by M. C. Beaton
Mrs. Maria Witherspoon nodded her turbaned head vigorously. Mr. Witherspoon’s fortune hailed from a series of Yorkshire mills. The Witherspoons were therefore “in trade,” and had found that their vast wealth would not open one society door to them in London. It was then that Mr. Josiah Witherspoon had hit on the idea of going to Brussels.
By being very free with his money and giving various sumptuous banquets in restaurants, he had soon found himself on hobnobbing terms with a variety of titled names who would have cut him dead in Bond Street.
The Witherspoons were an unprepossessing couple, both being on the plump side and a similarity of disposition having marked each face with a permanent ingratiating leer. They had secured invitations to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball by simply buying two cards of invitation from a pair of impecunious aristocrats.
But Mrs. Witherspoon’s sharp ears had caught a nasty comment earlier that evening. “My dear,” one lady had said to the other, “aren’t the Witherspoons too simply terrible for words? But after all, one need not recognize them in London.”
She saw Lord Hubert and his wife standing up for the quadrille and noticed that they needed one other couple and accordingly urged her husband into the dance.
The eight members of Lord Hubert’s quadrille waited for the opening chords of the music.
“I shall never forget this evening or these dreadful people,” thought Mary, looking round at the other members of the quadrille. “Apart from Hubert, I never want to see any of them again.”
There were the Witherspoons, simpering awfully and calculating how much social use each member of the quadrille could possibly be to them. There was Lucy, her large eyes roving in every direction but that of her husband. Clarissa was staring at Mary with a hard, calculating look and Lord Peregrine was looking as restless and angry as ever.
The band struck up. The couples bowed and curtsied. They crossed and recrossed, weaving out the patterns of the dance, sometimes dancing with their own partner, sometimes with someone else’s.
And the members of Lord Hubert’s quadrille did not know that they could at that moment have been acting out a pattern of their lives to come.
In another room of the Richmond’s rented mansion, the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of Richmond were poring over a map.
“Napoleon has humbugged me, by God!” said Wellington angrily. “He has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.”
“What do you intend doing?”
Wellington stared down at the map. “I have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras, but we shall not stop him there, and if so,” the Duke passed his thumb-nail over the map, “I must fight him here.”
The Duke of Richmond stared down at the little black name on the map indicated by Wellington’s thumbnail.
Waterloo.
Chapter 2
“Why this sudden desire to have me in your bed, my lord?” said Mary wearily.
No reply as her husband unwound his cravat from his neck and shrugged his broad shoulders out of his evening jacket. Hubert had drunk quite a lot of wine that evening. He was tired and he was also excited and elated at the thought of the battle to come.
Mary stood by the window, looking across the shadowed room at his back. She longed to feel his arms around her and at the same time she was alarmed at his air of detachment about the whole thing. He stripped off his shirt and flung it onto a chair where it lay against the dark red plush of the upholstery, gleaming whitely against the darkness of the room.
He turned abruptly and looked at her. He lifted the branch of candles from the mantelpiece and held it high, sending long shadows running and dancing up the walls. Her eyes looked enormous in her white face and she seemed little more than a schoolgirl. He suddenly felt that the correct thing to do would be to deposit a chaste kiss on her forehead and then tuck her into bed. But she was his wife after all and she could really not, in all fairness, expect to remain a virgin for the rest of her life.
He replaced the candelabra on the mantelpiece and walked slowly towards her.
Mary waited, trembling, hanging onto her pride. How dare he flirt with Clarissa one minute and expect her to fall into his arms the next? How dare he shun her for all those long and lonely nights after their marriage? Had he pulled her into his arms as ruthlessly as she expected, then she would have remained still and unresponsive. But instead, he folded his arms gently round her and rocked her against the warmth of his naked chest. “Come, Mary,” he said softly. “There is no need to be afraid.”
He tilted her chin and bent his head and kissed her very gently on the mouth, feeling her soft lips cling and tremble against his own. The great love she had for him could no longer be hidden. She gave a little broken sound, half sigh, half sob, and wound her arms round his neck as he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.
