Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell

would need to treat Lady Grace’s insistence tactfully. ‘I served with a Company exploring officer for a while, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and he frequently rode behind enemy lines. That’s when I met P — the baron.’ He thought for a second or two. ‘I maybe met him four times, perhaps five?’
    ‘Which enemy?’
    ‘The Mahrattas, ma’am.’
    ‘So he was a friend to the Mahrattas?’
    ‘I imagine so, ma’am.’
    She stared at him as if she was weighing the truth of his words. ‘He seems very attached to you, Mister Sharpe.’
    Sharpe almost swore as the wine glass slid away from him and fell over the fiddle. The glass smashed on the floor, splashing wine across the canvas rug. ‘I did him a service, ma’am, the last time we met. It was after a fight.’
    ‘He was on the other side?’ she interrupted him.
    ‘He was with the other side, ma’am,’ Sharpe said carefully, disguising the truth that Pohlmann had been the general commanding the other side. ‘And he was caught up in the rout. I could have captured him, I suppose, but he didn’t seem to pose any harm, so I let him go. He’s grateful for that, I’m sure.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, and seemed about to stand.
    ‘Why, ma’am?’ Sharpe asked, hoping she would stay.
    She relaxed warily, then stared at him for a long time, evidently considering whether to answer, then let go of the table and shrugged. ‘You heard the captain’s conversation with the baron tonight?’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘They appear as strangers to each other?’
    ‘Indeed they do,’ Sharpe agreed, ‘and Cromwell told me as much himself.’
    ‘Yet almost every night, Mister Sharpe, they meet and talk. Just the two of them. They come in here after midnight and sit across the table from each other and talk. And sometimes the baron’s manservant is here with them.’ She paused. ‘I frequently find it hard to sleep and if the night is fine I will go on deck. I hear them through the skylight. I don’t eavesdrop,’ she said acidly, ‘but I hear their voices.’
    ‘So they know each other a great deal better than they pretend?’ Sharpe said.
    ‘So it would seem,’ she answered.
    ‘Odd, ma’am,’ Sharpe said.
    She shrugged as if to suggest that Sharpe’s opinion was of no interest to her. ‘Perhaps they merely play backgammon,’ she said distantly.
    She again looked as though she would leave and Sharpe hurried to keep the conversation going. ‘The baron did tell me he might go to live in France, ma’am.’
    ‘Not London?’
    ‘France or Hanover, he said.’
    ‘But you can hardly expect him to confide in you,’ she said scornfully, ‘on the basis of your very slight acquaintance.’ She stood.
    Sharpe pushed back his chair and hurried to open the door. She nodded thanks for his courtesy, but a sudden wave heaved the Calliope and made Lady Grace stagger and Sharpe instinctively put a hand out to check her and the hand encircled her waist and took her weight so that she was leaning against him with her face just inches from his. He felt a terrible desire to kiss her and he knew she would not object for, though the ship steadied, she did not step away. Sharpe could feel her slender waist beneath the soft material of her dress. His mind was swimming because her eyes, so large and serious, were on his, and once again, as he had the very first time he glimpsed her, he sensed a melancholy in her face, but then the quarterdeck door banged open and Cromwell’s steward swore as he carried a tray towards the cuddy. Lady Grace twisted from Sharpe’s arm and, without a word, went through the door.
    ‘Raining buckets, it is,’ the steward said. ‘A bloody fish would drown on deck, I tell you.’
    ‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, ‘bloody hell.’ He picked the decanter up by the neck, tipped it to his mouth and drained it.
    The wind and rain stayed high throughout the night. Cromwell had shortened sail at nightfall and those few passengers who braved the deck at