Her words surprised him. Touched him, really, with an icy dread right at the core of his heart. But it wasn't the sort of dread a man ran from -- far from it. He witnessed her resolve and he found it particularly intoxicating, like on the day he watched Teresa run a Frenchman threw with his own sword and she'd spat at him for not having done it first. He'd watched it happen and he'd wanted her from that moment -- slim and fine-faced like this woman, too, sitting beside him.

Sharpe breathed deep and kept his wits about him, resisting an urge or two. He tried to stay poised. Precise. Officerly.

"Think nothing of it, love," the endearment slipped out not in a personal way but in the way men are wont to use it. Encompassing and diminutive and familiar. "We use what weapons we have."