Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles

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.

She looked at him, unsmiling, and Sharpe feared he had offended her, but then she smiled. ‘To yourself?’

He nodded. ‘You’ll like it. It’s seven foot by six with walls of damp wood and clammy canvas.’

‘And you swing in your lonely hammock there?’ she asked, still smiling.

‘Hammock be blowed,’ Sharpe said, ‘I’ve a proper hanging cot with a damp mattress.’

She sighed. ‘And not six months ago a man offered me a palace with walls of carved ivory, a garden of fountains, and a pavilion with a bed of gold. He was a prince, and I must say he was very delicate about it.’

‘And were you?’ Sharpe asked, suddenly jealous of the man. ‘Were you delicate?’

‘I froze him.’

‘You’re good at that.’

‘And in the morning,’ she said, ‘I will have to be good at it again.’

‘Yes, my lady, you will.’

She smiled, acknowledging that he understood the necessary deception. ‘But it won’t be light,’ she said, ‘for another three hours.’

‘Four, more like.’

‘And I’ve been wanting to explore the ship,’ she said. ‘All I ever see is the roundhouse, the cuddy and the poop deck.’

He took her hand. ‘It’ll be pitch black below.’

‘I think that would probably help,’ she said gravely. She took her hand from his. ‘You go first,’ she said, ‘and I’ll follow. I’ll meet you on the main deck.’

And so he waited below the break of the quarterdeck and she did follow and he led her below and there they forgot their suspicions of Pohlmann and Cromwell.

Who, most probably, Sharpe thought when the dawn came and he lay astonished and alone again in his bed, had been playing backgammon. He closed his eyes, amazed at his happiness and praying that this voyage could last for ever.

CHAPTER FOUR

Two mornings later a sail was sighted, the first since the Calliope had left the convoy. It was dawn and the sky above unseen Madagascar was still dark when a topman saw the first sunlight reflect from a distant sail off the starboard bow. Captain Cromwell, summoned from his cabin by Lieutenant Tufnell, appeared agitated. He was wearing a flannel nightgown and his long hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of his neck. He stared at the strange ship’s sails through an ancient telescope. ‘It ain’t a native ship,’ Sharpe heard him say. ‘They’re proper topsails. Christian canvas, that.’ Cromwell ordered the main-deck guns to be unlashed. Powder was brought up from the magazines while Cromwell changed into his usual uniform. Tufnell went to the mainmast crosstrees equipped with a telescope. He stared for a long time, then shouted that he thought the distant vessel was a whaler. Cromwell seemed relieved, but left the powder charges on deck just in case the strange ship proved to be a privateer.

It was the best part of an hour before the distant ship could be seen from the Calliope’s deck and its presence brought the passengers on deck to stare at the stranger. Like the glimpse of land, this was a break in the journey’s tedium and Sharpe gazed with the rest, though he had an advantage over most of the passengers, for he possessed a telescope. The instrument was a marvel, a beautiful spyglass made by Matthew Berge of London and inscribed with the date of the battle of Assaye. Sir Arthur Wellesley had given the telescope to Sharpe, with his thanks engraved above the date, though he had been his usual distant and diffident self as he handed the glass over. ‘I would not have you think I was unmindful of the service you did me,’ the general had said awkwardly.

‘I was just glad to be there, sir,’ Sharpe had answered just as awkwardly.

Sir Arthur had forced himself to say something more. ‘Remember, Mister Sharpe, that an officer’s eyes are more valuable than his sword.’

‘I’ll remember that, sir,’ Sharpe said, reflecting that the general would have been dead without Sharpe’s sabre. Still, he supposed the advice was good. ‘And thank you, sir,’ Sharpe had said and remembered being obscurely disappointed with the telescope. He had reckoned that a good sword would have been a better reward for saving the general’s life.

Sir Arthur had frowned, but Campbell, one of his aides, had tried to be friendly. ‘So you’re off to join the Rifles, Sharpe?’

‘I am, sir.’

Sir Arthur had cut the conversation short. ‘You’ll be happy there, I’m sure. Thank you, Mister Sharpe. Good day to you.’

And thus Sharpe had become the ungrateful possessor of a telescope that would have been the envy of richer men. He trained it now on the strange ship, which, to his untutored eye, looked a good deal smaller than the Calliope. She was certainly no warship, but appeared to be a small merchantman.

‘She’s a Jonathon!’ Tufnell called from aloft, and Sharpe edged the glass leftwards and saw a faded ensign flying at the far ship’s stern. The flag looked very like the red-and-white-striped banner of the East India Company, but then the wind lifted it and he saw the stars in its upper quadrant and realized she was an American.