Read How to Deceive a Duke Online
Authors: Lecia Cornwall
How to Deceive a Duke (27 page)
“W
hat a crush!” Delphine said as they took the Fairlies’ coach to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. “It is becoming a dreadful inconvenience to have all those soldiers in the streets. It is impossible to go anywhere at all! We’re sure to be late.”
Meg looked out the window. White faces passed the coach, torchlight gleaming on gunmetal and bayonets.
“William, this is hardly the time for a parade,” Eleanor said to her husband. “What’s happening?”
“There’s nothing to worry about, my dear. The duchess herself asked Lord Wellington if it would be safe to hold her ball tonight. He assured her it would indeed, and if he believes—”
“Will.” Eleanor insisted on the truth. “These men are not out for an evening stroll. They are on the march. I have been an army wife for eight years.”
The colonel glanced at Meg and Delphine and sighed. “We had word this afternoon. Napoleon has crossed into Belgium.”
Delphine gave a shriek and put a gloved hand to her mouth. “Is he coming here, tonight?”
“Calm yourself. We are merely on alert. There’s no danger. It may be days yet before anything happens. Would Wellington be dancing the night away otherwise?” Fairlie soothed.
Meg searched the crowds. She watched as a soldier fell out of line to kiss his sweetheart as the sergeants bawled.
Be safe
, she wished him, and hoped wherever Nicholas was, he was safe too.
The Duke and Duchess of Richmond had rented the grand home of a coach maker as their Brussels residence. The ball was being held in the workshop, a fine open space for a party, which the duchess had decorated with trellises, flowers, and thousands of candles.
“Listen,” Meg said as they climbed the steps. The sound of marching feet kept macabre time with the gay dance music that spilled out the open windows. She shivered.
The duchess’s daughter met them at the door. “Georgiana, the streets are filled with soldiers! Aren’t you afraid?” Delphine asked.
Georgiana laughed. “You look as if Napoleon himself is going to march up to these doors and invade the party. Lord Wellington has assured Mother a dozen times there’s nothing to fear. Have you ever seen anything so grand as this? So many handsome gentlemen—I plan to dance with all of them.”
The gay atmosphere inside stood out in stark contrast to the scene outside. If anyone was fearful, it didn’t show. The candlelight here glinted off nothing more threatening than gold braid and diamond necklaces. Meg supposed she should feel relieved, but her chest knotted.
“Do you think Temberlay is here?” Eleanor asked.
Meg shook her head. She’d spoken to soldiers who had known him in Spain, heard more of the stories that Stephen Ives had begun telling her. She knew now that the soldier, the man of honor, was the real Nicholas. The rake, the rogue—those were the false images. If battle was imminent, he was near the fray.
Delphine pressed a glass of champagne into her hand, but the sparkling wine tasted bitter. Georgiana dragged Delphine off to meet a group of grinning officers.
“Would you excuse me, my dear?” Fairlie said, and took his leave. Meg stood with Eleanor and watched him cross the room.
“I suppose that leaves us to join the matrons. Shall we do so, or would you like to dance?”
“I don’t think I could,” Meg replied.
Eleanor squeezed her arm. “I’m a soldier’s wife too. Fairlie may be a colonel, but he sees limited action now he’s inherited his title. Nicholas is a duke. They won’t put him in harm’s way. He will stand well back if there’s to be a battle, with Wellington, out of danger.”
“He isn’t that kind of soldier,” Meg murmured. “He wouldn’t want that.”
Eleanor pointed. “Look, there’s Lord Wellington. Would he be here tonight at all if there was any danger? Come, I’ll introduce you.”
The commander swept a bow as the ladies greeted him, his dark eyes assessing Meg. “Is it true that Napoleon has crossed the border, Your Grace?” Eleanor asked.
Wellington raised his brows. “Yes, Lady Fairlie, the rumors are true. We are off tomorrow.”
Eleanor gasped. “As soon as that?”
Meg’s limbs turned to water. She read the truth in Wellington’s eyes. There was little time left for gaiety and parties. War was upon them yet again.
“Your Grace, might I ask after my husband? Have you any word of him?” she asked breathlessly.
His eyes traveled over her with male appreciation. He held out an arm. “Dance with me, Your Grace.” It was an order, and she laid her hand on his sleeve and let him lead her out.
