“Your Grace.” Lord John bowed. “May I name Miss Jane Gibbons for you?” He deliberately used Jane’s maiden name.

“Miss Gibbons.” The Duke found himself staring down her powdered cleavage as she curtseyed. “Have we not met, Miss Gibbons?”

“Briefly, Your Grace. In southern France.”

He had her now. Good God! Wellington stiffened, remembering the details of the gossip. This was Sharpe’s wife! What in hell’s name did Rossendale think he was doing? The Duke, realizing that the introduction had been made in order to give the adulterous liaison the appearance of his approval, icily turned away without another word. It was not the adultery that offended him, but the stupidity of Lord John Rossendale risking a duel with Sharpe.

The Duke turned abruptly back, intending to inform his lordship that he did not permit duelling among his officers, but Rossendale and Jane had been swallowed up in the crowd.

The Duke forced a smile and airily denied to a lady that he had any fear of an imminent French attack. “It takes longer to push an army up a road than you might think. It’s not like herding cows, madam. We’ll have good warning when Bonaparte marches, I do assure you.”

Another burst of applause announced the arrival of the Prince of Orange, who had come with a handful of staff officers. The Young Frog waved happily to the dancers and, ignoring his hostess, made straight for the Duke. “I knew you wouldn’t cancel the ball.”

“Should I have done?” the Duke asked tartly.

“There have been rumours,” the Prince said airily, “nothing but rumours. Isn’t this splendid?” He stared eagerly about the room in search of the prettiest faces, but instead caught sight of Lieutenant Harry Webster, one of his own British aides, who was hurrying across the dance floor. Webster offered the Prince a perfunctory bow, then offered him a despatch.

Most of the ballroom saw the despatch being given, and could tell from Webster’s dust-stained boots that he must have ridden hard to bring the paper to Brussels, but the Prince merely thrust the despatch into a pocket of his coat and went back to his scrutiny of the younger women. Webster’s face showed alarm. The Duke, catching the expression, smiled thinly at the Prince. “Might I know the contents of the despatch, Your Highness?”

“If you wish. Of course.” The Prince carelessly handed over the sealed paper, then sent one of his Dutch aides to enquire about the identity of the girl in the diaphanous gold dress.

The Duke tore the despatch open. Rebecque, in Braine-le-Comte, had news both from the Prussians and from Dornberg in Mons. The French had advanced north from Charleroi, but had turned eastwards to attack Blücher and had halted for the night at a village called Fleurus. General Dornberg reported no activity at all on the roads leading to Mons. His cavalry patrols had ridden ten miles into France and had met no enemy troops.

The Prince, his eyes more bulbous than ever, had seized Webster’s arm. “You see that girl? Do you know her?”

“Lieutenant Webster,” the Duke’s voice was as cold as a sword in winter, “four horses instantly to the Prince of Orange’s carriage. Your Highness will return immediately to your headquarters.”

The Prince blinked in surprise at his Commander-in-Chief, then offered a small laugh. “Surely it can wait till — „

“Instantly, sir!” The Duke did not raise his voice, but there was something quite terrifying in his tone. “Your corps will concentrate on Nivelles now. Go, sir, go!”

The Prince, aghast, stayed a half-second, then fled. A thousand eyes had watched the brief altercation, and now the whispers began in earnest. Something must have happened; something alarming enough to send the Prince scurrying from the ball.

The Duke and Duchess of Richmond sought an answer, but the Duke of Wellington merely smiled and blithely proposed that the company should proceed to supper. He offered the Duchess his arm and the orchestra, seeing the gesture, stopped their playing to allow the Highland pipers to begin their sword dance.

The pipes wailed and squealed into life, then caught their air to fill the room with a martial sound as the company, two by two and slow as an army’s progress up a country road, went in to supper.

There were quails’ eggs served on scrambled eggs and topped with caviar which the Duchess’s chef obscurely called les trois oeufs de victoire. They were followed by a port-wine jelly and a cold soup.

The Duke of Wellington was happily seated between two attractive young ladies, while Lucille found herself between d’Alembord and a Dutch gunner colonel who complained about the victory eggs, refused the soup, and said the bread was too hard. Lucille had seen the Prince’s arrival and hasty departure, and had resigned herself to Sharpe’s absence. In a way she was glad, for she feared Sharpe’s violence if he discovered Lord John Rossendale at the ball.

Lucille, a Norman, had been raised on stories of the merciless English pirates who lived just across the Channel and who, for centuries, had raided her homeland to kill and burn and plunder. She loved Sharpe, yet she saw in her lover the embodiment of those ghouls who had been used to scare her into childhood obedience. In the last few months, as the soldier had tried to become a farmer, Lucille had tried to educate her Englishman. She had convinced him that sometimes diplomacy was more effective than force, that anger must sometimes be tamed, and that the sword was not the clinching argument of peace. Yet, Lucille knew, he would remember none of those pacifist lessons if he saw Lord John. The big sword would scrape free. Peter d’Alembord, who shared her fears, had promised to restrain Sharpe if he appeared.

Now, it seemed, he would not be coming, for the Prince had fled the ball. No one knew why, though the Dutch gunner Colonel opined that the reason for the Prince’s hasty departure could not have been of great importance, or else the Duke would surely have left with the Prince. The most reasonable assumption was that the French had pushed a cavalry raid across the frontier. “I’m sure we’ll discover the cause by morning,” d’Alembord said, then turned to Lucille to offer her a glass of wine.

But Lucille had gone quite white. She was staring wide-eyed and frightened at the supper room’s open doorway which, like a proscenium arch, framed the Highland dancers and, quite suddenly, now also framed her lover.

Sharpe had come to the ball after all. He stood, blinking in the sudden candlelight, a shabby Rifleman among the dancing Scotsmen.

“Good God Almighty!” D’Alembord stared in awe at his friend.

Silence spread slowly across the supper tables as the hundreds of guests turned to stare at the Rifleman who, in turn, searched the supper tables for a particular person. A woman gasped in horror at the sight of him, and the pipes groaned a last uneasy note before the dancers froze above their swords.

Sharpe had come to the ball, but drenched in blood. His face was powder-stained and his uniform darkened with gore. Every other man in the room wore white breeches and silk stockings, yet here, looking like the ghost in the Scottish play, came a soldier from a battlefield; a soldier bloodied and marked, grim-faced as slaughter.

Jane Sharpe screamed; the last sound before the room went wholly silent.

Lucille half stood, as if to reveal herself to Sharpe, but he had seen the Duke and, seemingly oblivious of the effect his entrance had caused on the ball’s guests, now strode between the tables to the Duke’s side.

Wellington’s face seemed to shudder in reaction to the stench of powder, blood, sweat and crushed grass that wafted from Sharpe’s uniform. He waved the Rifleman down to a crouch so that their conversation could be more private. “What is it?” the Duke asked curtly.

“I’ve just come from a crossroads called Quatre Bras, sir. It’s north of Charleroi on the Brussels road. The French attacked there at sunset, but were checked by Saxe-Weimar’s men. Prince Bernhard is certain the enemy will make a much stronger attack in the morning.” Prince Bernhard had said no such thing, but Sharpe had decided it would be more efficacious to assign the opinion to the prince than to confess that it was his own view.