Georgiana was staying in a castle on the western outskirts of Brussels. It had been built in the eleventh century, with a moat and drawbridge surrounding it, though the main structure had since been rebuilt in the Renaissance style, entirely of red brick, with a large garden.
In the seventeenth century, it had belonged to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Brabant. When he was still young, his father had been killed by Dutch Revolt forces, and his mother had fled with him to Cologne. Once grown, he became Spain's envoy to London, then rose steadily to the position of Chancellor. There was a Brabant village near the castle; its villagers had once been subjects of his fief. Now they had nothing to do with one another, because the castle had changed hands many times and its final owner had been the Church.
If one ignored its past as a shelter for beggars and the sick, the renovated castle was quite comfortable to live in. From the small sitting room where they were gathered, they could see the moat and the garden.
The claim that it took three days to travel from Paris to Brussels referred to the pace of relay horses. How could human legs possibly outrun horses?
That was precisely why Wellington had misjudged how quickly the French would reach Belgium and had nearly been caught off guard.
Georgiana had once wondered why Louis XVI had fled northeast. At the time, she had probably been overthinking it.
From Paris to Charon, one could arrive in a day without stopping, but they had reached it by four in the afternoon. That was the result of constantly changing horses—and using good ones at that.
Yet they had still missed the cavalry sent to meet them. In fact, once they had