The men whom Vivar expected arrived at noon. A trumpet call announced the visitors’ approach, and there was a flourish of celebration in its sound. Some of the Cazadores went down the steep path to escort the two men into the fortress. The newcomers were priests.
Sharpe watched their arrival from the window of Louisa Parker’s room. He had gone to see her to discover why she had fled from her family. She had slept all morning and now seemed entirely recovered from the night’s exertions. She looked past him at the dismounting priests and gave an exaggerated shudder of pretended horror. “I can never properly rid myself of feeling there’s something very sinister about Romish clergy. My aunt is convinced they have tails and horns.” She watched as the priests advanced through a guard of honour to where Bias Vivar waited to greet them. “I expect they do have tails and horns, and cloven hooves. Don’t you agree?”
Sharpe turned away from the window. He felt embarrassed and awkward. “You shouldn’t be here.” Louisa widened her eyes. “You do sound grim.”
“I’m sorry.” Sharpe was speaking more abruptly than he would have liked. “It’s just that…“ His voice tailed away. ”You think your soldiers will be unsettled by my presence?“ Sharpe did not like to say that Bias Vivar had already been unsettled by Louisa’s impulsive act. ”It isn’t a fit place for you,“ he said instead. ”You’re not used to this kind of thing.“ He waved his hand around the room, as though to demonstrate its shortcomings, though in truth Vivar’s Cazadores had done everything they could to make the foreign girl comfortable. Her room, though small, had a fireplace in which logs smouldered. There was a bed of cut bracken and crimson saddle blankets. She had no other belongings, not even a change of linen.
She seemed crestfallen by Sharpe’s strict tone. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“No.” Sharpe tried to dismiss her apology, even though he had elicited it.
“My presence embarrasses you?”
Sharpe turned back to the window and watched the Cazadores gather about the two priests. Some of his Riflemen looked on in curiosity.
“Would you like me to go back to the French?” Louisa asked tartly.
“Of course not.”
“I think you would.”
“Don’t be so damned stupid!” Sharpe turned on her viciously, and was instantly ashamed. He did not want her to know just how glad he was that she had run from her aunt and uncle and, in his effort to disguise that gladness, he had let his voice snap uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, miss.”
Louisa was just as contrite. “No, I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have sworn.”
“I can’t imagine you giving up swearing, even for me.” There was a trace of her old mischievousness, a hint of a smile, and Sharpe was glad of it.
“It’s just that your aunt and uncle will worry about you,” he said lamely. “And we’re probably going to have to fight again, and a fight’s no place for a woman.”
Louisa said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. “The Frenchman, de l’Eclin? He offended me. I think he perceived me as a spoil of war.”
“He was offensive?”
“I imagine he thought he was being very gallant.” Louisa, dressed in the blue skirts and coat in which she had fled the travelling coach, paced about her small room. “Would I offend you by saying that I preferred your protection to his?”
“I’m flattered, miss.” Sharpe felt himself being drawn into her conspiracy. He had come here to warn Louisa that Bias Vivar disapproved of her presence, and to tell her to avoid the Spaniard as much as was possible; instead he felt the attraction of her vivacity.
“I was tempted to stay with the French,” Louisa confessed, “not because of the Colonel’s intrinsic charms, but because Godalming would surely have been agog to hear of my adventures with the army of the Corsican ogre, would it not? Perhaps we would have been sent to Paris and paraded before the mob like Ancient Britons displayed before the Romans.”
“I doubt that,” Sharpe said.
“I rather doubted it, too. Instead I foresaw a most tedious time in which I would be forced to listen to my aunt’s interminable complaints about the war, the lost testaments, her discomforts, French cooking, your shortcomings, her husband’s timidity, my forwardness, the weather, her bunions – do you wish me to continue?”