Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (44 page)
48
Sunday, 18 June–Monday, 19 June
S
uch simple words. And it was over. The fighting, the struggle, the betrayals. All so she could stand at the head of a flight of mahogany stairs and hear the end of everything she had fought for pronounced by her husband’s grinning best friend.
uch simple words. And it was over. The fighting, the struggle, the betrayals. All so she could stand at the head of a flight of mahogany stairs and hear the end of everything she had fought for pronounced by her husband’s grinning best friend.
Suzanne ran down the stairs and flung her arms round David, burying her face in his shoulder. He swung her round in an exuberant circle. By the time he set her back on her feet, she had recovered her self-command. “Tell me. Where did you hear?”
“Stuart just sent word round. He had the news from Alten.”
Suzanne shook her head. She could still not make sense of it. “I thought General Alten had been brought in wounded.”
“He ordered one of his aides-de-camp to send word to him as soon as the battle was decided,” Simon said.
Suzanne hugged Simon, holding on a little tighter than usual. “What else have you learned?”
“Nothing about anyone we know.”
She nodded and reached out to hug Cordelia and then Aline. Rachel had dropped back down beside Henri, who was sitting up against the pillows, a smile creasing his face.
Simon and Cordelia opened champagne and handed it round in a variety of drinking vessels. Suzanne sipped champagne from a teacup, laughed, grinned, said and did everything that seemed appropriate.
Cordelia caught her eye. “I know. Such amazing news, and it won’t mean anything to me if they don’t come back.”
“Quite.”
“Drink some more champagne.”
With the giddy atmosphere in the hall, it was a moment before Suzanne realized the door had opened. She turned round to see her husband standing just inside the door. She ran to him and flung her arms round him with the force of everything coursing through her.
Malcolm hugged her to him hard, but he spoke over her shoulder to David, Simon, and Addison. “Davenport’s in the cart outside, badly wounded. I’m going to need help getting him in.”
Suzanne drew back to see that Cordelia had taken two steps forward, parchment pale but all questions suppressed.
“It’s serious,” Malcolm said, meeting Cordelia’s gaze. “But not beyond hope.”
Cordelia gave a quick nod and snatched up a lamp. “Put him in my room.”
Malcolm, David, and Simon carried Harry Davenport upstairs, while Addison saw to Perdita and Claudius, who had somehow survived the battle. Cordelia held the lamp to light the way. Suzanne set about gathering up lint, brandy, and clean cloths. Aline brought a bowl of warm water from the kitchen.
By the time they came into Cordelia’s room, the men had got Harry’s boots and coat off. He was moaning and twisting his head against the pillows but seemed unconscious of his surroundings.
“Bless you for the water.” Cordelia dampened a cloth and sponged her husband’s mud-caked face.
“He fell facedown,” Malcolm said. “And it was some time before I got to him. I fear at least one horse trampled him. Blackwell says he has two broken ribs, but it’s the wound in his chest that’s really concerning. Blackwell said to tell you to change the dressing.”
Suzanne pushed back the remnants of Harry’s shirt, which had already been sliced neatly in two, probably by Geoffrey Blackwell. She peeled back the dressing. Cordelia sucked in her breath. The wound was deep and perilously close to Harry’s heart. But at least it was leaking clean blood. She cleaned it with brandy and applied a fresh dressing. He twitched but didn’t waken from his feverish state. Cordelia held him steady, as Rachel had done earlier with Henri.
Suzanne bent over Cordelia and put her arms round her shoulders. “I’ll have some tea sent up, and I’ll be just downstairs should you need me. I’ve seen men much farther gone make a complete recovery.”
Cordelia squeezed Suzanne’s fingers. She didn’t ask how many men in a similar state Suzanne had seen die, though the question lurked in her eyes.
Suzanne slipped out into the passage. Malcolm followed and pulled the door to behind him. For the first time since he’d come into the house, Suzanne looked properly at him. In the light from the candle sconces, she saw that his face was mud spattered and covered with a day’s stubble. There was a red-brown smear just below his jaw. She put her hand up to it.
