Sharpe ignored Knowles's summation of the Emperor's strategy. "You believe what?" he asked.

"Nothing. I said too much."

"You didn't say a bloody thing," Sharpe protested and waited, but Knowles still remained silent. "You want me to slit your skinny throat, Robert," Sharpe asked, "with a very blunt knife?"

Knowles smiled. "You mustn't repeat this, Richard."

"You know me, Robert, I never tell anyone anything. Cross my heart and hope to die, so tell me before I cut your legs off."

"I believe Mrs. Lawford's sister was in trouble. She found herself with child, she wasn't married and the man concerned was apparently a rogue."

"Wasn't me," Sharpe said quickly.

"Of course it wasn't you," Knowles said. He could be pedantically obvious at times.

Sharpe grinned. "So Slingsby was recruited to make her respectable?"

"Exactly. He's not from the topmost drawer, of course, but his family is more than acceptable. His father's a rector somewhere on the Essex coast, I believe, but they're not wealthy, and so Lawford's family rewarded Slingsby with a commission in the 55th, with a promise to exchange into the South Essex as soon as there was a vacancy. Which there was when poor Herrold died."

"Herrold?"

"Number three company," Knowles said, "arrived on a Monday, caught fever on Tuesday and was dead by Friday."

"So the idea," Sharpe said, watching a French gun battery being dragged along the track by the stream below, "is that bloody Slingsby gets quick promotion so that he's a worthy husband for the woman what couldn't keep her knees together."

"I wouldn't say that," Knowles said indignantly, then thought for a second. "Well, yes, I would say that. But the Colonel wants him to do well. After all, Slingsby did the family a favor and now they're trying to do one back."