The two men spoke on the darkened quarterdeck. It was well past midnight on the second day since the sighting of Cape East and the third night in succession that Sharpe had gone in the small hours to the quarterdeck in hope that Lady Grace would be on the poop. He needed to ask permission to be on the quarterdeck, but the watch officer had welcomed his company every night, unaware why Sharpe wanted to be there. The Lady Grace had not appeared on either of the first two nights, but as Sharpe now stood beside the lieutenant he heard the creak of a door and the sound of soft shoes climbing the stairs to the poop deck. Sharpe waited until the lieutenant went to talk with the helmsman, then he turned and went to the poop deck himself.

A thin saber-curve of moon glistened on the sea and offered just enough light for Sharpe to see Lady Grace, swathed in a dark cloak, standing beside the stern lantern. She was alone, with no maid to chaper-one her, and Sharpe joined her, standing a pace to her left with his hands, like hers, on the rail and he stared, like her, at the smooth, moon-silvered wake that slipped endlessly into the dark. The great mizzen driver sail loomed pale above them.

Neither spoke. She glanced at him when he joined her, but did not walk away. She just stared at the ocean.

“Pohlmann,” Sharpe said very quietly, for two panes of the cuddy’s skylight were open and he did not want to be overheard if anyone was below, “claims he does not know Captain Cromwell.”

“Pohlmann?” Lady Grace asked, frowning at Sharpe.

“The Baron von Dornberg is no baron, my lady.” Sharpe was breaking his word to Pohlmann, but he did not care, not when he was standing close enough to smell Lady Grace’s perfume. “His name is Anthony Pohlmann and he was once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment that was hired by the East India Company, but he deserted. He became a freelance soldier instead, and a very good one. He was the commander of the enemy army at Assaye.”

“Their commander?” She sounded surprised.

“Yes, ma’am. He was the enemy general.”

She stared at the sea again. “Why have you protected him?”

“I like him,” Sharpe said. “I’ve always liked him. He once tried to make me an officer in the Mahratta army and I confess I was tempted. He said he’d make me rich.”

She smiled at that. “You want to be rich, Mister Sharpe?”

“It’s better than being poor, milady.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is. So why are you telling me about Pohlmann now?”

“Because he lied to me, ma’am.”

“Lied to you?”

“He told me he didn’t know the captain, and you told me that he does.”

She turned to him again. “Perhaps I lied to you?”

“Did you?”

“No.” She glanced at the cuddy’s skylight, then walked to the far corner of the deck where a small signal cannon was lashed to the gunwale. She stood in the corner between the cannon and the taffrail and Sharpe, after a moment’s hesitation, joined her there. “I don’t like it,” she said quietly.

“Don’t like what, ma’am?”

“That we’re sailing to the east of Madagascar. Why?”

Sharpe shrugged. “Pohlmann tells me we’re trying to race ahead of the convoy. Get to London first and bring the cargo to market.”

“No one sails outside Madagascar,” she said, “no one! We’re losing the Agulhas Current, which means we’ll make slower time. And by coming this way we go much closer to the Ile-de-France.”

“Mauritius?” Sharpe asked.

She nodded. Mauritius, or the Ile-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbor protected by treacherous coral reefs and stone forts. “I told William all this,” she said bitterly, “but he laughed at me. What would I know? Cromwell knows his business, he says, and I should just leave well alone.” She fell silent and Sharpe was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she was crying. The realization astonished him, for one moment she had been as aloof as ever, and now she was weeping. She stood with her hands on the rail as the tears ran silently down her cheeks. “I hated India,” she said after a while.

“Why, milady?”

“Everything dies in India,” she said bitterly. “Both my dogs died, and then my son died.”

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

She ignored his sympathy. “And I almost died. Fever, of course.” She sniffed. “And there were times when I wished I would die.”

“How old was your son?”

“Three months,” she said softly. “He was our first and he was so small and perfect, with little fingers and he was just beginning to smile. Just beginning to smile and then he rotted away. Everything rots in India. It turns black and it rots!” She began to cry harder, her shoulders heaving with sobs and Sharpe simply turned her and drew her toward him and she went to him and wept onto his shoulder.

She calmed after a while. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and half stepped away, but seemed content to let him keep his hands on her shoulders.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” Sharpe said.

Her head was lowered and Sharpe could smell her hair, but then she raised her face and looked at him. “Have you ever wanted to die, Mister Sharpe?”

He smiled at her. “I always reckoned that would be a terrible waste, my lady.”

She frowned at that answer, then, quite suddenly, she laughed and her face, for the first time since Sharpe had met her, was filled with life and he thought he had never seen, nor ever would see, a woman so lovely. So lovely that Sharpe leaned forward and kissed her. She pushed him away and he stepped back, mortified, readying incoherent apologies, but she was only extricating her arms that had been trapped between their bodies and once they were free she snaked them around his neck and pulled his face to hers and kissed him so fiercely that Sharpe tasted blood from her lip. She sighed, then placed her cheek against his. “Oh, God,” she said softly, “I wanted you to do that since the moment I first saw you.”

Sharpe hid his astonishment. “I thought you hadn’t noticed me.”

“Then you are a fool, Richard Sharpe.”

“And you, my lady?”

She pulled her head back, leaving her arms about his neck. “Oh, I’m a fool. I know that. How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight, milady, as near as I know.”

She smiled and he thought he had never seen a face so transformed by joy, then she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. “My name is Grace,” she said quietly, “and why only as near as you know?”

“I never knew my mother or father.”

“Never? So who raised you?”

“I wasn’t really raised, ma’am. Sorry. Grace.” He blushed as he said it, for though he could imagine kissing her, and though he could imagine laying her on a bed, he could not accustom himself to using her name. “I was in a foundling home for a few years, one that were attached to a workhouse, and after that I fended for myself.”

“I’m twenty-eight too,” she said, “and I don’t think I’ve ever been happy. That’s why I’m a fool.” Sharpe said nothing, but just stared at her in disbelief. She saw his incredulity and laughed. “It’s true, Richard.”

“Why?”

There was a murmur of voices from the quarterdeck and a sudden glow of light as the compass in the lantern-lit binnacle was unshielded. Lady Grace stepped away from Sharpe and he from her, and both instinctively turned to stare at the sea. The binnacle light vanished. Lady Grace said nothing for a while 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.”