An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

She looked up with a start. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, I was not attending! What did you say?’

‘Isn’t this our dance?’ he asked.

‘Our dance—oh yes, of course! How stupid of me!’

She got up, resolutely smiling, but he made no movement to lead her on to the floor. ‘What is it?’ he said quietly.

She gave a gasp, and pressed her handkerchief to her lips. ‘Nothing! nothing!’

He took her arm. ‘Come into the garden. You must not cry here.’

She allowed herself to be propelled towards the long, open window, but when they stood on the terrace she said in a trembling voice: ‘You must think me mad! It is the heat: my head aches with it!’

‘What is it?’ he repeated. ‘You are very unhappy, are you not? Can I do anything to help you?’

A deep sob shook her. ‘No one can help me! Yes, I am unhappy. Oh, leave me, please leave me!’

‘I can’t leave you like this. Won’t you tell me what the trouble is?’

‘Oh no, how could I?’

‘If you are unhappy I am in the same case. Does that make a bond?’

She looked up, trying to see his face in the dusk. ‘You? No, that cannot be true! You are engaged to the woman you love, you—’

‘No, not now.’

She was startled. ‘Oh, hush, hush! What can you possibly mean?’

‘My engagement is at an end. Never mind that: it is your unhappiness, not mine, that we are concerned with.’

She clasped his hand impulsively. ‘I am so sorry! I do not know what to say! If there were anything I could do—’

‘There is nothing to be done, or said. Lady Barbara and I are agreed that we should not suit, after all. I have told you my trouble: will you not trust me with yours?’

‘If I dared, you would think me—you would turn from me in disgust!’

‘I can safely promise that I should not do anything of the sort. Come, let us sit down on this uncomfortably rustic bench! . . . Now, what is it, my poor child?’

Sixteen

The news that Colonel Audley’s engagement was at an end afforded curiously little satisfaction to his friends. They had all wanted to see it broken, and the crease smoothed from between the Colonel’s brows, but the crease grew deeper, and a hard look seemed to have settled about his month. Occasionally the old, charming smile flashed out, but although he would talk lightly enough, laugh at the Headquarters’ jokes, spar sometimes with his fellow-officers, and dance at the balls as willingly as he had ever done, those who knew him found his cheerfulness forced, and realised sadly that the gay hussar had vanished, leaving in his place an older man, who was rather aloof, often abstracted, and had no confidences to make. The young Prince of Nassau, entering shyly upon his very nominal duties on the Duke’s staff, was even a little nervous of him, a circumstance which at first astonished Colonel Gordon. ‘Stern?’ he repeated. ‘Audley? I think your Highness has perhaps mistaken the word?’

‘Un peu sévère,’ said the Prince.

‘It’s quite true,’ said Fremantle. ‘Damn the wench!’ he added, giving his sash a vicious hitch. ‘I wish to God she would go back to England and give the poor devil a chance to forget her! If she had a spark of sensibility she would!’

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want him to forget her,’ suggested Gordon. ‘Do you think she means to get him back?’

‘If she does she ain’t going the right way to work. They’re saying she’ll have that Belgian fellow—what’s his name? Bylandt’s brigade: all teeth and eyes and black whiskers. Ugh!’

‘Lavisse,’ said Gordon, apparently recognising the Count from this description without any difficulty.

‘That’s it. Such a dog with the ladies! Well, they’ll make a nicely-matched pair, and I wish them joy of one another.’

‘It must hit Charles pretty badly.’