23
Claudette stood inside the walls, watching the British army return, shoulders slumped in defeat. She ran her eyes over the battered, shocked men until she found MacKim, and then she nodded to him, only once, and slipped back inside the crowd. MacKim watched her without understanding. His mind was busy with Lucas de Langdon, and his heart was sick with the pain of defeat.
“Seventy-eighth!” Colonel Fraser roared. “You’re soldiers, not sorners! Straighten those shoulders! March in!”
The process of returning pride to the men had begun, although it would be some days before the army recovered sufficiently to be called a fighting force.
“How many did we lose, sir?” MacKim asked as he slumped against the barrack-room wall. The taste of defeat was bitter in his mouth.
“I’m not sure,” Kenne
