The Covert Captain, page 13
Chapter 17
Sherry, please,” Eleanor whispered. Harriet saw her brother gaze Eleanor up and down and through.
“No,” he said, as if he had thought of something and found it wanting. “If it is true—if it is true, the devil may take you, madam, but I’ll not ruin you. You need not look so at me. But you’ll cry off this God-poxed engagement—”
“Astley!”
“Shut up, Harry.” He rounded on Harriet so quickly that Eleanor could only half stand between them. “Captain Fleming,” he said; his voice had gone thick and grim. “Is a man of the regiment, but he is not the marrying kind. And should he persist with you, Harry, he and I will meet.”
Eleanor was pale. She stood still as if faced, alone and on foot, with a troop of cuirassiers. Beside her, Harriet dropped into a chair.
“Courage, dearest.” She went on one knee to take up Harriet’s hands, and kissed them; she did not think Sherbourne had a pistol primed about him.
He stood, indeed, rooted to the center of the carpet, and passed his hand over his face to drive back sweat. “Ten years you were my right hand in the field, Fleming. I saw you into the saddle at Waterloo with your arm bound in my spare shirt. I thought you the bravest man I knew. I bloody well wept to send you forward, and now you cast it in my teeth!”
“Sherry—”
“I gave my charge at Waterloo to a woman!”
It had not happened so cleanly as that. Eleanor held wildly to Harry’s hands, shut tight her eyes, but could not wholly stay crouched by the wing chair on the floor of Sherbourne’s study. She felt as stomach-sick as Sherbourne sounded; he excoriated her for her treachery, for her sex, for the shame of his sister, but as he flung words at her hunched back Eleanor had gone three hundred miles away.
Sherbourne, on a stretcher, leg broken under his poor Kestrel, already going half-mad as it fevered, giving over his good pair of pistols and keeping rough hold on both her hands. “Best take them up to the field, ’Thaniel, I’m deuced indisposed.” She and Fraser, and MacHeath of the Greys, drew lots from Fraser’s shako for left, right, and center; shook hands all round, and said the last, ancient prayer. In Hades, gentlemen, and in the strange light of evening she took her men up the left, and never saw Fraser or Archie MacHeath again.
“Will you not answer when I address you, you bloody-minded bitch!”
Her face was wet, her chest was burning, and she had nothing to say. She realized, somewhat, that she stood on her feet, that Sherbourne had taken her up by the arm and was shaking her, as one might shake a small and irritating dog. Harriet, close by her still, was weeping.
With careful force Eleanor put off Sherbourne’s hand. She turned to Harriet and held her, without knowing who steadied whom.
“Madam, I will see you pilloried. Put in Bedlam. Horsewhipped.”
“Bear up, Harry, my love.” Eleanor kissed her forehead. “Let go, now, before Sherbourne makes a scene. If you came to harm over this—”
Harriet spoke, for the first time in a quarter hour. Her voice was not broken. “I am bearing up, Nora. I am not the first soldier’s wife to say farewell.”
“Where is Harriet?” She did not give him good morning. After a week's dead silence Sherbourne's summons had come, along with his carriage, forty minutes earlier; Eleanor had gritted her teeth that he thought he might still order her this way and that, but found herself following orders just the same. Now his town house might have been an outpost on the moon, so cold and strange it felt, and from the crown of her head to the holes in her boots she ached not to be here alone.
“At Bournebrook, you fool, d’ye think I’d have her within a furlong of you?”
“Major, if you’ve done her ill—”
“Don’t be an ass. She’s well, if wailing.”
“If not on her account, why on earth send for me?”
“You’ve a problem in my library.” Sherbourne seemed to hesitate. “Be you armed?”
“Of course I’m armed! I thought you meant to kill me.”
“Good Lord,” groaned Sherbourne. “Wait. No pistols upon you? Choose a pair from yonder.”
“Sherry, even now I would not meet you. I will not.”
“Oh, that’s very nice, I’m much relieved. I tell you, ma—madam, you’ve a bigger problem.”
When she took the best brace of French pistols from Sherbourne’s cabinet, and he did not protest, Eleanor began to know fear. “What the devil, Major!”