“I’m all right.” He curled his fingers round her own. “I don’t think it’s mine.”
“We heard the battle’s won,” she said, carefully calibrating a note of bright cheerfulness tempered by the horrors all round them.
Malcolm’s mouth twisted. “At an intolerable cost.”
The candlelight bounced off his eyes, revealing a hell starker than all the horrors of their years in the Peninsula. “Who?” she asked.
He swallowed. “Easier to ask who survived. Canning died of a stomach wound. De Lancey fell and last I heard no one had found him. Gordon lost his leg. He’s in Wellington’s bedchamber at Headquarters, and I doubt he’ll last the night.”
She sucked in her breath as though she’d received a blow to the gut. Gordon’s infectious laughter echoed in her ears. She saw Canning’s smile, heard Gordon’s ironic voice, had a clear image of De Lancey bending over his young wife’s hand. “Fitzroy?” she asked, holding her breath for the answer.
“He lost his arm. But Blackwell thinks he’ll recover.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “March?”
“He was alive last I saw. He got Slender Billy off the field.”
“The prince was wounded? Is he—”
“Alive at last report. He took a shoulder wound from a sniper. Who I think was aiming for me.”
“Tony Chase?”
“So I suspect. Though I think any number of people would have quite cheerfully put a bullet through Billy in the course of the day. The damn fool ordered his men to form line instead of square again. It was like giving them a death sentence. The number who fell—”
“Malcolm.” She tightened her fingers round his own. “Harry was right last night. Billy’s failures shouldn’t be on your conscience.”
“Countless pointless deaths. If I’d been truly brave I’d have bashed him over the head and dragged him from the field.” He caught her other hand in his, so tight she could feel the pressure of bone on bone. “The road from Waterloo is clogged with dead and dying men. Some were crushed under overturned wagons. Some are lying among the trees on the side of the road, unlikely ever to emerge. The number I passed without stopping—”
“Darling.” She pulled her fingers free of his grip and took his face between her hands. “You can’t save everyone.”
“Of course not. It would be hubris to think so. Not to mention idiocy.”
“But you still feel guilty when you can’t.”
He shook his head. “Wellington came through unscathed. But Blackwell told me Uxbridge had his leg shattered just at the end of the battle, when his horse was scarce more than a hand’s breadth from Wellington’s. He’ll lose his leg.” He drew a breath. “I was almost done for myself. When I was rescuing Davenport. A chasseur was coming straight at me.”
A chill shot through her. “What happened?”
“Someone shot him in the back. Whoever it was, I’ll be forever grateful to him.”
She wrapped her arms round him and pressed her face into the hollow of his throat. “So will I.”
Cordelia folded Harry’s hand between her own and sat bolt upright in her straight-back chair. He was frighteningly pale, his hair and the brown stubble on his jaw stark against his ashen skin, but she thought his breathing seemed a bit easier. Or perhaps it was simply that she was desperate to latch onto some reason to hope.
She studied the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest and realized that this was the first time she’d properly watched him sleep. Even when they’d lived together, he would visit her room and then retire to his own to sleep, after the practice of fashionable Mayfair couples.
No, that wasn’t quite true. She remembered once, early in their marriage, waking to the unexpected pressure of an arm flung across her and the feel of warm breath stirring her hair. She’d turned her head on the pillow to see Harry’s face, relaxed in sleep in a way she’d never seen it in waking. She’d watched him for a few moments, an unexpected warmth welling up in her that might have been tenderness.
His gaze had flown open. For a moment it had lingered on her own, soft with warmth. Then reality came thundering back. Harry drew away, clutching the sheet over him. “Sorry,” he’d mumbled. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
She’d clutched at the sheet herself, feeling as though she’d been caught waltzing at Almack’s without permission from the patronesses. Amazing how uncomfortable one could feel lying in bed with one’s own husband.
