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.’
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