Sharpe’s Trafalgar: The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

‘It’s better than being poor, milady.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is. So why are you telling me about Pohlmann now?’

‘Because he lied to me, ma’am.’

‘Lied to you?’

‘He told me he didn’t know the captain, and you told me that he does.’

She turned to him again. ‘Perhaps I lied to you?’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’ She glanced at the cuddy’s skylight, then walked to the far corner of the deck where a small signal cannon was lashed to the gunwale. She stood in the corner between the cannon and the taffrail and Sharpe, after a moment’s hesitation, joined her there. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said quietly.

‘Don’t like what, ma’am?’

‘That we’re sailing to the east of Madagascar. Why?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Pohlmann tells me we’re trying to race ahead of the convoy. Get to London first and bring the cargo to market.’

‘No one sails outside Madagascar,’ she said, ‘no one! We’re losing the Agulhas Current, which means we’ll make slower time. And by coming this way we go much closer to the Île-de-France.’

‘Mauritius?’ Sharpe asked.

She nodded. Mauritius, or the Île-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbour protected by treacherous coral reefs and stone forts. ‘I told William all this,’ she said bitterly, ‘but he laughed at me. What would I know? Cromwell knows his business, he says, and I should just leave well alone.’ She fell silent and Sharpe was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she was crying. The realization astonished him, for one moment she had been as aloof as ever, and now she was weeping. She stood with her hands on the rail as the tears ran silently down her cheeks. ‘I hated India,’ she said after a while.

‘Why, milady?’

‘Everything dies in India,’ she said bitterly. ‘Both my dogs died, and then my son died.’

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’

She ignored his sympathy. ‘And I almost died. Fever, of course.’ She sniffed. ‘And there were times when I wished I would die.’

‘How old was your son?’

‘Three months,’ she said softly. ‘He was our first and he was so small and perfect, with little fingers and he was just beginning to smile. Just beginning to smile and then he rotted away. Everything rots in India. It turns black and it rots!’ She began to cry harder, her shoulders heaving with sobs and Sharpe simply turned her and drew her towards him and she went to him and wept onto his shoulder.

She calmed after a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered and half stepped away, but seemed content to let him keep his hands on her shoulders.

‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Sharpe said.

Her head was lowered and Sharpe could smell her hair, but then she raised her face and looked at him. ‘Have you ever wanted to die, Mister Sharpe?’

He smiled at her. ‘I always reckoned that would be a terrible waste, my lady.’

She frowned at that answer, then, quite suddenly, she laughed and her face, for the first time since Sharpe had met her, was filled with life and he thought he had never seen, nor ever would see, a woman so lovely. So lovely that Sharpe leaned forward and kissed her. She pushed him away and he stepped back, mortified, readying incoherent apologies, but she was only extricating her arms that had been trapped between their bodies and once they were free she snaked them round his neck and pulled his face to hers and kissed him so fiercely that Sharpe tasted blood from her lip. She sighed, then placed her cheek against his. ‘Oh, God,’ she said softly, ‘I wanted you to do that since the moment I first saw you.’

Sharpe hid his astonishment. ‘I thought you hadn’t noticed me.’

‘Then you are a fool, Richard Sharpe.’

‘And you, my lady?’

She pulled her head back, leaving her arms about his neck. ‘Oh, I’m a fool. I know that. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-eight, milady, as near as I know.’

She smiled and he thought he had never seen a face so transformed by joy, then she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘My name is Grace,’ she said quietly, ‘and why only as near as you know?’

‘I never knew my mother or father.’

‘Never? So who raised you?’

‘I wasn’t really raised, ma’am. Sorry. Grace.’ He blushed as he said it, for though he could imagine kissing her, and though he could imagine laying her on a bed, he could not accustom himself to using her name. ‘I was in a foundling home for a few years, one that were attached to a workhouse, and after that I fended for myself.’

‘I’m twenty-eight too,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think I’ve ever been happy. That’s why I’m a fool.’ Sharpe said nothing, but just stared at her in disbelief. She saw his incredulity and laughed. ‘It’s true, Richard.’

‘Why?’

There was a murmur of voices from the quarterdeck and a sudden glow of light as the compass in the lantern-lit binnacle was unshielded. Lady Grace stepped away from Sharpe and he from her, and both instinctively turned to stare at the sea. The binnacle light vanished. Lady Grace said nothing for a while and Sharpe wondered if she was regretting what had happened, but then she spoke softly. ‘You’re like a weed, Richard. You can grow anywhere. A big, strong weed and you’ve probably got thorns and stinging leaves. But I was like a rose in a garden: trained and cut back and pampered, but not allowed to grow anywhere except where the gardener wanted me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not seeking your pity, Richard. You should never waste pity on the privileged. I’m just talking to find out why I’m here with you.’

‘Why are you?’

‘Because I’m lonely,’ she answered firmly, ‘and unhappy and because you intrigue me.’ She reached out and touched a very gentle finger to the scar on his right cheek. ‘You’re a horribly good-looking man, Richard Sharpe, but if I met you in a London street I’d be very frightened of your face.’

‘Bad and dangerous,’ Sharpe said, ‘that’s me.’

‘And I’m here,’ Lady Grace went on, ‘because there is a joy in doing things we know we should not do. What Captain Cromwell calls our baser instincts, I suppose, and I suppose it will end in tears, but that does not preclude the joy.’ She frowned at him. ‘You look very cruel sometimes. Are you cruel?’

‘No,’ Sharpe said. ‘Perhaps to the King’s enemies. Perhaps to my enemies, but only if they’re as strong as I am. I’m a soldier, not a bully.’

She touched the scar again. ‘Richard Sharpe, my fearless soldier.’

‘I was terrified of you,’ Sharpe admitted. ‘From the moment I saw you.’

‘Terrified?’ She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘I thought you despised me. You looked at me so grimly.’

‘I never said I didn’t despise you,’ Sharpe said in mock seriousness, ‘but from the moment I saw you I wanted to be with you.’

She laughed. ‘You can be with me here,’ she said, ‘but only on fine nights. I come here when I can’t sleep. William sleeps in the stern cabin,’ she explained, ‘and I sleep on the sofa in the day cabin. My maid uses a truckle bed there.’

‘You don’t sleep with him?’ Sharpe dared to ask.

‘I have to go to bed with him,’ she admitted, ‘but he takes laudanum every night because he insists he cannot sleep. He takes too much and he sleeps like a hog, so when he’s asleep I go to the day cabin.’ She shuddered. ‘And the drug makes him costive, which makes him even more bad-tempered.’

‘I have a cabin,’ Sharpe said.