Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell Page A

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 toward 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 dawn found the Calliope plunging

    beneath low dark clouds from which black squalls hissed across a white-capped sea. Sharpe,

    lacking a greatcoat, and unwilling to soak his coat or shirt, went on deck bare-chested.

    He turned toward the quarterdeck and respectfully bowed his head in acknowledgment of

    the unseen captain, then half ran and half walked toward the forecastle where the

    breakfast burgoo waited to be fetched. He found a group of sailors at the galley, one of

    them the gray-haired commander of number five gun, who greeted Sharpe with a

    tobacco-stained grin. “We’ve lost the convoy, sir.”
    “Lost it?”
    “Gone to buggery, ain’t it?” The man laughed. “And not by accident if I knows a thing

    about it.”
    “And what do you know about it, Jem?” a younger man asked.
    “More’n you know, and more’n you’ll ever learn.”
    “Why no accident?” Sharpe asked.
    Jem ducked his head to spit tobacco juice. “The captain’s been at the wheel since

    midnight, sir, so he has, and he’s been steering us hard south’ards. Had us on deck in dark

    of night, hauling the sails about. We be running due south now, sir, instead of

    sou’west.”
    “The wind changed,” a man observed.
    “Wind don’t change here!” Jem said scornfully. “Not at this time of year! Wind here be

    steady as a rock out of the nor’east. Nine days in ten, sir, out the nor’east. You don’t need

    to steer a ship out of Bombay, sir. You clear the Balasore Roads, hang your big rags up the

    sticks, and this wind’ll blow you to Madagascar straight as a ball down a tavern