Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (99 page)

Should she tell Mrs. Reynolds that the puddle at their feet where the feather rested was the result of Lady Catherine’s excited incontinence, or give blame to the dogs?

B
ut a day later and a few miles away from the Charleroi debacle a slow, low drum roll was heard. It kept eerie beat and lent even greater menace to a dark line of advancing French infantry. The British held fast to the top of a small ridge at Quatre-Bras. From
his vantage atop Scimitar, Fitzwilliam stood in his stirrups and could see the feet of British soldiers in front of him begin to shift in anticipation of the clash only minutes away. Scimitar began his own skittish dance and jigged in place. Fitzwilliam leaned down and patted the horse’s neck, speaking to him in murmuring reassurance.

For most soldiers, this was the moment of greatest dread: that of the brief, agonising wait with the enemy in sight, but not near enough to engage. These few minutes of delay were crucial that day, for the half-dozen cannons that would be their only true means of defence had only just arrived and were creaking far too slowly into position. The massive column of Napoleon’s army began their assent of the hill. Scimitar danced in place again.

Fitzwilliam’s company had endeavoured with feverish haste to shore up the allied line at this point. And as always, as if as much by an unseemly evil intuition as military astuteness, Napoleon’s generals seemed to know just where to drive their wedge to breach the enemy position. Covering this weak spot was only a brief and miserly triumph for the allied. As the weakest link, it was there that they would bear the brunt of the assault of this particular battle. The French artillery behind their troops was now within a half mile and Fitzwilliam could hear the first salvos that landed short of the British line.

Finally, theirs could respond and did, but only sporadically, for the ammunition had arrived tardy of the cannons.

Their own volleys were falling short of the French and Fitzwilliam could see the men make scurried correction to the lay of the cannons. He eyed one cannon specifically and watched the rhythm closely as it was loaded, primed, aimed, then fired. The power of the shot lifted the heavy gun upward, then hard backward with the percussion, as even the cannoneers cringed away. Hastily it was loaded, primed, aimed, and fired once more. Fitzwilliam made a mental calculation. First, one blast was shot off a minute, then two, then, blessedly, three. Their own cannons up to speed bestowed precious little time for self-congratulation, for they were immediately assaulted by incoming fire. The assault decimated their tightly packed ranks, mangling both bodies and equipment.

By the time the enemy had been engaged, the single shot had been expended from every soldier’s rifle, and the bayonet rendered the weapon an unwieldy sword. Howbeit Fitzwilliam knew himself to be a particularly conspicuous target atop Scimitar and wearing the plumed hat of regimental leader, he had not drawn the most jeopardous undertaking. That fell to the lead infantrymen. It was they who had the poor prospect and unjust duty of meeting, bayonet to bayonet, the first of Napoleon’s finest. These demonically hungry and worse, foolhardy, French soldiers were not ordered, but chose, to bloody themselves upon British knives.

As these frontiersmen began to bludgeon and stab, the cannon fire yet crossing landed upon enemy and defender without discrimination (victory being more urgent than economy in this particular battle). At one time Napoleon’s weighty army would have deployed right through a position as slim as theirs, but politics and desertion had taken away what leverage greater numbers afforded the French.

This fight was a face-to-face encounter and the blood that splattered from it was an odious and unseemly repetition of the earlier rain. Had not every soldier’s ears been deafened by the cacophony of arms, the screams of agony and rage would have been indiscernible of origin.

The first waves of French were repelled by the incline as much as military might, but the sight of these ferocious troops falling back lured some amongst the allied to move forward to crush them. But that was not the battle plan. They held and waited to be assaulted again. When it came, the next movement of French troops had again to fight the incline, but were now also hindered by the obstacle of dead bodies and abandoned equipment already fallen victim to the fight.

The French cannons volleyed yet into the British and Belgian troops, yet the second attempt by Napoleon’s army took even greater toll upon both sides. Three British cannons had been silenced, hence, the throat-razing sting of gunpowder that filled every man’s lungs came mostly from below.

Seeing the artillery might fight victory for them, the French cavalry poised at the side chosen for encounter. It was what Fitzwilliam had come to France to find. As ranking officer, all eyes were upon him. It would be at his signal, and not before, that they would draw their swords. A few horses shuddered, reflecting the anxiousness of their riders, not a good sign when coolness in the face of a charge meant all.

“Steady, lads. Show no hurry,” Fitzwilliam called out in a low, reassuring voice.

With that admonition, he drew his sword and held it first high, thereupon rested it upon his shoulder. The order was followed with such precision, the blades of three hundred men made but a single sound as they were drawn. It was Scimitar who took the first step into battle; the regiment followed suit, first into a barely contained trot, from thence, a slow canter.

As they rode their horses shoulder to shoulder, the regiment of horse soldiers awaited the bellowing of the one word that would send them to their destiny. When it was sounded, it was Fitzwilliam who issued the command.

