‘I don’t know.’
She looked at the table top. She pushed a leaf between two of the rough planks and he saw how the white cuff of her dress was darned with small, neat stitches. ‘I don’t think she wanted to marry my uncle, but women don’t have a choice, really.’ She talked very softly, not just because she feared her voice carrying, but because she had never talked like this to anyone. She said she should have been married herself, two years before, but the man had lost his fortune and Sir Henry had called off the wedding.
‘Who was he?’ Sharpe asked with a stab of jealousy.
‘A man from Maldon. It’s not far away.’ Now she had been told she was to marry Bartholomew Girdwood.
Told?’
She gave her sudden, enchanting, mischievous smile, that always, Sharpe was noticing, left a residue of sadness on her face. ‘I ran away when it was arranged. My uncle brought me back.’
Sharpe wondered if that was why she had been in the carriage on the day when he and Harper were being marched as recruits to Foulness. ‘Ran away?’
‘I have a cousin who married a vicar. Celia said I should come to them, but my uncle knows the man who owns the living, and you can imagine what happened.’ Doubtless Sir Henry had threatened the vicar with the loss of his parish and livelihood. She smiled at Sharpe. ‘I wasn’t much good at running away.’
‘Are you frightened of Sir Henry?’
She thought about it, her hands linked on the table top, then nodded. ‘Yes. But most of the time he’s in London. He’s only here for a few days at a time.’ She looked out over the moon-washed marshes to where, now at its height, the tide was pushing waves across the drowned mudflats in shimmering, silver sheets that broke in small, bright spurts of foam where they met the river’s push. ‘So here I am. I’m a companion to my aunt, I talk with the housekeeper, and sometimes, when my uncle’s at home, I have to be a hostess for his dinners.’ She smiled. ‘That means soldier’s talk.’
‘Girdwood?’
‘He’s always here.’ She said it with a rueful laugh. ‘My uncle likes him. They talk for hours and hours about battles and tactics?’ She made the last word into a question as though she was not accustomed to using it. ‘But I suppose all soldiers do that?’
He shook his head. ‘Most of the soldiers I know talk about what they’re going to do when the war ends. They want to own a piece of land. I think they dream of never seeing a uniform again.’
‘And you?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’ He remembered his sad thoughts as he had sat on the pool’s parapet in the Vauxhall Gardens, his drab presentiments of a soldier in peacetime.
She sighed. ‘You need the books badly?’
‘Yes. I have to have proof, you see.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I want to help you, but it’s hard.’
‘Hard?’ He wanted to take her hands once more, but was uncertain whether the gesture would be welcomed. Her head was lowered, and the moonlight cast the shadows of her eyelashes in long, thin lines down her cheeks that abruptly vanished as she looked up at him.
‘I can take the risk, you see. I can try to find them for you. I would like to do that, really. But I shall be punished.’
‘Sir Henry?’
‘He beats me.’ She was not looking at him, but across the marshland to the small waves.
‘He beats you?’
‘Yes.’ She said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘He let Girdwood watch the last time, because he thought the Colonel should know how to treat a wife. He uses a cane. He doesn’t do it often; not very often, anyway.’ She gave a small laugh, as though indicating that she was not seeking his pity. Sharpe felt inadequate to say anything, and kept silent. She shook her head. ‘There are marks on his study walls. He thrashes, you see, and the cane scratches the plaster. He gets very angry.’ The last words were said limply, as though she could not truly describe the beatings. In the silence that followed her words Sharpe heard a clock chiming in the house. He counted ten beats and, when they were done, she looked up at him. ‘What happens if you don’t have the books?’