“Tell Rebecque I’m going to Brussels. The Prince wants me to go to a bloody ball.”
Simon Doggett’s face blanched as he looked at Sharpe’s frayed and blood-drenched uniform. “Like that, sir? You’re going to a ball dressed like that?”
“There’s a bloody war on. What does the Young Frog expect? Bloody lace and pantaloons?” He handed Doggett the stallion’s bridle, then carried the saddle over to the spare horse. “Tell Rebecque I’m riding to Brussels to see the Duke. Someone has to tell him what’s happening here. Go on with you!”
Behind Sharpe the firing had died away. The French had retreated, presumably back to Frasnes, while Saxe-Weimar’s men had begun to make their bivouacs. Their axes sounded loud in the long wood as they cut the timber for their cooking fires. The people of the hamlet, sensing what destruction would follow the coming of these soldiers, were packing their few belongings into the farm cart. The small girl was crying, looking for her lost kittens. A man cursed at Sharpe, then went to help harness a thin mule to the cart.
Sharpe wearily mounted his fresh horse. The crossroads were safe, at least for this one night. He clicked his fingers for Nosey to follow him, then rode northwards in the dusk. He was going to a dance.
CHAPTER 6
Lucille Castineau stared gravely at her reflection in the mirror which, because it was only a small broken sliver, was being held by her maid, Jeanette, who was forced to tilt the glass up and down in an effort to show her mistress the whole dress. “It looks lovely,” Jeanette said reassuringly.
“It’s very plain. Oh, well. I am plain.”
“That’s not true, madame,” Jeanette protested.
Lucille laughed. Her ball gown was an old grey dress which she had prettified with some lengths of Brussels lace. Fashion dictated a filmy sheath that would scarcely cover the breasts and with a skirt slit to reveal a length of thigh barely disguised beneath a flimsy petticoat, but Lucille had neither the tastes nor the money for such nonsense. She had taken in the grey dress so that it hugged her thin body more closely, but that was her sole concession to fashion. She would not lower its neckline, nor would she have dreamed of cutting the skirt.
“It looks lovely,” Jeanette said again.
“That’s because you haven’t seen what anyone else will be wearing.”
“I still think it’s lovely.”
“Not that it matters,” Lucille said, “for I doubt whether anyone will be looking at me. Or will even dance with me.” She well knew Richard Sharpe’s reluctance to dance, which was why she had been surprised when the message came from the Prince of Orange’s headquarters informing her that Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe would be attending His Royal Highness at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in anticipation of which His Royal Highness took pleasure in enclosing a ticket for Madame la Vicomtesse de Seleglise. Lucille herself never used her title, but she knew Sharpe was perversely proud of it and must have informed the Prince of its existence.
The reluctant Vicomtesse now propped the broken mirror on a shelf and poked fingers at her hair which she had piled loosely before decorating with an ostrich feather. “I don’t like the feather.”
“Everyone’s wearing them.”
“I’m not.” Lucille plucked it out and tickled the sleeping baby with its tip. The baby twitched, but slept on. Henri-Patrick had black hair like his father, but Lucille fancied she already saw her own family’s long skull in the baby’s wrinkled face. If he had his father’s looks and his mother’s brains, Lucille liked to say, Henri-Patrick should be well blessed.
She was unfair, at least to herself. Lucille Castineau had lived all her twenty-seven years in the Norman countryside and, though she came from a noble family, she proudly considered herself to be a farm woman. The rural life had denied her Jane Sharpe’s fashionable pallor; instead Lucille’s skin had the healthy bloom of country weather. She had a long, narrow and strong-boned face, its severity softened by her eyes which seemed to glow with laughter and sense. She was a widow. Her husband had been an elegant officer in Napoleon’s cavalry, and Lucille had often wondered why such a handsome man had sought to marry her, but Xavier Castineau had thought himself most fortunate in his wife. They had been married for only a few weeks before he had been hacked down by a sabre. In the peace after the wars, when Lucille had found herself alone in her family’s Norman chateau, she had met Sharpe and become his lover. Now she was the mother of his son.