Hoare and the headless Captains cbh-2 Page 14

  "Very interesting," Hoare said, and waited for Selene Prettyman to come to the point of her summons.

  "I invited you to call on me, Captain Hoare," she went on, "because I cannot juggle more balls than I now have in hand. Cumberland and his crowd of hangers-on are quite enough for one person to keep under observation. I must ask you to keep watch over the Frobisher coterie for me. The puzzling activities of Mr. Goldthwait of Chancery Lane must be delegated to another, and I must return to London posthaste to attend to that matter."

  "Am I to understand then, Mrs. Prettyman, that you wish me to determine… if the 'Frobisher coterie,' as you called it, is engaged in occasional treason and-if so- when and how?"

  "And to frustrate their knavish tricks, if they do so engage."

  "I'll be happy to do so. Am I to do this alone, or may I call upon the talents of Royal Duke's crew? And why should the Frobisher group not be put out of the way in any case, whether they are committing treason or not?"

  Selene Prettyman held up two fingers of one slender hand and touched one.

  "To answer your first question: By all means, draw upon your crew. From what little I have heard-from Cumberland, for instance, who gave me a most entertaining report of his inspection of Royal Duke-your ship has unusual characteristics."

  "Indeed," Hoare said.

  She touched the second finger.

  "To answer your second question: We do not know that Sir Thomas is a traitor. As it is, moreover, he and his friends command several important votes in the Commons and are not without influence in the upper house as well. The Admiralty and the Prime Minister are in agreement that the evidence must be overpowering before action is taken against them-if, indeed, action is to be taken at all. They may simply be a cluster of harmless eccentrics, like Francis Dashwood's Hell-Fire Club, for example. Or both."

  "I understand," Hoare said. "Then I shall add this to Royal Duke's tasks. Frankly, I would find it a personal pleasure to put Sir Thomas in his place… We have never seen eye to eye. And, in any case, the task may not be so far afield from my current interests."

  "How is that?" Selene Prettyman asked.

  Hoare gave her an outline of his encounters with the Frobishers, including the suggestion that Sir Thomas and he were on a collision course with respect to a certain widow in Weymouth.

  "Aha!" Mrs. Prettyman said on hearing this. "This makes amusing news. For I was thinking it might be well for you to visit Broadmead. Now I know you should. Sir Thomas will be there, if I do not mistake myself, on a mission that I deem quite unsuitable for a widower of his age and reputation. You know of Broadmead?"

  "Miss Felicia Hardcastle mentioned the place the other evening, if my memory serves me. The Gladden estate, is it not?"

  "Yes. And are you acquainted with the daughter, Miss Anne?"

  "I met her once. It was last autumn, on the occasion of her brother's ordination."

  "Of course," Mrs. Prettyman said. "The young man whom you saved from being hanged. Now, the girl's parents, and the girl herself, are in an interesting and difficult situation."

  "Indeed?" Hoare wondered what the Gladdens had to do with the previous subject of conversation. Miss Gladden was lovely as a Dresden figurine and very little taller. He suspected that Sir Ralph and Lady Caroline Gladden were desperate to find a husband for their daughter. If this was the line Selene Prettyman was taking, it would not do.

  "I fear that for a number of reasons I am not an appropriate suitor for the young lady's hand, Mrs. Prettyman."

  "That is of no consequence," she said. "In any case, I shall mention you to Miss Felicia as a possible escort for her when she visits Broadmead. Before I leave for London, I shall make the necessary arrangements with her father. In fact, I shall commence now. There is not a moment to be lost."

  She rose to her feet, indicating that their t+фte-a-t+фte was at an end.

  "Before we part, Captain Hoare, let me give you a warning. Do not be surprised if you see me again in unexpected circumstances. If you do, please do not acknowledge me in any way unless I give you a sign. Let me see… yes. Unless I say something about 'friend of the Crown.' Understood?"

  "Understood, ma'am. 'Friend of the Crown.' Until then." With that, Hoare made his farewell bow and let Angelique hold the door for him.

