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was still a relief to reach up and not feel the thick, flour-like paste. As he felt his hair, he wondered whether it was getting too long once again.
    Williams ran up the left stirrup. Instinctively awkward in social gatherings even of such an informal sort, he had long since convinced himself that appearing to be busy, rather than merely standing and looking on, created a better impression should anyone deign to notice. As he walked behind Bobbie, the mare lashed out with a hoof. She missed, just swishing aside the long tails of his officer’s coat. He had bought it after Vimeiro, at the auction of the property of a fallen officer of the 50th, and then had the black cuffs and collar replaced with the red of the 106th. The unfortunate man had been as broad shouldered, but considerably larger around the waist. In spite of adjustments the jacket still hung loose around him, suggesting that Williams had suffered from a serious illness, and denying him the trim figure felt ideal for an officer.
    He patted Bobbie again to calm her, but suspected this was merely one of her periodic outbursts of malice and not prompted by any particular grievance. There was a sound of more horsemen arriving to join the group of officers clustered around the general. Williams now had his back to them all and did not bother to turn. He slid the other stirrup up, and then reached back to scratch his lower back with both hands, before reaching farther down to the area left tender. A shadow fell over him.
    ‘I trust you are not wounded, Mr Williams?’ It was a voice he admired above all others, and for a moment he froze, horrified to be caught in such an ungraceful posture. Then the tall man turned, his face beaming happiness as he looked up at the girl. She overwhelmed him, as she always did whenever they met.
    Miss MacAndrews wore a deep blue riding habit, with a snug-fitting jacket over it styled something like the pelisse of the hussars. This was a paler blue, with white lace and ribbons, and a generous fringe of soft brown fur. She had a grey fur hat, only very vaguely resembling the cavalry’s headgear, but far more suitable to keep her warm, and her flowing red curls were pinned up beneath it. In a field of snow under a grey sky and amid a tired and mud-stained army, she seemed to shine. Williams fervently believed that her beauty and essential goodness would stand out in any place and any company.
    ‘It seems that I made an appropriate choice of attire for today,’ she said. ‘Even Father will be pleased at such a victory.’ Major Alastair MacAndrews had been a soldier since the American War, where he had been captured when the cavalry had fled and left his battalion surrounded. This had greatly reinforced the instinctively jaundiced attitude of a foot soldier to the more conspicuous and flamboyant mounted arm.
    ‘May I say that your uniform becomes you most magnificently. I am sure that our hussars will crave the chance for ten more such charges, merely to begin to prove worthy of inspiring your costume.’ It had taken months for Williams to gain any confidence in her presence, and even now he was thinking hard to devise appropriate compliments.
    Jane MacAndrews’ blue-grey eyes stared into his, her expression suddenly serious. ‘Then I am sure that I must at once go off and alter it. For that would mean more fighting and surely it is inevitable that some men will die. I should hate to be the cause of deaths, most of all merely because of the choice of a garment.’
    Williams scrambled desperately for an appropriate response. ‘I am sure that in such a cause they would feel honoured … That is to say …’ That was no doubt wrong. ‘I did not mean to imply …’ For all his hard-won confidence, he had been thrown off balance in a minute.
    The flicker of amusement began in her eyes, and then she dazzled him with a smile, and he no longer cared about balance. ‘I am cruel,’ said Jane, ‘to respond so unjustly to generous