the mirror with the expression of a woman well pleased with her own reflection. ‘Your good jacket, I think.’
In every town that the British occupied, and in which they spent more than a few days, one building became a club for officers. The building was never officially chosen, nor designated as such, but by some strange process and within a day of two of the Army’s arrival, one particular house was generally agreed to be the place where elegant gentlemen could retire to read the London papers, drink mulled wine before a decently tended fire, or play a few hands of whist of an evening. In St Jean de Luz the chosen house faced the outer harbour.
Major Richard Sharpe, born in a common lodging-house and risen from the gutter-bred ranks of Britain’s Army, had never used such temporary gentlemen’s clubs before, but new and beautiful wives must be humoured. ‘I didn’t suppose,’ he spoke unhappily to Jane, ‘that women were allowed in gentlemens’ clubs?’ He was reluctantly buttoning his new green uniform jacket.
‘They are here,’ Jane said, ‘and they’re serving an oyster pie for luncheon.’ Which clinched the matter. Major and Mrs Richard Sharpe would dine out, and Major Sharpe had to dress in the stiff, uncomfortable uniform that he had bought for a royal reception in London and hated to wear. He reflected, as he climbed the wide stairs of the Officers’ Club with Jane on his arm, that there was much wisdom in the old advice that an officer should never take a well-bred wife to an ill-bred war.
Yet the frisson of irritation passed as he entered the crowded dining-room. Instead he felt the pang of pride that he always felt when he took Jane into a public place. She was undeniably beautiful, and her beauty was informed by a vivacity that gave her face character. She had eloped with him just months before, fleeing her uncle’s house on the drab Essex marshes to come to the war. She drew admiring glances from men at every table, while other officers’ wives, enduring the inconveniences of campaigning for the sake of love, looked enviously at Jane Sharpe’s easy beauty. Some, too, envied her the tall, black-haired and grimly scarred man who seemed so uncomfortable in the lavishness of the club’s indulgent comforts. Sharpe’s name was whispered from table to table; the name of the man who had taken an enemy standard, captured one of Badajoz’s foul breaches, and who, or so rumour said, had made himself rich from the blood-spattered plunder of Vitoria.
A white-gloved steward abandoned a table of senior officers to hasten to Jane’s side. ‘The cap’n wanted to sit ’ere, ma’am,’ the steward was unnecessarily brushing the seat of a chair close to one of the wide windows, ‘but I said as how it was being kept for someone special.’
Jane gave the steward a smile that would have enslaved a misogynist. ‘How very kind of you, Smithers.’
‘So he’s over there.’ Smithers nodded disparagingly towards a table by the fire where two naval officers sat in warm discomfort. The junior officer was a lieutenant, while one of the other man’s two epaulettes was bright and new, denoting a recent promotion to the rank of a full post captain.
Smithers looked devotedly back to Jane. ‘I’ve reserved a bottle or two of that claret you liked.’
Sharpe, who had been ignored by the steward, pronounced the wine good and hoped he was right. The oyster pie was certainly good. Jane said she would deliver a portion to Hogan’s lodgings that same afternoon and Sharpe again insisted that she should not actually enter the sickroom, and he saw a flicker of annoyance cross Jane’s face. Her irritation was not caused by Sharpe’s words, but by the sudden proximity of the naval captain who had rudely come to stand immediately behind Sharpe’s chair in a place where he could overhear the conversation of Major and Mrs Sharpe’s reunion.
The naval officer had not come to eavesdrop, but rather to stare through the rain-smeared window. His interest was in a small flotilla of boats that had appeared around the northern headland. The boats were squat and small, none more than fifty feet long, but each had a vast press of sail that drove the score of craft in a fast gaggle towards the harbour entrance. They were escorted by a naval brig that, in the absence of enemies, had its gunports closed.
‘They’re chasse-marées,’ Jane said to her husband.
‘Chasse-marrys?’
‘Coastal luggers, Richard. They carry forty tons of cargo each.’ She smiled, pleased with her display of knowledge. ‘You forget I was raised on the coast. The smugglers in Dunkirk used chasse-marées. The Navy,’ Jane said loudly enough for the intrusive naval captain to hear, ‘could never catch them.’
But the naval captain was oblivious to Mrs Sharpe’s goad. He stared at the straggling fleet of chasse-marées that, emerging from a brief rain-squall, seemed to crab sideways to avoid a sand-bar that was marked by a broken line of dirty foam. ‘Ford! Ford!’
The naval lieutenant dabbed his lips with a napkin, snatched a swallow of wine, then hastened to his captain’s side. ‘Sir?’
The captain took a small spyglass from the tail pocket of his coat. ‘There’s a lively one there, Ford. Mark her!’
Sharpe wondered why naval officers should be so interested in French coastal craft, but Jane said the Navy had been collecting the chasse-marées for days. She had heard that the boats, with their French crews, were being hired with English coin, but for what purpose no one could tell.
The small fleet had come to within a quarter mile of the harbour, and, to facilitate their entry into the crowded inner roads, each ship was lowering its topsail. The naval brig had hove-to, sails shivering, but one of the French coasters, larger than the rest of its fellows, was still under the full set of its five sails. The water broke white at its stem and slid in bubbling, greying foam down the hull that was sleeker than those of the other, smaller vessels.
‘He thinks it’s a race, sir,’ the lieutenant said with happy vacuity above Sharpe’s shoulder.
‘A handy craft,’ the captain said grudgingly. ‘Too good for the Army. I think we might take her on to our strength.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
The faster, larger lugger had broken clear of the pack. Its sails were a dirty grey, the colour of the winter sky, and its low hull was painted a dull pitch-black. Its flush deck, like all the chasse-marées’ decks, was an open sweep broken only by the three masts and the tiller by which two men stood. Fishing gear was heaped in ugly, lumpen disarray upon the deck’s planking.
The naval brig, seeing the large lugger race ahead, unleashed a string of bright flags. The captain snorted. ‘Bloody Frogs won’t understand that!’
Sharpe, offended by the naval officers’ unwanted proximity, had been seeking a cause to quarrel, and now found it in the captain’s swearing in front of Jane. He stood up. ‘Sir.’
The naval captain, with a deliberate slowness, turned pale, glaucous eyes on to the Army major. The captain was young, plump, and confident that he outranked Sharpe. They stared into each other’s eyes, and Sharpe felt a sudden certainty that he would hate this man. There was no reason for it, no justification, merely a physical distaste for the privileged, amused face that seemed so full of disdain for the black-haired Rifleman.
‘Well?’ The naval captain’s voice betrayed a gleeful anticipation of the imminent argument.
Jane defused the confrontation. ‘My husband, Captain, is sensitive to the language of fighting men.’
The captain, not certain whether he was being complimented or mocked, chose to accept the words as a tribute to his gallantry. He glanced
