“Oh.” Sharpe closed his eyes as though the sunlight in the plaza was hurting him. He did not know what to say. There was nothing so foolish, he thought, as a man rejected.
“I can take instruction in the faith,” Louisa said, “and I can become a part of this country. I don’t want to run away from Spain. I don’t want to go back to England and think of all the excitement that beckons here. And I cannot…“ She stopped in embarrassment.
She did not need to finish. She could not throw herself away on a common soldier, an ageing Lieutenant, a pauper in a tattered uniform whose only prospect was to decay in some country barracks. “Yes,” Sharpe said helplessly.
“I cannot ignore the moment,” she said dramatically.
“Your family…“ Sharpe began.
“Will hate it!” Louisa forced a laugh. “I am trying to persuade myself that is not the sole reason why I intend to accept Don Bias’s offer.”
Sharpe made himself look up at her. “You will marry?”
She looked very gravely at him. “Yes, Mr Sharpe, I shall marry Don Bias.” There was relief in her voice now that the truth was out. “It is a sudden decision, I know, but I must have the bravery to seize the moment.”
“Yes.” He could think of nothing else to say.
Louisa watched him in silence. There were tears in her eyes, but Sharpe did not see them. “I’m sorry,” she began.
“No.” Sharpe stood. “I had no expectations, none.”
“I am pleased to hear that,” Louisa said very formally. She stepped back as Sharpe walked to the platform’s edge, then frowned as he went down the cathedral steps. “Didn’t you have to see Don Bias?”
“No.” Sharpe did not care any longer. He sheathed his sword and walked away. He felt he had fought for nothing, there was nothing left worth fighting for, and his hopes were like the ashes of the burnt flag in the empty plaza. It was all for nothing.
CHAPTER 16
For Lieutenant Richard Sharpe to aspire to Miss Louisa Parker was, in its way, as daring as Vivar’s plan to capture an enemy-held city. She came from a respectable family which, though it sometimes trembled on the edges of genteel poverty, was far above Sharpe’s ignoble station. He was a peasant by birth, an officer by accident, and a pauper by profession.
And what, Sharpe asked himself, had he expected of the girl? Did he imagine that Louisa would willingly tramp behind the campaigning army, or find some squalid home near the barracks and eke out his inadequate pay on scraps of meat and day-old bread? Was she to have abandoned silk dresses for woollen shifts? Or would he have expected her to follow him to the West Indian garrison where the yellow fever wiped out whole Regiments? He told himself that his hopes of the girl had ever been as stupid as they were unrealistic, yet that did not heal the sudden hurt. He told himself that he acted childishly for even feeling the hurt, but that did not make it any easier to bear.
He plunged from the plaza’s wintry sunshine into the foetid reek of an alley where, beneath an arcade, he found a wineshop. Sharpe had no money to pay for the wine, but his demeanour and the hammer of his hand on the counter persuaded the tavern keeper to fill a big flask from the barrel. Sharpe took the flask and a tin cup to an alcove at the back of the room. The few customers, huddled round the fire and seeing his bitter face, ignored him; all but for a whore who, at the tavern keeper’s bidding, edged onto the bench beside the foreign soldier. For a second Sharpe was tempted to push her away, but instead he beckoned for a second mug.
The tavern keeper wiped the mug on his apron and set it on the table. A sacking curtain was looped back over the alcove’s arch and he took hold of it and raised an interrogatory eyebrow.
“Yes,” Sharpe said harshly. ”Si.“
The curtain dropped, plunging Sharpe and the girl into dark shadow. She giggled, put her arms about his neck, and whispered some Spanish endearment until he silenced her with a kiss.