Belgium, late May 1815
It had been a month since Thomas left the Farm, and the green peace of Spain now seemed like a hallucination—a dream conjured under silk sheets and candlelight. Here, in the churned mud of Belgium, there were no velvet walls, no warm hearths. Only smoke, sweat, and the thunder of boots against ruined roads.
The Rifle Brigade had received him with mixed eyes—respect for the insignia on his shoulder, but suspicion in their silence. Field commissions were rare, and rarer still for officers who reappeared from thin air with polish on their boots and a backstory no one quite trusted.
Captain. It still felt strange in his mouth. He wore the rank like a borrowed name.
The march north from Brussels was long and cruel. The roads were bogged with wagons, field artillery, and battalions of British and Prussian infantry threading through the farmland like spilt ink. It rained constantly. The nights were colder than he expected for late spring, and the men’s morale hung by threads—dried tobacco, scrawled notes from home and the rare bottle of wine passed between tents was all that kept them going.
They called it a buildup, but it felt more like a reckoning.
In his tent, Thomas wrote.
Dearest Emily,
The fields here are wide and grey and endless. I sometimes imagine the winds are whispering your name, though that may just be madness settling in from lack of sleep. Movement is ongoing and continuous. We are gathering like a storm. I feel it in my spine.
As for my commission, the uniform fits. The weight of command fits less so. I watch young men sleep near their muskets and wonder which of them I will have to write home about.
But I think of you, and of Lucia. I carry both of you with me. Not in memory—but in motion. You were the last stillness I knew. I hope I will know it again.
He left out the worst of it.
He left out the boy with the missing jaw from a training misfire. He left out the drunken lieutenant who wept for his mother three nights in a row before deserting into the woods. He left out the stench of death that sometimes blew in on the breeze, even though no battle had yet begun. It wasn’t the blood that haunted—it was the waiting.
June 15th, 1815 – Near Quatre Bras
The enemy had finally moved. Napoleon’s army had crossed the Sambre.
Everything accelerated.
They met the French at Quatre Bras—fields of wheat and rye turned to fire and screaming. The Rifle Brigade advanced through orchards and over ditches, harried by French skirmishers in the treeline. Thomas led from the front, his voice hoarse from shouting orders, his saber stained, and his mind cracked wide open.
He had killed a dozen men that day—many by pistol, two with the blade. They did not scream. Their eyes simply widened, and then they fell.
That night, covered in blood, he sat with trembling hands and wrote again.
Lucia,
I think if I do not write to you, I may come apart.
Today I saw how thin the veil is between man and ghost. We fought all afternoon in the fields near Quatre Bras. I was not afraid when it happened. I was only cold. And terribly awake.
You once said I looked lost. I do not feel lost now—I know exactly where I am. But I am starting to wonder if there’s a way back.
I miss the sun on the glass of the conservatory. I miss your voice.
If I do not return… know that I remembered you when I could have forgotten everything else.
-----
June 17th — On the move toward Waterloo
They marched again—toward destiny, they said. Toward Waterloo.
The rain poured without mercy, turning the roads to sludge. Horses stumbled. Men collapsed mid-step. Thunder rolled across the skies, and it seemed even God was not sure who to favour.
Thomas carried letters in his satchel—some from the men, some of his own. Each step forward felt heavier than the last, not from fatigue, but from a sense that what lay ahead would not be survived in whole.
His own thoughts became harder to untangle from the mud, the rain, the roar of distant cannon.
But still, he wrote. Always.
Emily,
I do not know if this will reach you. But if it does, and you are reading this, know that I carried you into battle. Not as a comfort, but as a promise.
They speak of glory. I no longer believe in it. Only in survival. And in the strange, beautiful madness we shared.
If I live through this, it will be because something in your touch taught me I still deserved to.
He signed it with just his name.
And then he folded the page, placed it in the leather satchel over his heart, and stepped back into the storm.
-----
Ashcombe Manor, Early June 1815
The rain had returned to Sussex, falling in long grey curtains that blurred the hedgerows and softened the manicured edges of the Ashcombe estate. Yet within the high halls of the manor, something bright—something utterly new—had taken root.
Emily stood at the window in her dressing gown, fingers resting lightly over the gentle curve of her lower belly. It was not yet visible to others, but she knew. She felt it, humming beneath her skin like a secret too radiant to hide.
The physician had confirmed it only days ago.
A child.
Lord Ashcombe, upon hearing the news, had said nothing for a moment. Then he had kissed her—on the forehead, on the mouth, on her bare shoulder—and whispered, “It’s Thomas’s, isn’t it?”
She had nodded.
And he had smiled.
They had made peace long ago with what their marriage was—and was not. But this, this new life, was a thread between all three of them. Not scandal. Not shame. Something like grace.
---
The Letter from Lord and Lady Ashcombe to Thomas
Captain Thomas Hale,
We write to you not in protocol, but in joy. Emily is with child.
The months since your departure have been long, but they have ripened us into something altogether unexpected. We both agree—this child is yours. And you are ours, in more ways than can be bound by law or uniform.
Come home when you can. Return whole, if fate allows it. But know that no matter the outcome, you have left something beautiful behind.
