The Covert Captain, page 6
She looked back over her shoulder as if that gentleman stood waiting. “There are tunnels under this house straight through Bournesea village and to the cliffs, for the men to bring the spoils in.”
Fleming hardly realized they had been walking as she spoke, back to the inhabited parts of the house; the portraits were newer and brighter, and close by the gallery doors there was a triptych, untouched by dust, though draped in dusty black.
“My sisters,” Harriet said, pausing as though she introduced them at a ball. “Helena, Hestia, and Honoria. When I felt disagreeable, I sounded the H.”
Each had sat for the painter, perhaps, upon her engagement; each was gowned and sashed in silvered white. They were three near copies of Harriet and Sherbourne, all fair as milk with dark, wild-curling hair, not quite smoothed down even in the paintings.
“It is why I will not marry, Captain, and Sherry will not press me.”
“Beg pardon?”
“My sisters were all very happily married. They left me in mortal dread of it.”
“What on earth, Harry,” replied Fleming. “Sherbourne would meet any man who mistreated you, surely.”
“Childbirth, Captain,” Harriet got out, and waited for Fleming to stammer or blush. “I have no wish to ever get a child. All three of my sisters were brought to bed and died. We have one nephew to show for it.”
“I am heartily grieved for it, madam.” The captain inclined his head. “But—Harry—if your cousins should press upon Sherry, and so press you, and you wished a respite…”
Harriet looked baffled. Fleming had to look at the ceiling.
“…you would come to no danger if you married me.”
“What on earth!”
“I cannot give you children, Harry, even should you wish it.”
“Oh. Oh, Nathaniel, I am sorry.”
A bachelor may not properly correspond with an unmarried lady. It was her grandmother’s advice, to a girl from another lifetime. Fleming rubbed the ink-bottle in her hands to warm it.
My dear lady,
My very dear Harriet—
Harry, Eleanor wrote at last. She was near nodding over the page, much though she wished to write. Her fingernails, where she could note them by the rushlight, were blackened and broken, and her hand was cramping round the quill.
My sister’s house in Mayfair I found a ruin, and I have had much work to bring it up to mark. This should not concern me if I did not miss your society so very much. As it is I fear I cannot extend Sherbourne the supper invitation I meant, as the kitchens have lately lain under four inches of water, and I have not found a cook willing to swim. How fares Phantom of Fotheringhay? I never knew history so blood curdling.
She filled a sheet and a half, leaving a back blank for folding, conversing upon trivialities as though Harriet was with her in the room. Her study was small, made chill by the windows giving light from the street below, and it was furnished with the flotsam of years; it cheered Eleanor a great deal to think of Harriet here, even if she could not imagine her so far upstairs, taking her ease in a chair whose seat might drop at any moment.
Next morning, having paid to advertise for a charwoman on Saturdays, and done herself the extravagance of a pound of candles, Eleanor posted the letter. She was scarcely home again, eating a pork-pie wrapped in a handkerchief to keep it from the dirt of her hands, when a post-boy knocked at the knockerless door. There was a letter from Bournesea, Essex, but not from Sherbourne.
Not until Eleanor read the first lines, standing against the staircase, did she realize she had given the boy a half-devoured pork-pie with his fee.
Dear Nathaniel,
Sherbourne having travelled to visit our Mother, I pled Cold in the Head, took the liberty of going over his Study, and discovered your Direction. Pray forgive me being so forward as to write so soon.
Harriet wrote a small, plain hand, with no flourishes, and the letter ran three sheets.
It was never more than a handful of days, after that, before a letter arrived. Eleanor kept them tucked into the slats of the box-bed in the chamber she had taken for herself. As October raced toward Guy Fawkes’ Night, that did not suffice; the earliest ones she bound up and stowed in her campaign chest, hidden safe among her mother’s things. Until she found a small hoard of coin in her grandmother’s Sunday-box, Eleanor’s diet tended sharpish toward brown bread and postage.