Clear and loud below the window came the imperative call of a bugle, and in the nearby squares the drums began to beat to arms. In the back of his brain, he had a nagging feeling of guilt. He should have waited. It was her first night after all and it should not be a hurried affair like this. He should be able to lie at her side late in the morning instead of hurrying off to the battle. But the trembling passion of her immature body against his own suddenly excited him more than anything he could remember before.
He at last fell completely and soundlessly asleep, lying across her body while Mary, cradling him in her arms, dazed with love and happiness, lay awake for a few minutes longer than her lord.
After an hour, a louder bugle call sounded outside and Hubert woke immediately and sat up. Mary awoke as well and stared up at him, eyes almost blind with love. He looked down at her with a strange, abstracted stare. He felt acutely responsible for her for the first time since their marriage and this new feeling of responsibility irked him immensely. And in the same misguided way of parents who are cruel to be kind, he said harshly, “Dammit, I have overslept!”
Without another look at her, he stalked off to his dressing room, shouting for his valet.
Mary lay, stunned. She felt as if he had slapped her across the face. She could feel the tears pricking at the back of her eyes but she would not let them form. After a few minutes, she got up and wrapped a blanket around herself and crossed to the wash stand in the corner to splash cold water over her face.
She put on a fussy and elaborate pink morning dress, hoping to look her best, but the masses of frills and furbelows only succeeded in making her look younger than ever.
Lord Hubert came into the room, dressed in his scarlet and gold regimentals, looking magnificent, handsome and remote. She stared at him, her eyes wide with hurt, begging for reassurance.
But he avoided her gaze, saying abruptly, “Should anything happen to me, will you look after Hammonds? It’s been in my family for centuries and I would like our son to inherit it…if we have a son.”
She nodded dumbly, twisting one of the silly frills of her dress nervously in her fingers.
He crossed the room with easy, athletic strides and called down into the street below for assurance that his horse had been brought round.
“Very well then, Mary,” he said, turning back and dropping a cool kiss on her cheek. “I must be away. Pray for me.”
“Of course,” said Mary quietly.
He crossed to the door.
“Mary…”
“Yes, Hubert?”
“Oh, nothing. Goodbye.” And with that he was gone.
She crossed to the window and leaned out. A rosy dawn was rising over the jumbled gables of Brussels. The air was warm and still and heavy. A flock of pigeons rose and wheeled up to the brightening sky.
A Scotch regiment swung down the street to the skirl of the pipes, then came a regiment of Hussars in their magnificent uniforms.
Then came her husband.
He was sitting on his dappled horse talking to Major Godwin who rode beside him. He seemed to be trying to cheer the Major up. Major Godwin was still in evening dress and dancing pumps,
his wife having kept him at the ball until the very last minute.
Hubert suddenly looked up and saw Mary at the window. He raised his arm in a brief salute and rode on.
The regimental band was playing, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” a jaunty rousing tune. Mary leaned farther from the window, craning her neck for a last look at her husband, as the remainder of the regiment swung out along the Charleroi road in the rosy glow of the sunrise to join the rest already on the battlefield. She stayed there as all the regiments that had been left in Brussels marched out. She stayed there until the drums and the bugles and the pipes and the marching, marching feet had all filed by and the last fixed bayonet glinted in the sun.
And then she went back into the room to pray.
But Mary was not destined to be allowed to pray in peace. Scarcely had the last military sound disappeared from the streets of Brussels to be replaced by the rumbling of the farm carts arriving for the market than Mrs. Witherspoon was announced.
Mary had not been out in the world enough to recognize a pushing mushroom, or to know what to do about it. Mrs. Witherspoon announced she had come to sit with “the poor love” and comfort her. Mary did not like Mrs. Witherspoon but she had no one else in Brussels to share her fears with, and so suffered that vulgar lady to stay all morning and then to join her for lunch.
