“Richard Sharpe,” he added.
She nodded. She was clutching the bedclothes to her chin. The bed was wide and it was plain a second person had occupied it through the night, for the pillows still showed the mark of his head. The ambassador’s head, Sharpe was certain. Brigadier Moon had seen him come to the house, and Sharpe could not blame Henry Wellesley for being unable to surrender his whore because Caterina Blazquez was a beauty. She had short golden curls that were pretty even in disarray, wide blue eyes, a small nose, a generous mouth, and a smooth pale skin. In a land of dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned women she glowed like a diamond.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Sharpe said, “and I’m not the only one.”
She gave the smallest shake of her head, which, together with her scared expression, conveyed that she was frightened of whoever looked for her.
“You do understand me, don’t you?” Sharpe asked.
A tiny nod of the head. She pulled the covers higher, covering her mouth. This was a good place to hide her, Sharpe thought. She was in no danger here, certainly in no danger from Lord Pumphrey, and she lived in the comfort that a man would want his mistress to enjoy. She was safe enough, at least until the servants’ gossip betrayed her presence in Pumphrey’s house. Caterina was examining Sharpe, her eyes traveling down his shabby uniform, seeing the sword, rising again to his face, and her eyes, if anything, were now slightly wider.
“I was busy last night,” Sharpe said. “I was fetching some letters. Remember those letters?”
Another tiny nod.
“But I got them back. Gave them to Mister Wellesley, I did. He burned them.”
She lowered the bedclothes an inch and rewarded him with a flicker of a smile. He tried to work out how old she was. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Young, anyway. Young and flawless as far as he could see.
“But there are more letters, darling, aren’t there?”
There was a slight rising of her eyebrows when he called her darling, then a barely discernible shake of her head.
Sharpe sighed. “I know I’m a British officer, darling, but I’m not daft. You know what daft means?”
A nod.
“So let me tell you a bedtime story. Henry Wellesley wrote you a lot of letters that he shouldn’t have written and you kept them. You kept them all, darling. But your pimp took most of them, didn’t he? And he was going to sell them and share the money with you, but then he got murdered. Do you know who murdered him?”
She shook her head.
“A priest. Father Salvador Montseny.”
The slight rise of eyebrows again.
“And Father Montseny murdered the man sent to buy them back,” Sharpe went on, “and last night he tried to murder me, only I’m a much harder man to kill. So he lost the letters and he lost the newspaper that printed them and he’s now a very angry priest, darling. But he knows one thing. He knows you didn’t destroy all the letters. He knows you kept some. You kept them in case you needed the money. But when your pimp got murdered you became scared, didn’t you? So you ran to Henry and told him a pack of lies. You told him the letters were stolen, and told him there weren’t any more. But there are more, and you’ve got them, darling.”
The tiniest and most unconvincing denial, just enough to shiver her curls.
“And the priest is angry, my love,” Sharpe went on. “He wants those other letters. One way or another he’ll find a printing press, but first he has to get the letters, doesn’t he? So he’s coming after you, Caterina, and he’s a wicked man with a knife. He’ll slit your pretty belly from bottom to top.”
Another shiver of the curls. She pulled the bedclothes higher to hide her nose and mouth.
“You think he can’t find you?” Sharpe asked. “I found you. And I know you’ve got the letters.”
This time there was no reaction, just the wide eyes watching him. There was no fear in those eyes. This was a girl, Sharpe realized, who had learned the enormous power of her looks and she already knew that Sharpe was not going to hurt her.
“So tell me, darling,” Sharpe said, “just where the other letters are, and then we’ll be done.”
Very slowly she drew the sheet and blankets down to uncover her mouth. She stared at Sharpe solemnly, apparently thinking about her answer, then she frowned. “Tell me,” she said, “what did you do to your head?”
“It got in the way of a bullet.”
“That was very silly of you, Captain Sharpe.” The smile flickered and was gone. She had a languorous voice, her vowels American. “Pumps told me about you. He said you’re dangerous.”
“I am, very.”
“No, you’re not.” She smiled at him, then half rolled over to look at the face of an ornate clock that ticked on the mantel. “It’s not even eight o clock!”
“You speak good English.”
She lay back on the pillow. “My mother was American. Daddy was Spanish. They met in Florida. Have you heard of Florida?”
“No.”
“It’s south of the United States. It used to belong to Britain, but you had to give it back to Spain after the war of independence. There’s nothing much there except Indians, slaves, soldiers, and missionaries. Daddy was a captain in the garrison at St. Augustine.” She frowned. “If Henry finds you here he’ll be angry.”
“He’s not coming back this morning,” Sharpe said. “He’s working with Lord Pumphrey.”
“Poor Pumps,” Caterina said. “I like him. He talks to me such a lot. Turn around.”
Sharpe obeyed, then edged sideways so that he could see her in the mirrors of the wardrobe doors.
“And move away from the mirrors,” Caterina said.
Sharpe obeyed again.
“You can turn around now,” she said. She had pulled on a blue silk jacket that she laced to her chin, giving him a smile. “When they bring breakfast and water you’ll have to wait in there.” She pointed to a door beside the wardrobe.
“You drink water for breakfast?” Sharpe asked.
“It’s for the bath,” she said. She pulled on a ribbon that rang a bell deep in the house. “I’ll have them revive the fire as well,” she went on. “You like ham? Bread? If the chickens have laid then there’ll be eggs. I’ll tell them I’m very hungry.” She listened until she heard footsteps on the stairs. “Go and hide,” she ordered Sharpe.
He went into a small room filled with Caterina’s clothes. A table with a mirror was cluttered with salves and cosmetics and beauty patches. Behind the mirror was a window and Sharpe, peering into the clearing air, could see the fleet weighing anchor and sailing north out of the bay. The army was on the move. He stared at the ships and thought his place was there, with men, muskets, cannons, and horses stalled in the holds. Men going to war, and here he was in a whore’s dressing room.
The breakfast came a half hour later, by which time the fire was blazing and the bath filled with steaming water. “The servants hate filling the bath,” Caterina said, sitting up on banked pillows now, “because it’s so much work for them, but I insist on having a bath every day. The water will be too hot now, so it can wait. Have some breakfast.”
Sharpe was ravenous. He sat on the bed and ate, and in between mouthfuls he asked questions. “When did you leave, what did you call it, Florida?”
“When I was sixteen, my mother died. Daddy had run away long before that. I didn’t want to stay there.”
“Why not?”
“Stay in Florida?” She shuddered at the thought. “It’s just a hot swamp filled with snakes, alligators, and Indians.”
“So how did you come here?”
“By ship,” she said, her big eyes serious. “It was much too far to swim.”
“By yourself?”
“Gonzalo brought me.”
“Gonzalo?”
“The man who died.”
“The man who was going to sell the letters?”
She nodded.
