‘Because their country demanded it, of course,’ Vincent said, then spurred to catch up with Fox.
They had retraced their steps to Péronne, reaching the town just after midday to discover that the garrison had surrendered and Wellington’s army was now manning the ramparts while the Duke himself was quartered in the town’s citadel. A Major on the Duke’s staff directed Sharpe and his battalion to a barracks in the south of the town. ‘I’ll tell His Grace you’re here, Colonel, but don’t make yourselves too comfortable,’ he warned Sharpe, ‘we’ll be marching tomorrow. Parade at five a.m. in the great square.’
Sharpe left the battalion to settle in the barracks and walked with Harper to the square in Péronne’s centre. ‘Lucille will be here,’ Sharpe guessed. He had asked which was the town’s most luxurious tavern, reckoning that the Countess Mauberges would take rooms there, and sure enough he found Lucille in the inn that was hard by the town’s biggest church. She was finishing a late lunch, sitting in the inn’s dining room that was a gloomy chamber crossed by vast oak beams onto which men had nailed the shako plates of the various French regiments that had passed through the town. Lucille stood when she saw Sharpe and held out her arms in welcome, provoking jealous glances from the many British officers who filled the tables.
‘Thank God,’ Sharpe said.
‘You suddenly believe in Him?’ Lucille asked, amused.
‘If He gave me you, yes.’ He embraced her, held onto her for a few seconds. ‘How’s Patrick?’
‘Sleeping, I hope. Jeanette looks after him, poor Jeanette, I work her too hard. And you, Richard? You look tired too.’
‘Been a busy few days, love.’ He kissed her and, despite the many men who watched, held the kiss a long time. ‘Won’t be any easier when we reach Paris.’
Lucille gently pulled away and sat. ‘What happens in Paris?’
‘Nothing good, I suspect.’
‘Why?’ Lucille asked delicately.
‘We went to Ham to rescue half a dozen prisoners. Which we did, though it cost me two good men. Now they’re going to Paris, and Major Vincent tells me he wants me there. He won’t say why, but the men we freed aren’t soldiers, so it’s spying. Political work.’ He almost spat the last two words.
‘But you will reach Paris before the rest of the army?’
‘Well ahead,’ Sharpe answered.
Lucille took a scrap of paper from her small bag. ‘Then I must ask a favour of you.’
‘Anything!’
She handed him the paper. ‘Go there, Richard, please.’
He unfolded the paper to find an address; H?tel Mauberges, Champs-élysées.
‘Hotel?’ he asked. ‘You want us to stay there?’
Lucille smiled. ‘H?tel is just the word for a mansion. A very grand house! And I will stay there.’
‘With the Countess,’ Sharpe said, understanding.
‘She has invited us to her house, yes, but it is occupied by brigands! Deserters from the Emperor’s army. Her steward wrote and said they are beasts, and the authorities do nothing!’
‘And you want me to clear the buggers out?’
‘Can you?’
‘With pleasure,’ he said.
Lucille offered him a sealed letter. ‘That is for the steward, if you can help.’
‘I’ll scour the buggers out,’ Sharpe said, putting the letter into a pouch, ‘but all I really want right now is to go home.’
‘Home?’
‘Normandy.’
Lucille smiled, reached across the table and laid a hand on Sharpe’s hand. Her Englishman. She still found that strange because, like most of her compatriots, she had hated the English through the long wars that had killed both her husband and her brother, yet Sharpe had come to her and he had stayed, and now her Englishman thought of Normandy as home. ‘We will go home to Normandy,’ she told him.
‘And marry?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Father Defoy would approve of that,’ Lucille said, smiling, ‘he believes unmarried mothers are a stain on France’s honour. But you’re already married.’
‘Father Defoy doesn’t need to know that,’ Sharpe said. ‘And I imagine she’s gone back to England.’ His wife, Jane, had stolen his money and found a protector in John, Lord Rossendale. But Rossendale was dead, hacked to pieces at Waterloo. Jane had followed Rossendale to Brussels, and the last time Sharpe had seen her she was weeping in her carriage at the battlefield. He had ignored her. ‘We’ll marry,’ he told Lucille.
She squeezed his hand. ‘We will marry,’ she said.
There was a sudden scraping of chairs as men stood, and Sharpe turned to see that the Duke of Wellington had entered the dining room. Sharpe stood too, then saw that the Duke was accompanied by Major Vincent and by Alan Fox, the enormously tall Englishman, who had to stoop beneath the ceiling’s thick beams. The Duke waved the diners back to their chairs, then glanced about the room. He said something to Vincent, then turned and climbed the few steps back to the inn’s entrance hall. Fox followed the Duke, but Vincent walked towards Sharpe, then bowed to Lucille. ‘Major Vincent,’ Sharpe introduced him, ‘this is Lucille, Vicomtesse de Seleglise.’
‘Madame,’ Vincent said, ‘I am honoured.’ He bowed over her hand.
‘Honoured?’ Lucille asked.
‘Your husband was a great soldier, madame.’
‘My next husband is too, Major.’
Vincent grinned at Sharpe. ‘He is, madame, he is, and the Peer wants to see you, Colonel.’
‘Trouble,’ Sharpe said curtly.
‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,’ Vincent said airily, ‘and you, Colonel Sharpe, fly higher than most sparks. Madame, you will forgive me if I take the Colonel from you?’
‘Bring him back, Major.’
‘I suspect nothing could prevent his return, madame.’
Sharpe followed Vincent across the room and up the few steps.
‘You are indeed a lucky man, Colonel,’ Vincent said.
‘And I want to live,’ Sharpe said, ‘to enjoy that luck.’
‘You shall, Sharpe, you shall!’ Vincent led Sharpe across the hall to a small private parlour that looked out onto the main square. Vincent did not go in, but just opened the door for Sharpe, who discovered the Duke standing beside an empty hearth, while Alan Fox, now dressed in a dark coat and white breeches, was sprawled in a great armchair, his long legs splayed across a rug. He grinned at Sharpe, who bowed his head to the Duke. ‘Your Grace,’ he remembered to say.
‘Vincent says you did well at Ham,’ Wellington said abruptly.
‘He did!’ Fox put in.
‘You’ve met Mister Fox.’ The Duke sounded disapproving.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Mister Fox speaks with my authority,’ the Duke said, ‘do you understand what that means, Sharpe?’
‘No, my lord.’
The Duke snorted. ‘Mister Fox is a civilian, Sharpe, but he wields my authority, which means you obey him.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘And you, Mister Fox,’ the Duke stared down at the sprawling man, ‘will listen to Colonel Sharpe if there’s any trouble. He might look like something the dog dragged in, but he understands fighting.’
‘Of course, Your Grace.’