Savage, who was the widow of one of the many British wine merchants who lived and worked in the city of Oporto. She was rich, Sharpe presumed, certainly rich enough to own a fine carriage and the lavish House Beautiful, but she was also foolish for she should have left the city two or three days before, but she had stayed because she had evidently believed the bishop’s assurance that he could repel Marshal Soult’s army. Colonel Christopher, who had once lodged m the strangely named House Beautiful, had appealed to the British forces south of the river to send men to escort Mrs. Savage safely away and Captain Hogan had been the closest officer and Sharpe, with his riflemen, had been protecting Hogan while the engineer mapped northern Portugal, and so Sharpe had come north across the Douro with twenty-four of his men to escort Mrs. Savage and any other threatened British inhabitants of Oporto to safety. Which should have been a simple enough task, except that at dawn the widow Savage had discovered that her daughter had fled from the house.

„What I don’t understand,” Sharpe persevered, „is why she ran away.”

„She’s probably in love,” Hogan explained airily. „Nineteen-year-old girls of respectable families are dangerously susceptible to love because of all the novels they read. See you in two days, Richard, or maybe even tomorrow? Just wait for Colonel Christopher, he’ll be with you directly, and listen.” He bent down from the saddle and lowered his voice so that no one but Sharpe could hear him. „Keep a close eye on the Colonel, Richard. I worry about him, I do.”

„You should worry about me, sir.”

„I do that too, Richard, I do indeed,” Hogan said, then straightened up, waved farewell and spurred his horse after Mrs. Savage’s carriage which had swung out of the front gate and joined the stream of fugitives going toward the Douro.