All in Scarlet Uniform (Napoleonic War 4) Read Online Free PDF

was thronged with recruiters.
    ‘Hello, soldier,’ said the boy.
    ‘Hello, young man,’ Williams replied, and this at least prompted a grateful smile from the father. The man had quick, intelligent eyes, and hands that were soft underneath some recent blisters. Williams guessed he was educated, perhaps a clerk, but had recently been forced to take any work he could get to feed his family. An older woman appeared beside the man.
    ‘A soldier, Gran,’ said the child, pointing in case she failed to notice Williams. Then doubt creased the small forehead. ‘He should have a horse.’
    ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ apologised the woman, whose face was heavily lined with care.
    ‘It is fine.’
    ‘But he should have a horse,’ the boy continued, with utter conviction. ‘He’s a soldier.’
    ‘He is in his stable being fed,’ said Williams.
    ‘Good.’ That appeared to resolve the mystery, and further conversation became impossible when on the far side of the square the drummer from Williams’ party plunged into a series of flamboyant tattoos, the sound echoing off the houses and for a moment checking the busy hubbub of market day. The boy was carried off into the mass, his father accompanied by his grandmother. The child was obviously delighted with the sights and sounds and began waving his hands as if he had sticks and his father’s head was a drum.
    Williams made his way through the crowd towards the redcoats, and could not help sighing at the thought that he had possessed a horse for a few brief weeks in the summer. The mare was an Andalusian, fast, elegant and well mannered even with an inexperienced rider like Williams. It was a gift given after Talavera as a reward for saving the life of the Spanish commander, and from the very beginning the subaltern had known that it was too fine and delicate an animal for a mere subaltern in the line to feed and maintain. Williams had no funds beyond his pay, and was unable to afford proper feed to keep the mare in condition, let alone a groom to care for her. He had sold the horse when he reached Lisbon, and received the princely sum of two hundred guineas from a newly arrived major general. The price was fair, perhaps even a little low, and it was more money than he had ever had – almost than he had ever dreamed to have. When they reached England and finally received eight months of back pay in one lump sum, for a while Williams felt himself to be rich.
    It did not last, and his funds were now much diminished. There were bills to pay, for all the usual deductions had steadily accumulated, and it seemed that more than half of his wages vanished in the twinkling of an eye and the scratching of a pen in an account book. Then there were presents for his mother and sisters, and since then the drain of hunting for the errant Kitty, and of taking her up to Scotland with Garland, where the two were wed in that strange ceremony over the anvil. Both Garland and Tilney were due to join their regiment in Lord Wellington’s army, and so there was no time for the banns to be called.
    Williams had gone to represent the family, and although brief acquaintance convinced him that Garland was sincere and to be trusted, it was proper for him to be there. Kitty had done better than she deserved, winning a decent and well-off husband at the end of her silly and dangerous adventure. The impression of her great good fortune was reinforced when they visited Mr and Mrs Garland on their way back south. An initially tepid welcome quickly became very warm, for the parents clearly doted on all of their children and were delighted to see their son happy. Kitty flattered them with enough obvious sincerity to win them over. She had always been personable, and had a social confidence that Williams himself utterly lacked. For the moment she would live in Bristol with his mother and sisters, until ‘her hero returned from the wars’. The willingness not to be a burden on her husband’s parents had very much