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“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” Will said at last.

Alec blew out a stream of smoke that dissipated at once in the wet air. “Worse than usual, do you think?”

His friend was quiet, then plucked the cigar from his mouth to gesture at the sodden darkness. “Somewhere over that ridge are thousands of Frenchmen who want to kill us all. They must know it’s old Boney’s great chance. If he can wipe out this army, what would stand in his way?”

Alec grunted, conceding the point. “He won’t destroy this army. Wellington’s too cagey for that. He’ll fall back on Brussels and make another stand, and God help the Prussians if they don’t join us there.”

“They’re on the way to Wavre, if the French don’t get them first.”

“You’re awfully grim,” Alec said mildly. “I hold out hope we might crush them, instead of the other way ‘round.”

Will shook his head. “I have a terrible premonition about this. No—that’s not what I mean.” He paused, struggling for words. “I haven’t been as—as able an officer as I should have been.”

Alec glanced at him. “Nonsense. What the devil. . . ?”

“I feel my inadequacies weighing on me of late.” He was drawing hard on his cigar. “As though I’ve been blind to them all my life and only now see what they’ve cost me.”

“Ah, the lament of all married men,” said Alec in exaggerated pity.

As hoped, Will smiled, but it quickly faded. “My poor wife. If I die, who will take care of her? She shouldn’t have to suffer so, and now she’s with child.”

Will had married a Spanish beauty during the Peninsula campaign, and his father had never forgiven him. Old Mr. Lucey was stubborn and proud, and he wouldn't be likely to take care of Isabella Lucey and her baby if anything happened to Will. Mrs. Lucey was in Brussels, no doubt even more anxious about the impending battle than her husband. Alec had met her on a few occasions and thought she was charming.

He clapped Will on the shoulder. “I would care for her. You may depend on that, although I fully expect you to ride through this battle without a blemish and have many children to vex you well into your old age, just as you and I have done for our fathers.”

Will’s shoulder twitched. “Thank you. You cannot know how that eases my mind. I have your word?”

Surprised, Alec looked away from the driving rain and into his friend’s face. “Do you even need to ask? You know I would.”

“Your word?” Will repeated. His eyes burned and the cigar trembled in his fingers. “Whatever happens?”

“Yes.” Alec wondered at Will’s feverish insistence, but then told himself not to judge too harshly. He didn’t know what went through a man’s mind the night before a battle when he had a wife and child to think of. He didn’t particularly care to think of his own death, but if it happened, his family would go on well enough without him. No one depended on him for home and happiness. “I swear it.”

The tension went out of Will’s body and he leaned against the wall at their back. “I have a letter. . . Some documents. . . ” He drew a packet from inside his coat. “Would you send these to my father, after my death?”

It was customary to leave a letter for one’s family, to be sent if necessary. Many officers would be up most of the night writing them. Alec stared askance at Will, though, for the certainty of his phrasing. Not "if I should fall" but "after my death." He took the letter and the packet and shoved both into his jacket. “Get some sleep, Lucey. You’re not going to die, not in this fight.”

Will’s smile was ghastly. “Perhaps not. But it would ease my mind. . . ”

“Of course,” Alec muttered. Of course they both might die on the morrow, or a month hence of fever, or in their sleep tonight from the wet and the chill. It was part of the army. “I regret I have no wife and child to burden you with. Perhaps you can find someone to marry Julia, if I die and miss the chance of teasing her suitors.”

Will closed his eyes, smiled, and said nothing. For a long moment the only sound was the steady patter of the rain on the umbrella over their heads and the soft rush of the small river now flowing through the ditch that used to be a road in front of them. In the distance was a constant rumble, not of thunder but of wagons carrying supplies and artillery.

A man came sloshing through the mud toward them. “Captain Lucey, sir!”

Will stiffened. “Yes?”

The man’s eyes were barely visible in the dark; every inch of him was spattered with mud. “You’re needed, sir. General Ponsonby wants you.”

Will’s face relaxed, and he nodded before sending the man on his way. “Ponsonby’s concerned for his horse,” he said wryly, more like the Will of old. “He’s been set on purchasing another to spare his animal any injury, but cannot seem to strike a bargain. Perhaps I shall sell him mine and make a tidy sum.”

“Don’t do it,” advised Alec. “He’d blame you if the horse startled and he had to retreat.”

“No doubt,” said Will with a laugh. He flicked the end of his cigar into the darkness. The glowing tip of it was extinguished before it hit the ground. “Godspeed, Alec.”

Alec touched the dripping brim of his hat in salute. “And to you, Will.”

He went back into the house, finding the small room assigned to him. He stripped off his jacket and pried off his boots, setting them outside the door for his batman, Kirke, to make some effort to dry. Kirke had delivered his campaign trunk, which sat at the foot of the narrow bed, and Alec opened it.