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The Ruthless Lord Rule

Thorndike Press

Chapter One

Peace!

All England is rejoicing. Napoleon, that scourge of the Continent, has at last been put in his cage. Paris has capitulated, with the trusted Marmont leading his unsuspecting men straight into the Austrian camp in surrender. Now an emperor in name only, with but a scant four-hundred-man army and living on the charity of the country he had led in triumph for nearly twenty years, Bonaparte barely escaped France with his life and is living in genteel poverty on the unpretentious island of Elba.

His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, is delirious with joy; so overcome that he'd had to be bled of twenty-seven ounces of blood. Indeed, for nearly a month, he languished in his bed, hovering between life and death.

The rush to cross the Channel is already in full force, with even the Duke of Wellington, now British ambassador to France, characteristically ignoring the angry glances cast his way as he saunters down the streets of Paris, dines on good, plain English fare at the Cafi des Anglais, and accepts the grateful thanks of the repatriated French nobility.

London is in a whirl, eagerly anticipating the arrival of Czar Alexander of Russia, King Frederick William of Prussia, and, wonder of wonders, the much loved Field Marshal von Bl|cher. Indeed,the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg, the czar's "platter-faced" sister, has already disembarked and is royally ensconced in Pulteney's Hotel, busily setting up the Regent's back with her Whig antics.

That this endears her to the residents of London is no surprise, for the Regent has been out of favor with his subjects for some time. The younger generation has no memory of the glorious Florizel that was once the Prince of Wales and cannot think of him as the genial Big Ben. They see him instead as Swellfoot, an obese, grotesque, thoroughly evil man. They glory in the little ditty penned by Charles Lamb:

By his bulk and by his size, By his oily qualities, This (or else my eyesight fails) This should be the Prince of Whales.

Not that Louix XVIII, who had been cheered through the streets as he headed toward the Channel Ports and a return to his homeland, fared much better once he reached Paris. The King, whom Lord Byron has irreverently dubbed Louis the Gouty, seems to have spent his entire exile in thrall with his host country's cooking, and is so thoroughly corpulent that the Regent, after investing the King with the Order of the Garter, and buckling the Garter around a leg even thicker than his own, remarked, "When I clasped his knee it was exactly as if I were fastening a sash around a young man's waist."

One German account of the King's appearance commented on both the advanced age and accumulated fat of Napoleon's replacement. Telling of the King's entrance into the room, the report centered on the fact that Louis, clad in soft black satin boots and supported on either side, was so disablingly obese that he "would stumble over a straw."

While Europe laughs at reports of Napoleon's frugal inventories of mattresses and his drawing up of lists of his personal clothing ("my underlinen is in a lamentable state"), and ridicules his official-sounding Council of State that he has set up to investigate improvements in the iron mines and salt pits of Elba while considering the possibility of importing silkworms, the banished Emperor is reading of the high jinks being perpetrated by his vanquishers.

"They are mad!" he said of the governments that had a hand in putting Louis on the throne. "The Bourbons in France; they would not be able to hold their position for a year! Nine-tenths of the nation cannot endure them; my soldiers will never serve under them."

But none of the leaders of the world, their minds filled with plans for pomp and ceremony and grand celebrations, hear the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, or, if they do hear them, heed them.

Only a few shake their heads at the merry-making and wonder - wonder, if this glorious peace is really to be believed. Sir Henry Ruffton, one of the War Office's most intelligent members, wonders.

Then word reaches Sir Henry of one of Bonaparte's final statements before leaving France. "Between ourselves," Napoleon has told a trusted aide who had feared his Emperor would commit suicide, "a living drummer is better than a dead emperor."

So, while London rings with cheers and hangs bunting from the fagades, Sir Henry pens two messages. One missive goes to Sussex by private courier. The other is sent by packet to Calais, to his most trusted operative. Both messages are the same: "Come to me, now."

* * *

May 1814

"Honestly, Mary, that new coachman of Sir Henry's drives as if he's riding to hounds." Gratefully subsiding into a chair in the rather spartanly furnished drawing room, Rachel Gladwin removed her straw bonnet and proceeded to use it as a fan to cool her flushed cheeks. "While I applaud your guardian's hiring of returned soldiers, I do believe he should temper his generosity with a bit of common sense. I doubt if even Wellington would have survived if all of our troop charges into battle were accomplished with the same reckless fervor our driver just demonstrated on Bond Street."

Pushing at the dark coppery curls that had been slightly crushed by her fetching, if a bit imprudent, choice of headgear, Mary Lawrence smiled into the mirror that reflected Rachel's frowning face. "Coming it a bit too brown, aren't you, Aunt?" she asked, using the courtesy title that lady had insisted upon. "Considering it was you who applauded so enthusiastically when that same driver sent that ridiculous dandy scurrying up the lamppost in fear of his life?"

Rachel's features relaxed into a small smile. "I will admit to being a bit amused by the spectacle," she owned cheerfully enough, "but I would be shirking my duty as your resident bear-leader if I did not stress once again that putting one's fingers in one's mouth and whistling encouragement to servants is just not done. Wherever did you acquire such a disgusting talent, Mary?"

"In Sussex," Mary Lawrence replied, leaving the mirror to take up residence in the chair across from Rachel's. "You'd be surprised at the accomplishments I have mastered through the kind offices of my last keepers, may they live long and prosper. And you are not bear-leading me, no one could. You are my friend and companion while I'm forced to live in London."

Rachel shook her head. "Still singing the same sad song, Mary? I thought Sir Henry had succeeded in convincing you that this is the best, the safest, place for you at the moment."

"Bah! All the world is in Paris. The papers are full of on-dits about the English lords and ladies who are scampering about France, aping the latest fashions and gambling away their fortunes at the Palais-Royal - among other things," she ended, winking broadly. "I fail to see why Sir Henry refuses to let me cross the Channel. It's so dreadfully flat here; I was better entertained in Sussex."

Looking at the very young, very beautiful girl dressed in the height of fashion, a girl who in her few short weeks in the metropolis had already been dubbed the latest Incomparable, Rachel suppressed a chuckle and tried for a commiserating tone. "La, you poor, oppressed creature. Forced to spend your time dragging yourself from ballroom to theater party, your unwilling body pressed into wearing an endless array of flattering silks and satins, while saddled with the unpalatable chore of breaking every young male heart in London. I daresay I admire you for not dissolving on your bed in a flood of tears, so onerous is your trial."

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Ruthless Lord Rule by Kasey Michaels Copyright © 2003 by Kasey Michaels. Excerpted by permission.
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