Lucille laughed. Her ball gown was an old grey dress which she had prettified with some lengths of Brussels lace. Fashion dictated a filmy sheath that would scarcely cover the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and with a skirt slit to reveal a length of thigh barely disguised beneath a flimsy petticoat, but Lucille had neither the tastes nor the money for such nonsense. She had taken in the grey dress so that it hugged her thin body more closely, but that was her sole concession to fashion. She would not lower its neckline, nor would she have dreamed of cutting the skirt.

"It looks lovely," Jeanette said again.

"That's because you haven't seen what anyone else will be wearing."

"I still think it's lovely."

"Not that it matters," Lucille said, "for I doubt whether anyone will be looking at me. Or will even dance with me." She well knew Richard Sharpe's reluctance to dance, which was why she had been surprised when the message came from the Prince of Orange's headquarters informing her that Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe would be attending His Royal Highness at the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond's ball, in antic.i.p.ation of which His Royal Highness took pleasure in enclosing a ticket for Madame la Vicomtesse de Seleglise. Lucille herself never used her t.i.tle, but she knew Sharpe was perversely proud of it and must have informed the Prince of its existence.

The reluctant Vicomtesse now propped the broken mirror on a shelf and poked fingers at her hair which she had piled loosely before decorating with an ostrich feather. "I don't like the feather."

"Everyone's wearing them."

"I'm not." Lucille plucked it out and tickled the sleeping baby with its tip. The baby twitched, but slept on. Henri-Patrick had black hair like his father, but Lucille fancied she already saw her own family's long skull in the baby's wrinkled face. If he had his father's looks and his mother's brains, Lucille liked to say, Henri-Patrick should be well blessed.

She was unfair, at least to herself. Lucille Castineau had lived all her twenty-seven years in the Norman countryside and, though she came from a n.o.ble family, she proudly considered herself to be a farm woman. The rural life had denied her Jane Sharpe's fashionable pallor; instead Lucille's skin had the healthy bloom of country weather. She had a long, narrow and strong-boned face, its severity softened by her eyes which seemed to glow with laughter and sense. She was a widow. Her husband had been an elegant officer in Napoleon's cavalry, and Lucille had often wondered why such a handsome man had sought to marry her, but Xavier Castineau had thought himself most fortunate in his wife. They had been married for only a few weeks before he had been hacked down by a sabre. In the peace after the wars, when Lucille had found herself alone in her family's Norman chateau, she had met Sharpe and become his lover. Now she was the mother of his son.

Loyalty to her man had brought Lucille to Brussels. She had never been a Bonapartist, yet that distaste had not made it any easier for her to leave France and follow an army that must fight against her countrymen. Lucille had left France because she loved Sharpe, whom she knew was a better man than he thought himself to be. The war, she told herself, would end one day, but love was timeless and she would fight for it, just as she would fight to give her child his father's company. Lucille had lost one good man; she would not lose a second.

And tonight, surprisingly, she had an opportunity to dance with her good man. Lucille took a last look in the mirror, decided there was nothing that could be done to make herself any more elegant or beautiful, and so picked up her small bag that contained the precious pasteboard ticket. She kissed her child, gave her hair one last despairing pat, and went to a ball.

A tall man waited at the stable entrance of the lodging house where Lucille Castineau had rented two attic rooms. He was a man whose frightening appearance commanded instant respect. His height, four inches over six feet, was formidable enough, yet he also carried the muscles to match his inches and this evening he looked even more threatening for he hefted an oak cudgel and had a long-barrelled horse-pistol thrust into his belt and British army rifle slung on one shoulder. He had sandy hair and a flat hard face. The man was in civilian clothes, yet, in this city thronged with soldiers, he had a confidence that suggested he might well have worn a uniform in his time.

The tall man had been leaning against the stable's open gates, but straightened up as Lucille appeared from the house. She looked nervously at the western sky, tumultuous with dark clouds that had so hastened the dusk that the first lamps were already being lit in the city's archways and windows. "Shall I bring an umbrella?" she asked.

"It's not going to rain tonight, ma'am." The tall man spoke with the harsh accent of Ulster.

"You don't have to walk me, Patrick."

"And what else would I be doing tonight? Besides, the Colonel doesn't want you walking the streets alone after dark." Harper took a step back and gave Lucille an appreciative smile. "You look just grand, so you do!"

