If only Flashman had got on with his dinner and ignored the handkerchief dropped by a flirtatious hussy in a Calcutta hotel. well, American history might have been different, a disastrous civil war might have been avoided, and Flash Harry himself would have been spared one of the most hair-raising adventures of his misspent life. If only. but alas, the arch-rotter of the Victorian age could never resist the lure of a pretty foot and this latest extract from The Flashman Papers soon finds him