The Covert Captain, page 2
“Hold to his mane,” Fleming instructed, slipping an arm round her waist, tightly, but as much about his business as a man on the ’Change. “I leave the stirrup to you. We’ll have a gallop—a gallop is easiest, madam, like pulling a spoon through milk. Be easy,” said the captain, either to Whirlaway, or Harriet. “Even should you fall off, it is not so far as it looks.”
Chapter 3
The captain was a man of his word to Harriet. The pianoforte was kept open hours on end, through all the Schubert they kept at the country house, through a great deal of Mr. van Beethoven from Fleming’s campaign chest, and any number of homely broad pieces. Sometimes, when the Viscountess had nothing upon which to discourse over the music, Fleming could be induced to sing. His voice was true, if not ornamented; he knew any ballad Harriet could name, and forty she could not.
At whiles it seemed he forgot the women were in the room. He played from his head or from sheets copied over by hand, kept together by bits of silver braid from a cavalry dolman; they were not titled or marked at all. Harriet turned for him, sometimes, and wondered every moment if he noticed the pages’ change.
“That is tiresome,” Viscountess Beauchamp said, sharp into an afternoon gone honey-slow, warm, and still. “What nonsense do you give us, Captain?"
“It is true, the cadenza is much better played upon the harp,” Fleming said, as if it pained him to move so quickly from music to speech. “As you do not care for opera buffa, my lady, I thought to give you tragedy. It is Monsignior Rossini; the one good piece for his Desdemona.”
“You give us tragedy surely enough,” the Viscountess answered, and Harriet bridled in protest.
“Oh! I thought it lovely.”
“Very lovely—words a bit rubbish—I wish you might have seen it, lady Harriet. We had four days’ run-off to Naples in ’sixteen, and I dragged Sherry to the theatre by his pelisse.”
“May I suppose then, Captain, you understand the Italian tongue? I would not have thought it of an upstart from the West Riding.”
“Music has no tongue, my lady Beauchamp,” Fleming said with mildness spread thick. “Or else many as the stars. Do you not find that one of its singular joys?”
He had given her cousin the rout, and Harriet knew that would spark to anger; she set her knitting-needles down and crossed to the pianoforte, leaning to raise the key-fall where Fleming had dropped it shut.
“Pray sing, instead,” she asked. “Something in English, with words exceeding small.”
He did not smile until she did. Then he gathered the music away, shook his wrists and fingers, and struck up again.
“As sweet Polly Oliver lay musing in bed, a sudden strange fancy came into her head; nor father nor mother shall make me false prove—I’ll ’list for a soldier and fo—”
The knock upon the doorpost made Harriet quite set her teeth; it was not a ballad she had ever heard. Before she could send away the servant—or stamp her foot—Sherbourne half-bowed himself into the room, his cutaway spangled with ash from forgotten cigarillos, his face mirth all over.
“I mislike to interrupt the musicale, but Spaniel, there’s a parcel for you below.”
“For me! What on earth!”
“No direction on the thing,” Sherbourne shrugged. “Beg you go and see to it. It is rather cumbersome.”
Fleming stood, his countenance blank with bafflement. “Pray accept my excuses, my lady Beauchamp, my lady Harriet. Major, you make it sound like a thing alive!”
Sherbourne shrugged again.
“Must I go armed, man?”
It was not the captain’s question but the cast of her brother’s grin that stirred Harriet. “Captain, do go carefully. Sherry, if you’ve buttered the staircase again—!”
“Sister, I was twelve,” Sherbourne protested.
Harriet, lumbered by the viscountess as she was, gained the front door some seconds behind her brother. She was in time to see Captain Fleming leap from the front steps with a heart-stopping shout.
“Malabar!”
There was a horse standing in the drive, with no groom to speak of, a slim-legged dappled grey with four white pasterns and a tail docked short. The tack Harriet recognized; the horse she had never seen. Captain Fleming hung by his arms round the beast’s proud neck, laughing.