“I think it is he,” Sherbourne rejoined. “If that gentleman keeps a house in Yorkshire.” When he passed her, the major clapped her upon the shoulder, as he might have before any sortie. Then he opened the library door.
“Captain Fleming, Sir Colquhoun.”
Her brother Colquhoun was still the handsomest man Eleanor had ever seen. In profile, at the window, his fair hair gone all to white, he was half their father, but for the lines of a sneer; half an Apollo. He was still full seven inches taller than Eleanor. A newspaper was folded over his hands, but in the sunlight she could see its leaves trembling. Without turning to the doorway, he began to speak.
“I have lately seen our name in the papers, Nathaniel.”
If Eleanor leant upon her memory, she could remember the college boy who sang as often as she, blow, winds, blow, my bonny-o, but in the years since she had seen him his voice had grown chill and void of music.
“I own it a cruel thing to thus hear news of you, after so long a time! Did you not think of your lady, before you cried off this engagement? What do you mean by it? Did she come to you under false colours?”
“Never, upon my word,” said Eleanor, and stepped from behind Sherbourne.
The newspaper fell to the carpet. Sir Colquhoun’s gape was hidden by his gloves, and he had gone sickening pale. “God Jesus. It is Nora.”
She legged him somewhat of a bow.
“Nate is dead, then, and you—”
“He is dead,” Eleanor answered. “I am heartily sorry for it. And I am heartily sorry I could not marry Lord Sherbourne’s sister, but you may see, Colly, all that fault was mine.”
“All that fault a thousand fold,” her brother said, and spat. When Eleanor brought a hand to her cheek, Sir Colquhoun made to seize her arm. “How dared you, you freak, you foul unnatural thing! I will take her in hand at once, Major, upon my word. I will bring her home and see to her, I swear it!”
“Why on earth,” said Sherbourne, exceeding calm and dry. “Were I you, Sir Colquhoun, I should do no such thing. She has had twelve—rising thirteen year to dishonor your name, and you have only seen the papers Sunday week.”
“She is my sister—mine—to settle as I will!” He swung at Eleanor, badly, but she should have been laid on the carpet if she stood for the blow.
She had been too long a man: she ducked, landed two hard punches below his ribs, and shoved her brother out to killing-distance.
“Hold!” At that moment, Sherry’s voice was all that stayed her. He stood close by, as if they were comrades still, as Eleanor realized her sabre was drawn. Sherbourne’s firing piece was near to her eye—and set at her brother’s heart.
“You will not do violence upon a woman in my house, Sir.”
“You consider that a woman!”
“She has killed better men than you, at His Majesty’s behest,” warned Sherbourne. “I own she is your sister, but she is of my regiment, and not released from my command.”
“Then you mean to bear this insult!” Sir Colquhoun’s eyes stared wide. “Have you no regard for your own sister?"
“That matter lies between ’Th—between the captain and myself.”
“I am not so beguiled by her as you, Major, and I will not brook dishonor.”
“Who is dishonored, man, but a pair of spinsters? Leave it lie.”
“I will not!”
“Do you intend to meet your own sister, then, for getting your name in the Times? Upon my word, that will be sporting! She will drop you like a mad dog in the street.”
“It is you I intend to meet, Lord Sherbourne, as you have drawn arms upon me—”
“In my house!”
“And as you prevent me thus removing my property.”
“Colly, don’t!” Eleanor put up her sabre. “Brother, I beg you don’t.”
“Do you care so much for kinship, then?” Sir Colquhoun’s face was not so handsome in his anger. Red burned to purple across his cheeks and nose, and his sneer, at rest no more, became a rictus. “That is brazen of you, sister, when you defiled our younger brother’s gra—”
“Enough.” Sherbourne did not modulate his voice for the walls and windows; he pitched it for battle, and Sir Colquhoun flinched. “You, Sir, may gather your surgeon and seconds and give your notice to my man Linton. I will meet you as you like, but I will not bear sight of you until that moment. You, stand as you are, Fleming; if you cry, deuce take it, I’ll rip your entrails out.”
Sherbourne stood aside from the library door, and did not need to help Sir Colquhoun through it. When he had gone, Eleanor and Sherbourne regarded one another in terrible silence.