Every cavalryman raised his sword high above his head, and as each kicked their horses into a hard run, they stood forward in their stirrups and pointed their sabres toward the enemy.

“Charge!”

A
fter the battle had been decided, the allied demarche demanded those who could to strive on to Paris behind the Prussians as occupation troops. Those injured were pouring back toward the English Channel to return home. Those men whose
wounds demanded they not travel farther were cared for at the makeshift hospitals. If they had two legs upon which to hobble, they were directed on to Boulogne. The war was over more quickly than it began. Darcy had not yet found Georgiana, but was heartened. For if his information was correct, he was certain she would be at the abandoned villa that lay upon the road he trod.

Initially, he had chastised himself for the two weeks he spent getting to Brussels. However, they proved to be not so unproductive after all. Once there, he had a chance conversation with the wife of an attaché to Wellington, who had the good fortune to accompany her husband from Vienna to Brussels. (Anticipating fighting the next day, the general and his wife made the curious choice to attend the duchess of Richmond’s heralded ball. She and her husband invited Darcy to join them, but he decried lack of evening attire in his bedroll, and declined.) However, before they departed the general’s wife told Darcy that she had been struck by one young woman within a retinue of nurses.

“She was quite unlike the other young ladies with the hospital. Very demure, very ladylike,” she said.

Then, from the discretion of her fan, she asided, “I am told many of the young nurses we have brought are no better than common trollops.”

That his sister was in such despicable company was not a particular comfort. But just then, her companions were the least of his concerns. The young woman the general’s wife described was to be in the hospital ahead. It must be her. There could not be two such gentlewomen toiling in such an execrable place.

And if it was not she, he was not certain he could bear the disappointment.

On the heels of learning the disrepute of the nursing corps, Darcy had also heard a troubling report that Fitzwilliam’s cavalry regiment had been assaulted by heavy losses,

“Barely a horse left standing,” another colonel had said to him.

It was of a nagging worry, but he saw little recourse to gain information. Casualty lists were nonexistent—even deaths were only in round figures. Generals killed in battle were immediately lauded as heroes, but the individual names of the lower ranks would be long in coming.

By skirting the remaining pockets of resistance and travelling horseback, Darcy was within sight of the once-grand house by late afternoon. Progress was slow. The animal he rode was not Roux’s dun and, being flay-footed and wall-eyed, owned no quality save for four legs and tail to promote himself as, indeed, a horse. But in a war such as this, Darcy thought himself lucky to have him. Two days earlier, Roux’s gelding was expropriated by the military at gunpoint. It took him a day to find another (and he would never admit to anyone how much he had to pay for him).

The house had not been hard to locate. He simply followed the ever-increasing stream of dying and injured Brothers of the Blade. Thitherward, the structure was demolished and it lay open to accept the line of wounded humanity as if a giant maw.

Wellington’s forces had suffered heavy losses. That was a given. However, hearing of such losses and seeing them were two entirely separate understandings. At first glance, it was easy to identify the injured as British, for all seemed to wear their red uniform jackets yet. But, in closer inspection, what appeared to be their scarlet uniform was, indeed, a uniform, not of wool, but of blood. As he rode his horse past the endless trail of mangled men, Darcy felt the appropriateness of the colour chosen for His Majesty’s
army. He could only draw his eyes away from the horror of the spectacle by sheer will.

He was within earshot of Wellington when the duke spoke the soon-to-be-famous words, “Nothing except a battle lost is half so melancholy as a battle won.” A truly Pyrrhic victory, indeed.

Darcy kicked his horse to move ahead in order to wrest sight and mind from the hopeless vista. Ultimately overtaking the trail of injured and dying soldiers, Darcy managed to get into the court of the hospital. Having some time to perfect it, he had planned a subterfuge to gain entrance. He had decided to claim himself not a surgeon, but a civilian physician (surgeons were known to be a tatty bunch; if he were to inhabit a masquerade, it would be one of dignity). All the folderol of disguise was of little use. When presenting his assertion, no one questioned him (for what reason would someone make such a claim who was not?). He was thrust an apron and a rather dull knife. Eyeing it, he issued the considerable hope that the dirk was used to slice bandages, not men.

Once inside, chaos reigned and he tossed aside the accoutrements of his assumed profession. No questions were asked of him, only an occasional demand to step aside by someone who did not glance up.

One side of the building had been felled by cannon fire. The majestic columns yet standing cast shadows across the men who lay head to foot in rows across the marble floor of what was once a grand-ballroom, exposing a peculiarly inappropriate harlequin pattern. He estimated one hundred men in that room alone, and from what he could see, one thousand stood in line for aid. Seeing few people offering help, he walked slowly about, hoping to spot Georgiana. With each succeeding minute that passed without locating her, desperation expanded in the pit of his stomach.