“Stopped your pining and sighing, have you, Fleming my love?” Sherbourne might have taken a Sunday-school prize and a cone of sweets. His hands were hooked in his Cossack-trousers’ pockets, and he beamed like a cherub. “That’ll be a deuced relief.”
“I thought never to see her again.”
“What do you take me for, leaving such a beast to the Frogs!”
“But the fees, Sherry, you know I cannot—” The captain stopped his mouth just in time, as even a third son ought.
“Can’t hear you. Talk up next time, Spaniel.”
“Sherry, je t’embrasse!”
“I should hope not,” he answered. “Good God, Spaniel, do you suppose I’d see her badly looked after?”
Fleming unfolded from his crouch by the mare’s forefoot. “Do you suppose I’d let you keep a groom who did? Only heaven knows what has befallen her, since we parted; she might have been cold-shod, out there over the Channel.”
“Quelle horreur,” Sherbourne answered. “I gave that the beast should be shod afresh in Dover, you idiot, by a proper blacksmith. Do you mean to ride or not?”
Fleming broke off gazing like a man in love. He bowed, very low, and then beckoned up to Harriet. “My lady, may I make you acquainted?”
Harriet lingered only for her cousin to wind the H of her Christian name. She came down onto the lawn swallowing her fear by degrees, though the horse had lowered its head and was nosing and striking at Fleming’s hips as if it would begin to eat him.
“Brazen,” said Fleming, exceeding fondly. “I’ve nothing for you. Get away.”
“Wh-what on earth must it want?”
“She,” corrected Fleming. “Wants comfits—or candied violets, game girl she is.” He remembered himself, and cleared his throat. “This is Malabar out of Bacchante, by Selim; and so, in her way, as great a lady as you.”
Harriet said all she could on the matter, which was “Quite,” and handed over her comfit-case to Fleming.
“I much doubt she will save you any, if she sees them go to and fro like that.”
“Oh! I am at her service, Captain. A lady must have refreshment who has just made the Channel crossing.”
The captain gave her a look appraising and admiring all at once. Then he took Harriet’s wrist, most delicately, and shook a bright hail of caraway comfits onto her palm. Before she could balk, he had guided her hand right under the mare’s nose.
Above them, by the sound, the Viscountess Beauchamp had taken too much snuff.
Fleming’s light tenor came in from the garden as Harriet sat over the wreck of last week’s broadsheets. It was Green Grow the Rushes-o, she supposed after a moment, but not as she had heard it ever before.
“Lies our Sherry on the ground, fallen off his mount-o! Lord, but he’s a drunken sod, and ever more shall be so!”
“Spaniel, you bastard.”
“…said you would hear it,” Fleming said, half lost in laughter and the steady jingling of tack. “I pray you don’t impugn my poor dead mother; all my wickedness fell from the proper side of the blanket.”
They were coming round to the carriage-drive, horses nearly in step, and Harriet died to know what could have made Sherry forego breakfast; she finished the bitter last of her chocolate and hurried to the door, not pausing for Sherry’s man to open it for her.
“How beautiful!”
“Martial, sister. A beast of Her Majesty’s Hussars is martial.”
Harriet, hair and waist bright with poppy-colored sateen, came down the great steps to stand at the head of Fleming’s grey mare. She reached a hand to the thick plush of the sabretache by Fleming’s knee and traced its gilt insignia, casting only half a glance to the rider. “Martial, then. But why get them up like this? Is there a parade in Bournesea?”
“Have to dress ’em up so even in peace, now and again. Keep them used to it.” Sherbourne leant across to her from his saddle, clinking and rasping with sabre and musketoon. “Best enjoy the freedom of the place while we’ve gone. If Beauchamp tires you, have Linton take you out in the carriage.”
“May I not accompany you, sirs?” Harriet looked as much to the captain as her brother.
“You may not, Harry. You shouldn’t care for ten miles on a beast like this; and how should we bear you? The kit is six stone already.”
“I think it should be splendid,” she protested.
“Dearest, you would be frightened. Leave gentlemen’s business to gentlemen—”
“Ah, Sherry, shuck your pack,” said Fleming.