With loyalty, affection, and something near to love,
Ashcombe
and Emily
------
Lucia’s Letter
Lucia wrote separately, by candlelight, seated at the edge of the bed where she so often dreamed of him. Her handwriting was delicate but sure. She paused often, chewing her lip before letting the words spill freely. This was no courtly correspondence. It was something far more personal.
My dearest Thomas,
I read your letter three times beneath the lemon tree in the conservatory. The paper smells like powder and smoke. I keep it under my pillow.
I miss your hands. I miss your voice the most. I speak aloud sometimes to no one, just so I don’t forget what it felt like to share the silence with you.
Emily glows. She holds her belly as if she’s protecting a star. I watch her, and sometimes I feel jealous—not of the child, but of the part of you that lives in her now. And then I remember, I carry part of you, too.
At night, when the house is quiet and the wind presses against the windows, I think of your mouth, your warmth, the weight of you. I touch myself slowly, my fingers are no replacement for you, but the pleasure they bring me makes me feel alive and wanted the way you did. I whisper your name into the darkness as my body shudders, hoping you hear it on the distant wind.
I do not apologise for this. I want you to know that I still burn.
Come back to us. Come back to me.
Yours,
Lucia
She sealed the letter with wax, pressed her ring into it, and gave it to the courier before she could change her mind.
-----
In Ashcombe Manor, the rain continued to fall. Emily sat in the drawing room with her embroidery, humming a tune that only a woman newly in love with the future could hum. Lord Ashcombe smoked in the study, one hand tracing the curve of a musket ball Thomas had once gifted him, removed from the chest of a French officer only feet away from Napoleon. The Note said, “This ball could have ended it all and brought us back together, but the wind changed direction”.
And Lucia, in the quiet hours before sleep, returned to Thomas’s last letter, reading the line where he said her name. She traced it again and again with her fingertip, like a prayer.
The war was still raging. But here, in this house of stone and secrets, they were building something to survive it.
----
Near Waterloo, June 17, 1815 — Night Before Battle
The wind howled across the fields, carrying the scent of wet soil, trampled wheat, and gunpowder. It had rained for hours. The camp was soaked. Tents sagged under the weight of water, and boots squelched in the muck with every step.
Captain Thomas Hale sat beneath an oilcloth near the fire, a tin cup of warmed brandy in hand, steam rising from it like breath in the cold. He had not spoken for most of the evening. His men had learned to leave him be during these silences. The ones who survived the last battle saw something in his eyes—resolve wrapped around sorrow like a bandage over a wound.
A courier arrived just after nightfall, soaked to the bone, bearing letters with seals he knew at once. Ashcombe. His name in Emily’s unmistakable script.
He read hers first, with slow reverence. The words didn’t just warm him—they split him open. A child. Ours. The meaning stole the air from his lungs. Lord Ashcombe’s formal tone made him smile in disbelief. But it was Lucia’s letter that undid him. He held it to his lips, then to his chest, before folding it into the pocket above his heart.
He did not sleep.
Instead, he stared into the dark, the letters clutched in his hand and let them become a shield for what was to come.
June 18, 1815 — The Battle of Waterloo
At dawn, the rain lifted. What followed was not sunshine but smoke.
They advanced with the Rifle Brigade, black-coated and green-faced, moving in staggered formation through the tall grass. Ahead lay La Haye Sainte, the battered farmhouse that would become the crucible of their day—a stubborn stone outpost at the heart of Wellington’s centre.
French cannon fire thundered across the field. The earth quaked beneath their boots. Men cried out, fell, rose again.
Thomas’s section reached the outer wall just as a mortar shell struck the rear stables. The blast flung splinters and flame skyward. Horses shrieked inside as they burned.
He did not falter.
“Inside! Hold the line!” he bellowed over the din.
They fought room to room—pistols discharged at near point-blank range, bayonets locking against French steel. The smoke inside the farmhouse grew thick and choking. The roof collapsed in one corner, flame licking up the wooden beams.
Thomas led a push to secure the second floor. By the time they reached it, only ten men remained with him. He stood at the centre of the landing, saber drawn, and saw a young French grenadier aiming a musket his way.
The shot rang out.
Pain exploded in Thomas’s side, just below the ribs. He staggered, dropped to one knee, but stayed upright, driven by something deeper than duty. Blood poured through his jacket.
A familiar voice rang behind him. “Captain’s hit! Hold him up!”
Two men pulled him back as more British troops poured in to relieve them. The French line faltered. The push broke. Muskets thundered below as Prussian reinforcements swept in from the right.
Victory wasn’t declared—it was wrestled from the jaws of death with blood and fire.
Late Afternoon, June 18 — Aftermath
Thomas lay in the ruined kitchen, wrapped in a tattered cloak. Smoke still clung to the walls. His wound had been bound by a young medic who whispered, “You’ll live, sir. But it was close.”
He clutched the letter from Lucia, now smudged with ash and blood. He hadn’t let go of it. The lines she had written pulsed in his mind, even through the haze.
“Come back to us. Come back to me.”
Through the shattered window, the battlefield groaned with the sounds of dying men and distant cheers. The tricolour had fallen. Napoleon’s dream ended in the mud of Waterloo.
Thomas Hale survived.
Barely.
But even in agony, he smiled. Not for glory. Not for Britain. But for the child he hadn’t met, the woman who bore it, and the lady who waited with a secret kind of love in her heart.
