Sharpe's Fortress Part 62

"And what'll happen to me there?"

"You'll be all right, la.s.s. I'll give you a pair of my magic pebbles."

"What I want," she said softly, 'is to go home. But I can't afford it."

"Marry a soldier," Sharpe said, 'and be carried home with him." He thought of Eli Lockhart who had been admiring Clare from a distance.

They would suit each other, Sharpe thought.

She was crying very softly.

"Torrance said he'd pay my way home when I'd paid off the debt," she said.

"Why would he make you work for one pa.s.sage, then give you another?" Sharpe asked.

"He was a lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"He seemed so kind at first."

"We're all like that," Sharpe said.

"Soft as lights when you first meet a woman, then you get what you want and it changes. I don't know.

Maybe not every time."

"Charlie wasn't like that," Clare said.

"Charlie? Your husband?"

"He was always good to me."

Sharpe lay back. The light of the dying fires nickered in the tent's loose weave. If it rained, he thought, the cloth would leak like a pepper pot.

"There are good men and bad," he said.

"What are you?" Clare asked.

"I think I'm good," he said, 'but I don't know. All the time I get into trouble, and I only know one way out. I can fight. I can do that all right."

"Is that what you want? To fight?"

"G.o.d knows what I want." He laughed softly.

"I wanted to be an officer more than I'd wanted anything in my life! I dreamed of it, I did. I wanted it so bad that it hurt, and then the dream came true and it woke me up and I wondered why I'd wanted it so much." He paused.

Syud Sevajee's horses stamped their feet softly behind the tent.

"Some b.u.g.g.e.rs are trying to persuade me to leave the army. Sell the commission, see? They don't want me."

"Why not?"

"Because I p.i.s.s in their soup, la.s.s."

"So will you leave?"

He shrugged.

"Don't want to." He thought about it.

"It's like a club, a society. They don't really want me, so they chuck me out, and then I have to fight my way back in. But why do I do it if they don't want me? I don't know. Maybe it'll be different in the Rifles. I'll try 'em, anyway, and see if they're different."

"You want to go on fighting?" Clare asked.

"It's what I'm good at," Sharpe said.

"And I do enjoy it. I mean I know you shouldn't, but there ain't any other excitement like it."

"None?"

"Well, one." He grinned in the dark.

There was a long silence, and he thought Clare had fallen asleep, but then she spoke again.

"How about your French widow?"

"She's gone," Sharpe said flatly.

"Gone?"

"She b.u.g.g.e.red off, love. Took some money of mine and went. Gone to America, I'm told."

Clare lay in silence again.

"Don't you worry about being alone?" she asked after a while.

"No."

"I do."

He turned towards her, propped himself on an elbow and stroked her hair. She stiffened as he touched her, then relaxed to the gentle pressure of his hand.

"You ain't alone, la.s.s," Sharpe said.

"Or only if you want to be. You got trapped, that's all. It happens to everyone. But you're out now. You're free." He stroked her hair down to her neck and felt warm bare skin under his hand. She did not move and he softly stroked farther down.

"You're undressed," he said.

"I was warm," she said in a small voice.