If she’d reached out and caught his hand then, instead of watching as he struggled into his dressing gown and slipped from the room—Would anything have been different?
It all seemed so absurd now as she watched him fighting for his life. And yet if he recovered, if they tried to go on together—if he even wanted to—that was the world they’d go back to.
Suzanne brought her a cup of sweetened tea and gave her a hug. “I looked in on Livia. She’s still sound asleep.”
Cordelia forced herself to sip the tea, knowing she needed the strength. She had finished the cup and the sky was beginning to turn a pale charcoal beyond the window when Harry finally stirred. She thought it was the feverish restlessness again, but his gaze fastened on her face. His eyes were sleep clouded but focused. “Cordy?”
His voice came out rough and harsh, but it drove the fear from her lungs. “Good morning, Harry.”
“What are you doing here?”
She dropped to her knees beside the bed so her face was level with his. “This is my room. You’re in the Rue Ducale.”
He frowned, shook his head slightly, winced. “Damned fool Rannoch. Damned generous fool. Thought I was done for.”
“How much do you remember?”
His brows drew together. “Took a shot to the chest.”
“Malcolm Rannoch found you on the battlefield. In the mud. Dr. Blackwell bandaged your wound.”
“Hurts like the devil.”
“You have two cracked ribs as well. Here.” She reached for the laudanum. “This will help.”
He pushed her hand away. “Is there news?”
“The battle’s won. The French are in retreat.”
A faint smile lit his eyes. “Thank God some good came of all the carnage.” His gaze moved over her face. “Don’t know if George survived—”
“That doesn’t—”
“But I saw Tony Chase die in a French uniform. He took a bayonet meant for John Ashton.”
Shock and relief that Johnny had apparently survived shot through her. Followed by an unexpected jolt of grief. She had an image of Tony as a seven-year-old boy, front teeth missing, climbing an apple tree.
“Sorry,” Harry said. “He was your friend.”
“A long time ago.” She struggled to sort through the implications. “He died saving Johnny?”
“I think he did it for his sister.”
Harry’s eyes closed, and she thought he slept again. “Thank you,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
His eyes flew open. “For what?”
“For coming back.”
“Damned ironic.”
“What?”
“For the first time in my life I went into a battle wanting quite desperately to survive. And I very nearly didn’t. May not.”
“Don’t talk foolishness, Harry. I have no intention of letting you die.”
His eyes drifted closed again. “Never knew you so determined.” His head sank deeper into the pillow. But as she returned to her chair to settle in while he slept, she heard him murmur, “Your name.”
“What?” She leaned forward, not sure she’d heard him aright.
His eyes opened and fastened on her face for a moment, clear and focused. “Your name. Last thing I said before I lost consciousness with my face in the mud.”
Henri Rivaux turned feverish in the early hours of the morning, thrashing on his pallet. Suzanne cleaned his wound, bathed it with an infusion of comfrey, and helped Rachel wash him with cool cloths to bring down the fever. Rachel worked with quiet determination, mouth set, though her lips trembled slightly. Another of the wounded, a sergeant in the Rifles, had died just after the news of victory. Simon and Addison had gone to arrange for his burial.
Malcolm touched her on the shoulder to murmur that he and David were going back to the battlefield to bring back more wounded and to try to learn what had become of his brother.
“Don’t worry if we’re gone for some time,” Malcolm said, his fingers tightening on her shoulder. “The roads are an impassable hell. But the fighting’s done. We won’t come to mischief.”
She nodded and turned her head to press her lips against his hand. The lowering truth was that she was oddly relieved to see him go. All the while she nursed the wounded and made sure there was food for the household and looked in on the children, a weight of sorrow tore at her chest. A sorrow she couldn’t share with Malcolm, the man with whom she shared so much. A barrier had slammed up between them. A barrier that had been there from the moment they met, but that she had learned to ignore, to look past, to step through. Yet on this morning of victory for the Allies, it had never been more clear that he was a British gentleman and she was a French revolutionary.
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