Patrick Harper liked London’s cheerfully robust chaos. He could not have contemplated living there, though he had relatives in Southwark, but he had enjoyed his two previous visits, and once again found an endless entertainment in the hawkers and street-singers. There were also enough Irish accents in the capital to make a Donegal man feel comfortable.
Yet he was not comfortable now. He should have been for he was sitting in a tavern with a pot of ale and a steak and oyster pie, yet a very unhappy Captain d’Alembord was threatening to capsize Harper’s well-ordered world.
‘I think I can understand why it has happened,’ d’Alembord said painfully, ‘I just don’t want to believe that it’s true.’
‘It’s not true, sir,’ Harper said stoutly, and in utter defiance of all Captain d’Alembord’s evidence. ‘Mrs Sharpe’s good as gold, so she is. Take me round there, sir, and she’ll be as happy as a child to see me.’
D’Alembord shrugged. ‘She quite refused to receive me again, and Lord Rossendale has ignored all my letters. I finally went to see Sir William Lawford. Do you remember him?’
‘Of course I remember One-armed Willy, sir.’ Sir William Lawford, now a member of Parliament, had commanded the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers until the French had removed one of his arms at Ciudad Rodrigo.
D’Alembord shook his head sadly. ‘Sir William assured me that Mrs Sharpe and Lord Rossendale are,’ d’Alembord paused, then said the damning word, ‘intimate. It could just be ill-natured gossip, of course.’
‘It must be nothing but gossip.’ Harper’s world was bounded by certainties, one of which was that a pledge of love was entirely unbreakable, which was why, though he was made very uncomfortable by these speculations about Jane Sharpe, he still refused to give them any credit. ‘I expect they’re just trying to help Mr Sharpe, sir, so it stands to reason that they have to spend a bit of time together. And you know how tongues start flapping when a man and woman spend time together. So why don’t we just walk round there and I’ll give her the Major’s letter, and I’ll warrant she’ll be as happy as a hog in butter when she reads it. I’ll just finish the pie first, if I might. Are you sure you wouldn’t want a bite of it yourself?’
‘You finish it, Sergeant-Major.’
‘I’m not a soldier any more, sir,’ Harper said proudly, then plucked at the hem of his new coat as proof. He had discarded the old clothes Madame Castineau had given him, and replaced them with a suit of thickly woven wool, stout boots, gaiters, and a neckcloth which he had purchased with part of the money he had left in London where, like Sharpe, he had sold his Vitoria jewels. He was clearly pleased with his purchases, which made him look like a prosperous farmer come to town. His only weapon now was a thick and ungainly cudgel. ‘I haven’t got my papers yet,’ he admitted to d’Alembord, ‘but once Mr Sharpe’s off the hook then I dare say he’ll get them.’
‘Be careful you’re not arrested.’
‘Who’d dare?’ Harper grinned and gestured towards the cudgel.
The pie finished and the ale drunk, the two men walked slowly westwards. It was a lovely spring evening. The sky was delicately veined with thin cloud beyond the gauzy pall of London’s smoke, and the new leaves in the squares and wider streets had still not been darkened by soot and so looked spring-bright and full of hope. The beauty of the evening infused Harper with a quite unwarranted optimism. ‘It’s going to be all right, sir, so it is,’ he insisted. ‘Just wait till Mrs Sharpe sees me! It’ll be grand to see the lass again!’ He dropped a coin into the upturned shako of a legless beggar. D’Alembord did not have the heart to tell Harper that the vast majority of wounded indigents were not, despite their remnants of army uniforms, veterans of the war, but were merely taking advantage of the generosity of officers home from France. ‘Have you thought,’ Harper went on, ‘of writing to Nosey?’
‘Nosey’ was the newly created Duke of Wellington who, for lack of any better government appointment in London, had just been made Ambassador to Paris. ‘I’ve written to him,’ d’Alembord said, ‘though I’ve had no reply.’
‘Nosey won’t let Mr Sharpe down, sir.’
‘He won’t defend him if he thinks he’s a murderer.’
‘We’ll just have to prove he isn’t.’ Harper tossed another penny, this time to a man with empty eye-sockets.
They turned into Cork Street where Harper sniffed his disapproval for the elegant houses. ‘Mr Sharpe will never live here, sir. She’ll have to change her tune a bit smartish, I can tell you! He’s set on the countryside, so he is.’
‘And I tell you she’s set her heart on London.’
‘But she’s the woman, isn’t she? So she’ll have to do what he wants.’ That was another of Harper’s unshakeable certainties.
‘Hold hard.’ D’Alembord put a hand on Harper’s arm. ‘That’s the house, see?’ He pointed to the far end of the street where a varnish-gleaming phaeton was drawn up outside Jane’s house. A pair of matching chestnuts were in the carriage shafts and an urchin was earning a few coins by holding the horses’ heads. ‘See her?’ D’Alembord was unable to hide the disgust he felt.
Jane was being handed down the steps by a very tall and very thin young man in the glittering uniform of a cavalry Colonel. He wore pale blue breeches, a dark blue jacket, and had a fur lined pelisse hanging from one shoulder. Jane was in a white dress covered by a dark blue cloak. The cavalryman helped her climb into the high, perilous seat of the phaeton which was an open sporting carriage much favoured by the rich and reckless.
‘That’s Lord Rossendale,’ d’Alembord said grimly.
For the first time since meeting d’Alembord, Harper looked troubled. There was something about Jane’s gaiety which contradicted his pet theory that, at worst, she and Rossendale were mere allies in their attempt to help Sharpe. Nevertheless it was for this meeting with Jane that Harper had come to London, and so he took Sharpe’s letter from a pocket of his new coat and stepped confidently into the roadway to intercept the carriage.
Lord Rossendale was driving the phaeton himself. Like many young aristocrats, he held the professional carriage-drivers in great awe, and loved to emulate their skills. Rossendale tossed the urchin a coin, climbed up beside Jane, and unshipped his long whip. He cracked the thong above the horses’ heads and Jane whooped with feigned and flattering alarm as the well-trained and spirited pair started away. The carriage wheels blurred above the cobbles.
Harper, standing in the roadway, raised his right hand to attract Jane’s attention. He held Sharpe’s letter aloft.
Jane saw him. For a second she was incredulous, then she assumed that if Harper was in Cork Street, her husband could not be far away. And if her husband was in London then her lover was threatened with a duel. That prospect made her scream with genuine fright. ‘John! Stop him!’
Lord Rossendale saw a huge man holding a cudgel. It was early in the day for a footpad to be on London’s more fashionable streets, but Rossendale nevertheless assumed that the big man was attempting a clumsy ambush. He flicked the reins with his left hand and shouted at the horses to encourage them to greater speed.
‘Mrs Sharpe! Ma’am! It’s me!’ Harper was shouting and waving. The carriage was twenty yards away and accelerating fast towards him.
‘John!’ Jane screamed with fright.
Lord Rossendale stood. It was a dangerous thing to do in so precarious a vehicle, but he braced himself against the seat, then slashed the whip forward so that its thong curled above the horses’ heads.
‘Sergeant!’ D’Alembord shouted from the pavement.
The whip’s thong cracked, and its tip raked Harper’s cheek. If it had struck