“Do you have any idea what your husband does, madam?”
She studied the braid on the front of his uniform for a moment, the medals and honors on the blue silk sash, and swept her gaze back up to meet his. “I believe I do, Your Grace.”
“Then you should know that there are gentlemen here tonight who perform similar services for the enemy.”
Meg looked around, but the duke squeezed her hand. “Smile, if you would, Your Grace, as if I’ve said something amusing. This is a party. It wouldn’t do to give the impression that we are in the least worried about the outcome of the battle.”
A young officer swept up to him and bowed. “Your Grace, I must interrupt. A courier just arrived.”
Wellington bowed over her hand. “Please excuse me—duty calls, Your Grace.” He paused. “Wherever Temberlay might be, I pray that he is safe, both for your sake and for the sake of my army.”
He asked his aide to escort her back to Eleanor, and she watched as he disappeared into a small withdrawing room and shut the door.
An officer emerged moments later, and waved the orchestra to silence.
“Gentlemen, finish your dances, and return to your regiments as quickly as possible.”
Eleanor clutched her arm. “It’s begun!”
Fairlie pressed through the crowds toward them. “It’s time to go. I will see you to the coach, and go and join my men.”
Delphine leaned out the window of the coach and waved the regiments off with her handkerchief as they made slow progress through the streets.
As they passed Claire Howard’s rooms, Meg turned to Eleanor. “I’m going to see Claire. She might not know what’s happening. She’ll be worried about Daniel.”
Eleanor laid a hand on her arm. “I cannot let you do that! If things go badly, Fairlie has ordered us to go north at once. By morning, possibly.”
Delphine frowned. “Are we in danger?”
Eleanor took her sister’s hand. “This isn’t the time to go missish! We must be brave. I’m simply to keep the horses in harness, be prepared.”
Meg opened the door. “Then it is all the more important that I speak to Claire.”
Eleanor pursed her lips a moment. “Yes, fine, but hurry. Napoleon is advancing far faster than they imagined he would. I can’t send the coach back for you.”
“We’ll find a way,” Meg said, and got out of the vehicle.
Whatever happened, she was not leaving without Nicholas.
C
laire was pacing the floor when Meg arrived. She burst into anxious tears when Meg told her the news.
They sat in the window throughout the night and watched the soldiers march toward the city’s south gate. The Royal Dragoons, Nicholas’s regiment, rode past, each man tall in the saddle, ready to fight, but he and Hannibal were not among them.
At dawn, low rumbling peals of thunder rolled across the Belgian farmland. “We’re in for a storm,” Claire said.
“I think that’s artillery. Colonel Fairlie said we’d be able to hear it,” Meg replied with tears in her eyes. “The battle has begun.”
T
he Belgian army came through the city in a disordered retreat as the sun rose, causing panic. Behind them, carts filled with wounded men began pouring into town.
“I can’t sit here and wait,” Meg said, worry choking her. “I’m going to see if—” She couldn’t say it.
“I’m going with you,” Claire said, and picked up her cloak.
The two women went to the Richmonds’ lodgings, where the carts were unloading their grim passengers in the same courtyard where coaches had let down ladies in silk and lace only hours before. The carefully swept cobbles were slick with blood.
Claire began to search among the wounded for Daniel. Meg felt her stomach shrivel at the sheer number of men here. The sound of their cries rose like a dirge.
Georgiana, still in her evening gown, stood staring down at one mangled body. The young man was still wearing his dancing shoes and his dress uniform.
Meg took her hand. “I danced with him last night, Meg! He can’t be dead.” Meg bent and placed two fingers on his neck, seeking a pulse, but his heart was still, his flesh cold. She closed his eyes and looked around for something to cover him. Georgiana burst into tears. “Go and find your mother, Georgiana. Ask her for some blankets, something we can use as bandages,” Meg told her.
Someone caught at her skirts. “Water, miss, if you please.” Meg crossed to the pump and filled the bucket. She held the dipper to the man’s lips.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The French are pushing us back,” he grunted. “We’re trying to stop them at a place called Quatre Bras, south of here. The line won’t hold. I was hit in the first volley. Am I going to die?” He clutched at her hand, leaving bloody streaks on her skin. Meg resisted the urge to pull away.
