“No one expected him to march so quickly,” Brasseur replied.
Joseph looked up at Rose. His chest was heaving with frustration, but he seemed to grow calmer as he watched her in the candlelight.
What was he thinking? Did he mean to tell her he would join the fight?
Joseph cleared his throat, then turned his attention back to Mr. Brasseur. “As you know, my wife is from Petersbourg,” he said. “Do you have any news of the Petersbourg army? Were there many casualties? In particular”—he paused—“we would like to know about the cavalry.”
Rose stared at him in shock. Why was he asking the question? Did he know she had been with Leopold in a back room at the ball? Had he seen through her heart that day? Was he aware that her thoughts were with Leopold almost constantly?
“As far as I know,” Brasseur replied, “the Petersbourg cavalry did very well. They were instrumental in Wellington’s success and lost only a few men.”
Rose exhaled with relief and had to bite back the urge to ask specifically about Leopold. Was he one of the few unlucky ones? Then, to her surprise, Joseph fielded the question for her.
“I don’t suppose you heard anything about a General Hunt? He is an old friend of my wife’s family. We would like to know if he is safe.”
Mr. Brasseur thought about it a moment, then shrugged. “I am sorry. I do not know, but I didn’t hear about the death of any generals. The odds are good he is alive and well.”
Rose thanked Mr. Brasseur, then excused herself and left the room. She moved into the dimly lit corridor, rested her head against the wall, and shut her eyes.
Thank God.
She swung around quickly, however, when Joseph appeared in the doorway. “You can relax now,” he said in a cool voice. “He’s probably fine.”
She took a step forward to try to explain, to reassure her husband that he was most important to her, but he held up a hand to silence her.
“You don’t need to say anything, Rose. Please. Let us not speak of it.”
All she could do was nod in agreement as he left her alone in the corridor.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Hundreds of wounded soldiers were brought into Brussels the following day. Rose and Lady Rothwell did what they could to assist the doctors and care for all the men who had fought so bravely at Quatre Bras.
By late afternoon she was exhausted and returned to the hotel to change her blood-soaked apron and wash the dirt and grime from her skin.
Joseph had still not returned. Earlier in the day, he had ridden to the Duke of Wellington’s headquarters at Waterloo to learn what he could about the situation. He returned to town shortly before seven P.M. in the midst of a terrible downpour of rain that had begun shortly after he left.
He was drenched to the bone when he entered the room. Rose dashed into his arms.
“I am so glad you are back. I was worried about you, afraid you wouldn’t return. You must be famished. I will send for a supper tray and arrange a hot bath.”
He held her tightly for a moment, tighter than he’d ever held her before, then stepped away and shrugged stiffly out of his sopping-wet coat. “It wasn’t easy getting back,” he said. “The road is muddy and littered with abandoned wagons and all sorts of things, as if people simply dropped their belongings in a desperate flee to safety.”
“I will be glad when this is over,” she said. “I hope the coalition is successful and we can end this as swiftly as it has begun.” She started toward the door. “I will order that supper tray now.”
An hour later they were seated in front of a hot fire sipping wine, thankful for the meal they had just enjoyed while the troops were camped outdoors in the rain.
For a long while they sat in silence until Joseph leaned forward and laid his hand on hers.
“I’ve made a decision,” he said, “and there is no point keeping it from you any longer.”
Her heart sank. “What is it?” But she had a feeling she already knew.
Joseph let out a sigh. “I only came back tonight to spend a few hours with you before I return to the duke’s headquarters at dawn.”
“Why? Do you intend to join the fight?”
His expression was grave. “Yes. You know me, Rose. I am a soldier at heart, and I cannot bear to stand by and watch others do what I should also be doing.”
She, too, leaned forward and gripped both his hands in hers. “No. You do not need to do that. You’ve served your people well on the battlefield in the past. Now you serve them in other ways. You are an important ambassador for Austria. There is much we can do together in that area. I will not let you go.”
He gazed at her raptly while the fire illuminated the highlights in his golden hair and caused his eyes to glimmer with regret. Pulling his hands from hers, he leaned back, then stood and walked to the rain-drenched window where the panes were rattling noisily in the wind.
“My mind is made up,” he said. “I will fight bravely, and I will return to you when it is over.”
Anger coursed through her. She, too, stood up. “This best not have anything to do with General Hunt. I hope you do not feel you must compete with him, because that is completely unnecessary. You are my husband, and I love you. What existed between Leopold and me is dead and buried.”
The words ached in her throat, but she managed to get them out.
Joseph finished his wine and set the empty glass down on a table. “There is no need to explain,” he said. “I understand how it is, and I am not joining the fight to compete with him. I join it because I feel a duty to fight for what is right. We cannot allow Bonaparte to recapture all of Europe again to satisfy his greed and lust for power. There is strength in numbers. I must offer my services to the coalition.”
Rose strode toward him. “Please do not go. I will go mad if I must listen to those guns again tomorrow and think of you in their line of fire.”
He cupped her chin in his hand. “At least you will be thinking of me, and not another.”