“You cannot kill him,” she begged. “He has no children. Moorlowe will go to the Crown.”
“Kill him? I don’t mean to blood him! I mean to shame him home to the West Riding.”
“You need not do so much.” Eleanor much wished to take Sherbourne by the arm. “He is like Father—he is a man for a grudge, not a fight—put him off for a fortnight, and in a week’s time he will remove to Moorlowe. If you take up his challenge now, he is a shot so appalling bad I fear he will kill you.”
“I must, Fleming. He would have struck you.”
“Had I not struck him!”
“I must,” repeated Sherbourne. “You are a lady.”
Eleanor regarded six fresh cornets on horseback, and the six cornets, uneasy, regarded the captain and the dogcart full of melons. Broken old pikes and stakes of odd heights—a man’s shoulder, a mounted man’s eye—had been driven into the training-ground, and a flyblown green melon was impaled upon each.
“This is not the worst I shall ask of you,” she said. “We have blindfolds for that.”
She must, someday, omit that jest. Into the silence, she drew her sabre and brandished it, showy, aloft.
“I care near nothing for how you handle your sword at home. This is His Majesty’s sabre, light dragoons and hussars, which I believe you believe you are; it is a bloody clumsy, nasty weapon. When first you use it in the field you will, upon my word, throw up.”
The young officers, as one, snickered. They were between eighteen and one-and-twenty; they had come to France already conquerors, they had never been uncertain of the morning. It pricked Eleanor to seething.
“Cornet Doyle, if you do not heed me upon the field you will surely die; you had best make a habit. You have read the book, I trust? You may, when it please you, demonstrate the six cuts and six defenses?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Sacré veinard, va! You may go last, then.”
“D-don’t you mean first, Captain?”
“Said last,” Eleanor replied. “Each man shall have a turn round the field, and as it is a clear day and smooth going, he who loses his seat shall muck out for his fellows in the morning. I much hope your beast is high stepping, Cornet Doyle, as you shall make your attempt in a melon salad.” She turned Malabar toward the start of the course, and only at the last moment gave a smile. “Make a good showing—no missed cuts, and no man unseats—and I will muck out for all of you.”
Six grown lads stared as though the captain were Christmas dinner astride a horse.
She gave Malabar a touch with her heel and was away, sabre up to guard. The drill was part of her sinews, the timekeeping calls one with the pulse in her chest; she had to remind herself to shout for the cornets’ benefit. Cut first, cut second, cut third, cut fourth, very grievous wounded melons slid in slices from their pikes; cut fifth, a bisected fruit spun off into the air.
Eleanor straightened and dipped into the sixth cut, the forecut meant to cleave a man’s head ear to ear, and agony rolled from her wrist to her elbow along her scar. She dug into the stirrups and cried out.
There was a sharp crack, and Malabar shied, but not quickly enough to spare Eleanor a gouting spray of melon-juice. Soft shrapnel pattered over her shoulders, and where she had missed her cut there was only empty air.
“No misses for the captain, then,” said a voice from stirrup level, some paces away. All the cornets’ horses were prancing in fear.
Sherbourne, leaning somewhat on a brass-topped stick, holstered his discharged pistol and gave her a grin. “Observe you the captain is covered in guts, but none be his own. Protect each other; know each where the other is weak. And read the bloody book,” he finished, coming despite his limp across the melon-sloshing ground. He took Malabar’s head and led the horse to the edge of the drilling ground, while Eleanor bit her lip bloody. Then he handed Fleming down as he might a gently-bred lady, both the captain’s hands upon his shoulders, though it wallowed him in sticky yellow as much as Fleming.
“I gave you took that arm from the sling too soon.”
“I gave you are too much upon that leg,” she said, low, not to contradict the major in front of the men. Aloud, Eleanor put a brave face to it. “Wasting powder and shot upon a canary-melon! It would have bled out, betimes!”
“Nonsense; you were a dead man.”
That was too much like history; both fell silent, shoulder by shoulder. Major Sherbourne dismissed the men, and ordered Captain Fleming’s troop horse bathed to a nicety, and Eleanor hunched at the waist and made effort not to faint.