Lucille laughed good-naturedly at the compliment. "It's a very old dress, Patrick."

In truth Patrick Harper had not really noticed Lucille's dress, but, being a married man, he knew the importance a woman attached to a compliment. Harper's own wife would need more than a few such compliments when he reached home, for she had been adamantly opposed to her husband travelling to Brussels. "Why do you do this to me?" Isabella had demanded. "You're not a soldier any more! You have no need to go! Your place is here, with me!"

That place was Dublin, where, at the end of the last war, Harper had gone with a saddlebag full of stolen gold. The treasure had come from the French baggage captured at Vitoria in Spain, a country where Sergeant Patrick Harper had found both wealth and a wife. Discharged from the army, he had intended to return to his beloved Donegal, but he had reached no further than Dublin where he bought a tavern close to the city's quays. The tavern also did a thriving trade in the sale of stolen horses, an activity that provided Harper with an excuse to travel deep into the Irish countryside. The return of the Emperor to France and the subsequent declaration of war had been good for Harper's trade; a good hunter stolen from a Protestant plantation in Ireland would fetch a prime price in England where so many officers equipped themselves for the campaign.

Harper had used the excuse of horse-trading to explain his journey to Isabella, but she knew the real truth of his escapade. It was not horses that fetched Harper to Belgium, but Sharpe. Sharpe and Harper were friends. For six years, on battlefields and in sieges, they had fought side by side and Harper, as soon as he heard of the new war, had waited for a word from his old officer. Instead, and to Isabella's chagrin, Sharpe had come to Dublin himself. At first it had seemed he was only there to sit out the war with his French woman, but then the summons had come from the Dutch army and Isabella had known that her husband would follow Sharpe.

Isabella had tried to dissuade Patrick. She had threatened to leave him and return to Badajoz. She had cursed him. She had wept, but Harper had dismissed her fears. "I'm only going to trade a few horses, woman, nothing else."

"You won't be fighting?"

"Now why in the name of all Ireland would I want to be fighting?"

"Because of him," Isabella knew her man, "and because you can't resist joining a fight."

"I'm not in the army, woman. I just want to make a few pennies by selling some horseflesh. Where's the harm in that?"

In the end Harper had sworn a sacred oath on the Holy Mother and on all the bleeding wounds of Christ that he would not go into battle, that he would remember he was a husband and a father, and that if he so much as heard a musket shot he would turn tail and run away.

"Did you hear there was a wee sc.r.a.p down south today?" Harper's voice had a note of relish as he spoke of the fighting to Lucille.

"A battle?" Lucille sounded alarmed.

"Probably just a skirmish, ma'am." Harper thrust aside the beggars who shuffled and reached towards Lucille. "I expect the Emperor's getting bored with the waiting and decided to see if anyone was awake on this side of the border."

"Perhaps that's why I haven't heard from Richard today."

"If he's got a choice between a battle and a dance, ma'am, then begging your presence, he'll take the battle any day." Harper laughed. "He's never been much of a man for dancing, not unless he's drunk and then he'll dance with the best of them." Harper suddenly realized that he might be betraying some confidences. "Not that I've ever seen him drunk, ma'am."

Lucille smiled. "Of course not, Patrick."

"But we'll hear from him soon enough." Harper raised the cudgel to drive away the beggars who swarmed ever more threateningly the closer they got to the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond's rented house. There were beggars throughout Europe. Peace had not brought prosperity, but higher prices, and the normal ranks of the indigent had been swollen by discharged soldiers. By day a woman could safely walk Brussels' streets, but at night the pavements became dangerous. "Get back, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Get back!" Harper thrust two ragged men aside. Beyond the gutter shouting children pursued the polished carriages that rattled towards the rue de la Blanchisserie, but the coachmem were experts with their long whips which snapped sharply back to drive the urchins off.

A squadron of British Hussars were on duty in the rue de la Blanchisserie to keep the beggars away from the wealthy. A helpful corporal with a drawn sabre rode his horse in front of Harper to help clear Lucille's pa.s.sage to the big house.

,I'll wait for you, ma'am," Harper told Lucille when they were safely in the courtyard.

"You don't have to, Patrick. I'm sure Richard will escort me home."

,I'll wait here, ma'am," Harper insisted.

