“Goods?” Sharpe asked, wondering why the secretary was making such an effort to be pleasant to him.

“To sell,” Braithwaite said impatiently, as though Sharpe was being deliberately obtuse. “I’ve got peacock feathers,” he went on, “five crates! The plumes fetch a rare price in London. Milliners buy them. I’m Malachi Braithwaite, by the way.” He held out his hand. “Lord William’s confidential secretary.”

Sharpe reluctantly shook the offered hand.

“I never did send that letter,” Braithwaite said, smiling meaningfully. “I told him I did, but I didn’t.” Braithwaite leaned close to make these confidences. He was a few inches taller than Sharpe, but much thinner, and had a lugubrious face with quick eyes that never seemed to look at Sharpe for long before darting sideways, almost as though Braithwaite expected to be attacked at any second. “His lordship will merely assume your colonel never received the letter.”

“Why didn’t you send it?” Sharpe asked.

Braithwaite looked offended at Sharpe’s curt tone. “We’re to be shipmates,” he explained earnestly, “for how long? Three, four months? And I don’t travel in the stern like his lordship, but have to sleep in the steerage, and lower steerage at that! Not even main-deck steerage.” He plainly resented that humiliation. The secretary was dressed as a gentleman, with a fashionable high stock and an elaborately tied cravat, but the cloth of his black coat was shiny, the cuffs were frayed and the collar of his shirt was darned. “Why should I make unnecessary enemies, Mister Sharpe?” Braithwaite asked. “If I scratch your back, then maybe you can do me a service.”

“Such as?”

Braithwaite shrugged. “Who knows what eventuality might arise?” he asked airily, then turned to watch the Baron von Dornberg come back down the forecastle steps.