Sharpe was groping for meaning in her words, for sense. He could only translate what she had said so far as desperate failure.
She nibbled at the bread. ‘Sir William wants to avoid a scandal. He won’t get you your Battalion. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ He nodded, and her green eyes seemed to mock him. ‘He doesn’t want you hurt, but he’ll protect the government first.’ She smiled at Sharpe. ‘You do understand me, Major? Sir William wishes you no harm.’
But Sharpe was still trying to make sense of Lawford going straight to Lord Fenner. ‘Why did he go to him?’
She smiled at the alarm in his voice. ‘To feather his nest, of course.’ She said the vulgarism brutally. ‘Lawford wants higher office and he has a most expensive wife. Or perhaps he wants a peerage? Above all he wants the scandal hidden so that he stays in office. The evidence will be destroyed, Major and no one will ever know, except for you.’ She pointed a knife at him. ‘You’re the embarrassment. They tried to kill you once, but they can’t do that again. I would guess, Major, that they’ll send you to a remote Canadian garrison? Or perhaps you’ll be given the command of a penal settlement in Australia. I imagine you’d like Australia.’ She had decided not to mention that Sharpe was to be given his own Rifle Battalion. He might, she thought, accept such an offer and then she would lose a man who could help her.
Sharpe frowned. ‘But Lawford promised . . .’
‘Lawford promised nothing!’ She said it sharply. ‘He’s a politician, Major. He’d like to give you what you want, but not at his own expense.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Sharpe was astonished by her. He presumed she was like the Marquesa; a subtle, pretty woman fascinated by the ways of power.
Lady Camoynes leaned back in her uncomfortable iron chair. Behind her, in the restaurant, a string quartet played. She stared at the Rifleman, and she resented the fact that he was so handsome and so base-born. ‘I just know.’
‘How?’
She would not reply. She wanted to tell him, because she liked him, but the truth was too hurtful. The truth had given her hatred, a hatred that had brought her here.
She would have liked to tell this Rifleman about the monstrous debt her husband’s death had left owing to Lord Fenner, a debt she paid in Fenner’s bed, a debt of humiliation. She had listened this night at the library door, listened shamelessly, for she was a woman who knew that all knowledge is power. She would hurt Lord Fenner if she could, and if to hurt him she must keep from Sharpe the knowledge that he was to be offered promotion and a Battalion of Green Jackets, then she would do it. She would destroy Fenner, and with him the debt, so that her small son, who had inherited the Earldom of Camoynes, would not inherit the great debt too.
She would have liked to tell Sharpe all this, but her habits of secrecy were too strong and her fear of his pity too great, so instead she stared defiantly at him. ‘I know it all, Major. I know about Foulness, about Sir Henry, about Girdfilth or whatever he’s called. I met him once, grovelling in Fenner’s house. He’s going to marry Simmerson’s niece, which seems very suitable. She can’t be much of a catch, though I suppose she’ll inherit his money.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Have I said something?’
‘No, Ma’am.’ Sharpe had blushed at the mention of Jane. He stared at the table top. ‘No.’
She still looked curiously at him, then shrugged. ‘Let us just say, Major, that I am here because I wish to destroy Lord Fenner. I want him clawed into little fragments and you, alley cat, can do it for me.’
‘How?’ He was thinking of Jane Gibbons and her soft, lively beauty bedded with Girdwood.
She gestured at the champagne and he poured more into her glass. He had hardly touched his own. She smiled. ‘You want your men?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘I want the auctions stopped. I want Girdwood punished.’