LITMIR.BIZ

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saddle-cloth of his captured horse. ‘Thank you, Richard!’

      ‘Thank Angel! He got three of them.’

      Angel blushed. He was staring at La Marquesa with dog-like devotion. Sharpe laughed, then led them back up the mountain and south towards the far valleys.

      He felt an extraordinary surge of life in him. He had done it! He had crossed Spain and snatched this woman from the Convent of the Heavens, he had fought her enemies, and he would take her to safety. He would find his answers, he would wrench his life back where it belonged, but first, first before all things, because at this moment it seemed the most important of all things, he would find out if she had changed. He looked at her, thinking that her beauty dimmed this land, and that when she smiled it was as if she held all his happiness in her hand. For the first time in months, because of this woman, he was content.

CHAPTER 13

      La Marquesa moaned, her eyes shut. She turned her head on the pillow, her lips open just enough for Sharpe to see her white teeth. The fire smoked into the room. Rain rattled a crisp tattoo on the tiny window through which, dim through the rain-smeared grime, Sharpe could see a candle burning in a cottage across the street.

      ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ She paused, her head turning in its gold hair on the pillow again. ‘Oh God!’

      He laughed. He poured wine for her and put it beside the bed. A tallow wick, held in an iron bracket, smoked above its dim flame. ‘Wine for you.’

      ‘Oh God.’

      They had ridden till one horse had had to be abandoned, until even the two good British horses were heaving with tiredness, and until La Marquesa’s thighs, unused to the saddle, were rubbed raw like fresh meat. She opened her eyes slowly. ‘Aren’t you sore?’

      ‘A bit.’

      ‘I never want to see a bloody horse again. Oh Christ!’ She scratched her waist. ‘Bloody place. Bloody Spain. Bloody weather. What’s that?’

      Sharpe had put a metal pot on the rough table. ‘Grease.’

      ‘For God’s sake why?’

      ‘For the sores. Rub it on.’

      She wrinkled her nose, then scratched again. She was lying on the bed, too tired to move, too tired to take any notice as Sharpe had ordered the fire lit, food prepared and wine brought.

      They had come to this town, a tiny place huddled in the mountains where there was a church, a marketplace, an inn, and a mayor who had been impressed that a British officer should come to this place. Sharpe, fearing El Matarife, would have preferred to have ridden on, to have found a place in the deep country where they could have hidden for the night, but he knew that La Marquesa could take no more. He would risk the town’s inn and hope that El Matarife, if he reached this far, would be inhibited by the townsfolk from trying to seize back La Marquesa. This was not the time, Sharpe thought, to tell her that he planned an early start in the morning.

      She pushed herself up on her elbows and frowned about the room. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever, ever, stayed in a place so awful.’

      ‘It seems comfortable enough to me.’

      ‘You never did have elevated tastes, Richard. Except in women.’ She flopped back. ‘I suppose that hoping for a bath here is futile?’

      ‘It’s coming.’

      ‘It is?’ She turned her head to look at him. ‘God, you’re wonderful.’ She frowned again as she scratched. ‘This bloody shift! I hate wearing wool.’

      Sharpe had hung the dress she had rescued from the convent by the fire. Her jewels were on the table. She looked at the dress. ‘Not very suitable for a wild flight, is it?’ She laughed and watched Sharpe peel off his wet jacket. ‘Is that the shirt I gave you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Don’t you have a laundry in the British army?’

      ‘It couldn’t come with me.’

      ‘Poor Richard.’ She tasted the wine and grimaced. ‘One day, Richard, I’m going to have a house on the River Loire. I shall have an island in the river and young men will row me to my island where we will eat lark pâté and honey and drink cold, cold wine on hot, hot days.’

      He smiled. ‘Which is why you want your wagons?’

      ‘Which is why I want my wagons.’

      ‘And that’s why the Church arrested you?’

      She nodded. She closed her eyes again. ‘They arranged it all. Luis had no one to leave his money to but me, and they found the bloody will and the clause which said they’d get it all if I became a nun. Simple.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘It’s rather clever of them.’

      ‘So why did you write the letter?’

      She waved a hand airily. ‘Oh, Richard!’ She looked at him and sighed impatiently. ‘They had to have Luis dead, didn’t they? They told me they wanted him punished, I don’t know why. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t think you’d mind killing him. He never was much use to anyone.’ She smiled at him. ‘I never thought it would get you into trouble, darling. Truly! I’ll write you a letter for Arthur, telling him you’re innocent. What a lot of trouble you went to!’ She frowned again, scratching at the grey shift.

      ‘Helene.’

      She looked at him, struck by the seriousness in his voice. She hoped that he was not going to question her lies, she was too tired. ‘Richard?’

      ‘It isn’t the wool.’

      ‘What isn’t the wool?’

      ‘Your scratching.’

      ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

      He gestured at the discarded fur cloak she had taken from the dead Partisan. ‘You’ve got guests.’

      She stared at him suspiciously. ‘Guests?’

      ‘Fleas.’

      ‘Christ!’ She sat up with sudden energy and hauled the shift above her knees. She frowned at her bared skin. ‘Fleas?’

      ‘Probably.’ He looked at her thighs, wondering why she had lied to him. He was sure that she had, he was certain that there was more to the letter she had written to her husband than the mere request of a church that wanted her riches, yet he sensed that he would have to accept her explanation because he was not clever enough to get the real truth from her.

      She twitched the shift higher, peering at her legs. ‘God and hell and damnation! Fleas? I can’t see any.’

      ‘You won’t.’

      She pushed the shift down. ‘I’ll never get rid of them!’

      ‘You will.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘The same as the rest of us. A piece of soap.’

      ‘Just wash them away?’

      He grinned. ‘No.’

      Someone knocked on the trapdoor that was the entrance to the room. Sharpe unbolted it, hauled it up, and the innkeeper’s wife pushed a great tin bath towards him. He took it from her and saw the buckets of water steaming at the ladder’s foot. ‘You have towels?’

      ‘Si, señor.’

      Sharpe saw Angel by the fire at the end of the inn’s main room. The boy stared forlornly at Sharpe, jealous that the Rifle officer was in La Marquesa’s room. ‘And I want soap.’

      ‘Si, señor.’

      La Marquesa was sitting, legs apart, on the edge of the bed. ‘What do I do with the

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