Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3. Bernard Cornwell
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then make his way into the foetid hold and try to sleep.
Then the door opened and Lady Grace came back into the cuddy. She had a scarf about her neck, hiding the pearls and the smooth white skin of her shoulders. She gave Sharpe an unfriendly glance and ignored his awkward greeting. Sharpe expected her to leave straightaway, assuming she had merely come to fetch something she had left in the cuddy, but to his surprise she sat in Cromwell’s chair and frowned at him. ‘Sit down, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Some wine, my lady?’
‘Sit down,’ she said firmly.
Sharpe sat at the opposite end of the table. The empty brass chandelier swung from the beam, reflecting flashes of the candlelight that came from the two shielded lanterns on the bulkheads. The flickering flames accentuated the high bones of Lady Grace’s face. ‘How well do you know the Baron von Dornberg?’ she asked abruptly.
Sharpe blinked, surprised by the question. ‘Not well, my lady.’
‘You met him in India?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where?’ she demanded peremptorily. ‘How?’
Sharpe frowned. He had promised not to give away Pohlmann’s identity, so he 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 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 towards the quarterdeck and respectfully bowed his head in acknowledgement of the unseen captain, then half ran and half walked towards the forecastle where the breakfast burgo waited to be fetched. He found a group of sailors at the galley, one of them the grey-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 alley, sir.’
‘So why has he turned south?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Because we’re a fast ship, sir, and it was grating Peculiar’s nerves to be tied to them slow old tubs of the convoy. You watch him, sir, he’ll have us hanging our shirts in the rigging to catch the wind and we’ll fly home like a seagull.’ He winked. ‘First ship home gets the best prices for the cargo, see, sir?’
The cook ladled the burgoo into Sharpe’s cauldron and Jem opened the forecastle door for Sharpe who almost collided with Pohlmann’s servant, the elderly man who had been so relaxed on his master’s sofa on the first night Sharpe had visited the cabin.
‘Pardonnez-moi,’ the servant said instinctively, stepping