  Hoare had vowed to himself that he would keep an engagement with his ward, Jenny Jaggery, at his former quarters at the Swallowed Anchor, to review her progress in writing her alphabet and to enjoy a cuddle. As he strolled eastward, then, he had to confess to himself that he regretted not having leavened the practical content of the meeting just concluded with at least a cuddle or two with a partner more mature than skinny little Jenny. Selene Prettyman was glorious to look upon, as others, including H. R. H. of Clarence, evidently agreed.

  But then, who was he to meddle in royal amours? Better not, he thought. In any case, the lady had not shown the least sign of being attracted to him. Then, too, he had an unexpected duel to fight, and he must warn Bennett of the role he had assigned to him.

  Chapter X

  Jenny proved to have mastered the letter K and therefore to have earned her kitten. Hoare promised to bring it to her with his next visit. He then penned a request to Sir George as Port Admiral that he be permitted to sleep away from his command tonight and also wrote the necessary warning to Bennett. Hoare invited his prospective second to address a chop that evening.

  "You need not have sent me the warning," Bennett told him immediately upon his arrival at the Swallowed Anchor. "A Mr. Dupree of the twenty-ninth Foot waited upon me this afternoon. We agreed on tomorrow, at the usual hour. Dupree insisted on swords, and I had no recourse but to accept. I'm told that your opponent, Pargeter, is a formidable swordsman-at least when he's sober."

  Bennett looked at Hoare questioningly and perhaps a trifle apprehensively. As far as his friend knew, Hoare suspected, he had never before faced a swordsman on the field of honor. It had always been pistols.

  "I'd have preferred fists," he whispered. "Drunk or sober, the son of a bitch misused my name and grossly insulted the lady who happened to be in my protection at the time. I wonder if he knows she's a Colonel's wife and the very good friend of the Duke of Cumberland."

  Bennett whistled. "Flying a bit high these days, ain't you, Hoare? I'm surprised at you. You've been lying pretty low lately, since you began making those visits to Weymouth."

  "Believe me, my friend, Mrs. Colonel Prettyman is a business acquaintance, nothing more."

  Bennett was a sea lawyer-a genuine one, one in the service of the Admiralty, and not one of those semiliterate lower-deck troublemakers who went by that name in the Navy. He knew when to keep his mouth shut, but Hoare could read his mind.

  "Business, eh?" Bennett's voice was skeptical.

  "Your good health, Bennett," Hoare whispered, raising his glass of claret.

  On their previous excursion of this kind, Hoare and Bennett, with their opposite numbers and the surgeon referee, had had to wait their turn on the convenient strip of greensward over the town while a pair of boys settled their grievance. Today's deep blue dawning saw the party in sole possession of the field. Mr. Hawley, the surgeon, who had experienced even more of these affrays than Hoare, oriented the line along which the combat would open so that neither opponent would have the sun in his eyes when it rose. Subsequently, as usual, the engagement would take its own course.

  From a long mahogany case, Hawley removed a pair of swords, taking a third for himself. Even in the gloaming, Hoare recognized them. He had used them or their like as fencing sabers, for they had been borrowed from the atelier of the emigre cidevant Vicomte Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac. Their buttons, however, had been removed and their points brought to a razor sharpness.

  "My opponent ought to be told that I'm used to these weapons," Hoare said, ostensibly to Bennett, but in a whisper loud enough to reach the two soldiers.

  "I don't give a damn whether he was raised with them in his cradle," Pargeter
said.

  Each of the duelists doffed his uniform coat and handed it to his second. Each stepped up to Hawley, the referee, to select his weapon and tested it between his hands before taking his place as instructed. During the referee's instructions, Pargeter let his gaze wander about the glade while Hoare listened intensely. Pargeter, he saw out of the corner of his eye, moved well. He would be a tough opponent. Hoare thought he would be lucky not to be struck first: First blood was to conclude the affair. The two saluted each other and crossed blades across the referee's.

  Hawley raised his referee's sword sharply, to clear the fighters' blades. A tap, a clink, and the dance was on.

  Pargeter's wrist was firm, his eyes level in the growing light. They circled once, back, feeling each other out while holding themselves in reserve. Hoare parried Pargeter's first lunge, threw it aside, lunged himself, was stopped, and the two came chest-to-chest in a bind. With a shove, Pargeter made to thrust Hoare back, out of balance, but Hoare was prepared and would not be toppled. It was Pargeter who rocked back.

