‘It seems extravagant, sir.’
Girdwood’s footsteps sounded on the floorboards. Sharpe heard the saddle-bag scrape on the table, then Girdwood chuckled. ‘When the army summons a soldier, dear Miss Jane, all we may do is obey with alacrity. It was ever thus.’ His footsteps paused the other side of the door. ‘One day, perhaps, when my service is over, I might look forward to a leisure spent ever at your side.’ His heels clicked together, his spurs ringing. ‘Mrs Grey? May I wish you a good night?’
‘Thank you, sir. You have your books safe?’
‘Most safe.’
‘And I pray you give Sir Henry our most dutiful regards.’
‘It will be my pleasure.’ There were more footsteps in the hall, the sound of the front door opening, and Sharpe stood, silent and still, debating whether to leave now. Perhaps, on the moonlit road, he could force from Girdwood the whereabouts of the accounts.
Yet before he could move, the sound of hooves on gravel was abruptly cut off by the closing of the front door, and voices murmured outside the library. They were close, and coming closer. ‘I shall take your aunt her medicine, Jane.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Grey.’ Jane’s voice was demure.
‘And you will go to bed?’ It was as much an order as a question.
‘I shall fetch my book first, Mrs Grey.’
‘Then goodnight.’ Sharpe heard footsteps on the hall floor. He was staring at the window. If a servant came to bolt the window-doors, then fold and bar the shutters on the night, surely he must see Sharpe behind the door? He held his breath as footsteps sounded in the room again.
‘I’ll lock the windows, Miss Gibbons?’ The voice was just the other side of the door.
‘I’ll do it, King.’
‘Thank you, miss.’
Sharpe was in shadow. The room smelt musty and damp. He heard steps in the room, a key in the lock, then the squeal of a drawer opening. He guessed Jane Gibbons was looking into the bureau from which the books and pistols had been taken. The drawer closed, was locked again, then Sharpe saw her. She walked to the window-doors, closed them and seemed to show no surprise that one leaf had been ajar onto the night. Then, as she stooped to push the lower bolt home, she became completely still.
Sharpe could see her golden hair was in ringlets. She wore a blue dress, white collared, with a tight, old-fashioned waist that showed her slim hips.
She was staring at the floor.
There was mud there, brought in on Sharpe’s boots from the creek bed, mud that led to his hiding place.
She straightened, turned, and raised her eyes slowly, following the trail of dry mud until she was staring into the shadow beside the door.
She jumped when she saw him, but did not cry out. Sharpe stepped sideways, out of the shadow, and they stared at each other, neither saying a word. He smiled.
For a moment he thought she was going to laugh, so mischievous and delighted was her face, then, decisively, she crossed to the door beside him. ‘I have to talk with you!’
‘Here?’
She shook her head. There was a pergola in the garden, built at the corner of the north wall, and she would join him there. ‘You’ll wait?’
‘I’ll wait.’
He waited in the dark shadow of the roses that grew unpruned about the lattice shelter. There was a seat in the pergola that ran around a table made of rough planks. The sea, far off to his right, seethed, faded, then seethed again. He had come here to find the missing Battalion’s accounts, and instead he waited for a girl that he imagined he loved.
He had waited twenty minutes and was beginning to think that she would not come when he heard the creak of a door, and, seconds later, saw a dark-cloaked figure running over the grass. She slid into the shadow, sat, then looked nervously back at the upper windows of the brick house that were glowing with lamplight. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’
He stared at her, suddenly not knowing what to say, and she bit her lower lip and shrugged as if she, too, was suddenly uncertain.