“If you wish. Of course.” The Prince carelessly handed over the sealed paper, then sent one of his Dutch aides to enquire about the identity of the girl in the diaphanous gold dress.
The Duke tore the despatch open. Rebecque, in Braine-le-Comte, had news both from the Prussians and from Dornberg in Mons. The French had advanced north from Charleroi, but had turned eastwards to attack Blcher and had halted for the night at a village called Fleurus. General Dornberg reported no activity at all on the roads leading to Mons. His cavalry patrols had ridden ten miles into France and had met no enemy troops.
The Prince, his eyes more bulbous than ever, had seized Webster’s arm. “You see that girl? Do you know her?”
“Lieutenant Webster,” the Duke’s voice was as cold as a sword in winter, “four horses instantly to the Prince of Orange’s carriage. Your Highness will return immediately to your headquarters.”
The Prince blinked in surprise at his Commander-in-Chief, then offered a small laugh. “Surely it can wait till – ,
“Instantly, sir!” The Duke did not raise his voice, but there was something quite terrifying in his tone. “Your corps will concentrate on Nivelles now. Go, sir, go!”
The Prince, aghast, stayed a half-second, then fled. A thousand eyes had watched the brief altercation, and now the whispers began in earnest. Something must have happened; something alarming enough to send the Prince scurrying from the ball.
The Duke and Duchess of Richmond sought an answer, but the Duke of Wellington merely smiled and blithely proposed that the company should proceed to supper. He offered the Duchess his arm and the orchestra, seeing the gesture, stopped their playing to allow the Highland pipers to begin their sword dance.
The pipes wailed and squealed into life, then caught their air to fill the room with a martial sound as the company, two by two and slow as an army’s progress up a country road, went in to supper.
There were quails’ eggs served on scrambled eggs and topped with caviar which the Duchess’s chef obscurely called les trois oeufs de victoire. They were followed by a port-wine jelly and a cold soup.
The Duke of Wellington was happily seated between two attractive young ladies, while Lucille found herself between d’Alembord and a Dutch gunner colonel who complained about the victory eggs, refused the soup, and said the bread was too hard. Lucille had seen the Prince’s arrival and hasty departure, and had resigned herself to Sharpe’s absence. In a way she was glad, for she feared Sharpe’s violence if he discovered Lord John Rossendale at the ball.
Lucille, a Norman, had been raised on stories of the merciless English pirates who lived just across the Channel and who, for centuries, had raided her homeland to kill and burn and plunder. She loved Sharpe, yet she saw in her lover the embodiment of those ghouls who had been used to scare her into childhood obedience. In the last few months, as the soldier had tried to become a farmer, Lucille had tried to educate her Englishman. She had convinced him that sometimes diplomacy was more effective than force, that anger must sometimes be tamed, and that the sword was not the clinching argument of peace. Yet, Lucille knew, he would remember none of those pacifist lessons if he saw Lord John. The big sword would scrape free. Peter d’Alembord, who shared her fears, had promised to restrain Sharpe if he appeared.
Now, it seemed, he would not be coming, for the Prince had fled the ball. No one knew why, though the Dutch gunner Colonel opined that the reason for the Prince’s hasty departure could not have been of great importance, or else the Duke would surely have left with the Prince. The most reasonable assumption was that the French had pushed a cavalry raid across the frontier. “I’m sure we’ll discover the cause by morning,” d’Alembord said, then turned to Lucille to offer her a glass of wine.
But Lucille had gone quite white. She was staring wide-eyed and frightened at the supper room’s open doorway which, like a proscenium arch, framed the Highland dancers and, quite suddenly, now also framed her lover.