Two more days, and the door won't open to the bar, no matter what he tries, even for his Security badge.

Two more days, and Lucille's fever climbs higher. The doctor from the village wants to bleed her, until Sharpe throws him out... but that just leaves him with no help at all, and nothing he can do works.

He tries every remedy he's ever heard of, before and after the doctor leaves. Quinine. Gunpowder mixed with brandy, in memory of Jack Spears. And, finally, in desperation, because it's been too long with no change, he tries the way Patrick Harper once saved his life - a cold water bath.

The chance does not pay off.

And in the end, Sharpe is left sitting by the deathbed of a third woman he's loved, squeezing her hand between both his, though she's been delirious for the last day, and listening to her breathing slow and stop.

The next time he tries the barn door, not really hoping to ever get back to the bar, it's not the barn he sees.

He meant to find a doctor, after talking to Archie. He was just going to go home quickly, check on Lucille and the babies, make sure everything was all right.

And then the door just opened on the barn, when he tried to come back.

It hasn't opened on Milliways since.

Lucille's fever isn't breaking. She hasn't got out of bed in two days, now.

And without the bar, there's not a damn thing Richard Sharpe can do about it.

All the preparations made, Sharpe opens the front door and leads Steph through.

On the other side is a typical farmyard - a few birds visible pecking up food, Danny the dog flopped out in the shelter of the barn, animal sounds coming from the other side of the buildings.

And the farmhouse.

"There's hard times ahead again. Look you sharp, sir."

It's not that he didn't take the warning seriously. He did. He just wasn't expecting the hard times to begin quite so soon.

Maybe he should have. When did his life ever go smoothly for very long, after all?

That's beside the point, though, really. At least, it is when the point is Lucille, in the kitchen, suddenly stumbling and grabbing the doorframe, and the pool shining at her feet, and the pain on her face.

The birth does not go well, though he sends Marie running to the village for the doctor. He refuses to be pushed out of the room, pacing anxiously in the doorway where he won't get in the way, but even he can see things aren't going as they should, and he wishes once again that Daniel Hagman was still alive and could be here now.

The doctor steps back from the bed, and Lucille's still alive, he can hear her breathing though there's something unhealthy about the sound of it, but he can see the baby in the doctor's hands, and it's not crying... oh God.

And then he remembers something else.

"Then it'd come down to always choosin' the future sir. Always, no matter it makes you bleed...that or lose it all"

He knows, somewhere deeper than he can name, that those were true words. If he doesn't... if he can't... then Lucille will die and the child will never live. And that's enough to decide him.

The next second, he's forward into the room and grabbing the baby - not dead, not dead, not yet - from the startled doctor's arms, cutting off the man's solemn words to Lucille. He doesn't wait to hear her protest before he's running for the barn, where the door to Milliways has been more often than anywhere else.

He promised Sally he'd be back, after Matt's funeral. But he's well aware that she didn't really expect him to keep that promise... and really, if Matt hadn't asked him to do this, she might have been right.

Still. Matt did ask. And so a dusty, travel-worn man rides one day into Keighley town square, a week or so after leaving his farm in France with a letter in his pocket.

Sharpe didn't mean to sleep in the bar, but a long day's work on the farm followed by a security shift catches up with a man, and he's fast asleep in a corner booth, undisturbed.

In his dreams, he's in an inn he'll never drink at again in reality, looking around the empty room. He has a feeling he's waiting for someone, but...

Sharpe and Wells emerge from the back door and head for the closest the bar has to a football pitch.

Sharpe's grinning, looking forward to the game.