“You’re thirsty, Captain?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“I have plenty of bottles. Some chicken?”

“No, Ma’am.”

She sighed. “You’re so hard to please, Captain. Ah! There’s Arthur!”

Wellington was, indeed, returning westward along the track behind the ridge.

Spears twisted in his saddle to look at the General. “Ten to one he comes up here to see you, Helena?”

“I’d be surprised if he didn’t.”

“Sharpe!” Spears grinned at him. “Two guineas he won’t come?”

“I don’t gamble.”

“I do! Christ! Half the bloody estate’s gone.”

“Half of it?” La Marquesa laughed. “All of it, Jack. All of it, and a lot more. What will you leave your heir?”

“I’m not married, Helena, thus none of my bastards can be described as an heir.” He blew her a kiss. “If only your dear husband would die I would be on my knees to you. I think we’d make a handsome couple.”

“And how long would my fortune last?”

“Your beauty is your fortune, Helena, and that is safe for ever.”

“How pretty, Jack, and how untrue.”

“The words were said by Captain Sharpe, my dear, I just repeated them.”

The huge blue eyes looked at Sharpe. “How pretty, Captain Sharpe.”

He was blushing because of Spears’ lie and he hid it by wrenching the reins harshly about and staring at the quiescent French. Lord Spears followed him and spoke softly. “You fancy her, don’t you?”

“She’s a beautiful woman.”

“My dear Sharpe.” Spears leaned over and led the Rifleman’s horse forward a few paces. “If you want her, try her.” He laughed. “Don’t worry about me. She won’t look at me. She’s very discreet, our Helena, and she’s not going to endure Jack Spears boasting round the city that he tucked his feet in her bed. You should mount an attack, Sharpe!”

Sharpe was angry. “You mean lovers from the servant’s hall keep quiet, because they’re so grateful?”

“Your words, friend, not mine.”

“True.”

“And if you must know, you may be right.” Spears was still friendly, but his words were low and forceful. “Some people think the meat in the servant’s hall is better than the thin stuff served in the banquet hall.”

Sharpe looked at the handsome face. “La Marquesa?”

“She gets what she wants, you get what I want.” He grinned. “I’m doing you a favour.”

“I’m married.”

“God help me! Do you say your prayers every night?” Spears laughed aloud, then turned for hoofbeats presaged Wellington’s arrival at the head of his staff. The General reined in, doffed his bicorne hat, then cast a cold glance at Spears and Sharpe.

“You’re well escorted, Helena!”

“Dear Arthur!” She offered him her hand. “You have disappointed me!”

“I? How?”

“I came for a battle!”

“So did we all. If you have any complaints you must address them to Marmont. The fellow absolutely refuses to attack!”

She pouted at him. “But I so hoped to see a battle!”

“You will, you will.” He patted his horse’s neck. „I’ll lay you odds that the French will sneak away tonight. I gave them their chance and they turned it down, so tomorrow I’ll take those forts.“

“The forts! I can watch from the Palacio!”

“Then pray Marmont sneaks away tonight, Helena, for if he does I’ll lay on a full assault for you. All the battle you could wish!”

She clapped her hands. “Then I will give a reception tomorrow night. To celebrate your victory. You’ll come?”

“To celebrate my victory?” Wellington seemed positively skittish in her presence. “Of course I’ll come!”

She waved a hand round all the horsemen gathered about the elegant barouche. “You must all come! Even you, Captain Sharpe! You must come!”

Wellington’s eyes met Sharpe. The General gave a thin smile. “Captain Sharpe will be busy tomorrow night.”

“Then he will come when his business is finished. We shall dance till dawn, Captain.”

Sharpe felt, though he did not know if it was meant, a subtle mockery in the eyes that watched him. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would face Leroux, tomorrow he would fight that sword, and Sharpe felt the desire to fight. He would beat Leroux, this Colonel who had put a chill of fear into the British, he would face him, fight him, and he would drag him captive from the wasteland. Tomorrow he would fight, and these foppish aristocrats would watch from La Marquesa’s Palacio and suddenly Sharpe knew what reward he wanted for facing Colonel Philippe Leroux. Not just the sword. He would have that anyway as the spoils of war, but something else. He would have the woman. He smiled at her for the first time, and nodded. “Tomorrow.”

Tired cavalry scouts came back to the city in the early Tuesday hours. Marmont’s army had gone north in the night. The French had abandoned the garrison of the forts in the city, they would bide their time now and hope that at some point in the summer they would catch Wellington flat-footed and fight a battle more on their own terms.

The fortresses served no purpose now for Wellington. They had failed to bring Marmont to battle for their rescue, and they stopped his supply trains using the long Roman bridge, so the fortresses would be destroyed. La Marquesa would get her battle, and Sharpe would have to seek Leroux among the prisoners.

If there were prisoners. It had seemed a light thing for the General to promise La Marquesa an assault of the three buildings, but Sharpe could see that the defenders would not easily give in. He had stared long and hard at the buildings, marooned in their waste ground, and the more he looked, the less he liked.

The waste ground was split by a deep gorge that ran southwards towards the river. On the right of the gorge was the largest of the French forts, the San Vincente, while to the left were the forts of La Merced and San Cayetano. An attack on any one of the three forts would be savaged by gunfire from the others.

The three buildings had been convents until the French evicted the nuns and turned this corner of the city into a stronghold. For nearly a week now the convents had been under fire from British guns, yet the artillery had done remarkably little damage. The French had prepared the buildings well.

Out of the levelled houses that had surrounded the convents they had made a crude glacis that bounced the round-shot up and over the defensive works. They had buttressed walls behind the deep ditch which surrounded each convent and over their gun emplacements and troop shelters they had made huge, thick roofs. Each roof was like a massive box filled with earth, designed to soak up the British howitzer shells that fell with fluttering smoke from the sky. The French garrisons were surrounded, trapped, but it would be hard for the British to break in.

Sharpe paraded his Company, not entirely by chance, outside the Palacio Casares. The huge gates stood open, revealing the central courtyard in the middle of which a fountain splashed into a raised pool. The courtyard was paved, filled with flowers in ornate tubs, and Sharpe stared through the shadows of the archway at the great door above the formal steps. The house seemed deserted. Thickly woven straw mats had been lowered over the windows, blotting the sun, and the water in the fountain was the only sign of movement in the great, rich house.

Above the gateway, on the tall, blank, outer wall, the coat of arms that decorated the barouche door was carved in pale gold stone. Above that, high above, Sharpe could see plants growing at the wall’s top, evidence perhaps of a balcony or even roof garden and it was there, he knew, that La Marquesa would get her view, above the rooftops, of the wasteland and the forts. Not that she would see much. The attack would be made at last light. Sharpe would have preferred a night attack, but Wellington distrusted them, remembering the closeness of disaster to success that the night had brought in Seringapatam so long ago.