Wedded to His Enemy Debutante by Samantha Hastings

Author:Samantha Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-11-08T12:48:13+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The next morning, Samuel’s nerves were shot and he felt emotionally drained. These were not uncommon consequences of spending time with his betrothed. Although, it would not be fair to blame her for yesterday. He had felt goose bumps on his arm before he even met Frederica that morning. He knew it had been dangerous to make that trip with her. The battle was getting closer. The air felt charged with it.

He was no longer a lad who wished to prove himself to Wellington—another surrogate father figure. Samuel knew that there was no glory and very little dignity in a battlefield death. An officer’s body received more deference than a soldier’s, but they were still piled together in a barn or a charnel house until friends or family could take the corpse and have it properly buried. The common soldiers’ bodies were thrown into mass graves with no names and sometimes without markers.

No mourners.

No funerals.

This would be the end thousands of his men faced after their battle with Napoleon’s armies. At seventeen, he had thought that he had nothing to lose. And now he knew that he had everything to lose. Frederica, his family, a future with a palace full of children. Slender Billy was right. He could not wait until after the war to tell Frederica his feelings. She deserved so much more than a death letter.

Exhaling, Samuel sat in the corner of the room, unnoticed. He watched Colonel Scovell bow to the new chief staff officer, Colonel Sir William Howe DeLancey, a man in his thirties with piercing dark eyes and curly hair. The man towered a head over Scovell as he escorted him to Wellington’s office. DeLancey stayed at the door and Scovell entered and left the room alone. Samuel would have loved to hear what they were saying. But it was bad form to spy on your own side.

A few minutes later, the Duke of Wellington opened the door and barked an order that all his staff should come immediately for a meeting. Samuel was one of the first of the twenty men to arrive. He sat next to Lord Fitzroy Somerset and Sir Alexander Gordon. Within five minutes all members of the staff were seated around the dining room. In the centre of the mahogany table was a large map of Europe. Strong and powerful like King Arthur of old, Wellington stood at the top of the oval table.

‘The intelligence I received last night from Grant suggests that the bulk of the French army is here in Paris protecting it,’ Wellington said, pointing to the city on the map. ‘He further suggests that over a hundred thousand men have been moved to the north of France and are coming our way with Napoleon to personally command.’

‘Then we have the advantage, Duke,’ Samuel said. ‘We have nearly ninety-two thousand men, and that is not including the Prussians.’

‘Napoleon’s presence on the field is worth forty thousand men,’ the general said gravely. ‘And his soldiers are veterans.

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