“Not in Brussels, but very close. Slender Billy wanted some British staff officers because he’s commanding British troops.“

Rossendale swallowed. “And he’s got Sharpe?”

“Indeed he has.”

“Oh, my God.” Rossendale’s face had paled to the colour of paper. “Is Sharpe coming tonight?” he asked in sudden panic.

“I certainly haven’t invited him, but I had to give Slender Billy a score of tickets, so who knows who he might bring?” The Duchess saw the fear on her young friend’s face. “Perhaps you’d better go home, Johnny.”

“I can’t do that.” For Lord John to run away would be seen as the most shameful of acts, yet he was terrified of staying. He had not only cuckolded Richard Sharpe, but in the process he had effectively stolen Sharpe’s fortune, and now he discovered that his enemy was not lost in France, but alive and close to Brussels.

“Poor Johnny,” the Duchess said mockingly. “Still, come and dance tonight. Colonel Sharpe won’t dare kill you in my ballroom, because I won’t let him. But if I were you I’d give him his wife back and find yourself someone more suitable. What about the Huntley girl? She’s got a decent fortune, and she’s not really ugly.” The Duchess mentioned another half-dozen girls, all eligible and nobly born, but Lord John was not listening. He was thinking of a dark-haired and scarred soldier whom he had cuckolded and impoverished, a soldier who had sworn to kill him in revenge.

Forty miles to the south, the Dragoon Lieutenant who had been kicked by his dying horse haemorrhaged in the nettles beside the ditch. He died before any surgeons could reach him. The Lieutenant’s servant rifled the dead man’s possessions. He kept the officer’s coins, the locket from about his neck, and his boots, but threw away the book on phrenology. The first French infantry butchered the Lieutenant’s dead horse with their bayonets and marched into Belgium with the bleeding joints of meat hanging from their belts. An hour later the Emperor’s coach passed the corpse, disturbing the flies which had been crawling over the dead Lieutenant’s face and laying their eggs in his blood-filled mouth and nostrils.