He felt the tautness of her belly under his hands, the heat of her blood through the firm flesh and thin skin. He was tired, so tired – she seemed infinitely far away, and young, where he was old. Too old to begin again. Too old to try any longer. He could not bear to feel anything ever again.

But she called him, with the insistence of the life that was strong within her. Life cannot be ignored, he thought; it must be lived, it must be answered to. It was the condition on which they held the earth, the price of their tenure of the beautiful world God made: the beautiful world which would shake off the blight and horror of war which men had laid on it, and in a few years be green and blessed again, as though none of it had ever happened.

The glow of the firelight behind her lit the curve of her cheek and gilded her eyelashes; there were gold lights in her brown hair; she was beautiful to him. And like a miracle, he felt the stirring of life again within his weary body, and feeling her flesh under his hands, he wanted her. She was ripe with life, her belly was full of his child, and he wanted her, he wanted to hold her and fill her again and again, until black memory retreated; as every new day was filled with the light of the sun, driving back the darkness.

‘I love you, Anna Petrovna,’ he said abruptly, and she looked at him for a moment doubtfully, quizzically. And then she laughed: not because it was funny, but simply because she felt good. He put his arms round her and pulled her roughly against him, and she tilted her head up, looking up at him and laughing; and against his belly, through the muffling layers of his clothing and hers, he felt the child within her kick him lustily.

EPILOGUE

Nobody knows exactly how many men crossed the River Nieman into Russia in June 1812; probably the total of the Allied French forces taking part in the campaign was between five and six hundred thousand. Those who straggled back over the frozen river in December numbered between thirty and forty thousand.

In the six months in between, half a million men had been lost: some in battle, killed or taken prisoner; others from starvation, exhaustion, typhus, pneumonia, dysentery, gangrene; and on the long march back from Moscow, others still perished from the effects of the pitiless Russian winter. Unprepared for the terrifying cold, without food, fuel or adequate clothing, they died by the thousand. Frozen to death, they fell like winter sparrows, unheeded beside the road, and no one ever recorded their names.

The name of Napoleon Bonaparte is known throughout the world as the greatest soldier who ever lived, and the man who, more than any other, shaped modern Europe.

Other books by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles include

The Colonel’s Daughter

Harte’s Desire

The Horsemasters

Julia

The Longest Dance

The Orange Tree Plot

The Bill Slider Mysteries

The Morland Dynasty Series

The War At Home Series

The Kirov Saga- Books 2 & Three

For a full list of titles please visit the author’s website at www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com

Copyright

Published by Northwood Publishing

Copyright © 1990, 2019 Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

All rights reserved

Author’s website

www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

ISBN 978-1-84396-573-2

Also available in paperback

ISBN 978-1-84396-574-9

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual living persons is purely coincidental.

Kindle ebook production

eBook Versions

127 Old Gloucester Street

London WC1N 3AX

www.ebookversions.com