Then there was an odd silence.
“He did lie,” Lord William said placidly in the silence, and reached over to take the letter from his wife’s lap. Grace made an effort to snatch it back, but Lord William was too quick. “Of course Braithwaite lied,” his lordship went on. “It must have provided him with an exquisite pleasure to tell me of your disgusting behavior. One detects his enjoyment throughout the letter, don’t you think? And I certainly did him no excessive kindnesses! The thought is as ludicrous as it is offensive.”
“He lies!” Lady Grace said more defiantly. A tear quivered at her eye, then rolled down her cheek.
“Showed him excessive kindnesses!” Lord William said scathingly. “Why would I do such a thing? I paid him a small salary commensurate with his services, and that was all.” Lord William carefully pocketed the folded letter. “One circumstance did puzzle me, though,” he went on. “Why did he confront Sharpe? Why not come straight to me? I have thought about that, and still it puzzles me. What was the point of seeing Sharpe? What did Braithwaite expect of him?”
Lady Grace said nothing. The rudder squealed in its pintles, and an enemy shot struck the Pucelle with a deep booming sound, then there was silence again.
“Then I remembered,” Lord William went on, “that Sharpe deposited some valuables with that wretched man Cromwell. I thought it an odd circumstance, for the man is palpably poor, but I suppose he could have plundered some wealth in India. Could Braithwaite have been attempting blackmail? What do you think?”
Lady Grace shook her head, not in answer to her husband’s question, but as if to shake off the whole subject.
“Or perhaps Braithwaite tried to blackmail you?” Lord William suggested, smiling at his wife. “He used to watch you with such a pathetically yearning face. It amused me, for it was plain what he was thinking.”
“I hated him!” Lady Grace blurted out.
“An extravagant waste of emotion, my dear,” Lord William said. “He was an insignificant thing, scarce worth disliking. But, and this is the point of our conversation, was he telling the truth?”
“No!” Lady Grace wailed.
Lord William lifted the pistol and examined its lock in the lantern light. “I noted,” he said, “how your spirits revived after we boarded the Calliope. I was pleased, naturally, for you have been over-nervous in these last months, but once aboard Cromwell’s ship you seemed positively happy. And indeed, in these last few days, there has been a vivacity in you that is most unnatural. Are you pregnant?”
“No,” Lady Grace lied.
“Your maid tells me you vomit most mornings?”
Grace shook her head again. Tears were running down her cheeks. Partly she cried from shame. When she was with Sharpe it seemed so natural, so comforting and exciting, but she could not plead that in her defense. He was a common soldier, an orphan from the London rookeries, and Grace knew that if society ever learned of her liaison then she would become a laughing stock. A part of her did not care if she was mocked, another part cringed under the lash of Lord William’s scorn. Grace was deep in a ship, down among the rats, lost.
Lord William watched her tears and thought of them as the first trickles of his revenge, then he looked up at the planks of the orlop deck and frowned. “It’s oddly silent,” he said, trying to keep her off balance by momentarily talking of the battle before torturing her with his sharp tongue once more. “Perhaps we have run away from the fighting?” He could hear the grumbling of some distant gunnery, but no cannons were being fired close to the Pucelle. “I remember,” he said, laying the pistol on his knees, “when we first met and my uncle suggested I should marry you. I had my doubts, of course. Your father is a wastrel and your mother a garrulous fool, but you possess, Grace, a classical beauty and I confess I was drawn to it. I was concerned that you boasted an education, though it has proved scantier than you think, and I feared you might possess opinions, which I rightly suspected would be foolish, but I was prepared to endure those afflictions. I believed, you see, that my apprehension of your beauty would overcome my distaste for your intellectual pretensions, and in return I asked very little of you, save that you gave me an heir and upheld the dignity of my name. You failed in both things.”