[ he offers up a quiet smile at the word honourable. it's kind of the lieutenant to couch it so generously, and sharpe understands immediately that gentleman is the unnamed void left absent in the sentence. he's okay with this fact; he's made his bed, and he will lie in it without complaint.

but then comes the latent threat and sharpe's expression sobers. not that he's frightened, really -- but he feels it somehow cheap to meet the man's concern with a grin. ] I sometimes fear she favours me so only because there's no one else to favour. No one familiar enough, I mean. No one from home. And if she'd met me back in London, she'd never look twice.

[ why, indeed, should she? although he had a fortune stored by in his accounts, none knew it but his bankers and his sergeant. for all appearances, he still looked like a penniless ruffian in a tattered officer's sash. ]

Worse yet, there is something I haven't told her. And I can't rightly suss whether she's worked it out for herself.

[ after all, even some gently born officers were rough and ragged. scarred and skint. and a navy family might not look so unkindly at a man come up from the ranks, except that he wasn't just some poor farmer's son who shot to success in the army. no -- he was a thief and a murderer and he'd been raised on streets he fancied faith had never seen, although they existed in the same city as her home. ]