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‘Water, ma’am, that’ll be the most welcome,’ the man advised her, handing back the flask.
‘Then that’s what I will do.’ Julia found a niche with a statue in it, incongruously elegant over looking the bloody scene. She sat her hat on its head, stuffed basket and cloak behind it, rolled up her sleeves and went to find the kitchens.
It was raining and almost dark when she stumbled out again at last. She had done all she could for the day, now she needed to wash, eat, snatch some sleep before she returned in the morning. The rain lashed down as she toiled up the hill and she tried not to think what it must be like out there in the darkness knowing that tomorrow you were going into battle.
Hal pulled his heavy felted cloak right over his head and leaned against Max’s front legs. Above him, the big horse shifted, cocked up a hoof and, resigned to the rain, settled again under the scant shelter of a spindly tree. Hal reached up to make sure he had loosened the girth and that the other cloak was still over the saddle and Max’s dappled rear quarters as a loud squelching announced that someone was rash enough to be moving about in the downpour.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Trooper ’arris, sir.’
Ah yes, the man who had taken over from Godfrey at the races. Godfrey was still off sick with pains in his guts and constant vomiting. Hal wondered if the man would rather be here or on his sick bed. He knew which bed he would like to be in. A fantasy of Julia, slim and curved and pale against the dark green silk bed cover his imagination conjured up sent flickering heat into his loins and he groaned.
What on earth had prompted him to speak as he had? Hal rubbed cold hands across his face. He must have been out of his mind. And he had hurt her too. She was growing fond of him, perhaps even, if that half-spoken word in the carriage had been what he suspected, thought herself in love with him.
She had every right to expect an honourable proposal, and she was too innocent to under stand why he could not, must not, offer marriage to a virtuous, well-brought-up young woman. She deserved someone of sub stance, of moral worth. Someone with a future.
It was not as though she came from the sort of aristocratic back ground where even the daughters were well aware of the rackety lives their fathers and brothers lived.
He had no business indulging those half-under stood urges towards stability and family at her expense. Look at him now! Half drowned in a sodden field and likely to come back tomorrow wounded, if he came back at all. What sort of husband would he make if he lived—leaving aside his character, reputation and general un suitability?
So it had been right to tell her, bluntly, even if it left her hating him. But it hadn’t. The memory of her innocent mouth under his, her instinctive, sensual, unawakened response filled him with a kind of humble gratitude.
Was she thinking of him? He thought she would be, safely tucked away in Antwerp. That last kiss that had turned his brain and his will power into jelly, was not given lightly.
Of course, if he was killed tomorrow, she was safe from him, he thought ruefully. And if he wasn’t, he would just have to make certain he never saw her again. She would think he was having second thoughts about her if he did, think he was going back on his word.
Hell. Hal scrubbed at his cold face again. Did it matter what she thought of him, so long as she did not make a mistake she would regret for the rest of her life?
That was a plan: be killed or be a bastard. Now all he had to do was get through tomorrow. God, he was itching to get into action. The frustration of that long, hard ride only to arrive after dark with orders to help cover the retreat, was intense.
Max shifted, his neck snaking out to bite something. ‘Hey!’ Hal twisted round to see what he was attacking.
‘Sorry, sir. I must have got too close.’ It was Harris again. ‘Big bugger isn’t he? Nasty teeth.’
‘Yes.’ Hal closed his eyes, ‘He’s as good as an armed bodyguard.’
The rain lashed down.
‘They’ve broken! The Old Guard has broken!’
The cry ran along the front of the Allied lines from the right flank to where the Light Dragoons fretted in reserve on the counter-slope of the left flank. Since eleven that morning when the first attack began at Hougoumont, the Dragoons had waited, their only occupation dodging fire, rallying faltering units ahead of them and making occasional forays to hold the extreme end of the line.
Now it was past seven in the evening. Hal had a hole through the top of his shako, a slight wound where a spent bullet had hit his right upper arm, and a burning sense of frustration. ‘Damn it, Will,’ he said to Captain Grey, who was standing beside him. ‘When the hell is Vandeleur going to let us go?’
‘Any minute now.’ Will grinned and gestured at the rider galloping flat out from Wellington’s position.
‘Mount up,’ Hal yelled, swinging into the saddle. ‘Form line!’
There was cheering all around him as he steadied Max. Vandeleur was indicating a mass of French cavalry in front of a battery of artillery that was still holding firm. The objective was clear: take the guns.
The next few minutes were bloody, fast and deadly. The French cavalry steadied, formed up and discharged a hail of carbine fire before turning, as though on parade, and cantering to the rear through the guns. Out of the corner of his eye, Hal saw Will slump over his pommel. He reined Max back, pulled his friend straight in the saddle and turned his horse’s head to the rear, sending it on its way with a slap on the rump. It was all he could do for him.
As he lowered his sabre and charged the nearest gun, he saw Trooper Harris beside him on an ugly roan, teeth bared, sabre ready. Together they charged through either side of the gun, slashing and stabbing until the gun crew fell or fled.
For a moment, they were alone on the far side of the artillery line in a swirling fog of smoke. Hal grinned at Trooper Harris and the man grinned back before he turned his horse hard into Max and drove his sabre straight at Hal’s heart.
The blow took his breath with the shock and the pain, then the blade hit something, skidded, dragged down, slashing his ribs, his arm, his hip, his thigh. Reeling in the saddle, stunned by the direction of the attack, Hal tried to parry with his own weapon. Then the world exploded. He was conscious of falling, of a great roar in his ears, of pain almost every where and of Harris falling too. Then everything went black.
