Vintage Love by Clarissa Ross

emperor as no officer or gentleman ought to have been treated.”
    She said, “I had gone before all that.”
    O’Meara gave her a sad smile. “And I can tell you that the emperor missed you. You and your friends Betsy and Jane Balcombe. He used to joke about his two Betsys and his Jane. But there was little of the good humor of the old days after Sir Hudson Lowe arrived.”
    Betsy said, “I wrote him several letters, once when my father died and once before that. But there were no replies.”
    O’Meara grimaced. “That does not surprise me. He never received the letters. Be certain of that. Lowe chose to censor everything beyond the point of good sense. I also wrote and received no reply.”
    Felix Black said, “Sir Hudson Lowe took himself too seriously and also his role as Napoleon’s chief warder. If he had been less stupid, we might not be faced with the situation as we are now.”
    Dr. O’Meara turned to her. “I hear you are to be part of Black’s private organization.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Are you not anxious to find out if Napoleon is alive?”
    “I’m of two minds,” O’Meara said. “I fear what this man Valmy may try and do with him if he is truly back in Europe and in his power. I would almost prefer that he be buried in his lonely grave on the island.”
    Felix Black explained. “Dr. O’Meara has taken up journalism and written a number of books explaining Napoleon’s nature and quoting from his conversations with him on Saint Helena. He has done an interesting work of painting the former tyrant of Europe in sympathetic colors, making many of his actions understandable and even laudable.”
    “And so they were!” the Irish doctor said vigorously.
    Black smiled. “I vow that only in this free England would you be allowed to publish such controversial writings.”
    O’Meara smiled bitterly. “Is it the freedom of England you’re so proud of? Should you not look about you. What sort of land is this today? Or take yourself to Ireland and see what suffering is! English landlords in absentia do not make for happy tenant farmers!”
    “That’s bog talk!” Felix Black replied. “You are my good friend, O’Meara, but I cannot tolerate it. As for the state of England, I do not think it that bad.”
    The curly haired Irish doctor sneered. “Now is that true? Take your London! A city in which a nobleman can lose thousands of pounds in a night at Watier’s! Yet little lads of five are forced to sweep chimneys, and girls of twelve parade the streets as prostitutes for little more than bread enough to keep them alive another day! His Majesty’s staging wild orgies with his stays undone and tossed to one side as he ravages the wife of some grand gentleman of his circle. And the same grand ladies greet their sons and daughters and puzzle who fathered them!”
    Felix Black clapped his hands. “Excellent! You’ve become a Christian orator as well as a pamphleteer! I vow you could also be a danger if you wished, O’Meara. Many a crowd could be roused by that speech.”
    Barry O’Meara turned to her, looking rather sheepish. “I’m sorry. I did rant on a bit. It must be my middle-class upbringing. I’m far too moral in my outlook. While on the other hand our friend Black has no morals at all. He surrendered them when he became chief of His Majesty’s espionage service.”
    Black’s thin face showed amusement. “You were one of us, O’Meara.”
    “So I was, to my everlasting shame,” Barry O’Meara said. “So now I atone by trying to tell the truth about Napoleon as I knew him.”
    Betsy, impressed by his performance, said, “I must read some of your writings.”
    “I’ll send you a copy of all of them,” the Irish doctor promised. “If history remembers me at all, and I doubt it will, it has to be as the man who tried to help make Napoleon understood.”
    Felix Black raised an eyebrow and with a hint of sarcasm suggested, “Or more likely as the stubborn Irish doctor sent to