"Nah, Molly. I'm the one who had you reading. Distracted, like."

A watered-down almost-smile. It was as he had feared. Conscription and crimpingand hadn't he fought most of his life against this sort of thing? Sure -- at first he fought only for his shilling or for his life. And then he fought for his king. But things had changed. Things had become ideological; not that Sharpe knew the word.

But there were practices that were good and moral and right in the world and he did want to uphold them. He fought within a crooked system to do that but he often found that if you fought enough and won enough medals and took enough enemy standards, people started to listen to you. No matter how ragged your accent.

He reached for her mug -- willing to take it from her hands.