Chase smiled at Sharpe’s smitten expression. “She was born Grace de Laverre Gould, third daughter of the Earl of Selby. She’s twenty years younger than her husband, but just as cold.”

Sharpe could not take his eyes from her ladyship, for she was truly beautiful; breathtakingly, achingly, untouchably beautiful. Her face was pale as ivory, sharp-shadowed as she leaned toward her husband, and framed by heavy loops of black hair that were pinned to appear artless, but which even Sharpe could tell must have taken her maid an age to arrange. She did not smile, but just gazed solemnly into her husband’s face. “She looks sad rather than cold,” Sharpe said.

Chase mocked the wistfulness in Sharpe’s voice. “What does she have to be sad about? Her beauty is her fortune, Sharpe, and her husband is as rich as he is ambitious as he is clever. She’s on her way to being wife of the Prime Minister so long as Lord William doesn’t put a foot wrong and, believe me, he steps as lightly as a cat.”

Lord William concluded the conversation with his wife, then gestured for a footman to open Chase’s gate. “You might have taken a house with a carriage drive,” he admonished the naval captain as he strode up the short path. “It’s devilish annoying being pestered by beggars every time one makes a call.”

“Alas, my lord, we sailors are so inept on land. I cannot entice your wife to take some coffee?”

“Her ladyship is not well.” Lord William ran up the verandah steps, gave Sharpe a careless glance, then held a hand toward Chase as if expecting to be given something. He must have noted the blood that was still crusted in Chase’s fair hair, but he made no mention of it. “Well, Chase, can you settle?”