The Covert Captain, page 11
“Forgive me bringing you here,” was all she said.
“Did you love her?” Harriet asked.
“Lib? No. I—knew the pleasure of her company, but rather less of it than many. She washed for the Seventh, in Spain. Until young Carver, I never knew her to entertain for love.”
“I think she might have loved you—by the way she hates you.”
“Why should she not hate me? The Seventh killed her husband. The Seventh has put her upon the parish.”
“Not for a month, at least.” Harriet played her fingers along Eleanor’s arm as they walked. “It was well done, dearest, but you ought to have shaken Sherry’s pocket before giving up your own.”
“He was a man of my company.”
“That does not excuse you from eating!”
“Leave it, Harry,” Eleanor scowled as Harriet pressed coins into her glove.
“Write me a vowel for it,” Harriet said, “And then tear it up; before next quarter-day everything mine will be yours.” She stopped in the middle of the street and turned, trapping Eleanor against her skirts, blind to the fish-sellers and game girls stumbling round them. Carefully, she smoothed Eleanor’s frock coat and fixed the medal in place, giving it a last rub with her fingertip before walking on.
“You ought not give this up so lightly,” Harriet said. “Not when it cost you so dear.”
Chapter 14
The house in Clarges Street was cold when they returned. Eleanor disappeared into the larder, and Harriet stirred the downstairs embers, but could only rouse them enough to light a candle by. Its light was small; she left another burning on the chimneypiece for Eleanor and started upstairs, where there was more certainty of coal.
At leisure, now, she studied the portraits upon the faded wall. They were all stiff, solemn men and women, fair as snow, in the mode of a hundred years before. Black gowns and white stocks were only here and there relieved by regimental colors.
The first landing was given over to one painting only, and it stopped Harriet cold. It was well-colored and richly lit, and even candlelight showed, in the bottom corner, David fecit… A young woman in a directoire gown gazed out, careless as she held a plain straw bonnet on blue satin strings. She was suitably solemn for her costly portrait, her fair hair all drawn to long, careful curls, but her eyes—very blue—were impish, awake, inquiring. Eleanor Charlotte Our Sunny, in the Fourteenth year of her Age, 1804, Harriet traced the plate at the portrait’s foot. This was Nora, then, before the heavy weight of war and wounds and secrets. The day’s chill fled, somewhat, as Harriet regarded her. Someone, once on a time, had loved Nora; enough to wish such a portrait made, to call her Sunny.
It made Harriet hum a little as she laid a fresh fire in Eleanor’s bedroom, more generous perhaps with coal and kindling than those articles’ owner.
“Don’t do that!”
“What, humming?” Harriet sat back on her heels.
“You are no servant,” said Eleanor, harsh into the cold.
“Nor you, but you have countless times seen to my comfort.” Harriet rose, dusted her hands, and put aside the tray Eleanor carried. “I’ll lay the supper. Look to your face—it’s swelled.”
“I want no nursemaid, either!”
“A fight is what you want, then, but let us eat first! You’ve taken nothing all the day.”
Eleanor looked lost when Harriet touched her elbow. “Have I…Have I said something?”
“You have,” Harriet’s answer came short. Then she saw Eleanor’s countenance, milk-pale and muddled, and half pushed her into a chair. “Sit down, dearest.”
“It is only—I thought I heard—I saw…” Eleanor shook her head and lapsed silent, eating the cold collation of bread and cheese and remarking nothing. The room was grown almost warm, but she hunched further into her coat.
There was a wineglass on the tray—for herself, Harriet supposed—and a demi of wine; Harriet filled the glass and put it in Eleanor’s hand. “I wish you would take this. It has been a terrible day.”
“Lord God, yes, to have lost so very many!” Eleanor drank the glass off in one.
“Nora?”
“Harry,” Eleanor answered her, sane enough, but a moment later she was trembling. “It has all gone so very badly, Harry, my love. Carver—I shall have to write Carver’s mother—he will end himself. The poor boy will end himself! I knew it from his face. And what can I do for him, when I am called to the field three hours hence, and my fate?”
