Now the conqueror of the world’s conqueror gestured to stop the applause. “He has a good leg,” the Dowager Countess confided in Lucille.
“He’s a handsome man,” Lucille agreed.
“And he’s not in a corset. You can tell that by the way they bow. My husband never wore a corset, not like some here tonight.” The Countess cast a scathing eye at the dancers who were beginning yet another waltz, then looked back to the Duke. “He’s a young man.”
“Forty-six,” Lucille told her, “the same age as the Emperor.”
“Generals are getting younger. I’m sure the soldiers don’t like it. How can a man have confidence in a stripling?”
The Countess fell into a disapproving silence as a young and handsome British officer offered Lucille a low and evidently un-corseted bow. “My dear Lucille!” Captain Peter d’Alembord was resplendent in scarlet coat and white breeches.
“Captain!” Lucille responded with a genuine pleasure. “How nice to see a friendly face.”
“My Colonel received an invitation, didn’t know what to do with such a thing, so gave it to me. I can’t believe you’ve persuaded Sharpe to attend, or have you turned him into a dancing man?”
“He’s supposed to be accompanying the Prince.” Lucille named d’Alembord to the Dowager Countess of Mauberges who gave the officer a very suspicious examination.
“Your name is French!” the Countess accused him.
“My family were Huguenots, my lady, and therefore unwanted in la belle France.” D’Alembord’s contemptuous scorn for France made the Countess bridle, but he had already turned back to Lucille. “You’ll do me the honour of dancing?”
Lucille would. D’Alembord was an old friend who had dined frequently with Sharpe and Lucille since they had come to the Netherlands. Both men had served in the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers where d’Alembord had succeeded Sharpe to the command of the first battalion’s light company. That battalion was now bivouacked in a village to the west of Brussels where d’Alembord had heard no news of any skirmishes on the frontier. Instead his day had been spent indulging the Colonel’s passion for cricket. “I think he plans to kill us all with boredom,” d’Alembord told Lucille as they took the floor.
“Poor Peter.”
“Not at all, I am the most fortunate of men. Except for Sharpe, of course.”
Lucille smiled at the dutiful but pleasing compliment. “Of course. And how is Anne?”
“Very well. She writes to tell me that her father has found a house that will be suitable for us. Not too large, but with adequate stabling and a few acres of grazing.”
“I’m glad for you.”
D’Alembord smiled. “I’m rather glad for me, too.”
“So stay alive to enjoy it, Peter!”
“Don’t even tempt fate to suggest I won’t.” D’Alembord was newly engaged, and filled with a touching happiness at the prospect of his marriage. Lucille rather envied him, wishing that she could marry Sharpe. That admission made her smile to herself. Who would ever have believed that Lucille, Vicomtesse de Seleglise and widow of Colonel Xavier Castineau, would be mother to a half-English bastard?
She turned lithely to the music and saw that the blue-eyed girl in the golden dress was watching her very coldly. Was it the dowdy grey dress that had earned the girl’s scorn? Lucille suddenly felt very shabby and uncomfortable. She turned her back to the girl.
“Good God!” D’Alembord, who was a very good dancer, suddenly faltered. His eyes were fixed on someone or something at the room’s edge and Lucille, turning to see what had caught his astonished attention, saw the golden girl returning d’Alembord’s gaze with what seemed to be pure poison.
“Who is she?” Lucille asked.
D’Alembord had quite given up any attempt to dance. Instead he offered Lucille his arm and walked her off the floor. “Don’t you know?”
Lucille stopped, turned to look at the girl once more then, intuitively, she knew the answer and looked for confirmation into d’Alembord’s worried face. “That’s Richard’s wife?” She could not hide her astonishment.
“God only knows what she’s doing here! And with her damned lover!” D’Alembord steered Lucille firmly away from Jane and Lord John Rossendale. “Richard will kill him!”
Lucille could not resist turning one more time. “She’s very beautiful,” she said sadly, then she lost sight of Jane as the Duke of Wellington’s party moved across the ballroom floor.