Outside, she stood looking around, trying to decide where to go. The sounds of battle were loud and terrifying, the clash of steel, the boom of the cannon, the sharp volley of muskets. Men were running backward and forward, and wounded were beginning to trickle in. Judith ran out of the yard and behind the group of farmhouses to a small hill. When she reached the top, she gazed in fascinated horror at the scene spread out before her. It was a field, bounded by hedgerows. Swaying backward and forward over those few acres were two massed armies, banners waving in the breeze, trumpets blaring. Wellington's infantry charged the squares of French soldiers. Cavalry rode over men and guns, lance and sword hacking and thrusting. Lines of infantry dropped to their knees, muskets aimed, there was a crashing boom, and the line of advancing French was decimated. From the distance of her observation post, the scene looked like some kind of anarchical play, wrested from the twisted imagination of a demented playwright. What must it feel like to be in the middle of that hand-to-hand melee, men facing men with but one intention-to kill? Bodies carpeted the field, men and horses falling on all sides, and it was impossible to believe there was any direction, any coherent strategy to the killing on either side. And yet there had to be. Marcus was somewhere in that murderous scrimmage, presumably making some kind of sense of it.
She went back to the yard to work with the wounded but in the late afternoon climbed the hill again. The Prussian advance on Napoleon's flank was beginning to have its effect now, although Judith didn't know that. But she could tell that the French seemed to be falling back, or at least that there seemed to be fewer of them. Peering into the melee, she distinguished a massive cannonade centered on a small rise, behind which a brigade of British Foot Guards sheltered. It seemed to Judith that the cannonade must split the earth with its violence. And then, abruptly, the firing ceased. There was an unearthly moment of silence. Then the smoke of the guns wafted away and she stared, transfixed, at the column of French Grenadiers, Napoleon's Imperial Guard, advancing toward the rise. A great cry of "Vive I'Empereur" seemed to reach the heavens as the column moved forward in deadly formation.
It was six o'clock in the evening.
Suddenly, from behind the little hill, the brigade of Foot Guards who had been sheltering from the cannonade rose seemingly out of the ground and fired round after round into the Imperial Guard. The effect was as if the fire itself was a battering ram, bodily forcing the front line of the French column backward. They began to fall like ninepins at a terrifying rate. The divisions at the rear began to fire over their comrades' head, the formation wavering as they milled in confusion. With an almost primeval scream that lifted the tiny hairs on her skin, the brigade of Foot Guards sprang forward, swords in hand. As Judith watched, the unthinkable happened. Napoleon's Imperial Guard, his last hope, his tool for certain victory, the veterans of ten years of war and innumerable triumphs, broke rank, turned, and ran, pursued by the bellowing brigade.
Slowly Judith turned and went back down the hill, unable to believe what she'd seen. But it seemed it was over. Wellington and Bliicher had won the Battle of Waterloo. The atmosphere in the stableyard was one of exhausted jubilance as the sun set and the sound of firing became sporadic. The death toll was horrendous and the wounded were brought in in wagonloads; but Bonaparte had been defeated for the last time. The Prussians were pursuing the fleeing French army, leaving the depleted British to gather themselves together, recover their strength, and take stock of their losses.
Marcus rode into the stableyard toward midnight. He'd accompanied Wellington to his post-victory meeting with Bliicher. The two men had kissed each other and Bliicher had summed up the day's events in his sparse French. "Quelle affaire!"
Adequate words, it seemed to Marcus. Superlatives somehow wouldn't capture the sense of finality they all felt. The world as they knew it could now return to peace again.
He looked for his wife in the torch-lit stableyard. Finally, he saw her bending over a stretcher in the corner of the yard. As if she were aware of his arrival, she straightened, pushing her hair out of her eyes, turning toward him. His heart leaped at the sight of her. The bitterness of their parting, the sourness of suspicion, faded, and he wanted only to hold her.
"You're safe," she said, her voice shaky with relief as he dismounted beside her. There was a'shadow of sorrow in her eyes as she met his gaze, a questioning apprehension that harked back to the wretchedness of the morning.
He was filled with an overpowering need to kiss the sadness from her eyes, the tremor from her soft mouth. Suddenly, nothing seemed to matter but that she was there for him. "Yes," he said, pulling her into his arms. He laid his lips against her eyelids, feeling their rapid flutter against his mouth. "Safe and sound, lynx."
Her arms went around him, and she reached her body against his, her head resting on his chest, the steady beat of his heart thudding against her ear. Her eyes jsed and for this moment she lost herself in the security of his hold, the warmth of his presence, the promise of passion.
9
That new butler of yours seemed inclined to deny me." Bernard Melville, third Earl of Gracemere, entered Lady Barret's boudoir without ceremony. "I trust it doesn't mean the gouty Sir Thomas is turning suspicious."
"No. He's at Brooks's, I believe. Snoring over his port, probably." Agnes stretched languidly on the striped chaise longue, where she had been taking a recuperative afternoon nap. "Hodgkins is overly scrupulous about his duties. He knew I was resting." She held out her hand. "I wasn't expecting you to return to town for another week."
He took her hand, carrying it to his lips. "I couldn't endure another day's separation, my love."
Agnes smiled. "Such pretty words, Bernard. And am I to believe them?"
"Oh, yes," he said, bending over her, catching her wrists and holding them down on either side of her head. "Oh, yes, my adorable Agnes, you are to believe them." His hard eyes, so pale their blueness was almost translucent, held hers, and she shivered, waiting for him to bring his mouth to hers, to underwrite his statement with the fierce possession of his body.
He laughed, reading her with the ease of long knowledge. "Oh, you are needy, aren't you, my love? It's amazing what an absence can do." Still he held himself above her, taunting her with promise.
"And you are cruel, Bernard," she stated softly. "Why does it please you to taunt me with my love?"
"Is it love? I don't think that's the right word," he murmured, bringing his face closer to hers but still not touching her. "Obsession, need, but not love. That's too tame an emotion for such a woman as you."
"And for you," she whispered.
"Obsession, need," he responded with a smile that did nothing to soften the cruel mouth. "We feed on each other."
"Kiss me," she begged, twitching her imprisoned hands in her need to touch him.
He let his weight fall onto her hands so that her wrists ached and very slowly brought his mouth to hers. She bit his lip, drawing blood, and he pulled back with a violent jerk of his head. "Bitch!"
"It's what you like," she said, with perfect truth.
He slapped her face lightly with his open palm and she gave an exultant crow of laughter, bringing her freed hand to his face, wiping the bead of blood from his lips with her fingertip and carrying it to her own mouth. Her tongue darted, licking the red smear, and her tawny eyes glittered. "Shall I come to you tonight, my lord?"