Harriet cried out. “Nora! Pray look at me, dearest, only look at me.”
Eleanor flinched. She might have cowered, but Harriet held to her arms.
“Your fate is right here, with me,” said Harriet, soft, and softer still. “We are alive, and in London, and nothing you see will harm you. Nora, pray listen, none of it is real.”
She rested a moment on Eleanor’s knee and was not struck for it or thrown aside; Harriet ventured to brush a kiss upon Eleanor’s cheek. “This is real. And this.” She slipped her hand under Nora’s waistcoat, to her shirt; broke the laces and loosed the binding linen, and laid her palm over Eleanor’s heart.
Sherbourne took the letter from Linton and, as Eleanor watched him, went as crimson as the wax of its seal. He half-staggered up from the card table, their game forgotten, and out of the drawing-room altogether.
“Sherry?”
“Concerns you, I’d lay a fiver,” answered Sherbourne, without meeting the captain’s eyes. “Her, too. Harry! Harry George! “
Eleanor had left Harriet to a stack of books and a bowl of pears, tucked away in her room on Sherbourne’s third floor; now, at her brother’s shout, she hazarded two and three stairs at a time, and Sherbourne was perspiring round his cravat.
“What on earth’s the matter, man?”
“Run for your very life,” Sherbourne said, and Eleanor could not wager how far he was in jest. He held the letter up to Harriet, who had frozen upon the stairs.
“Addressed t’you,” she retorted, though he had said nothing; the letter’s long fold was writ edge to edge with Sherbourne’s names. “Open it. I can’t bear to, Astley, please.”
He was not long in reading. “Mother is in Town, and expects I will be at home this evening. She is—she has heard your banns.”
“Fuck me seven ways from Sunday!”
“Harry?”
Sherbourne made a noise in his throat of agreement, but not surprise. “Wash your count’nance, Harry-girl, and see to your turnout.” He came far enough up the staircase to kiss Harriet’s cheek; then, with a hitch of his lame leg, he turned round to Fleming. “This was just Mother’s cannonade; she’ll breach the walls by supper. Go up with her and see to the defenses, will you?”
“These are all you have?” Harriet frowned into Eleanor’s traveling case. “I think you look well in them, but they will not pass before Mother.” She said the name as Sherbourne did.
“Awfully heavy weather you make of this—both of you. I thought your mother in her dotage, painting watercolours by the sea-side.”
“Mother is fifty-nine,” replied Harriet. “And I beg you, dearest, do not mistake your measure of her. She is…” Harriet shook her head, sharply, so that she had to push curls back into her bandeau. “You do not mind your tailoring second-hand? Sherry was a beau, before he took so well to letting out his waistcoat. There must be half a dozen suits of evening dress upstairs.”
“Evening dress! May I not put on my regimentals?”
“Not for Mother.”
Rifling Sherbourne’s cast-offs did not soothe her. Harriet sorted over shirts plain and ruffled, piled cravats by color, and mounded twenty coats upon the counterpane. None seemed to pass her muster, and each chime of the clock nearer supper-time brought fresh curses.
“If your mother troubles you so, we might take better care to avoid her.”
“She is my mother, madam; what do you suggest?”
“I might post to India.”
Harriet sent a pearl sateen waistcoat at Eleanor’s head.
“Harry.” Eleanor sat down upon the hassock Sherbourne kept to prop his leg. She tried twice to seat Harriet beside her, but she seemed in frantic flight between the hat-stand and the clothes press. At last Eleanor put out her boot, and caught Harriet when she tripped.
“Only tell me why you and Sherry dread this.”
“My mother is coming! You look fallen from the rag-bag, and my mother is coming! Here!”
“I have asked for your hand, Harry, I must ask it of someone.”
“She will hate you, Nora, for every reason I love you, and she will make it known, and make it hurt.”
“If she hurts you, she must contend with me.”
“You would deprive her of her greatest sport? Of all her girls, I am the disappointment; and worst, I lived!”
Eleanor kissed the crown of Harriet’s head, to quiet her, but she went on speaking as if worrying a wound.
