his fingertips touched the skin of her spine. The wind stirred the leaves above them.
She frowned slightly. “Do you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
She closed her eyes, seemed to sigh, and he pulled with his hand and she came, so easily, into his chest. Her hair was below his chin, her face cradled in his rough uniform, and her voice was small and pleading.
“No one must know, Richard, no one. Don’t tell anyone that you know, not even the General! No one must know. Promise me?”
“I promise.” He held her close, the wonder of it in his head.
“I’m frightened.”
“Is that why you wanted me here?”
“Yes. But I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
“You can trust me.”
She tipped her head up to his and he could see that her eyes were gleaming. “I’m frightened of him, Richard. He does terrible things to people. I didn’t know! I never knew it would be like this.”
“I know.” He leaned down and her face did not move. He kissed her and suddenly her arms were round him and she clung to him fiercely and kissed him fiercely as if she wanted to suck the strength from him into her own self. Sharpe held her, his arms round the slim body, and he thought of what his enemy would do to this perfect, lovely, golden woman, and he despised himself for distrusting her because he knew, now, that she was braver than he, that she had led her lonely life in the great Palacio, surrounded by enemies, and in danger, always, of a terrible death. El Mirador!
His hand pressed on her back and, through the lace, hanging in fringes, he felt the hooks of her dress, and he slipped his hand between the hooks, felt her skin, and then pressed the bottom hook between finger and thumb, the finger and thumb that were more used to the pressure of flint on mainspring, and the hook slid out of the loop, and he moved his hand up to the second, pressed again, it opened, and she dropped her face onto his chest, still clinging to him. He could not believe this was happening, that he, Richard Sharpe, was on this mirador, this night, with this woman, and he moved his hand to the last hook, pressed it back through the loop and he could feel the metal scraping as it moved, and she seemed to stiffen in his arms. He froze.
She looked up at him and her eyes searched his face as though she needed some reassurance that this man could truly keep her from Leroux’s long Kligenthal. She gave a small smile. “Call me Helena.”
“Helena?” The hook snapped free, he moved his hand, and he sensed the wings of the dress fall away and he put his hand back, stroked, and it was pressed into the rich curve at the small of her back. Her skin was like silk.
Her smile went, all the harshness came back. “Let go of me!” It was snapped like an order, her voice loud. “Let go of me!”
He had been a fool! She had wanted protection, not this, and now he had offended her by imagining what was not to be, and he let go of her, bringing his hand back, and she stepped away from him. Her face changed again. She laughed at him, laughed at his confusion, and she had ordered him away so that she could stand free and let the dress, light as thistledown, rustle to the floor. She was naked beneath the dress and she stepped back to him over its folds. “I’m sorry, Richard.”
He put his arms round her, her skin was pressed against his uniform, his sword belt, his ammunition pouch, and she clung to him and he stared at the dark bulk of the San Vincente and he swore that the enemy would never reach her, never, not while there was breath in his body or while his arm could lift the heavy sword whose hilt was cold on her flank. She hooked a leg round his, lifted herself up, and kissed him again and he forgot everything. The Company, the forts, Teresa; all were scoured away, whirled far off by this moment, by this promise, by this woman who fought her own lonely war against his enemies.
She lowered herself to the floor, took his hand, and her face was grave and innocent. “Come.”
He followed, obedient, in the dark Salamantine night.
PART TWO
Wednesday, June 24th to Wednesday, July 8th, 1812
CHAPTER 10
Sharpe found himself resenting the progress of the trench that was being dug in the ravine. He knew that once the excavation reached the midpoint between the San Vincente and San Cayetano forts then the second assault was imminent. The second assault could hardly fail. The ammunition supply to the heavy guns had been restored, cart after cart came across the San Marta ford and screeched into the city and each cart was loaded with the huge roundshot. The guns fired incessantly, grinding at the defences, and to make it worse for the French the gunners heated the shot to a red heat so that the balls lodged in the old timbers of the convents and started fires that the French tried desperately to control.
For four nights Sharpe watched the bombardment, each night from the mirador, and the red-hot shot seared in the darkness and crashed into the crumbling forts. The fires blazed, were damped down, then blazed again and only the small hours of the morning brought a respite for the defenders. Some nights it seemed to Sharpe as if no one could live through the battering of the forts. The shot streaked over the wasteland while, high overhead, the fuses of the howitzer shells spun and smoked then plunged down to explode in flowering dark flame and thunder. The crackle of the flames rivalled the cracks of the Riflemen, creeping nearer, and each morning showed more damage; more embrasures opened wide, their guns unseated, smashed, useless. Wellington was in a hurry. He wanted the forts taken so that he could march north in pursuit of Marmont.
When the forts fell Sharpe knew he would go north. The Light Company would rejoin the regiment and he would leave Salamanca, leave La Marquesa, leave El Mirador, and each moment, marked by the slow extension of the attacker’s trench, was precious to him. He left the Palacio each morning, going out by the secret staircase that led into an alleyway beside the stables, and he went back each afternoon when the only disturbance of Salamanca’s siesta was the sound of the gunners crumbling at the forts.
The Light Company were puzzled, Patrick Harper most of all, but Sharpe said nothing and they could only speculate where their Captain disappeared each day and night. On the first morning he came back to them he had bathed, his uniform had been cleaned, mended and pressed, but he offered no explanation. Each morning he exercised the Company, marching them into the countryside and going through the evolutions of skirmishing. He drove them hard, not wanting them to become soft because of their stay in this soft city. Each afternoon he released them to their freedom while he went, secretly and cautiously, to the small door in the stable alley. Behind the door the stairs led to the private, top floor where only La Marquesa’s most trusted servants were allowed and where, almost to Sharpe’s disbelief, he found himself deep in a passionate affair.
He had lost his fear of her. She was no longer La Marquesa, now she was El Mirador, and though she was still a flawless woman she was also a person to whom he listened avidly. She spoke of her life, talking bitterly of the death of her parents. “They were not even French, but they took them. They killed them. The scum.” Her hatred of the revolution was total. Sharpe had worked out her age from the tales she told him. She had been ten when the mob came to take her parents, so now she was twenty eight, and in the years between she had studied the forces of a world that had taken her parents’ lives. She spoke to him of politics, of ambitions, and she showed him letters from Germany that spoke of Napoleon gathering a vast army that she said was destined for Russia. She had news too from across the Atlantic, news that spoke of an imminent American invasion of Canada, and Sharpe, sitting in the mirador, had the sense of watching a whole world drawn into a maelstrom of flame and shot like that which hammered, unceasing, below.
Above all Helena spoke of Leroux, of his famed savagery, and of the fear she had that he would escape. Sharpe smiled. “He can’t escape.”
“Why not?”