Not that Mrs. Witherspoon seemed very prepared to listen. She had so much to say herself! “Faith, Lady Mary,” she gushed. “I feel I have known you this twelvemonth instead of us meeting only the other day. Such a handsome man your husband is and such a rip with the ladies! Ah, now, there’s your pretty eyes filling with tears. I do let my tongue rattle on so. Why, the dear Duke—Wellington, you know—was saying only t’other day, ‘I should have you at the front of the fighting, ma’am. That tongue of yours would put the Frenchies to flight.’”
Despite her misery, Mary had to suppress a smile. It did indeed, for once, sound like something the Duke of Wellington might say.
Mrs. Witherspoon continued to eat great quantities of food, seated comfortably in Mary’s little dining room, her elbows on the table and a chicken wing in her hand. Her large bosom spilled over the square neckline of a purple silk gown. A purple turban ornamented with an ostrich plume covered her sparse hair, and a stream of non-stop name-dropping issued from her pouting, rosebud mouth as her three chins wiggled vigorously in accompaniment.
Then all of a sudden, Mrs. Witherspoon began to talk about Lord Hubert and Mary learned a great deal about her husband that she did not know before.
Like herself, Lord Hubert had been born when his parents were middle-aged and his mother had not survived the birth. The family fortunes had been dwindling for generations and Hammonds, where Hubert had been brought up, had fallen almost into decay.
His father had died while Hubert was at Oxford; and Hubert had taken what little money there was and had bought himself a captaincy in a regiment which was ordered to Portugal the day he joined it.
He had followed Wellington through Portugal and up the long corridors of Spain to France. At the age of thirty, he had found himself a full colonel with a resounding list of battles behind him: Badajoz, Salamanca and Vittorio to name a few. He had seen more death and bloodshed than he had ever dreamed of. Sometimes in his dreams, he could still hear the screech of the wheels of the bullock carts as they hauled his regiment’s provisions across the endless barren sierras. There was the prize money, of course, but every bit of it seemed to be swallowed up in repairs to Hammonds. Wellington forbade looting, and Lord Hubert agreed with this law. But it was not always easy to impose it when the men seemed hell-bent on looting whole towns and sometimes, seeing brother officers made rich by stolen jewels, wished his conscience would allow him to do the same. At last, in desperation, he began to look about him for a rich wife. Mrs. Witherspoon paused for breath and Mary stared at her, her young face almost hard.
“Tell me, Mrs. Witherspoon,” she said in arctic tones, “where did you come by such intimate information about my husband? How could you possible know of his dreams?”
Mrs. Witherspoon bit her lip. She loved gossip and realized she had allowed herself to become carried away. The gossip had mostly come from Lady Clarissa. Even Mrs. Witherspoon, by dint of listening in to everyone else’s conversation, had quickly learned that Clarissa had been Lord Hubert’s mistress and had wondered along with society why Lord Hubert had not married Clarissa, who was reputed to be mistress of a sizeable fortune.
But the bit about hearing the bullock carts in his dreams she had gleaned from overhearing him talk at a party to one of his brother officers, Peter Bennet. That would do.
“Why, my dear, Lord Hubert told Captain Peter Bennet and that young fellow told me. I don’t like to listen to gossip, and that’s a fact, but that there Peter was forever talking to me like I was his mother.”
Mary blinked. Peter Bennet was an extremely elegant and fastidious young man. She could not for a minute imagine him confiding in anyone, let alone Mrs. Witherspoon. But she did, however, dismally feel as if the whole of Brussels knew of her husband’s innermost thoughts and plans while she, his wife, had only been treated to a few common pleasantries.
The day was hot and hazy and Mary reflected that she had never seen anyone perspire with such unembarrassed abandon as Mrs. Witherspoon. Little rivulets ran down from her forehead, across her chins and joined somewhere at the base of the last chin forming a river which plunged down into the chasm formed by her cleavage. Mary was all at once too tired to school her expression. Open distaste was mirrored in her eyes. Mrs. Witherspoon caught the look as she raised her head from a dish of tansy pudding and her brain began to churn. She would lose this little lady if she did not find some way to make Lady Mary obliged to her.