She looked for a surgeon, anyone who could help. The courtyard was full now, and still men were pouring through the gates, some walking, some being carried. They slumped against the walls, exhausted. She looked back at the soldier still clinging to her hand and saw Nicholas’s face in his homely features.
“No,” she said firmly. “You are not going to die.”
M
eg carried water until her arms ached. She asked every man who could speak for news of Temberlay, but no one had seen him. She offered what comfort she could, hoping some other woman would do the same for Nicholas if he came to her.
“There’s more wounded in the park,” a soldier told her. “Women are looking for their men there.”
She found Claire, working with the wounded as she was, and they hurried through the chaos of the streets. The park was crowded with bodies, and women tiptoed from man to man, looking into each battered face.
Claire cried out, and bent over a wounded man. “Daniel!” His arm came around her, the fingers filthy as they caressed her hair. Meg felt her heart swell, then break with disappointment.
“Are you well?” he asked, caressing Claire’s face. “Are you even real?”
Claire began to touch his limbs with shaking hands, searching for his wounds. “Temberlay bandaged me as best he could, got me back to our lines.”
Meg dropped to her knees. “You’ve seen Nicholas?”
He focused on her slowly. “Two days ago, Your Grace.”
“Was he—unhurt?” she asked.
Daniel smiled tiredly. “He saved my life,” he said.
“That man next,” a surgeon directed, pushing her aside. “Carry him over to the taproom.”
“Please, I have rooms, just there.” Claire pointed. “I can care for him.”
The surgeon wiped his hands on his apron. “There are many men needing care, many that have a better chance than he does.”
“He’s her husband,” Meg said fiercely. “Surely he stands the best chance of all in her care.”
The surgeon stared at her for a moment, then nodded to the stretcher bearers to carry Daniel where Claire directed. He caught Meg’s arm as she tried to follow. “I need help here. Can you stitch wounds?”
Meg looked around her. It appeared the whole city was filled with blood and misery. She straightened her shoulders. She had managed to cope with death before.
She turned to the surgeon. “Show me what to do.”
I
t was dark when Nicholas rode toward Wellington’s lines at a full gallop. The fields were high with ripening grain, and he stayed low, hoping it would shield him.
Too late, he stumbled on a line of French infantry squatting in the dark, probably lost. With a shout of surprise, they opened fire as Nicholas turned Hannibal to avoid them.
A shot whistled past his ear, and the night lit up in a blinding white flash. The pain was instant, and searing. He felt the ground slam his teeth together as he fell, thought of Meg and how she’d looked the first time he’d lifted her veil and seen her, blushing, beautiful. How could he have imagined he didn’t want her? He was a fool.
And then he felt nothing at all.
“Y
ou—the lady there. Come here,” the surgeon commanded, and the russet-haired beauty looked up. She was still wearing a cream satin ball gown trimmed with gold lace, and if it weren’t for the bloodstains, she’d look like an angel. She didn’t bother to pick up her skirts to keep them from brushing the wounded as she moved toward him between the tables of the tavern. She smiled at them, touched their hands, offered comfort. An angel indeed. She’d been here nearly as long as he had. He noted the fragile slimness of her figure, and the exhaustion in her face, at odds with the determination in her eyes. He felt a surge of admiration. Three other ladies had come to help some hours ago, and had departed again almost at once, two of them bearing away the third after she fainted at the sight of a man’s naked thigh.
This woman was different, stronger.
“You’ve proven you can sew. Can you dig a ball out of a man’s flesh?” he asked bluntly. She paled slightly but raised her chin.
“If I’m shown how.”
“There’s no shortage of men to practice on.” He led the way between the tables to a man with a ball buried in his shoulder. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Meg,” she replied simply, her eyes already on the patient.
“Just Meg?” She was pretty and he smiled at her, but her brows rose aristocratically in mild rebuke that he should dare to flirt here, now.
“You’d best be careful, Major. This is Devil Hartley’s missus,” the patient said, eyeing the tools the surgeon laid out.
She looked at the soldier in surprise. “You know my husband?”
“I was camped in Colonel Lord Fairlie’s orchard, ma’am. You spoke to me when you came looking for word of him. I’m Sergeant Bird. Have you found him yet?”
The surgeon dug into the wound with his tweezers, and the sergeant grimaced. She caught his hand and squeezed, giving him her fragile strength.
