Sharpe's Fortress Part 35

Torrance backed into the house, shouting at his servant to drape the windows with muslin, then turned and hurried to the kitchen to harry Clare. He tripped over Sharpe's pack and swore.

"Whose is this?"

"Mine," Sharpe said.

"You're not thinking of billeting yourself here, are you, Sharpe?"

"Good as anywhere, sir."

"I like my privacy, Sharpe. Find somewhere else." Torrance suddenly remembered he was speaking to a man who might have influence with Wellesley.

"If you'd be so kind, Sharpe. I just can't abide being crowded.

An affliction, I know, but there it is. I need solitude, it's my nature.

Brick! Did I tell you to brush my hat? And the plume needs a combing."

Sharpe picked up his pack and walked out to the small garden where Ahmed was sharpening his new tulwar. Clare Wall followed him into the sunlight, muttered something under her breath, then sat and started to polish one of Torrance's boots.

"Why the h.e.l.l do you stay with him?"

Sharpe asked.

She paused to look at Sharpe. She had oddly hooded eyes that gave her face an air of delicate mystery.

"What choice do I have?" she asked, resuming her polishing.

Sharpe sat beside her, picked up the other boot and rubbed it with blackball.

"So what's he going to do if you b.u.g.g.e.r off?"

She shrugged.

"I owe him money."

"Like h.e.l.l. How can you owe him money?"

"He brought my husband and me here," she said, 'paid our pa.s.sage from England. We agreed to stay three years. Then Charlie died." She paused again, her eyes suddenly gleaming, then sniffed and began to polish the boot obsessively.

Sharpe looked at her. She had dark eyes, curling black hair and a long upper lip. If she was not so tired and miserable, he thought, she would be a very pretty woman.

"How old are you, love?"

She gave him a sceptical glance.

"Who's your woman in Seringapatam, then?"

"She's a Frenchie," Sharpe said.

"A widow, like you."

"Officer's widow?" Clare asked. Sharpe nodded.

"And you're to marry her?" Clare asked.

"Nothing like that," Sharpe said.

"Like what, then?" she asked.

"I don't know, really." Sharpe said. He spat on the boot's flank and rubbed the spittle into the bootblack.

"But you like her?" Clare asked, picking the dirt from the boot's spur. She seemed embarra.s.sed to have posed the question, for she hurried on.

"I'm nineteen," she said, 'but nearly twenty."

"Then you're old enough to see a lawyer," Sharpe said.

"You ain't indentured to the Captain. You have to sign papers, don't you? Or make your mark on a paper. That's how it was done in the foundling home where they dumped me. Wanted to make me into a chimney sweep, they did! b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! But if you didn't sign indenture papers, you should talk to a lawyer."

Clare paused, staring at a sad tree in the courtyard's centre that was dying from the drought.

"I wanted to get married a year back," she said softly, 'and that's what Tom told me. He were called Tom, see? A cavalryman, he was. Only a youngster."

"What happened?"

"Fever," she said bleakly.

"But it wouldn't have worked anyway, because Torrance wouldn't ever let me marry." She began polishing the boot again.

"He said he'd see me dead first." She shook her head.

"But what's the point in seeing a lawyer? You think a lawyer would talk to me? They like money, lawyers do, and do you know a lawyer in India that ain't in the Company's pocket? Mind you' she glanced towards the house to make sure she was not being overheard 'he hasn't got any money either. He gets an allowance from his uncle and his Company pay and he gambles it all away, but he always seems to find more." She paused.

"And what would I do if I walked away?" She left the question hanging in the warm air, then shook her head.

"I'm miles from bleeding home. I don't know. He was good to me at first. I liked him! I didn't know him then, you see." She half smiled.

"Funny, isn't it? You think because someone's a gentleman and the son of a clergyman that they have to be kind? But he ain't." She vigorously brushed the boot's ta.s.sel.

"And he's been worse since he met that Hakeswill. I do hate him." She sighed.

"Just fourteen months to go," she said wearily, 'and then I'll have paid the debt."

"h.e.l.l, no," Sharpe said.

"Walk away from the b.u.g.g.e.r."

She picked up Torrance's hat and began brushing it.