All at once the hot stillness of the day was broken by a muffled boom.
“What’s that!” cried Mary, starting to her feet. “Thunder?”
Again it sounded and suddenly the street below became alive with the sound of running feet and shouting voices.
Mary leaned out of the window. “Qui se passe?” she yelled down to the fleeting figures. One Brussels shopkeeper heard her cry and twisted up his head. “Le feu,” he screamed. “Le feu, madame! La bataille commence!”
As the sounds of the cannonade boomed even clearer, Mary ran down the stairs and out into the street completely forgetting about Mrs. Witherspoon, and joined the hustling frightened crowd as they streamed towards the Namur Gate to look out across the fields in the direction of Quatre Bras.
All afternoon she stood there, listening in dread to that dull boom boom boom which sounded across the heavy air like a death knell. Rumors flew about her. Napoleon had driven a wedge between the British and their allies the Prussians, and he was taking his time to massacre them both. At last, at sunset, the noise of the cannonade died away. Trembling from worry and fatigue, Mary returned to her lodgings.
But she was still not to have her home to herself. Lucy Godwin was waiting for her, her pretty face drawn and pale.
Mary felt a rush of pity for her. “Do not look so, Mrs. Godwin,” she urged. “Our men will come home victorious, never fear.”
“I’m not worried about Freddie,” said Lucy, hitching a callous shoulder. “He’s used to battles. The thing is—how are we going to escape? Every horse and carriage has been taken and the few seats that are left are going for fabulous sums.”
Mary stared at her amazed. “But surely you would not contemplate leaving before your husband gets back? How can you dream of leaving, not knowing what has happened to him?”
“I think you’re very cold and unfeeling,” pouted Lucy. “You promised Freddie you’d look after me, yes you did, for he told me so. And looking after me doesn’t mean leaving me here to be raped by a lot of Frenchies.”
“But what can I do? We have no carriage. I have my own horse and you are welcome to that.”
“I couldn’t ride all the way out of here on my own,” protested Lucy. “It must
be a carriage or nothing. Mr. Witherspoon, ’tis said, bought a great deal of horses and at least two carriages apart from his own, and he is selling seats in them at fabulous prices which I cannot afford. You are very rich…”
“My husband has control of any money we have,” said Mary stiffly. “I do not inherit any wealth until my parents die.”
“But the Witherspoons are friends of yours…”
“I did not set eyes on them until last night.”
“Oh, you’re horrid,” said Lucy, beginning to sob. “And so I shall tell Freddie.”
“I shall, however, go and see Mr. Witherspoon,” went on Mary quietly, “and see what I can do.”
Lucy’s tears dried like magic.
The two women had to walk on foot since neither had a carriage and all vehicles of any description had been bought in order to escape the doomed city. The British did not quite realize that the people of Brussels were mostly pro-French and delighted in spreading rumors of Napoleon’s successes. The roads from the city were jammed with the carriages of society who had believed up to the very last minute of the ball that Wellington would succeed as he had always done, but no longer had any faith in that great leader.
The Witherspoons had a suite of rooms in the Hotel du Parc. They were delighted to see the ladies, especially Lady Mary. Mrs. Witherspoon and her husband had been plotting all day for some way in which to be of service to young Lady Mary so that they should have subsequent claims on her society in London. As soon as Mary asked for a carriage seat on Lucy’s behalf, they brightened considerably. Mr. Witherspoon drooped an eyelid at his wife, which was his signal to tell her to leave things to him. He led Mary into an adjoining room and studied her thoughtfully although the ingratiating leer never left his face. The girl looked exhausted—and vulnerable.
“I shall put it to you plain, my lady,” began Mr. Witherspoon at last. “I have a seat left in a carriage which is to leave Brussels in an hour’s time. Now I will gladly let Mrs. Godwin have it and at no cost whatsoever.”