“Not mine, sir! The lunch is in it!” Sherbourne’s voice was still amused, but tinged incredulous. He patted the neck of his white gelding. “Besides, this one is stout enough, but not so steady as my Kestrel.”
Fleming looked down at Harriet, kindly. He took off his battered hat, and in the sun his queue glinted like a sovereign. He buckled off his sabre and eased it to the ground by Harriet’s feet, tossing the hat down beside it; then with both hands he tugged at the straps of his pack. “Six stone,” he agreed. “Madam, how many stone have you?”
“Come now, this begins to be unseemly! And we’re wasting half the morning. Harry, turn about!”
The captain grinned at her, just a flash and a moment, before Sherbourne cut him off.
“Spaniel, I forbid it. A woman on a war-horse! Will you send the beast mad?”
“Malabar will go steady, Major.”
“If you take my sister up in front, Malabar will bear you to hell,” said Sherbourne.
“She has done, before,” Fleming answered, hardly to hear. He looked again to Harriet, mirth drained away, and ducked his head to her. “Come by, Malabar. Come by, then.” Fleming’s horse neatly sidestepped Sherbourne’s white, and in spite of rider and weapons and gear was fast enough to make Fleming appear a blue-and-white blot at the lawn’s edge in a moment.
“I s’ll give you come by, Captain! Come by indeed, sir!”
Chapter 4
There was a scratching at Harriet’s sitting-room door. Too regular and quiet for one of Sherry’s dogs, and in any case they ought all to be kenneled; too discreet for a servant, and Harriet had not rung. When the noise persisted, she left Frankenstein spraddle-backed on the hearthrug and went to the door in her shawl and shift.
“You are waking, then.”
Harriet gaped, but to Fleming’s relief had sense enough not to cry out. He kept carefully to the corridor side of her threshold, dropped the slide of his lantern to make up for what firelight came from within, and handed over a plain cloth bundle.
“G-give you good evening, Captain. It—it is half three o’clock.”
“I was out to the stables late,” said Fleming. “I thought you should like to ride, after what passed this morning; I came to see if you would.”
“What, now?” Harriet unwound the bundle and something—one boot, another—thumped to the carpet. “Now—and in breeches!”
“You cannot ride properly in a shift, and I beg you give Sherry no reason to blow my brains out in the daylight. So, yes, now.”
Harriet sorted the shirt and breeches over in her hands, as if sounding their mysteries out. They were exceeding worn, clean, pressed, smelling somewhat of ambergris. “Five minutes,” she said, at last.
“Three,” said Fleming, “or I shall tell you how the book ends.”
“Captain,” cried Harriet in a whisper, “you are no gentleman!”
“At your door in dead of night, and handing you my breeches?”
“Making threat to spoil my new book,” replied Harriet, and shut the door against him.
“That horse is naked!”
“I’m sure she does not think so.” Malabar stood under the sentinel oak, dappled silver in the moonlight; there was a pad and a plain groom’s saddle on the mare’s back, and a plainer cavesson. If it had not gleamed like all the captain’s tack, Harriet would have taken it for a rope halter.
“How shall I ride without stirrup or bridle?”
“You have no need of them. Shall I put you up?”
Harriet balked again. “I’ll fall right over the other side!”
“If you should, the turf is moderate soft.” There was amusement in Fleming’s voice, but no mockery. “We have not all the time in the world. Up?”
“How shall I make her go, without ribbons and a bit? I cannot guide a horse with nothing in its mouth.”
“You guide her with your legs, same as you hold your seat. I have the ribbons, such they be—” Fleming tugged at the cavesson, very fondly, and the mare swung her head round as if to box Fleming’s ears. “A bit you will not have with her, not yet. You pull too much in the turn.”
“You have never seen me ride, sir!”
“I have seen your mare’s mouth.” More gently, Fleming went on, “It is not a fault, it is a fear; you pull because you dread falling off. You are going to fall off, I say, aside or astride, and you will keep the fear if you keep your feet on the ground.”
