19 Sharpe's Revenge by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780006510413
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 9

Cap­tain Pe­ter d'Alem­bord sat in the draw­ing-​room of the Cork Street house and felt acute­ly un­com­fort­able. It was not that d'Alem­bord was un­used to lux­ury, in­deed he had been raised in an af­flu­ent fam­ily of the most exquisite tastes, but his very fa­mil­iar­ity with civ­ilized liv­ing told him that there was some­thing ex­ceed­ing­ly vul­gar about this high-​ceilinged room. There was, he con­sid­ered, sim­ply too much of ev­ery­thing. A great chan­de­lier, much too large for the room, hung from a plas­ter finial, while a dozen crys­tal sconces crowd­ed the walls. The sconces, like the chan­de­lier, dripped with can­dle wax that should long have been scraped away. The fur­ni­ture was most­ly lac­quered black in the fake Egyp­tian style that had been fash­ion­able ten years ear­li­er. There were three chaise-​longues, two foot­stools, and a scat­ter­ing of small li­on-​foot­ed ta­bles. The gilt-​framed pic­tures seemed to have been bought as a job lot; they all showed rather un­like­ly shep­herdess­es dal­ly­ing with very ethe­re­al young men. A box of can­died cher­ries lay gath­er­ing dust on one ta­ble, and a bowl of al­monds on an­oth­er.

Dust was ev­ery­where and d'Alem­bord doubt­ed whether the room had been cleaned for days, per­haps even weeks. The grate was piled with ash­es, and the room smelt over­whelm­ing­ly of pow­der and stale per­fume. A maid had curt­seyed when d'Alem­bord had hand­ed in his card at the door, but there was lit­tle ev­idence that the girl did any clean­ing. d'Alem­bord could on­ly sup­pose that Jane Sharpe was mere­ly lodg­ing in the house, for he could not be­lieve that she would al­low such sloven­li­ness in her own home.

d'Alem­bord wait­ed pa­tient­ly. He could find on­ly one book in the room. It was the first of a three vol­ume ro­mance which told the sto­ry of a cler­gy­man's daugh­ter who, snatched from the bo­som of her fam­ily by brig­ands in Italy, was sold to the Bar­bary pi­rates of Al­giers where she be­came the play­thing of a ter­ri­ble Mus­lim chief. By the last page of the book, to which d'Alem­bord had hasti­ly turned, she was still pre­serv­ing her maid­en­ly virtue, which seemed a most un­like­ly out­come con­sid­er­ing the re­put­ed be­haviour of the Bar­bary pi­rates, but then un­like­ly things prop­er­ly be­longed in books. d'Alem­bord doubt­ed if he would seek out the re­main­ing vol­umes.

A black and gilt clock on the man­tel whirred, then sound­ed mid­day. d'Alem­bord won­dered if he dared pull aside the care­ful­ly looped vel­vet cur­tains and open a win­dow, then de­cid­ed that such an act might be thought pre­sump­tu­ous. In­stead he watched a spi­der spin a del­icate web be­tween the tas­sels of a ta­ble-​cloth on which a vase of flow­ers wilt­ed.

The clock struck the quar­ter, then the half, then the hour's third quar­ter. d'Alem­bord had come unan­nounced to the house, and had thus ex­pect­ed to wait, but he had nev­er an­tic­ipat­ed be­ing kept wait­ing as long as this. If he was ig­nored till one o'clock, he promised him­self, he would leave.

He watched the fil­igreed minute hand jerk from five min­utes to four min­utes to one. He de­cid­ed it

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.