“You were separated from your troop.”
He nodded. “It was supposed to be temporary. We made a plan to meet after the battle. We all assumed Bonaparte would be on the retreat, and that would make him vulnerable. Stratford Fortescue had an elaborate plan to track him, ambush him, and kill him. It would have ended the war and we could have all gone home.”
“Considering Bonaparte was exiled to St. Helena where he died, I assume your plan failed.”
It had failed but not because Stratford Fortescue’s plan hadn’t been sound. It had failed because the British had lost that battle. Nicholas didn’t even remember who the general in charge had been, not Wellington, but one of his underlings. He’d sat awake most of the night with the other members of the cavalry, waiting to hear what the plan for the next day would be. When morning dawned, a low haze of campfires lingering between the enemy camps, he still didn’t know. The cavalry was usually first to attack, so the uncertainty made him and his fellow soldiers uneasy. They’d gotten into a standard formation and waited for their orders.
As the smoke had burned away and the sun had risen, glinting off the swords and buttons of the French soldiers in blue across the field, Nicholas hadn’t been able to stop himself from looking about for one of the general’s aides who would deliver their orders. Finally, with tension building like the sound of the drums across the field and the enemy side already in formation, a man came running and handed the major a paper.
“He seemed bewildered when he read it,” Nicholas told Amelia, summarizing the confusion of the morning. “He even asked the aide if he was certain, and of course, the aide barked at him to do as he was told.” Nicholas shook his head. “I knew then we would lose. I could feel it.”
“What do you mean? Like a supernatural sense?”
“No. I’d been in enough battles to by then to know what it feels like when we are all united. When the men around you are confident and committed. The men around me were frightened and unsure. The general had waited too long to convey their orders and the orders were unclear. And it was frustrating to those of us in my cavalry regiment because we’d been told to hold back and wait for the signal to attack. And so we were left on the side, watching as our fellow soldiers fought and died.”
Amelia lifted his hands and kissed them. “I cannot imagine how awful that must have been. Your friends were fighting, and you were standing by, helpless.”
“I was never so glad to ride into battle as when we finally received the signal. I don’t even know if we received a signal or if the major couldn’t wait any longer. I just know we charged into the fray and sent some of those Frenchies running.”
Now came the part that was hardest to talk about. He hadn’t mentioned Charlemagne yet, but he couldn’t continue without doing so.
“I had a warhorse,” he said. “I’d brought him with me from Battle’s Peak.”
“I thought you were a horse thief,” she said, and he appreciated her smile and the way she tried to lighten the mood.
“I stole horses for most of the other men, but a few of us had our own. I cared for Charlemagne as though he were a part of myself. I remember when he was born. Everyone said he would be magnificent. We could have sold him for a thousand pounds. His dam and sire were highly credentialed. But my father had decided by that point that I was to go into the army. I didn’t want to go, and he offered me Charlemagne to stop my protests.” He was silent then, remembering the hours he’d spent with the horse, training him, grooming him, bonding with him.
“I imagine a cavalry officer and his horse must trust each other completely,” she said.
“Yes. We fought together many times before Colonel Draven pulled me aside and asked me to join his troop. I actually thought it would be a break from the drudgery of life in the cavalry. I don’t think that saying—out of the frying pan and into the fire—was ever more apt.” He released her hands and struggled to push himself to the edge of the couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to stand.” He managed to get on his feet, and his leg protested with a sharp jab of pain. Nicholas ignored it. If he sat beside Amelia, holding her hand, gazing into her sympathetic eyes, he’d break down in tears when he told the rest. He had no intention of crying over the past any longer. He’d shed enough tears when he’d been lying in bed, worrying if he’d ever walk again.
He took a few steps, then paused before the hearth. “I was riding Charlemagne that day. He was thrilled to be on the battlefield. I think he’d missed it. Our orders had been to support the infantry, and we chased off a number of soldiers.” He didn’t tell her about slashing the men with his sword or stabbing them through with his bayonet. Those were moments he never spoke of, moments he’d pushed far back into his mind and which had become the stuff of nightmares. He’d been pacing as he spoke, but now he paused and looked directly at Amelia. “Have you ever had a moment where everything is perfect and then like this”—he snapped his fingers—“it shifts?”
She nodded. “The day my father was shot was like that. One moment I was outside under a sky as blue as your eyes with the sun on my back, and the next moment I heard a shot. I don’t think ten minutes passed before I was helping to carry my father into the house, my hands covered in blood. My world was never the same after that.” Her gaze was steady on his. “I understand that life can change in an instant.”
“That’s how the battle felt,” he said. “It changed in an instant. One moment we were pushing the French troops back, and the next their cavalry charged us. I don’t even know where they came from. It felt like they came from the side, which means they flanked us. Neil would know. He always analyzed the battles afterward, but in that moment, it didn’t matter that we’d been flanked. What mattered was we were fighting for our lives.” He shook his head. “Do you know that I never once considered I wouldn’t come out of it alive? Even with the odds as they were. Even seeing my fellow soldiers shot off their horses, I never thought it would be me. Until Charlemagne stumbled.”
He clenched his fists and swallowed.
“He stumbled?” Amelia asked quietly.
“Bastards shot him,” Nicholas said, forcing his voice from a throat that felt raw and tight. “Cowards shot my horse out from under me.” He glared at her. “There’s no honor in that.”
She shook her head, tears filling her eyes.
“And there was no need. They were winning at any rate. Our men were in retreat by then. I didn’t know that. I only knew that Charlemagne was falling, and I was falling with him. I knew what I had to do. I had to jump clear, but my boot caught in the stirrup. I couldn’t free it and by the time I did, by the time I jumped free, it was too late. All I did was manage to trap both my legs under Charlemagne’s weight. The only thing that saved me was that I hit my head when I fell and lost consciousness. The enemy must have thought I was dead and left me. I woke in the dark, in pain, the sounds of men’s groans surrounding me.”
“Oh, Nicholas.” A tear slid down her cheek, and Nicholas watched it linger on her jaw before dropping to her dress.
“I was one of those men groaning,” he said, refusing to give into his own instinct to cry. Tears wouldn’t help. They wouldn’t change anything. “I couldn’t feel my legs. Little did I know in that moment not being able to feel them was a blessing. I tried to free myself, and that’s when I felt them. The pain was so sharp and intense, I must have passed out again. I woke to the sound of my name being called. Neil had been searching the dead for me. He and Rowden Payne. They found me and Rowden stayed with me while Neil went to fetch Duncan Murray and Ewan. They were the biggest and the strongest. It took three men to free me from Charlemagne. Duncan carried me out of there over his shoulder.” He didn’t say that his last image of Charlemagne had been the horse’s unseeing brown eyes as Duncan walked away. “The next weeks are something of a blur,” he said. “I mostly remember pain. And fear I’d never walk again. They said I wouldn’t.”