“When she learnt I was c-clever.” It fell like a curse. “And when I had my season and came to naught, Mother consented I might squander awhile on books. She wrung Pater over it—oh, she must have—and he sent me out to seminary. It was a long way from home; I was fifteen years old. You, I think, were seventeen, and Sherry twenty? So you and he bled honorably for England, my sisters padded out the draggling fortune, and I was sent down in disgrace.”
“Your marks were poorly?” Eleanor’s brows told disbelief.
“Oh no. I am afraid it was my deportment.” Harriet twisted free, and turned again to the silk and velvet storm blown across Sherbourne’s bed. From its costly depths she pulled a sleeve, and then a coat, all of black velvet with black braid and facings.
“Am I to squire you to supper, or lead the Riderless Black?”
Harriet did not laugh. “Will it button?”
Eleanor, obliging, went to shirtsleeves; the coat was broad enough in back and shoulders, with caverns for arm-holes, but the hooks left her slip-fingered and swearing. “You would—ah! Bugger—you would leave the story there?”
“What story?”
“How you were sent down from seminary.”
For the first time in an hour, Harriet fell still. Eleanor came to her, and went unnoticed.
“Harry…?”
“When I met you—when I met Nathaniel Fleming.” Her eyes closed tight. “When you kissed me I thought I should die of it and I thought—thank God, I am no monster after all.”
“You were a captain at Waterloo, and you are a captain still?” The dowager countess had a raven’s eyes, keen and clever; she lacked Fleming’s height by a full hand, but leant out from Sherbourne’s chair as though she would overtop the captain even seated. It was the first she had spoken, having sat through her son’s introductions and drawn sips of tea between her teeth. She had greeted him and Harriet silently, and Fleming not at all.
“I stood captain at Orthez,” replied Eleanor, “under my lord Somerset, when Sherbourne was made Major. I was offered major when we posted to France, my lady, but I declined.”
“You had rather stay a field officer than have a command? I much question it.”
“I wished to remain in Sherbourne’s command. A company is enough for me, and I find I turn my hand well to the horses.”
“You are a groom, then,” snapped the dowager countess. “It is a fine thing for a gentleman to admit!”
“Sherbourne is yet Major,” said Eleanor quietly.
“Oh, my son has thrown away too many men to make general.”
“My lady—”
“You need not defend him. One may read dispatches even if one is a female.”
Across the room, Harriet had laid her hand upon Sherbourne’s knee, and rested her forehead against his temple. It seemed they kept each other from flying to pieces. Fleming, with no one on whom to lean, crushed the carpet beneath her boot-heels and was careful not to pick up her teacup, lest it snap.
“It has been my great honor to serve under your son.”
“You do not say overmuch with that. And I did not come up to Town from concern for my son. Let us come to it, Mr. Fleming. How much have you per annum?”
“Mamma!”
“Harriet Georgiana, if you have sold yourself without consulting me, I would know the price.”
“I do not consider I have bought your daughter!”
“What do you consider marriage, then, Mr. Fleming?”
“My lady, I have the very good fortune of a love match. If it ease you to know, I have one hundred and twenty pounds from His Majesty, and some small percent of my own in the Funds.”
“Very good fortune you may call it,” said Countess Sherbourne. “When your bride brings near twice your income, and you will be shot of her the moment she is in childbed!”
Eleanor found herself on her feet, of a sudden, fighting the mad desire to strike the countess broad on the cheek. “I believe there is no one left in this room to bear insult, save the pianoforte and the clock; the one is not in tune and the other not in time. Pray go on, my lady, and belittle them. As to Lady Harriet’s portion, you may keep it; we shall dine the more content without it, if only I must not bear you across my table of a Sunday.”
“Sherbourne!” The countess drew back as though Fleming might bite. “Sherbourne, your captain!”
“At ease, Fleming,” said Sherbourne, without rage or rancor. “Harry—Harry, darling, don’t—ow! Deuce take it, Spaniel, get after her, before she ends in Fleet Ditch.”
Chapter 15
Eleanor waited to speak until the coach-springs had stopped creaking. When the cab door no longer quivered from slamming, Eleanor drew the hangings and latched it to.