Her heart broke at the sound of those words, and she fought against a sudden violent flood of tears. “I am yours, Joseph,” she assured him. “You must believe that.”
He pulled her into his embrace, and she knew in that moment there was nothing she could say or do to change his mind. He was a soldier, and he would go to battle, with or without her blessing.
The following morning, when the first light of dawn broke through the opening in the velvet curtains, Joseph was gone. He had galloped back to the village of Waterloo, where two massive opposing armies were preparing to wage a new war.
Chapter Twenty-eight
On the crest of the hill at the battlefield of Mont-Saint-Jean—a few short miles away from the village of Waterloo—Leopold peered through his spyglass at the French troops on the opposite ridge. The enemy was seventy-two thousand troops strong against the sixty-eight thousand of the British, Petersbourg, and Dutch-Belgian allied forces.
It was just past eleven o’clock in the morning. The sun was high in the sky and the men were quickly growing restless, for they had risen at dawn and taken position, but Bonaparte had yet to fire a single shot.
A young lieutenant of the 22nd Petersbourg Brigade came trotting toward Leopold. “What’s he waiting for, General? It’s not like Boney to delay.”
Leopold lowered the spyglass. “I suspect he’s waiting for the ground to dry. All that muck makes it near impossible to move the cannons, and the cannonballs embed in the ground upon impact instead of bouncing and ricocheting through the ranks.”
“The mud is in our favor then,” the lieutenant replied, “for they outnumber us with their guns. Perhaps we should get things started ourselves. I’d be happy to light a charge and shake those Frenchies up a little.”
Leopold chuckled at the lieutenant’s impatience. “I am sure you would, Lieutenant, but Wellington is quite content to wait. Anything to delay the start of the battle is also in our favor, for it will give the Prussians more time to reach us, and by God, we
need them.”
Goliath, Leopold’s dependable chestnut charger, tossed his head and nickered. Leo leaned forward to stroke his shiny muscled neck. “It won’t be long now, boy. You’ll be doing your duty soon enough.”
The young lieutenant raised his hand in salute and wheeled his horse around to return to his own regiment, which was sheltered from the enemy fire on the downward slope beyond the crest of the hill.
Just then, another rider approached from the opposite direction. He wore a black coat and fawn breeches, which was not the uniform of any of the participating armies. Leopold watched him for a moment. As he drew closer, Leo recognized the light blond hair and freckled complexion. It was Archduke Joseph.
A knot twisted in Leo’s gut, for here was the man who had taken Rose away from him, the man he had dreamed of strangling into a corpse on more than one occasion.
He had been led to believe that Rose’s husband would not be fighting today. It was Leo’s understanding that the archduke was in Brussels to perform a diplomatic function only. What the blazes was he doing here on the battlefield?
A brand-new anger rose up inside him, for he had an army to lead and an enemy to defeat. He could not afford to become distracted by the heat of his jealousy and the appalling, devastating failure of his ill-fated personal life. He must be confident when he called out his orders. He must be focused.
The archduke trotted up alongside him and reined in his mount—a handsome white trooper with a shiny black mane.
“Good morning, General,” the archduke said, fingering the brim of his black hat.
Leo clenched both fists tight around the leather reins to keep from leaping off his horse, dragging Joseph from the saddle, and swinging a punch that would start something similar to a drunken taproom brawl.
“Good morning, Your Royal Highness,” he replied, curious as to why Joseph was here at all. The Austrians had not brought an army to Belgium. They had marched south to protect the Rhine.
Joseph glanced to the left to inspect the size and placement of Leopold’s regiments. “Your men look well,” he said. “It wasn’t the best of nights, was it?”
Torrential rains had pounded the countryside without mercy for hours upon hours, while most of the troops had slept out in the open.
“No, but at least we’ve been blessed with good weather this morning.”
“Indeed.”
Leopold regarded the archduke closely in the late-morning sunshine. He took in the fair color of his hair, his strong jawline, and the freckles on his cheeks. He was tall and muscular and carried himself with pride. A handsome man by any standards, which made Leopold’s gut twist sharply with rancor. He was sickened by the sourness of it.
This man had claimed Rose as his own. Her heart belonged to him now. He had slipped a ring on her finger a few short months ago and taken her innocence on their wedding night.
God. Oh God …
Leo’s stomach turned over at the thought of it and the agony was almost debilitating. He couldn’t bear it. Why was Joseph here? To torture him with a reminder of all that he had loved and lost?
Leo experienced a sudden, shameful compulsion to break away and gallop into the valley below and challenge those bloody French gunners to bring on their worst. He could give them a fast-moving target to whet their appetites. That would get the battle started, wouldn’t it?
He took a deep breath, however, and fought to focus on the men in his care, and the necessity of defeating the true enemy here today, which was Napoleon, not the rival beside him.
The archduke gazed at him for a long moment, probably feeling the same sort of bitter loathing that Leopold had just been wrestling with—for Leopold was Rose’s first love. No matter that her affection was now extinguished, he would always be that.
“She was worried about you,” Joseph said, “when we could hear the guns at Quatre Bras. I thought you should know.”