  The point of Hoare's blade pressed up, none too gently, into the soft flesh under Pargeter's chin.

  "Did Spurrier put you up to this?" Hoare whispered harshly in Pargeter's ear as the seconds cried, "First blood!" in unison.

  Hawley whipped his sword up, disengaging the combatants.

  "Lower your weapons, gentlemen," he commanded.

  He had no need to inspect Pargeter. A trickle of blood, detectably red in the sunrise, stained the soldier's cravat.

  "Show me your palms, sir," Hawley said, turning to Hoare.

  Hoare spread his hands, as if in appeal. They were whole.

  "I see blood on only one of you gentlemen," Hawley said. "I declare honor satisfied."

  "Do you need medical attention, sir?" he asked Pargeter.

  "For this pinprick? Don't be an ass," Pargeter snarled. His blood was up. So was Hoare's.

  "Henceforth, mind your tongue, sir," Hoare rasped.

  "Henceforth, fellow, mind your back," was Pargeter's reply.

  Neither showed ready to shake hands with his adversary. The three noncombatant members of the party stood at a loss. At last, both groups drifted away, in clouds, almost palpable, of business left unfinished.

  Chapter XI

  How it happened Hoare could never be sure. Perhaps it was through Selene Prettyman's mysterious authority, perhaps by Admiral Hardcastle's less mysterious command. Whoever and whatever lay behind the invitation to Broadmead, Admiral Hardcastle had been adamant. Hoare was to accept it, despite his protests that, if he did so, his other undertakings for the Admiral would languish and priceless evidence dissipate like dew in the morning sun.

  Hoare's best efforts to get Admiral Hardcastle to change his mind had been futile. Besides, the Admiral had let drop a hint that Sir Thomas Frobisher was to be a guest as well. The two knights being un-friends, Hoare knew that Sir George would not mind at all if Hoare were to put a spoke in Sir Thomas's wheel. So here was Hoare, less than forty-eight hours later, trotting smartly on a sorrel hack along the Portsmouth-Bath turnpike beside the berlin carrying Felicia Hardcastle, her former nurse and present abigail, and an elderly female cousin.

  They had broken their journey at a roadside inn outside Salisbury and overnighted at Wylye. Only at these points had Hoare to endure Miss Hardcastle's company, for which he was grateful. Felicia Hardcastle was a kindly lass, but she talked. Most of her talk was about the virtues of Lieutenant Peter Gladden, to whom, she confided to an unsurprised Hoare, she was now secretly betrothed. At Wylye she had digressed briefly to extol the scenic quality of Stonehenge.

  "Just think, Captain Hoare; it would be only a few miles out of our way! And just think of the letter I could write to dear Peter about its awesome, eerie presence! Oh, do let us break our journey there, sir!"

  Hoare was having quite enough to do with one prehistoric henge monument these days, he felt, without being required to view another. Moreover, he wanted to get the trip over with. He despised horses and hated riding them. He found them disorderly, disobedient, unpredictable, and happy to tittup and fart about wherever they pleased, leaving their excrement underfoot to be trodden in by their betters. He could never understand why country gentlemen were any more enthralled by a horse than they were by a medlar tree. Certainly the latter's leavings were more useful. So he had stood firm despite Miss Hardcastle's pleadings and pouts.

  The party drew up the long curving drive that led to Broadmead. From his station on the berlin's larboard quarter, he could hear his charge's squeals of anticipation. Even though her lover was at sea-he was newly promoted first in Frolic, 22-she was agog to meet his family. Here Hoare had the advantage over her. The entire Gladden family believed he had saved their elder son, Arthur, from a hanging and now behaved toward him as though he were a saint, if not the Savior Himself. Felicia Hardcastle, as he had become tired of experiencing, was only slightly less full of worship.

  Hoare was pleased to see that Sir Ralph and Lady Caroline successfully hid any distress at their first sight of their daughter-in-law elect. They and the Reverend Arthur all greeted Hoare with great warmth. As was only proper, Miss Anne Gladden's welcome was more reserved, but the expression of her periwinkle blue eyes, as they looked up into his from so far below them, was as sweet as he remembered and her smile as endearing.

