“Are you sure?”
“Tomorrow we fight.” This time though, he thought, we will be outnumbered.
She pulled her knees tight into her body, clasped them, and looked questioningly at him. “Are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Who’ll win?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you get your Eagle?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded seriously. “I have a present for you. I will give it to you after the battle.”
He was embarrassed. He did not have the money to buy presents. “I don’t want it. I want you.”
“You have me already.” She knew what he meant, but she deliberately misunderstood him. She watched him stand up. “You want your sword?”
“Yes.” Sharpe buckled the belt tight, pulling the scabbard into place.
She grinned at him. “Come and get it.” She lay the great blade on the bed and, rolling over, laid her naked belly on its chill steel.
Sharpe crossed to her. “Give it to me.”
“Get it yourself.”
Her body was warm and strong, the muscles hardened by exercise, and she clung to him. Sharpe pushed her face away and stared into her eyes. “What will happen?” he asked.
“You will get your Eagle. You always get what you want.”
“I want you.”
She shut her eyes and kissed him hard, then pulled away and smiled at him. “We’re just stragglers, Richard. We drifted together, but we’re both on a journey.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You do. We’re going two different ways. You want a home. You want someone to love you and want you, someone to take the burden away from you.”
“And you?”
She smiled. “I want silk dresses and music. Candles in the dawn.” He began to say something, but she put a finger on his lips. “I know what you think. That’s just silliness, but it’s what I want. Perhaps one day I’ll want something sensible.”
“Am I sensible?”
“There are times, my love, when you take things a little too seriously.”
“Are you saying goodbye?”
She laughed. “There! You see? You are taking things too seriously.” She kissed him swiftly, on the tip of his nose. “Come after the battle. Get your present.”
He reached down for the handle of his sword. “Move over, I don’t want to cut you.”
She moved to one side and touched the blade with her finger. “How many men have you killed with it?”
“I don’t know.” It slid into the scabbard, the weight congenial on his hip. He crouched by the bed and took her naked waist in his hands. He stared at her body as if trying to commit it to memory: the fullness of it, the beauty of it, the mystery that made it seem unattainable. She touched his face with a finger.
“Go and fight.”
“I’ll be back.”
“I know.”
Everything seemed unreal to Sharpe. The soldiers in Talavera’s streets, the people who avoided his passage, the afternoon itself. Tomorrow there would be a battle. Hundreds would die, mangled by roundshot, sliced by cavalry sabres, pierced by musket shot, yet still the town was busy. People were in love, out of love, bought their food, made jokes, yet tomorrow there would be a battle. He wanted Josefina. He could hardly think of the battle, of the Eagle-only of her teasing face. She was going from him, he knew that, yet he could not accept it. The battle was almost an irrelevance to the overwhelming need to entrap her, to make her his, and he knew it could not happen.
He walked to the town gate that overlooked the plain to the west. The Light Company was mounting a guard on the gate, and Sharpe nodded at Harper and then climbed the steep steps to the parapet, where Hogan stared down into the olive groves and woods that were full of Spanish soldiers filing into the positions Wellesley had carefully prepared for them. Cuesta, after refusing to attack on the Sunday, had impetuously marched after the retreating French. Now, four days later, his army was scuttling back and bringing behind them a French army that had more than doubled in size. Tomorrow, Sharpe knew, this Spanish army would have to fight. The French would wake them up, and the allied army that could have taken its victory last Sunday would now have to fight a defensive battle against the united forces of Victor, Jourdan and Joseph Bonaparte.