“And just who is Devil Hartley?” the major asked, half jealous as he probed for the ball. The sergeant swayed, and she propped him up with her delicate frame.
“Devil Hartley . . . was a captain in Spain with the Royal Dragoons . . . a hero,” the sergeant panted. “Now he’s a major, and a duke. Temberlay, isn’t that right, my lady?”
The surgeon found the ball and plucked it free, and dropped it to the floor. The sergeant fainted, and she pressed a cloth to the wound to stop the blood, so she could bandage it.
“You’re a duchess?”
She ignored him, kept at her task.
“Yet you’re a natural at this,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I could never get used to this. Not ever.”
“But you do, you see,” he said. “When you’ve seen enough of it, it doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t make you sick, it doesn’t move you to tears. You grow too tired to care.” He cleaned the wound with a splash of rum and the patient woke with a hiss, making her jump.
“It will always matter. Someone loves each and every one of these men,” she said fiercely. She began to bandage the sergeant’s arm with deft precision.
“If it helps, I haven’t seen many cavalry officers come in yet. Either they’ve been lucky or they’re beyond need of my help,” he said. He met the pain in her eyes and instantly regretted his glib choice of words.
“Come, Your Grace. Take a shot of the sergeant’s rum and buck up.” He looked around. The room was filled with the wounded and dying, and most said the fighting was still underway at a village called Waterloo, the last bastion between Napoleon and Brussels. The air reeked of blood and death, and the distant roar of the guns went on, and the carts continued rumbling into Brussels with their grim cargo.
Orderlies helped the sergeant off the table, and another man took his place. “Your next patient, Your Grace.” He indicated the bullet wound in the thigh as he tore the man’s breeches open. She took the tweezers and poured the proffered rum on them like a surgeon.
“Call me Meg,” she insisted again, and set to dig the ball out.
I
t was light again when Nicholas woke to the boom of distant artillery, with the rain chilling him and Hannibal nibbling at his hair. He had a blinding headache. He touched his scalp gingerly, felt the gash where the bullet had grazed him.
“How bad is it, old boy?” he asked the horse. “It could have been worse, I suppose, if it had been an inch to the left. I suppose I have you to thank for getting me out of harm’s way.”
The horse snorted, and Nicholas rose, leaned on him. Hannibal was wet, caked with mud, and Nicholas wondered if he looked as bedraggled as his horse.
He looked around for a few moments, getting his bearings, fighting the dizziness. The land reminded him of Wycliffe. He was thankful that Meg was safe in England. He’d been away from her for over a month, and the yearning was still as fresh and painful as the cut on his head.
Another blast of gunfire made Hannibal prick his ears. The crackle of musket fire made the horse’s nostrils flare.
Nicholas opened his saddlebag, pulled out a flask of whisky and took a sip, then poured some on the cut, cursing the sting.
The ground shook as the battle intensified. Nicholas took his coat off and put on his uniform, bright red against the gray mist.
He mounted Hannibal gingerly, and put his heels to him.
Sending up a prayer that he wasn’t behind enemy lines, he followed the sounds of the guns and headed north.
The Royal Dragoons were making ready to charge when he reached the battlefield. Everything was in chaos, the battle joined on a hundred fronts. The familiar fog of smoke and powder filled the air, and the wind carried the stench of blood and death.
He shut his eyes for a moment, felt the familiar buzz fill him, eliminating fear and pain. As the Dragoons reached them, he spurred Hannibal to a gallop and joined their ranks, racing across the wet ground, the hoofbeats pounding through his legs, his chest, becoming his heartbeat.
He opened his throat and screamed as he rode down upon the French guns, seeing fire burst from the black muzzles. In front of him, beside him, men fell, horses were cut down and shrieked in pain. It was a lost cause. Too many were dying, yet they were almost there. Shots whistled past him, and he leaned low over Hannibal’s neck.
The bastion was ahead.
O
n the hilltop on the British side that served as command post, Lord Wellington watched the fatal cavalry charge through his telescope. “Good God, they’ve gone too far,” he muttered. “They’re dying.”
He shifted the scope. “Is that Temberlay?” he asked in surprise.
His aide looked. “Yes sir, I believe it is.”
The duke squinted across the field again. “So it is. I wonder if he knows his wife is looking for him?”