Leopold frowned in confusion. It was not what he had expected to hear. First off, he was surprised that Rose even cared. But what had she said about it? Did she actually confess such a thing to her husband?
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
Joseph glanced back at the troops who were waiting eagerly, some apprehensively, for the bugle call. “I’ve fought battles before,” he said. “I know what it’s like to face death. I just thought you would want to know that.”
Leopold swallowed uneasily. The bitterness he had felt a moment ago diminished somewhat as he contemplated the fact that he was indeed grateful to know that Rose did not wish him dead, that a part of her still cared for him. Undeserving as he was to receive such a gift.
Another part of him, however, cursed this man for such a selfless act. It was not Joseph’s duty to deliver such a message.
Unless …
“Did she send you here to tell me this?”
Could it be true? His hopes soared.
Joseph shook his head, however, and looked down at the ground. “No, she didn’t want me to come at all. She tried quite heroically to stop me.”
“Then why did you come?” Leopold asked bitterly, for if he was ever blessed with Rose’s love and devotion … if she ever pleaded with him to stay with her, he would never leave her side again.
“I am a trained officer of the Austrian army,” Joseph explained. “I fought at Leipzig. I couldn’t simply stand back and watch thousands of men sacrifice their lives in the name of duty and honor while I did nothing. I had to join the fight. My conscience demanded it.”
Leopold regarded him steadily in the blinding sunlight.
While part of him hated Joseph for behaving so honorably—for he had spent the past few months taking a rather perverse pleasure in visions of his cowardice and weakness—another part of Leo was baffled by his selflessness. Not only did Joseph wish to join the fight, he had come here to tell Leopold that Rose still cared for him.
Leo had never seen anything like this before, and he felt a sudden pang of shame for his own selfish desires and violent anger. It was followed quickly by a semblance of reassurance in knowing that Rose would be cared for by a man such as this.
He always knew nothing mattered more to him than Rose’s happiness. If he had to, he would lay down his life for her.
He suspected this man would do the same.
Suddenly a shot was fired from the enemy lines. Leopold shared a look with the archduke. Together they galloped farther up the rise. They each withdrew and extended their spyglasses.
Leo saw smoke curling upward from the barrel of one of the French cannons.
“Do you see that?” Joseph asked.
Leo snapped his spyglass shut and slipped it into his pocket. “I do. It appears the French are finally ready to pick a fight.”
They glanced at each other for an intense moment of realization before Joseph wheeled his horse around. “I must return to the 25th. Good luck to you, General!”
“Good luck to you as well, Your Highness.”
With an odd sense of bewilderment, Leo watched Joseph gallop off, then returned to his own troops to await Wellington’s orders.
* * *
After the first shot was fired at approximately 11:30 A.M., the battle began like a series of ocean waves, one after another, each side advancing forward to foam up onto the beach, then retreat back to its position on the plains.
It began with the French forces storming the Hougoumont, a château in the valley between the two opposing armies. It required ten thousand French troops to overtake the twenty-five hundred British defenders that occupied it—but overtake them, they did.
Later in the afternoon Bonaparte laid siege to a second farm in the valley—La Haye Sainte—and captured that as well, causing the situation to look increasingly bleak for Wellington’s center.
All day long, Wellington waited for the arrival of the Prussian army, for the battle would be hard won without them, but they remained just out of reach, slowly making their way back from their initial retreat from the
lost battle at Ligny.
Again the French advanced across the field, but the British and Petersbourg cavalries, along with the brave Scots Greys, drove them back. The Scots Greys were fearless and passionate in their charge and attacked the French guns, putting an end to the crisis in the British center.
Yet Bonaparte pressed on. The French cuirassiers—a terrifying spectacle of mounted troops with steel helmets and breastplates that reflected the glare of the sun—advanced upon the allied forces, but did so without the support of infantry or cannon and failed to break the well-prepared British squares, which held off the charge of the horses with unbreakable lines of infantry with bayonets at the ready.
At last the Prussians arrived late in the day and captured the village of Plancenoit on the French right flank, just as Wellington’s center was beginning to falter.
Recognizing an immediate opportunity for victory, Bonaparte sent his most prized and experienced Imperial Guard forward to break Wellington’s back once and for all, but a British brigade of guns rose up on the crest of the hill and fired upon them. Fifteen hundred muskets faced only two hundred French guns, and sent them packing in a staggering array of confusion and broken morale.
With the long-awaited support of the Prussian army, Wellington called out, “No cheering, my lads, but forward and complete your victory!”
Leopold heard the command, drew his sword from its scabbard, and called his brave Petersbourg cavalry to action.
“This is it, men! The final charge! Onward in the name of King Randolph!”
His shout echoed through the ranks as every man spurred his horse into a thundering gallop down the slope toward glory, and to conquer and crush Napoleon’s famous French Imperial Guard.
The massive charge caused the ground to vibrate beneath the force of thousands of pounding hooves driving forward at an incredible speed.
The allies reached the enemy and fought with raging fury. It was a mad frenzy of violence, which soon became an uncompromising pursuit as the remaining French lines broke and scattered in retreat.
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