In the smoke and chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, Lieutenant Tom Burke cuts a dashing figure: young, ambitious, and recovering from wounds that speak to the brutality he barely survived. When we find him, he's watching a regiment in disarray, his soldier's eye catching the signs of impending disaster. But Burke's mind is on something else entirely: Minette, the vivandiere whose distant manner conceals a secret turmoil neither of them can name. As the army marches toward conflict, their relationship hangs in the balance, complicated by war's unforgiving demands and the distance between what they feel and what they can say. Charles James Lever writes with the breathless energy of a man who knows that every moment of peace is borrowed time. This is historical fiction at its most visceral: not the sanitized glory of battle, but the fear, the longing, the way love persists even when everything is falling apart. Volume II continues Burke's story with all the romantic intensity and military texture that made Lever one of the 19th century's most popular novelists. For readers who want adventure that doesn't flinch from emotional complexity.