Saying so, the captain hoisted Harriet by the elbows and half braced, half shoved at her hip. Harriet gasped and flailed, caught in skirts that were not there, and any moment expected a horrid dizzying drop.
The horse had not bucked her. She was in the saddle, and she clutched at the depths of the warm grey mane for dear life while Fleming, silent and quick, placed his bare hand upon Harriet’s knee and calf, and gripped her ankle through the borrowed boot.
“Heels down, eyes up,” he said, and ducked under Malabar’s head to repeat the whole show upon Harriet’s right side. When he had done, he came and eyed her, very critically.
“Madam, do you lace?”
“I beg your pardon, sir! I do not, at three in the morning!” Harriet was near enough to kick him in the head, but she had a great fear of startling the horse. Fleming, unruffled, reached up for something out of her line of sight.
He touched the small of her back, just at the band of the threadbare breeches. A shock, a jolt, a shiver—
“But that is perfect,” said Fleming. “Why on earth did you sit there like a pudding? I thought I must borrow Sherry’s riding corset.”
Her back straight as a whalebone busk, and tingling, Harriet realized he had not meant to touch her at all; he might have touched the mare’s back, for all it troubled him.
“Is all well, madam?”
“All’s well,” she lied.
Fleming heard it. “Malabar will stand for Congreve rockets, if she must. I think she will stand for you. Should you care to walk, hold tight with your knees—get out of her mane! Hold my hand, if you like, and hold to the pommel with the other.”
“Hold your hand! Don’t be ridiculous, sir, who shall hold the horse?”
“You,” replied Fleming. “I’ve no need to pull upon her to make her walk. She will do that at your word, I think.”
“You think!” Harriet was beginning to tremble.
“Oh, I have never tried her with anyone but myself. I have not been in the habit of lending Malabar.”
“Why take such pains with me?”
“I told you, I thought you should like it. And if you were my—sister, I had rather you learnt to ride properly and stir a scandal than muck about side-saddled and break your neck. Get up, Malabar.”
Harriet lurched when the horse moved, but did not fall—or else she fell continually, first one side, then the other, rolled as if amidships with the rolling of the horse.
“This is… this is not so queer as I supposed. I thought cavalry-horses were all savage!”
“Not so queer as you supposed,” Fleming laughed, low. Then he went on, “No. Your horse is your weapon, your shield, and your dearest savior; you do not want her savage, or ill-natured. They are let on the field to plunge, and bite, and kick, but those things are for war, not for habit.”
“Then Sherry’s war gelding is not—not violent?”
“No, to be sure! Why on earth?”
“He has given me a lie these many years! He has always said a war-horse will kill a woman who comes near.”
Fleming near doubled over with a sudden cough; the morning dark was chill, and the dew in the air was heavy. “S-stand, Malabar,” he wheezed. “Stand!”
“Captain, are you well?”
“Oh,” he said, clearing his throat at last. “Oh, I beg your pardon. Sherry—Sherry was putting a garland upon the truth, madam, for your safety. A war-horse is a most dangerous creature, indeed.”
“But you have just told me—”
The captain half waved, struggling again with a cough. “Dangerous for a woman, I mean. Women spook war-horses, you see,” he gave it up, pressing his face against the grey mare’s withers.
“Surely it is not true. Cousin Beauchamp has been to Wellesley’s country-house, and she says any lady who likes may ride him—ride Copenhagen.”
The cough grew explosive; the horse was obliged to stand again, and Fleming stamped and buried his mouth in his elbow. He wiped his face upon his cravat before speaking again.
“His Grace the Duke must do what he likes, but I can tell you, that charger is quite mad. Perhaps he likes being rubbed round the ears by great ladies, and fed bread and sugar.”
“I don’t know, sir. When Wellesley came here to dine, I scarce touched his hand; we only fed him turbot and venison.”
“Come,” said Captain Fleming, through his door. Short and sharp, but not peremptory as her brother; used to command, accustomed to obedience, but not too much. And very used to his own devices, thought Harriet, when she lifted the latch and he neither spoke further, nor glanced up.