Lucille was nervous as she climbed the steps. A gorgeously dressed footman inspected her ticket, then bowed her into the hallway which was brilliant with candles and thronged~ with people. Lucille already felt dowdy. She glanced about the hall, hoping against hope that Richard would be waiting for her, but there was no sign of Sharpe, nor of any of the Prince of Orange's staff. Lucille felt friendless in an enemy country, but then was relieved to see the Dowager Countess of Mauberges who, like so many other Belgian aristocracy, thought of herself as French and wanted the world to know it. The old lady was defiantly wearing her dead husband's Legion d'honneur about her neck. "Your husband was a member of the Legion, was he not?" she greeted Lucille.

"Indeed he was."

"Then you should wear his medal."

Not that the ball needed an extra medal for, to Lucille, it seemed as though a jewel shop had been exploded into extravagant shards of light and colour. The colour came from the men's uniforms, gorgeous uniforms, uniforms of scarlet and gold, royal blue and saffron, silver and black; uniforms of Hussars, Dragoons, Guards, Jaegers and kilted Highlanders. There were plumes, froggings, epaulettes, aigulettes, and gold-furnished scabbards. There were fur-edged dolmans, silk-lined pelisses, and gorgets of pure gold. There were princes, dukes, earls, and counts. There were plenipotentiaries in court uniforms so decked with gold that their coats seemed like sheets of light. There were jewelled stars and enamelled crosses worn on sashes of brilliant silk, and all lit by the glittering chandeliers which had been hoisted to the ceiling with their burdens of fine white candles.

The women wore paler colours; white or washed yellow or delicate blue. Those ladies slim and brave enough to wear the high fashion were ethereal in gauzy dresses that clung to their bodies as they moved. The candlelight glinted from pearls and rubies, diamonds and gold. The room smelt of scents - orange water or eau de cologne, beneath which were the sharper smells of hair powder and sweat. "I don't know', the Dowager Countess leaned close to Lucille, "why some of them bother to dress at all! Look at that creature!"

The Countess jabbed her walking cane in the direction of a girl with bright gold ringlets and eyes as radiant as sapphires. The girl was undeniably beautiful, and clearly knew it for she was wearing no petticoat and a diaphanous dress of pale gold that did little to hide her body. "She might as well be stark naked!" the Countess said.

"It's the fashion." Lucille felt very drab.

"When I was a girl it took twelve yards of cloth just to make an underskirt for a ball gown. Now they simply unfold some cheesecloth and throw it over their shoulders!" Hardly that even, for most of the womens' shoulders were bared, just as most bosoms were almost naked. "And see how they walk! Just like men." In the Countess's childhood, before the Revolution, and before Belgium had been liberated from Austrian rule by the French, women had been taught to glide along a floor, their feet hidden by wide skirts and their slippers barely leaving the polished boards. The effect was graceful, suggesting effortless motion, while now the girls seemed not to care. The Countess shook her head with disgust. "You can tell they're Protestants! No manners, no grace, no breeding."

Lucille diverted the old lady by showing her the supper room which, like the ballroom, had been draped with the Belgian colours of black, gold and scarlet. Beneath the silk hangings the long tables were covered in white linen and were thick with silver and fine china.

"They'll lose all the spoons tonight!" the Countess said with undisguised satisfaction, then turned as applause greeted the stately polonaise which had progressed from the far side of the house, advanced through the entrance hall and now entered the ballroom to open the dancing formally. Lucille and the Countess sat by the supper room entrance. The uniformed officers and their ladies stepped delicately in the dancing line, they bowed and curtseyed. The music rang sweetly. A child, allowed to stay up and watch the ball's beginning, stared wide-eyed from a balcony, while the Countess tapped her stick on the parquet floor in time to the music.

After the polonaise, the first waltz brightened the room with its jaunty rhythm. The windows were black with night, but sheeted with the reflections of a thousand candles sparkling on ten thousand jewels. Champagne and laughter ruled the room, while the dancers whirled in glittering joy.

Lucille watched the pretty girl in the diaphanous golden dress who danced with a tall and handsome officer in British cavalry uniform. Lucille noted how the girl refused all partners but that one man and she felt a surge of sympathy because she knew the girl must be in love, just as she herself was in love. Lucille thought the girl and the cavalry officer made a very fine couple, but she wished the girl would smile rather than hold her face in such a cold and supercilious expression.

Then Lucille forgot the girl as the ballroom was swamped by a sudden and prolonged applause, which forced the orchestra to pause.