“They’ll never go in proper fear of me now!”
“Spaniel, your braw gold head shines in their nightmares.”
“Wh-what brings you so far from quarters? You really ought not to be—”
“Deuce take the leg, dear Mamma,” snapped Sherbourne. “I want your—your—advice.”
“Mine!”
“It is—I mean to say, there is a personage…”
“A woman, Sherry!” Eleanor straightened up, fixing his eye.
“A woman!”
“Had your cherries plucked at last, then?”
He rounded upon her, but ended flailing, clinging to his stick. “Nothing like that yet,” Sherbourne at last admitted. “Nothing so breathtaking. You must see her, Spaniel! And tell me what to do. I cannot break ’em to saddle by a look, like you.”
Sir Colquhoun Fleming was making row enough in St. James’ Park to stir the sleeping pigeons. He was so near a fit of apoplexy that Mr. Callander and Mr. Giles, the two surgeons appointed for the meeting, doubted the business could go forward at all.
“I refuse to meet you if the—if that person is your second!”
Sherbourne’s captain, yawning behind a pearl-gray glove, seemed deaf and dumb. The captain held the major’s pistol case and chronometer, erect as any footman despite the hour, and paid no mind to Sir Colquhoun’s fine and escalating temper.
“I tell you I will not have that soldier here!”
“On what grounds do you object?”
Colquhoun would not bury himself so before witnesses, but Eleanor’s heart stayed high in her throat. “Consanguinity, sir!”
“I should be fortunate in calling the captain my brother, or my son, but he is too fair for one and too ancient for the other! I have met your demand,” Sherbourne said, his countenance all boredom. “Exchange with me, or go home.”
The solicitor looked hard at Eleanor, but did not seem to unmask her. He came forward when she did, and shook hands, making his strides match hers as they counted off twenty. Eleanor had checked Sherbourne’s flint and steel four times in the cab; now came the silly show of checking all again, priming and half-cocking, for the surgeons’ benefit.
“You see what this has come to!”
“Do you shut up, Callander, or my womanish hand is apt to shake.” Eleanor scowled down the barrel of one pistol, then its mate. “Dishonor the Major by a word and I’ll meet you before breakfast. I have nothing now to lose.” She holstered one of the weapons for herself, and gave the better balanced to Sherbourne.
“You are loaded, Major.”
“I thank you, Captain.” Without another glance, Sherbourne paced out to his handkerchief.
It was a clear day, and the mist was only very low upon the ground; Eleanor could see every line of him in his expensive tailoring, and wondered what it cost Sherbourne not to limp. She looked to Colquhoun’s side of the field only once, as he took his pistol and brought it to guard. He was tall, yes, well-dressed and coolly mute in all his features, but so diminished Eleanor thought she must have shocked him near his grave.
Her eyes were not quite sharp, on a moment; she nearly missed the solicitor’s hailing glove.
“Stand firm!” Eleanor lifted her own right hand in answer.
“And fire!”
Sherbourne’s shot was more danger to the atmosphere, as Eleanor might have ventured; Colquhoun’s went over-wide and blew a hail of bark. She shouted across to her brother’s second.
“Are you satisfied?”
“The Major has deloped,” announced Colquhoun’s solicitor.
“The Major had rather not play at silly buggers,” Eleanor snapped, not keeping now from the center of the field. “Will you not act in Sir Colquhoun’s interest and take him home?”
“The contest must continue,” Colquhoun’s man said at last, as if he feared somewhat to do so while the captain was in range.
“We should not even be here, you—” Eleanor scored the turf with her boot, but said no ungentlemanly thing. “As you must, then.”
Sherbourne gave a grimace when she came to reload for him. “Wouldn’t let it rest, then?”
“No! God pox him, Sherry. Colquhoun has given that little lawyer he may not cede the fight.”
“He is a little, round, unlikely thing, for a man’s second. His legs are near to short as yours, Spaniel.” Sherbourne watched the bullet down the muzzle, gaze as quick as Fleming’s fingers. “I suppose I shall have to do Sir Brother some small hurt, before the light is up and the Runners come. Sorry for it.”
