“Thinking of nothing,” Sharpe protested. Dunnett and his men had followed him onto the lawn. “Do you know who this woman is?” Sharpe asked Murray.
“She’s my wife, Lieutenant,” one of the two civilians answered, “and I am an accredited French diplomat.”
“Last week,” Sharpe said, “I watched that bitch pull a man’s teeth because he was a British agent.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dunnett snapped. He stepped toward Sharpe and held out his hand. “Give me your pistol, Lieutenant, and your saber.”
“Captain!” Madame Visser said reprovingly. “Perhaps Lieutenant Sharpe has been affected by battle? I am told it makes some men insane. I think you should place him in a hospital.”
“We shall arrest him, ma’am,” Dunnett said enthusiastically. “Give me your rifle, Sharpe.”
“Bloody take it,” Sharpe said. The anger was rising dangerously in him.
“Richard,” Captain Murray said emolliently. He took Sharpe’s elbow and showed surprise when his hand was shaken off. “This isn’t the place, Richard,” he said softly. “We can sort things out back at the village.”
“There’s nothing to bloody sort out! I didn’t do anything here!”
“You trespassed, Richard, and it ain’t a serious offense.”
“Lieutenant Sharpe!” Dunnett was becoming impatient. “You will give me your weapons now or I shall order my men to take them.”
“Parole, Warren, parole,” Murray suggested.
Madame Visser watched Sharpe with mock sympathy and a half-smile. She had won and was enjoying his humiliation. Then a new voice sounded angrily from the arch in the box hedge. “What the devil is going on?” the voice demanded, and the group on the lawn turned to see that Sir Arthur Wellesley, attended by three aides, had come to the house. “Someone tells me an officer was plundering here?” The General was plainly furious as he strode across the grass. “My God, I will not abide plundering, especially by officers. How can you expect obedience from the men when officers are corrupt?”
“I took nothing!” Sharpe protested.
“It’s you,” Wellesley said in a distant tone. Madame Visser, struck by the General’s good looks, was smiling at him while her husband bowed stiffly and introduced himself. Wellesley spoke to them in fluent French, Dunnett and Murray stood back and Sharpe stared down at the wicker table and cursed his impulsiveness.
Wellesley turned cold eyes on Sharpe. “Monsieur Visser tells me you were annoying his wife.”
“I put a bullet through her leg, sir,” Sharpe said, “if that’s what he means.”
“You did what?” Wellesley snapped.
“Last week, sir, in Copenhagen. She was pulling a man’s teeth at the time, and he was one of our agents.”
Wellesley stared at him, Madame Visser chuckled. “He’s mad, sir,” Captain Dunnett said.
“I fear the sun or else the strain of battle has gone to his head, Sir Arthur,” Madame Visser said gently. “I hurt my leg falling from a horse. Otherwise I would have ridden with my husband to witness your great victory. Instead I stayed here and Lieutenant Sharpe threatened me with a rifle, then said he would search the house for gold.” She shrugged. “It is sad, I think, but perhaps you do not pay your officers properly?”
“Is that true, Sharpe?” Wellesley’s voice was as cold as Sharpe had ever heard it.
“Of course it isn’t true, sir,” Sharpe said. He was not looking at Sir Arthur, but at the work basket. A hatpin, he thought, she had a hatpin in the work basket. My God, it was a wild chance, but perhaps the only one he had. Sir Arthur, confronted with an attractive woman, was talking to her in French and doubtless believing everything she said and in a moment he would confirm Dunnett’s order to have Sharpe arrested and so, while the General was distracted, Sharpe stooped and pulled the newspaper from beneath the work basket. It was a copy of the Berlingske Tidende, nothing strange about that, but Madame Visser still made an ineffectual lunge to grab it back from him.
Wellesley frowned. “What the devil… ” he began, then watched as Sharpe unfolded the paper and held it up to the sun. Tiny dots of light sparked on the page. Monsieur Visser and the other civilian stepped back as if to suggest they had nothing to do with whatever happened next and Sharpe just gazed at the pricks of sunlight and felt a great surge of relief. He was safe. “Sir?” he said.