“Where did you say we’re going?” It was a moment before spots stopped dancing before her eyes. She was a muck of sweat under the close black-velvet coat, and all her anger had given over to the wish her tailoring might not kill her.
“Gretna Green!” Harriet cried aloud, eyes brighter every moment. She huddled in the corner of the carriage and glared back at Eleanor. “I had not thought, truly. We may as well go there, if you insist on bearing me company.”
Eleanor took off her borrowed hat and Sherbourne’s pearl-buttoned gloves, and rapped upon the roof. “Gretna Green, if you wish it,” she said.
“Oh, do not tempt me!”
“Vauxhall,” Eleanor shouted up to the driver. “Go by Regent Bridge, and breathe your horses. We’ve the time.”
She kissed Harriet, who was willing enough, but passive; every jolt of the wheels separated them once again.
“Harry, dearest.”
“Lord God,” Harriet got out, her hands tensed and striking against her lap. “Lord God, she is worse every time! She behaved unspeakably to you, Nora!”
“Were I the dowager countess Such-and-So, I should not like my last daughter to marry a half-pay cavalry man.”
“Sherry’s captain, and a gentleman!”
Eleanor stroked Harriet’s shoulders and spoke low, her words woven with hums and hushes as though she soothed a skittish horse. “She is not much in company, love, and it came unexpected—”
“Madam, you will stop. Defending. My mother.”
“Harry, Harry. I was only trying—I fear you will go off like a gun.”
“It is that woman. You see now why Sherry keeps her at a distance, why—Nora!”
She could not look up, nor make an apology, as Harriet’s hands were pressing in her hair. Having gained all she could by stealth and speed, and thwarted only a little by the cut of Harriet’s new bodice, Eleanor gave herself up for trapped. She drew Harriet’s nipple against her teeth, sucking and biting by turns until white velveteen and linen were soaked through.
“We are…in public!” Harriet held her away. Her eyes were sparking still, but not with rage.
“We are absolutely not, madam, but at your word I will find something better to do.”
“Yes—no—not that—not in a cab.”
“As you like,” said Eleanor, and pulled Harriet into her lap.
“You said you would stop!”
“Said I would find something better,” Fleming corrected. With one hand she teased the breast she had neglected, until Harriet’s rocking against her had nothing to do with the coach. Her other hand roved and sought at Harriet’s hip. “Pocket?”
“Wh-what?” Harriet’s head had gone down upon Eleanor’s shoulder, and all her dark curls escaped their fillet.
“Where’s your pocket,” gasped Eleanor.
“N-no pocket-cuts in an evening dress!”
“Oh, fuck fashion.” Eleanor cast Harriet’s skirts up round them both.
“Captain,” Harriet breathed. Then she was writhing against the slow circling of Eleanor’s thumb, moans bitten back with each jog over the pavement. Someone had torn away Nora’s cravat, it was all disarray, there was a carmine-mark at Nora’s throat and it was just where Harriet’s mouth fit, just so…
“All right, Harry?”
She half whined in frustration and fumbled for Eleanor’s wrist. “Yes, please, God, please, inside me.”
“Servant, madam,” Eleanor said, and shifted, so all Harriet’s cries were lost in Eleanor’s coat.
Eleanor’s hat had, somehow, gone quite under the carriage-seat; she was obliged to brush it back to respectability on the walk down Bridge Street. At the garden turnstiles, her pocket was heavier by a sovereign, and Harriet was very taken with straightening her gloves.
“I have not come here in years,” Harriet said, tucking her forearm against the plush of Eleanor’s coat. “Not since they gave the triumph for Wellesley, and Sherry came home on leave. What a pity I did not meet you then! Where were you?”
Eleanor raised her brows, as if she could not remember. “Vitoria? I believe I was horse-thieving off the Spaniards. I wore not stars enough to come home and stroll in gardens.”
“Were you so handsome in regimentals then, stars or no?”
“One hears,” said Eleanor, when Harriet answered her blushes with a smirk, “Mrs. Hengler’s fireworks are a marvel.”
