“I really don’t know you,” she said. She was holding his hand as they walked. “But you are like Nils. He swore terribly!”
“A Dane? Swearing?”
She laughed. “He made me laugh too.” She swung on Sharpe’s hand, suddenly unable to contain a joy that bubbled in her despite the city burning around her. “And you?” she asked. “You have never been married?”
“No.”
“Not even close?”
“Close enough,” he said, and he told her about Grace and that tale brought them near to Ulfedt’s Plads, and when the story was told Astrid stopped and hugged him. “I think,” she said, “we both need some happiness.”
“Your father won’t be happy,” Sharpe said. “He doesn’t like me. I’m not religious enough for him.”
“Then you must tell him you are searching for God,” Astrid said. She walked on a few paces, flinching as more bombs shook the night. “It isn’t just religion,” she went on. “Father thinks any man will take me away from him, but if I tell him you are staying here then he might not be angry.”
“I will stay here,” Sharpe said and was amazed that a decision that would change his life should be taken so easily. Yet why not, he wondered. What waited for him in England? He could return to Shorncliffe, but he would be a quartermaster again, despised by men like Dunnett because he had been born in the wrong place. And he liked Copenhagen. The folk were tediously pious, but that seemed a small price to pay for the happiness he wanted. And had he not considered working for Ebenezer Fairley in Britain? So why not work for Ole Skovgaard in Denmark and take his daughter into the bargain? And with a little luck he could bring a pile of golden English guineas to this new life.
A dim light shone from the windows of the house in Ulfedt’s Plads. “Father must be home,” Astrid said. The house and warehouse were safe, for they lay far enough from the great fires that burned in the city’s west and in the citadel. Astrid unlocked the door, offered Sharpe a wry smile as if to say she knew they must endure some hostility from her father, then pulled him over the threshold. “Papa!” she called. “Papa!”
A voice answered in Danish, then a light appeared at the top of the stairs to cast wavering shadows from the balustrade, but it was not Ole Skovgaard who carried the lantern. It was Aksel Bang. The Dane was wearing his shabby uniform and had a musket slung on his shoulder and a sword at his side. He seemed to be reproving Astrid as he came downstairs, then he saw Sharpe and his eyes widened in disbelief. “Lieutenant!”
Sharpe nodded, said nothing.
“You should not be here!” Bang said sternly.
“Everyone’s saying that tonight,” Sharpe said.
“Mister Skovgaard would not want you here! He will be angry.”
“Then Mister Skovgaard can tell me that himself,” Sharpe said.
“He will not be back tonight,” Bang said. “He is helping with the fires.”
“And you’re not watching him?” Sharpe asked.
“He’s safe,” Bang said. “He has other men with him.”
Astrid tried to reduce the tension between the two men. “We shall make tea,” she said. “You like tea, Richard?”
“I love tea,” Sharpe said.
Bang had seen the look on her face as she spoke to Sharpe and he stiffened. “You must not go into the yard,” he told Astrid.
“Why not?”
“When I came back there were men who had collected unexploded bombs. English bombs.” He spat the last two words at Sharpe. “They wanted somewhere safe to put them, so I let them use the yard. In the morning we must pull their fuses out.”
“Why would I go to the yard?” Astrid asked. She edged past Bang, who still glared at Sharpe. Sharpe followed and, as he pushed past the recalcitrant Dane, he smelt gin on his breath. Aksel Bang drinking? It was extraordinary what a bombardment would do.
They went to the parlor where Astrid rang a bell to summon a maid and Sharpe crossed to the window and pulled aside the curtains to stare at the burning city. The cathedral’s dome reflected the flames that roared skyward from the black walls of broken houses. The sky pulsed with gun flashes, was laced by the red threads of falling fuses and crazed by the fierce trails of rockets. A church bell, incongruous among the turmoil, struck the half-hour and then Sharpe heard the musket lock click.
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