At last, a week past Martinmas, word came from Sherbourne that he and his sister would return to Town in a fortnight. Eleanor left off sorting the silver, weeding what could be scoured from what could be sold, in the middle of the day; she had had, for a time, some words in mind to send.
Harry, she got down, scarce able to credit her daring. The quill-slip did not quite fit, or else Eleanor’s hand shook, and the next line jogged down the page.
My prospects are narrower, and my graces fewer, than you deserve, but I would ask leave to court you.
She put her mark to it formal and with flourish, Capt Nathaniel Jas Fleming 7th Her Majesty the Queen’s, and let it go into the mail-boy’s hand with a shilling for speed.
The reply was a half-sheet folded over, sealed with an unfamiliar wafer, and it arrived by evening the next day. There was no date, no mark from Harriet, and no greeting.
Yes.
Chapter 9
Harriet was late coming down to the salon. No one gave account to spinsters when the room was packed with girls in their first season—was not her brother the Earl yet a bachelor? All the huntresses looked one to Harriet, each too young for Sherbourne, and above half too vapid; were they taught at all to converse any more, these blossoms of English girlhood? Her own sisters had been known upon the Marriage Mart as much for wit as fine ankles, and that was not so very long ago…
One of the candyfloss maidens trod Harriet’s foot, and made no remark of it as she nudged past into the salon.
“Very bad ton, you know, dovey,” said Harriet in clenched teeth, more cross at herself for woolgathering than for the mark upon her new dancing shoe.
“Are you quite well, Lady Harry?”
“Dear Linton, if such occurrences troubled me, I should never emerge from my cloud of blue devils,” she smiled, a little false. “Will you inquire for me whether Captain Fleming is arrived?”
“He waited you, my lady, but now he is within, as some of the company asked for music; the hired players are not yet come.” Linton paused. “If I may, Lady Harry, that new green gives your form every credit.”
“Heavens,” said Harriet, blushing unaccountably. Her brother’s man was one of few in the house quite old enough to marry Sherbourne.
“Shall I announce you, madam?”
“Oh, don’t, pray. I cannot abide a scene tonight.” Her head throbbed at the prospect of the night before her, of another season. The captain’s letter had given her joy, of a kind, but not hope. She had not seen him these three months, and she might gain the salon to find his every dance taken by a woman younger.
“Lady Harry?” Linton stood aside the door. “Will you not go in?”
She could not have moved, just then, had Linton shoved her. At the far corner of the room, where the harp and pianoforte had been shifted for the evening’s use, she spied her brother’s dark head bent beside Fleming’s fair one. Their music was some of Sherry’s beloved Schubert—she thought the Serenade—and they went along in such rhythm, Harriet scarcely knew which man played what part.
“I did not know he could play so,” said Linton, who knew whether Sherbourne dressed to the left or right. Harriet touched his arm a moment, and then stepped over the threshold. She had for cover the room’s applause for the Earl, and the sight of the captain in his regimentals lent resolve to her step. He had left off his pelisse, for playing, and his shoulders were as fine as Harriet remembered. He was conversing with Sherry, aside, as Harriet came near, and something Sherry said made Fleming’s countenance all mirth.
“You will suffer, if you insist,” Fleming gave Sherbourne answer. “I don’t sing to myself, you know. I’m not in voice.”
“For her, then,” said Sherbourne, and goosed at the captain’s ribs.
She was caught quite out.
“My lady Harriet,” Fleming greeted her, stood, and gave his deepest bow.
“S-sir. I hope you are well.”
“Sir,” echoed Sherbourne. “Great God, man, you might have mentioned.”
“Mentioned what, Major?”
“Nothing at all,” said Sherbourne, jumping up from the pianoforte’s bench with briskness strange to see in a lamed man. “Leave you then, shall I? All manner of people to see, say nothing of keeping Beauchamp from my brandy.”
Fleming looked after him in something like dismay. “Think you he disapproves of us? I thought—with your cousin so in his ear—he must know.”
“I know Cousin Beauchamp told him—at Bournebrook—she made it out to him that we…” Harriet swallowed. “He had no harsh words for me on the matter, but you were gone from us, by then. I think we must stake his good nature upon the Christmas-punch.”
