„Why’s that, sir?”
„Because Soult isn’t going to linger in Oporto if there’s a chance of Lisbon falling, is he? No, if Soult is in Oporto then that’s as far as the Frogs have got.”
„But they are south of the river?”
„A few bloody cavalrymen maybe,” Sharpe said dismissively, but it was frustrating not to know what was happening and Sharpe, to his surprise, found himself wanting Colonel Christopher to return so he could learn how the war progressed.
Kate doubtless wanted her husband to return even more than Sharpe did. For the first few days after the Colonel’s departure she had avoided Sharpe, but increasingly they began to meet in the room where Daniel Hagman lay. Kate brought the injured man food and then would sit and talk with him and, once she had convinced herself that Sharpe was not the scurrilous rogue she had supposed him to be, she invited him into the front of the house where she made tea in a pot decorated with embossed china roses. Lieutenant Vicente was sometimes invited, but he said almost nothing, just sat on the edge of a chair and gazed at Kate in sad adoration. If she spoke to him he blushed and stammered, and Kate would look away, seemingly equally embarrassed, yet she seemed to like the Portuguese Lieutenant. Sharpe sensed she was a lonely woman, and always had been. One evening, when Vicente was supervising the pic-quets, she spoke of growing up as a single child in Oporto and of being sent back to England for her education. „There were three of us girls in a parson’s house,” she told him. It was a cold evening and she sat close to a fire that had been lit in the tile-edged hearth of the Quinta’s parlor. „His wife made us cook, clean and sew,” Kate went on, „and the clergyman taught us scripture knowledge, some French, a little mathematics and Shakespeare.”
„More than I ever learned,” Sharpe said.
„You are not the daughter of a wealthy port merchant,” Kate said with a smile. Behind her, in the shadows, the cook knitted. Kate, when she was with Sharpe or Vicente, always had one of the women servants to chaper-one her, presumably so that her husband would have no grounds for suspicion. „My father was determined to make me accomplished,” Kate went on, looking wistful. „He was a strange man, my father. He made wine, but wouldn’t drink it. He said God didn’t approve. The cellar here is full of good wine and he added to it every year and he never opened a bottle for himself.” She shivered and leaned toward the fire. „I remember it was always cold in England. I hated it, but my parents didn’t want me schooled in Portugal.”
„Why not?”
„They feared I might be infected with papism,” she said, fidgeting with the tassels on the edge of her shawl. „My father was very opposed to papism,” she continued earnestly, „which is why, in his will, he insisted I must marry a communicant of the Church of England, or else.”
„Or else?”
„I would lose my inheritance,” she said.
„It’s safe now,” Sharpe said.
„Yes,” she said, looking up at him, the light from the small fire catching in her eyes, „yes, it is.”
„Is it an inheritance worth keeping?” Sharpe asked, suspecting the question was indelicate, but driven to it by curiosity.
„This house, the vineyards,” Kate said, apparently unoffended, „the lodge where the port is made. It’s all held in trust for me at the moment, though my mother enjoys the income, of course.”
„Why didn’t she go back to England?”
„She’s lived here for over twenty years,” Kate said, „so her friends are here now. But after this week?” She shrugged. „Maybe she will go back to England. She always said she’d go home to find a second husband.” She smiled at the thought.
„She couldn’t marry here?” Sharpe asked, remembering the good-looking woman climbing into the carriage outside the House Beautiful.
„They are all papists here, Mister Sharpe,” Kate said in mock reproof. „Though I suspect she did find someone not so long ago. She began to take more trouble with herself. Her clothes, her hair, but maybe I imagined it.” She was silent for a moment. The cook’s needles clicked and a log collapsed with a shower of sparks. One spat over the wire fireguard and smoldered on a rug until Sharpe leaned forward and pinched it out. The Tompion clock in the hall struck nine. „My father,” Kate went on, „believed that the women in his family were prone to wander from the straight and narrow path which is why he always wanted a son to take over the lodge. It didn’t happen, so he tied our hands in the will.”