“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.
“And you’ve been working with Gonzalo ever since?”
She nodded again. “In Madrid, Seville, and now here.”
“The same game?”
“Game?”
“Pretend to be well-born, get letters, sell them back?”
She smiled. “We made a lot of money, Captain Sharpe. More than you could ever dream of.”
“I don’t need to dream, darling. I once stole the jewels of an Indian king.”
“So you’re rich?” she asked, eyes brightening.
“Lost it all.”
“Careless, Captain Sharpe.”
“So what will you do without Gonzalo?”
She frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Stay with Henry? Be his mistress?”
“He’s very kind to me,” Caterina said, “but I don’t think he’d take me back to London. And he will go back eventually, won’t he?”
“He’ll go back,” Sharpe confirmed.
“So I’ll have to find someone else,” she said, “but not you.”
“Not me?”
“Someone rich,” she said with a smile.
“And you have to stay away from Father Salvador Montseny,” Sharpe said.
She gave another shudder. “He is really a killer? A priest?”
“He’s as nasty as they come, darling. And he wants your letters. He’ll kill you to get them.”
“But you want my letters too.”
“I do.”
“And Pumps says you’re a killer.”
“I am.”
She seemed to consider her dilemma for a moment, then nodded at the bath. “It’s time to get clean,” she said.
“You want me back in that room?” Sharpe asked.
“Of course not. That bath’s for you. You stink. Get undressed, Captain Sharpe, and I’ll wash your back.”
Sharpe was a good soldier. He obeyed.
“I LIKE Henry Wellesley,” Sharpe said.
“So do I,” Caterina said, “but he is”—she paused, thinking—“earnest.”
“Earnest?”
“Sad. His wife hurt him. Pumps says she was not beautiful.”
“You can’t trust everything Pumps says.”
“But I think he is right. Some women are not beautiful yet they drive men mad. She has driven Henry sad. Are you going to sleep?”
“No,” Sharpe said. The bed was the most comfortable he had experienced. A feather mattress, silk sheets, big pillows, and Caterina. “I have to go.”
“Your uniform isn’t dry.” She had insisted on washing his uniform in the used bath water and it was now propped on two chairs before the fire.
“We have to go,” Sharpe corrected himself.
“We?”
“Montseny wants to find you. And to get the letters he’ll hurt you.”
She thought about that. “When Gonzalo died,” she said, “I came here because I was frightened. And because this is safe.”
“You think Pumps will protect you?”
“No one would dare come in here. It’s the embassy!”
“Montseny will dare,” Sharpe said. “There’s no guard on Lord Pumphrey’s front door, is there? And if the servants see a priest they’ll trust him. Montseny can get in here easily. I did.”
“But if I go with you,” she said, “how do I live?”
“Same as everyone else.”
“I am not everyone else,” she said indignantly, “and didn’t you tell me you were sailing back to Lisbon?”
“I am, but you’ll be safer in the Isla de León. Lots of British soldiers to defend you. Or you can come back to Lisbon with me.” She rewarded that suggestion with a smile and silence. “I know,” Sharpe went on, “I’m not rich enough. So why did you lie to Henry?”
“Lie to him?” She opened her eyes wide and innocent.
“When you came here, darling, you told him you had no letters. You told him you’d lost the ones Gonzalo didn’t have. You lied.”
“I thought perhaps if things went wrong,” she began, then shrugged.
“You’d still have something to sell?”
“Is that bad?”
“Of course it’s bad,” Sharpe said sternly, “but it’s bloody sensible. So how much do you want for them?”
“Your uniform is scorching,” she said. She climbed out of bed and went to turn the jacket and overalls around. Sharpe watched her. A beauty. She would drive men mad, he thought. She came back to the bed and slid in beside him again.