  Hoare was not particularly surprised to see Miss Jane Austen among his fellow guests. When they had encountered each other at the reception for the Duke of Cumberland, she had said nothing to him about being engaged here. But, after all, the two of them were not precisely bosom beaux, and she had had no reason to confide in him. As she returned his bow, he thought her look somewhat calculating.

  Hoare was also happy that Admiral Hardcastle and Selene Prettyman had dropped him their hints about Sir Thomas Frobisher. For there the Knight-Baronet himself stood, in the greater reception room, among the other guests who had gathered to inspect the new arrivals. Unlike Hoare, Sir Thomas was clearly astonished at the encounter, for his eyes goggled. He had no word for Bartholomew Hoare. Sir Thomas was not amused.

  Hoare had long since discovered that his whisper, with its implication of confidentiality, led many persons to believe him a man with whom their deepest secrets would be safe-an illogical belief, he considered, yet understandable and often useful. The late Janus Jaggery, Jenny's da, had been one of these persons, and Mrs. Selene Prettyman apparently was another. Now, the next morning, as he and Miss Gladden strolled through a gentle mist among the late-blooming flowers in Broadmead's cutting garden, he found that she, too, was ready to trust him as if by instinct.

  "May I speak with you frankly, Captain Hoare?" she asked. "And in the certainty that my words will go no further?"

  "You may. You have my word," Hoare whispered, "unless, of course, what you tell me endangers our country." He could say so in good conscience, since he was quite certain her coming confidence would have no bearing, for good or evil, on the national welfare.

  "As you may know, sir, Sir Thomas Frobisher is a powerful man in the region, and a widower, as you may also know. He has seen fit to speak to Papa-"

  "What? Sir Thomas a suitor for your hand?" Forewarned Hoare may have been, but his reacquaintance with Anne Gladden, his earlier glimpse of Sir Thomas, and the idea of her diminutive form… Out of revulsion, he could say no more.

  She nodded. "You may imagine that my parents wish him neither to marry me nor to take offense at being sent empty away. I should tell you that they hope you will consider rescuing me from his attentions by offering for me yourself."

  With a speaking look, Miss Anne Gladden blushed under her bonnet and added, "The notion was put into their minds, I think, by Miss Austen."

  Miss Austen again, Hoare thought. Damn the interfering bitch, she interferes in matters that… she does not understand.

  "I…," he began, but Miss Gladden had now taken her courage in both hands and must conclude before it eluded her again.

  "T
he arrangement need not be a genuine one, Mr. Hoare. I would cry off whenever you asked me to free you-"

  "But-"

  She raised one hand against his interruption and continued her recital. It was obviously rehearsed.

  "On the other hand, sir, while I am small of stature, I would be amply dowered. In fact, Papa suspects that the three thousand a year he must settle on me upon my marriage has more than a little to do with Sir Thomas's ardor. And I cannot abide the man!" she burst out. "He could be my father, or even my grandfather! Why, his daughter is older than I! I would rather be wed to a frog!" She was on the verge, Hoare saw, of breaking into tears.

  She regained control of herself with a gulp. "I mean the reptile, Captain Hoare, not the Frenchman. The latter might be tolerable, but Sir Thomas…

  "And truly, sir, I believe you and I might suit, after all."

  "I am quite certain we should suit, Miss Gladden," Hoare said, "but it cannot be."

  "Oh," came a small voice from the small person beside him. There was a silence. Then, "She was despised… rejected," she sang softly, sweetly, and sadly, to the tune of Handel's plaintive aria.

  "No, Miss Gladden, never despised," Hoare said. "But, you see, I am not at liberty. My heart is not my own."

  "Who is the fortunate person who owns it?" she asked.

  "I tell you in confidence, Miss Gladden, for the lady has yet to accept my proposal."

  "You gave me your word, sir; you have mine in return," Anne Gladden replied stoutly.

  "She is Mrs. Eleanor Graves," he continued, "the widow of Dr. Simon Graves in Weymouth." As I believe Miss Austen well knows, he continued to himself.

  "I could wish myself as fortunate," she said.