“No!” Braithwaite could barely speak, for his neck was being twisted hard around.
“It’s not really a crack,” Sharpe went on in a conversational tone, “more a kind of grating creak, and I’ve often wondered if I could do it myself. It’s not that I’m afraid of killing, Braithwaite. I wouldn’t have you think that. I’ve killed men with guns, with swords, with knives and with my bare hands. I’ve killed more men, Braithwaite, than you can imagine in your worst nightmare, but I’ve never wrung a man’s neck till it creaked. But I’ll start with you. If you do anything to hurt me, or anything to hurt any lady I know, then I’ll twist your head like a cork in a bloody bottle, and it’ll hurt. My God, it’ll hurt.” Sharpe gave the secretary’s neck a sudden jerk. “It’ll hurt more than you know, and I promise you that it will happen if you say so much as one single bloody word. You’ll be dead, Braithwaite, and I won’t give a rat’s droppings about doing it. It’ll be a real pleasure.” He gave the secretary’s neck a last twist, then let go.
Braithwaite gasped for breath, massaging his throat. He gave Sharpe a scared glance, then tried to stand, but Sharpe hauled him back onto the chest. “You’re going to make me a promise, Braithwaite,” Sharpe said.
“Anything!” All the fight had gone from the man now.
“You’ll say nothing to anybody. And I’ll know if you do, I’ll know, and I’ll find you, Braithwaite. I’ll find you and I’ll wring your scrawny neck like a chicken.”
“I won’t say a word!”
“Because your accusations are false, aren’t they?”
“Yes.” Braithwaite nodded eagerly. “Yes, they are.”
“You’re having dreams, Braithwaite.”
“I am, I am.”
“Then go. And remember I’m a killer, Braithwaite. When you were at Oxford learning to be a bloody fool I was learning how to kill folk. And I learned well.”
Braithwaite fled and Sharpe stayed seated. Damn, he thought, damn and damn and damn again. He reckoned he had frightened the secretary into silence, but Sharpe was still scared. For if Braithwaite had found out, who else might discover their secret? Not that it mattered for Sharpe, but it mattered mightily to Lady Grace. She had a reputation to lose. “You’re playing with fire, you bloody fool,” he told himself, then retrieved his brush and finished cleaning his coat.
Pohlmann seemed surprised that Sharpe should be a guest at dinner, but he greeted him effusively and shouted at the steward to fetch another chair onto the quarterdeck. A trestle table had been placed forward of the Calliope’s big wheel, spread with white linen and set with silverware. “I was going to invite you myself,” Pohlmann told Sharpe, “but in the excitement of seeing the Jonathon I quite forgot.”
There was no precedence at this table, for Captain Cromwell was not dining with his passengers, but Lord William made sure he took the table’s head, then cordially invited the baron to sit beside him. “As you know, my dear baron, I am compiling a report on the future policy of His Majesty’s government toward India and I would value your opinion on the remaining Mahratta states.”
“I’m not sure I can tell you much,” Pohlmann said, “for I hardly knew the Mahrattas, but of course I shall oblige you as best I can.” Then, to Lord William’s evident irritation, Mathilde took the chair on his left and called for Sharpe to sit next to her.
“I’m the major’s guest, my lady.” Sharpe explained his reluctance to sit beside Mathilde, but Dalton shook his head and insisted Sharpe take the offered chair.
“I have a handsome man on either of my sides now!” Mathilde exclaimed in her eccentric English, earning a look of withering condescension from Lord William. Lady Grace, denied a seat beside her husband, stayed standing until Lord William coldly nodded to the chair beside Pohlmann which meant she would be sitting directly opposite Sharpe. In a superb piece of dumb play she glanced at Sharpe, then raised her eyebrows toward her husband, who shrugged as though there was nothing he could do to alleviate the misfortune of being made to sit opposite a mere ensign, and so the Lady Grace sat. Not eight hours before she had been naked in Sharpe’s hanging bed, but now her disdain of him was cruelly obvious. Fazackerly, the barrister, asked permission to sit beside her and she smiled at him graciously as though she was relieved to have a dinner companion who could be relied on to make civilized conversation.