“She made out to him, that we what?”
A footman came, then, as Fleming had not returned to his seat at the pianoforte; the liveryman handed the captain’s sabre. It was a dress sword, plated over with gilt and silver; a motto ran down from the hilts.
“May I?” Harriet asked, and took the sabre without waiting the captain’s assent. Cousin Beauchamp was not in sight, in any case, for Fleming to skewer her upon it; Harriet had time to collect the motto, and read, roughly, “Acies ad Hostem.”
“It means—”
“Sharp edge toward enemy,” Harriet finished.
“It was my gift from Sherbourne, when I rose captain,” Fleming said. “He thought I should need the advice.”
“Has your carcass blighted my settee since last night?” Sherbourne was half-dressed, though it rose one o’clock; he nudged at Fleming with the brass head of his walking-stick.
“Ah, Major! Cold gotten into your leg, then? Filled you with goodwill toward men?”
“Stow your insufferable cheer,” Sherbourne groaned. “I suppose you must be in good humor, Golden-Locks?”
“Indeed, I am. I was thinking of Moorlowe at Christmastide.” The captain reached across from where he sprawled upon the sofa, rounding up cloves from a saucer on the tea-table and studding them into an orange. He did not sit up, only regarding Sherbourne over the turned-out toes of his shoes. “Dare say you would call it no more than a hunting box, but I love it.”
“Have you seen it, inside ten years?”
“No,” said Fleming. “But it is my home.”
“Happen tha r’turn to Yorkshire…” began Sherbourne, more broadly than was kind. Fleming sat up just enough to hurl the clove-orange into Sherbourne’s trouser front.
“Ow! Bastard! If you were to return home, I suppose you mean to go leg-shackled to my sister?”
“I beg your pardon?” Fleming flailed and scrabbled and came upright.
“It seemed to me, last night, that you and she had perhaps—ah—she was most pleased to see you.”
“I was most gratified that she should join us. I was much in her society at Bournebrook, and I dare say she converses rather well.”
“Spaniel, you kissed her!”
“I?” The captain gazed up, surpassing unruffled.
“Kissed her hand, at least, in my sight, and—”
“She is a lady gently bred, and I dare say a friend!”
“Friend, nothing! Think you I have abstained long enough to mistake a woman thoroughly kissed?”
“Your house is shored up at the beams by kissing-boughs! It might have been a dozen beaux with nothing to do, as every girl in the party was launched at your head.”
“Might,” Sherbourne bit out.
“I wish you would not abstain, Sherry, or else make it known—”
“Let us keep to the subject, Spaniel, of your making free with my sister!”
“Upon my word, I have not meant to make free with her. Too long at Paris, I guess, where it is no on dit if one touches a lady’s glove. And she is witty, Sherry, and most kind.”
“Harry is?” Sherbourne snorted. “Mignon, when she had her season, she left seven men in gory pools of their own pride. Scoffed at posy-rings from Bath to John o’Groats. Never I heard the poor beggars deem her kind.”
“Haven’t blunt enough for a posy-ring, so it’s as well.” Fleming shrugged.
“She’s too old for such things!”
“She is two years the younger, scoundrel, am I in my dotage?”
“…How on earth should you know that?”
Fleming neglected to make a sound.
“Look here, I don’t care if you dally with my sister; I’d be touched in the upper workings if I thought I might prevent her. Only this is Town, not backwater Bournesea…”
“I shall consider myself advised, Major.”
“Oh. Well. It is only—I rather thought—come in to luncheon, Spaniel, never mind it. Roasted a pig, you know. Christmas.”
“Sure you want to go in there, Fleming? It’s a rout.” Linton had taken a playing-card from his pocket and, by the tip of his knife, was fashioning a snowflake. His hands were dead steady. His voice alone shook. “Ladies all up one wall and their mothers down the other. Devil I know why he does it.”
The captain pressed his gloved knuckles under his eyes. “Because he is unwed and thirty-six, God save him.”
