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was fighting on, her broadsides ragged but persistent. In an instant the proud, graceful flagship burst apart in a thunderous crash. Every ship in the harbor was racked back by the explosion. Victoire noticed that a frigate that had been listing badly could no longer be seen. Debris from the explosion rose skyward and began to shower over the entire bay. Small scraps of wood and metal rained down on the dune, none larger than a fraction of an inch across. The rumble of the explosion echoed back off the distant hills and city, rolling endlessly across the black waters of Aboukir Bay and the hundreds of men struggling to survive by clinging amid the flotsam. Where the L’Orient had sat, not even flotsam remained.
    “Mary and Joseph,” whispered Vernet, his oath lost in the thunder of L’Orient’s end. He held Victoire’s hand more tightly.
    Around them several people were weeping openly, and one cavalry captain swore loudly and continuously. Smoke rolled over the water toward them, hot and stinking. Many of the watchers had retreated, and now, as burning embers began to fall around them, most of those on the shore fell back, getting away from the presence of battle and defeat.
    Vernet pulled Victoire after him, and together they reached a line of makeshift stalls at the edge of the camp that provided some protection. Inside, horses milled and whinnied, fretting at the smell of burning.
    “I ought to arrange to send you home,” said Vernet seriously, looking down at his wife with genuine concern. “This is no place for you.”
    “What do you mean?” Victoire inquired, looking for some opportunity to vent her frustration and dismay.
    “I mean I should never have let you come here. You’re not a typical army wife, raised to follow the drum and live from camp to camp.” He lowered his head. “It was my mistake. We have been married such a short time, I was selfish to want you with me, even against the general’s wishes. You should be somewhere you can live as you deserve to live, not here where you—”
    “This is exactly the place for me,” Victoire corrected him with some heat. “I am your wife, Lucien Vernet. What sort of creature do you think I am? I am not a rich man’s pampered darling, I’m from merchant stock. My mother knew what it was to unload shipping bales and to carry cargo from dusk until midnight, and so did her mother before her. Even when my father was elected to office, my mother continued to supervise our enterprise.” She folded her arms. “What would I do in Paris, or Rouen, with you gone? Your salary would not go far, not with you here and me in France, and my competence would not support you and me as well. Would you like to see me as a governess in a high-born household, catering to the demands of half a dozen ill-informed brats? It could come to that. Do you think my cousin would welcome me into his household? Or were you intending that I should find a little cottage in the countryside where I could throw corn to chickens while you fight the British? My inheritance would cover those expenses well enough.”
    He had no answer for her, and so took refuge in bluster. “You make it sound as if I have no use for you and am looking for an excuse to be rid of you. That’s far from the truth.”
    “Is it?” She put her hands on her hips in unconscious imitation of her dead mother. “How can you suggest that I leave and then tell me you don’t wish to be rid of me?” She stared at him. “Well?”
    “You’re overwrought,” he mumbled.
    “Nothing of the sort,” she countered, but recognized there was some truth in his accusation. “I am worried. That’s a very different matter.”
    “About the British,” he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the smoke and chaos on the Nile.
    She was just angry enough not to guard her tongue. “About Berthier,” she said, and immediately fell silent.
    “What about Berthier?” asked Vernet, very much on the alert.
    Now that she had