Sharpe's Sword Part 17

She nodded. "It pleases me. So tell me what Jack Spears whispered to you?" The inflection of command was back in her voice, as if she talked to her postilion.

Sharpe was tired of her games. He let his own voice be as harsh as hers. "That you had low tastes, Ma'am."

She went very still and tense. She was leaning forward on the bench, her hands gripping its edge, and Sharpe wondered if she was about to shout for her servants and have him thrown out. Then she leaned back, relaxed, and waved a hand at the elegant balcony. "I thought I had rather high tastes. Poor Jack thinks everyone is like him." Her voice had changed again, this time she had spoken with a soft sadness. She stood up and walked to the lattice, pus.h.i.+ng open one of the doors. "That business tonight was a shambles."

The previous subject seemed to have been forgotten, as if it had never existed. Sharpe turned to look at her. "Yes."

"Why did the Peer order the attack? It seemed hopeless."

Sharpe was tempted to say that she had wanted a battle, almost pleaded with Wellington for one, but this new, crisp woman was not someone he wanted to annoy, not at this moment. "He's always impetuous at sieges. He likes to get them done."

"Which means many deaths?" Her fingers were beating a swift tattoo on the frame of the lattice.

"Yes."

"What happens now?" She was staring at the forts and Sharpe was staring at her profile. She was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

"We'll have to dig trenches. We'll have to do everything properly."

"Where?"

He shrugged. "Probably in the ravine."

"Show me."

He went to her side, smelling her, feeling her closeness to him and he wondered if she could detect his trembling. He could see a silver comb holding up her piled hair and then he looked away and pointed at the gorge. "Along the right hand side, Ma'am, close to the San Vincente."

She turned her face to his, just inches away, and her eyes were violet in the moonlight that threw shadows beneath the high cheekbones. "How long will that take?"

"It could be done in two days."

She kept her face turned up and her eyes stayed on his eyes. He was aware of her body, of the bare shoulders, of dark shadows that promised softness.

She turned abruptly away and crossed to the table. "You haven't eaten."

"A little, Ma'am."

"Come and sit. Pour me some wine." There were partridges roasted whole, quails stuffed with meat and peppers, and small slices of fruit, that she said were quinces, that had been dipped in syrup and sugar. Sharpe took off his shako, propped his rifle against the wall, and sat. He did not touch the food. He poured her wine, moved the bottle to his own gla.s.s, and she stared at him, half smiling, and spoke in a detached, curious voice. "Why didn't you kiss me just then?"

The bottle clinked dangerously against his gla.s.s. He set it down. "I didn't want to offend you."

She raised an eyebrow. "A kiss is offensive?"

"If it's not wanted."

"So a woman must always show that she wants to be kissed?"

Sharpe was feeling desperately uncomfortable, out of his place in a world he did not understand. He tried to shrug the topic away. "I don't know."

"You do. You think that a woman must always invite a man, yes? And that then leaves you guiltless." Sharpe said nothing, and she laughed. "I forgot. You're just a humble soldier and you don't understand the ways of your betters."

Sharpe looked at the beauty across the table and he tried to tell himself that this was just another woman, and he a man, and that there was nothing more to it than that. He could behave as if she was any woman he had ever known, but he could not convince himself. This was a Marquesa related to Emperors, and he was Richard Sharpe, related to no one apart from his daughter. The difference was like a screen between them and he could not s.h.i.+ft it. Others might, but not he. He shrugged inwardly. That's right, Ma'am. I don't understand."

She picked another cigar from the box on the table and leaned over the candle in the niche to light it. She sat down and stared at the cigar glow as if she had never seen it before. Her voice was soft again. "I'm sorry, Captain Sharpe. I don't mean to offend." She looked up at him. "How many people do understand? How many, do you think, live like this? One in a hundred thousand? I don't know." She looked at the thick rugs, at the crystal on the table. "You think I'm fortunate, don't you." She smiled to herself. "I am. Yet I speak five languages, Captain, and all I am expected to do with them is order the daily meals. I look in a mirror and I know just what you see. I open my doors and all those pretty staff-officers flood in and they flatter me, charm me, amuse me, and they all want something of me." She smiled at him, and he smiled back. She shrugged. "I know what they want. Then there's my servants. They want me to be lax, to be undemanding. They want to steal my food, my money. My Confessor wants me to live like a nun, to give to his charities, and my husband wants me to sail to South America. Everyone wants something. And now I want something."

"What?"

She pulled on the cigar, looking at him through the smoke. "I want you to tell me if there's going to be a battle."

Sharpe laughed. He sipped the wine. He had been brought up to this balcony to tell her something that any officer, British or Spanish, German or Portuguese, could tell her? He looked at her and her face was serious, waiting, so he nodded. "Yes. There has to be. We haven't come this far to do nothing, and I can't see Marmont giving up the west of Spain."

She spoke with deliberation. "So why didn't Wellington attack yesterday?"

He had almost forgotten that it was only yesterday that they had sat on the hilltop and watched the two armies. "He wanted Marmont to attack him."

"I know that. But he didn't, and the Peer outnumbered him, so why didn't he attack?"

Sharpe reached forward and cut at a partridge. The skin was crisp and honeyed. He gestured with the slice of meat towards the lights of the spyholes. "There are a dozen generals down there, three dozen staff officers, and you ask me? Why?"

"Because it pleases me!" Her voice was suddenly harsh. She paused to draw on the cigar. "Why do you think? If I ask one of them they'll smile politely, become charming, and tell me, in so many words, not to worry my head about soldiering. So I'm asking you. Why didn't he attack?"

Sharpe leaned back, took a deep breath, and launched into his thoughts. "Yesterday the French had their back to a plain. Marmont could have retreated endlessly, in good order, and the battle would have stopped by nightfall. There'd have been, oh." he shrugged, "say, five hundred dead on each side? If our cavalry was better there might have been more, but it would decide nothing. The armies would still have to fight again. Wellington doesn't want a series of small indecisive skirmishes. He wants to trap Marmont, he wants him in a place where there's no escape, or where he's wrong footed, and then he can crush him. Destroy him."

She watched the sudden pa.s.sion in Sharpe, the cruelty of his face as he imagined the battle.

"Go on."

"There isn't any more. We take the forts and then we go after Marmont."

"Do you like the French, Captain Sharpe?"

It struck him as a curious question, the wrong question. She meant, surely, did he dislike the French? He made a gesture of indecision. "No." He smiled. "I don't dislike them. I don't have reason to dislike them."

"Yet you fight them?"

"I'm a soldier." It was not that simple. He was a soldier because there was nothing else for him to be. He had discovered all those years ago that he could do the job and do it well, and now he could not imagine another life.

Her eyes were curious, huge and curious. "What do you fight for?"

He shook his head, not knowing what to tell her. If he said 'England' it would sound pompous, and Sharpe had a suspicion that if he had been born French then he would have fought for France with as much skill and ferocity as he served England. The Colours? Perhaps, because they were a soldier's pride, and pride is valuable to a soldier, but he supposed the real answer was that he fought for himself to stop himself sliding back into the nothingness where he began. He met her eyes. "My friends." It was as good an answer as he could think of.

"Friends?"

"They're more important on a battlefield."

She nodded, then stood up and walked down the balcony trailing smoke behind her. "What do you say to the charge that Wellington can't fight an attacking battle? Only a defensive battle?"

"a.s.saye."