“You’ve gone quite white,” Linton added. He spoke to Captain Fleming as the inferior officer he had been, or a friend. “Puke in the coal-scuttle, if you’ve a mind to. Or go home, man. Half the men would bolt, it’s tighter than a troop-ship—”
“I promised her I would. I—I thought I would speak to her.”
“Ah. Speak to her?” Linton grinned, and it was not the grin of his grace the Earl’s obedient servant. “Has she the sense God gave a marrow, she’ll refuse you.”
“I know it.” If she refuses, what have I to fear?
Linton came close enough to brush the snow-melt from Fleming’s shoulders, twist and coax his silver braid into better light against the blue. “Well. Maybe it’s not so difficult, asking such a simple thing.”
“It’s not the asking. It’s the telling.”
“Beg pardon, Captain?”
“Said, you had better let me in, then.”
Linton let him pass, without a word or a bow but with a solid shove in Fleming’s back, for courage. In the spark and spill of candlelight, all the room was a momentary blur. Fleming had several heartbeats’ time to think on the Provost Marshal, the pillory, Harriet’s cut direct; she thought she had steel enough for all but the last.
“You look well,” said Fleming, not much above a whisper. He did not give his back to the library threshold.
Harriet smiled at him. “One of the few delights of my years, Captain, is that I am no longer required to dress like a boiled sweet.” She smoothed the skirt of her claret velvet gown and then took the chair the captain drew for her, that he might have something to do with his hands.
Fleming, for his part, struggled not to turn out his toes, or stand upon the outside of his boots; he was agonizing slow to pluck up conversation, now they were alone.
“Nathaniel—”
“Harry—”
Both faltered at once, and Harriet perhaps kicked the carpet. “I have missed you a great deal. Why you took yourself away so quickly after luncheon, I cannot venture.”
Fleming closed his eyes a moment, as Sherbourne did when old wounds pained him, and when he spoke it did not ring quite the truth. “I wished to tell you—I wished,” Fleming faltered, and then half lied. “Madam, I did not wish by my conduct to turn us into an on dit.”
“Your conduct was most correct. You’d no reason to vanish from company like a ghost. And the hour is late for me to go compromising myself with cavalry-men!” Harriet glared, bright-eyed, at him. “If you would not have talk from my brother’s guests, there is a simple expedient—quite aside from refraining to flee Sherry’s town house while half of them are at Christmas lunch.”
“I am coming to that—if making a mare’s nest of it! I should have spoken last night. I would have, and let witness it who may.” The captain dropped from his chair to his knees, and took up Harriet’s hands. “Harry, I have near nothing in this world, save my honor and my sword.”
Harriet did not draw away. She needed Fleming’s grip, in any case, to keep from fainting to the carpet. His eyes were earnest and blue as ever, but not so steady as his hands.
“Harriet Georgiana, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
“I very much hoped you should speak your mind.” She turned her face aside a moment. “You have mentioned it to my brother?”
“No,” answered Fleming. “I—I thought his opinion no consequence in the matter.”
Harriet laughed. “I accept you, then, Nathaniel, with all my heart.”
He kissed her gloved fingers and bounded upright, smiling. “Shall we bring the news to him, dearest, and crown Twelfth Night as never before in this house?”
“Captain—Nathaniel—”
He paused in his stride, his smile never fading.
“In half an hour we shall go and tell Sherry he may wish me happy,” said Harriet. “Until then, bear me company.”
Fleming closed the library door. He came to her and kissed her; she had taken off her gloves, and her fingers slid and tangled in his hair. When he laid his lips to the pulse in her throat, Harriet shivered.
There was a reading-alcove to hand, hidden round by old, thick curtains, and Harriet pulled at the captain’s shoulder until they fell, clinging together, into the cushions of its seat. Her curls were loose about Fleming, longer than he had known, and the curve of her breast above the red velvet was touched with attar of roses. The alcove was chill, but her hands upon him were afire, caught at the back of his breeches, pressing him desperate close.
