Kate blushed. „Oh, I do,” she said, „I truly do.”
Father Josefa smiled at her. The sun streamed through the church’s small high windows, there were flowers in her hair and Father Josefa raised his hand to bless James and Katherine with the sign of the cross and just then the church door creaked open to let in a wash of more sunlight and the stench of a manure heap just outside.
Kate turned to see soldiers in the door. The men were outlined against the light so she could not see them properly, but she could see the guns on their shoulders and she supposed they were French and she gasped in fear, but Colonel Christopher seemed quite unworried as he tilted her face to his and kissed her on the lips. „We are married, my darling,” he said softly.
„James,” she said.
„My dear, dear Kate,” the Colonel responded with a smile, „my dear, dear wife.” Then he turned as harsh steps sounded in the small nave. They were slow steps, heavy steps, the nailed boots unfittingly loud on the ancient stones. An officer was walking toward the altar. He had left his men at the church door and came alone, his long sword clinking inside its metal scabbard as he walked closer. Then he stopped and stared into Kate’s pale face and Kate shuddered because the officer was a scarred, shabby, green-coated soldier with a tanned face harder than iron and a gaze that could only be described as impudent. „Are you Kate Savage?” he asked, surprising her because he put the question in English and she had assumed the newcomer was French.
Kate said nothing. Her husband was beside her and he would protect her from this horrid, frightening and insolent man.
„Is that you, Sharpe?” Colonel Christopher demanded. „By God, it is!” He was oddly nervous and his voice was too high-pitched and he had a struggle to bring it under control. „What the devil are you doing here? I ordered you south of the river, damn you.”
„Got cut off, sir,” Sharpe said, not looking at Christopher, but still staring at Kate’s face which was framed by the narcissi in her hair. „I got cut off by Frogs, sir, a lot of Frogs, so I fought them off, sir, and came to look for Miss Savage.”
„Who no longer exists,” the Colonel said coldly, „but allow me to introduce you to my wife, Sharpe, Mrs. James Christopher.”
And Kate, hearing her new name, thought her heart would burst with happiness.
Because she believed she was married.
The newly united Colonel and Mrs. Christopher rode back to the Quinta in the dusty gig, leaving Luis and the soldiers to trail after them. Hagman, still alive, was now in a handcart, though the jolting of the unsprung vehicle seemed to give him more pain than the old stretcher.
Lieutenant Vicente was also looking ill; indeed he was so pale that Sharpe feared the erstwhile lawyer had caught some disease in the last couple of days. „You should see the doctor when he comes to have another look at Hagman,” Sharpe said. There was a doctor in the village who had already examined Hagman, pronounced him a dying man, but promised he would come to the Quinta that afternoon to look at the patient again. „You look as if you’ve got an upset belly,” Sharpe said.
„It is not an illness,” Vicente said, „not something a doctor can cure.”
„Then what is it?”
„It is Miss Katherine,” Vicente said forlornly.
„Kate?” Sharpe stared at Vicente. „You know her?”
Vicente nodded. „Every young man in Porto knows Kate Savage. When she was sent to school in England we pined for her and when she sailed back it was as if the sun had come out.”
„She’s pretty enough,” Sharpe allowed, then looked again at Vicente as the full force of the lawyer’s words registered. „Oh, bloody hell,” he said.
„What?” Vicente asked, offended.
„I don’t need you to be in love,” Sharpe said.
„I am not in love,” Vicente said, still offended, but it was obvious that he was besotted with Kate Christopher. In the last two or three years he had gazed at her from afar and he had dreamed of her when he was writing his poetry and had been distracted by her memory when he was studying his philosophy and he had woven fantasies about her as he delved through the dusty law books. She was the Beatrice to his Dante, the unapproachable English girl from the big house on the hill and now she was married to Colonel Christopher.