‘I arrived last night. I would have been here sooner but one of our carriage horses slung a shoe and it took four hours to find a smith. I couldn’t sleep either. It’s just too exciting.’ He smiled happily, expecting the Duchess to share his joy.

‘You’re with the army?’

‘Of course.’ Lord John plucked at his uniform coat as though that proved his credentials. ‘Harry Paget asked for me, I begged Prinny’s permission, and he finally relented.’ Lord John, though a cavalry officer, had never been permitted to serve with the army. He was an aide to the Prince Regent who had resolutely refused to lose his services, but Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge, who was another crony of the Prince and who also commanded Britain’s cavalry, had successfully persuaded the Prince to give Lord John his chance. Lord John laughed as he went to the sideboard where he helped himself to toast, ham and coffee. ‘Prinny’s damned jealous. He thinks he should be here to fight Napoleon. Talking of whom, is there any news?’

‘Arthur doesn’t expect any nonsense from him till July. We think he may have left Paris, but no one’s really very sure.’ Arthur was the Duke of Wellington. ‘I asked Arthur whether we were quite safe having our ball tonight, and he assured me we are. He’s giving a ball himself next week.’

‘I must say war is an ordeal,’ Lord John smiled at the Duchess from the sideboard.

The Duchess shrugged off his flippancy, and instead offered the elegant young man a most suspicious stare. ‘Have you come alone?’

Lord John smiled winningly as he returned to the table. ‘Bristow is very kindly finding me two tickets.’

‘I suppose it’s that woman?’

Lord John hesitated, then nodded. ‘It is Jane, indeed.’

‘Damn you, Johnny.’

The Duchess had sworn in a very mild tone, but her words still made Lord John bridle. Nevertheless he was too much in awe of the older woman to make any voluble protest.

The Duchess supposed she would have to write to Lord John’s mother and confess that the silly boy had brought his paramour to Brussels. She blamed the example of Harry Paget who had run off with the wife of Wellington’s younger brother. Such an open display of adultery was suddenly the fashionable sport among cavalrymen, but it could too easily turn into a blood sport and the Duchess feared for Lord John’s life. She was also offended that a young man as charming and eligible as Lord John should flaunt his foolishness. ‘If it was London, Johnny, I wouldn’t dream of letting her come to a ball, but I suppose Brussels is different. There’s really no saying who half these people are. But don’t present this girl to me, John, because I won’t receive her, I really won’t! Do you understand?’

‘Jane’s very charming –’ Lord John commenced a defence of his slighted lover.

‘I don’t care if she’s as beautiful as Titania and as charming as Cordelia; she’s still another man’s wife. Doesn’t her husband worry you?’

‘He would if he were here, but he isn’t. At the end of the last war he found himself some French creature and went to live with her, and so far as we know, he’s still in France.’ Lord John chuckled. ‘The poor fool’s probably been imprisoned by Napoleon.’

‘You think he’s in France?’ The Duchess sounded aghast.

‘He certainly isn’t with the army, I made sure of that.’

‘Oh, my dear Johnny.’ The Duchess lowered her cup of coffee and gave her young friend a compassionate look. ‘Didn’t you think to check the Dutch army list?’

Lord John Rossendale said nothing. He just stared at the Duchess.

She grimaced. ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe is on Slender Billy’s staff, Johnny.’

Rossendale blanched. For a second it seemed that he would be unable to respond, but then he found his voice. ‘He’s with the Prince of Orange? Here?’

‘Not in Brussels, but very close. Slender Billy wanted some British staff officers because he’s commanding British troops.’

Rossendale swallowed. ‘And he’s got Sharpe?’

‘Indeed he has.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Rossendale’s face had paled to the colour of paper. ‘Is Sharpe coming tonight?’ he asked in sudden panic.

‘I certainly haven’t invited him, but I had to give Slender Billy a score of tickets, so who knows who he might bring?’ The Duchess saw the fear on her young friend’s face. ‘Perhaps you’d better go home, Johnny.’

‘I can’t do that.’ For Lord John to run away would be seen as the most shameful of acts, yet he was terrified of staying. He had not only cuckolded Richard Sharpe, but in the process he had effectively stolen Sharpe’s fortune, and now he discovered that his enemy was not lost in France, but alive and close to Brussels.

‘Poor Johnny,’ the Duchess said mockingly. ‘Still, come and dance tonight. Colonel Sharpe won’t dare kill you in my ballroom, because I won’t let him. But if I were you I’d give him his wife back and find yourself someone more suitable. What about the Huntley girl? She’s got a decent fortune, and she’s not really ugly.’ The Duchess mentioned another half-dozen girls, all eligible and nobly born, but Lord John was not listening. He was thinking of a dark-haired and scarred soldier whom he had cuckolded and impoverished, a soldier who had sworn to kill him in revenge.

Forty miles to the south, the Dragoon Lieutenant who had been kicked by his dying horse haemorrhaged in the nettles beside the ditch. He died before any surgeons could reach him. The Lieutenant’s servant rifled the dead man’s possessions. He kept the officer’s coins, the locket from about his neck, and his boots, but threw away the book on phrenology. The first French infantry butchered the Lieutenant’s dead horse with their bayonets and marched into Belgium with the bleeding joints of meat hanging from their belts. An hour later the Emperor’s coach passed the corpse, disturbing the flies which had been crawling over the dead Lieutenant’s face and laying their eggs in his blood-filled mouth and nostrils.