The Covert Captain, page 7
“Harry…” Fleming meant to draw back, meant to heed the hammering blood as pleasure edged to panic. Harriet’s teeth scraped toward Fleming’s dolman collar, and her hands were—her hands—
Her hands flew from the front of the captain’s breeches. Harriet screamed, and caught Fleming hard across the nose.
Eleanor leapt from the alcove seat, eyes blind and filling. “Harry,” she got out, around the blood.
“Oh God.” Harriet was curled half upon herself, biting her fingertips as she began to cry. “You are—you have been—all this time! Get off! Stand away!”
Eleanor had reached to comfort Harriet without thinking. “Harry, wait, cry you mercy!”
Harriet caught a ragged breath. “Oh God, I cannot bear it. You had my heart, and I was every moment deceived!”
“Please…”
“Get out.”
“Please, listen!”
“We are at an end—sir—madam.” Harriet had begun to collect herself; she jerked her bodice into place, and made her hands busy, rather than bury her face in them. “I do not consider you may entreat me to listen, or anything else.”
“Dearest,” said the captain, unwilling to give it over. She had taken her hand down from the shocking mess of her countenance, though she blinked and whitened still with pain; she seemed not to care for the blood upon her uniform. “I meant—I meant to tell you, sooner far than this.”
Harriet was shaking, hard enough to mar her speech. “H-have I b-broken your nose?”
“Nicely,” said Eleanor. She caught Harriet under the elbows, when she swayed, and set her down amidst the alcove’s scattered cushions.
“No,” Harriet cried protest. “No! Take your hands away! Monster—viper—liar!”
Eleanor ducked under each word as if it were a blow. She gained the library door and opened it, her hand on the latch gone slippery with tears and blood. “Harry,” she tried, low, for one last time.
“Get out!”
“Viscountess Beauchamp informs me you depart for Bournebrook.”
“Sir, give you good evening.” Harriet did not turn a hair at Eleanor’s matched black eyes, badly gone over with a mottle of someone’s powder.
“Viscountess Beauchamp rather delighted to inform me of it.”
Harriet never smiled. “She is so very rarely right, sir; she must take her joy where she may. I fear she has played you false, all the same, and likely delighted the more.”
“Madam?”
“I do not return to the Earl’s house in Essex, sir.”
Eleanor threw over courtesy. “Then where? Will you not give me your direction?”
Harriet cast her glance down to her shoes.
“May I not write to you for friendship’s sake, if you insist on quitting London?”
“I fear it should be unwise to remain friends.”
Eleanor clenched her fists hard enough to split her gloves. Then she bowed low over Harriet’s hand, to make a brave show for the mob in the salon. “You hate me so much, then.”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t know you.” Harriet’s voice cracked. “Captain, if you do not return to the entertainments, I fear Sherbourne’s guests will begin to enquire. “
“Let ’em enquire—let them go to blazes.” Eleanor drew a great breath and failed to check the pleading in her voice. “Harry, upon my word I am the same as you knew me yesterday.”
“In all but a very few points.” Harriet was polite, and dry, and cruel. “I do not care to know you as you were yesterday, when you made sport of a spinster on the shelf. Perhaps you will ask Sherbourne to marry you, today?”
“I wasn’t making sport of you. I was thinking of your honor.”
“My honor! Lord Jesus, Captain!”
“You knew what I meant,” said Eleanor, beseeching. “Half London knows that we have carried on, Harry, as your cousin must hold forth upon every damn thing, and I asked you—I asked you because I love you!”
“Captain Fleming, you forget yourself!”
“I forget myself! I! I was not the one with her hand down my—oh, shit,” Fleming swore out. Within, harp and piano jangled silent. One of Sherbourne’s rather larger footmen came into the corridor and found the captain alone, wiping his streaming, stinging eyes, and covered from forehead to dress sword in crimson ratafia punch.
Chapter 10
The drive in Hyde Park was meant to fill the useless hours, to bleed the cold daylight away until Harriet could plead headache and retire to bed. In Sherbourne’s well-appointed town house her cousin gamed Beauchamp’s fortune away with avidity; the library was full of cigarillo-smoke and the racket of the faro machine, and Harriet found she could not bear society ladies of late. Of all Sherbourne’s house-party, only Philomela Partington could be induced to accompany Harriet in the curricle, and Harriet had little enough upon which to speak to her. Philo was mad for gaming, indeed, and pined to be back at the house; but she had been obliged by her husband to abstain, having cost Lord Partington his rather fine shooting-lodge in Scotland.
In the near silence, Harriet froze by degrees. Sherbourne’s town horses were grown elderly, so that he considered Harriet might drive them herself; now as she listened to Philo natter upon the weather, Harriet’s hands petrified in calfskin driving-gloves. The curricle’s sway was lulling her to sleep.
“Oh, Harriet, look! Is that not your captain?”
“Dear Philo, he is not my anything.”
He—she was handsome as the devil, her greatcoat flung back by the speed of her mount, breeches and waistcoat fitting with perfect deceit. The black horse, Harriet had not seen before, but it was delicate, dashing and quick; Fleming looked a highwayman. Her cheeks bore roses in the cold, one lock of golden hair had fallen forward, and her mouth…
There was nothing to remark about the captain’s mouth. Harriet, for her part, bit the inside of her cheek.
“I say, Harriet, that horse much resembles Lord Uxbridge’s Black Darnley! It cannot be his!”
“Not his,” Harriet agreed, though the captain would have looked as well riding backward upon a jennet. “For speed I dare say it is Black Darnley, or one like him. Captain Fleming is much trusted in matters of horse-flesh.”
“You mean to say he is exercising that horse, like any gentleman’s groom?”
“His great pleasure is in riding,” was all Harriet would say. She kept her own team to the trot, and hoped for a bend in the path.
“Lady Beauchamp mentioned he was quite a member of the staff at Bournebrook. I wondered your brother permitted—but then he showed so very well in company, Harriet dear. I must say, though, he is dashed unfashionable for riding the Row! No crop to speak of, and no spur!”
“Captain Fleming does not hold with them.”
“I know you must go along with him, of course. But—oh, Harriet—if you wished so very much to be married, surely you might have—”
“Philo, you’re mistaken. I no longer wish to marry Captain Fleming.”
“Oh, thank heaven! I do not think I could bear it. And Lady Beauchamp will be so much relieved. He seemed a very country sort of person, and she could not ascertain he had been to school at all! Though she did seem exceeding sure—” Philomela froze, the better to deliver her stage whisper with a frisson that might have carried to the Prince Regent’s box at Covent Garden. “I hope you are not compromised, Harriet dear!”
Harriet might have let fly with half a dozen oaths to give her brother’s company credit, but to her horror Captain Fleming had overtaken them.
“Whoa!” Fleming lifted her hat, but her expression bore no pleasantry. “Whoa,” she said again, to the black horse, and swung down into the road. “Your off horse has nearly cast a shoe. You must not drive on so—my lady Harriet, my lady Partington,” she added, correct enough, but they might both have been dolls in a shop-window. “Let me help you down, if you please. I will have Darnley into harness as quickly I may, and walk Lord Sherbourne’s beast.”
“Lord Uxbridge’s derby horse! I wonder you dare, sir!”
“My lord Uxbridge’s signal concern is for a lady’s safety. Had you rather turn over into the sand? Or…walk?” Captain Fleming did not quite match Lady Partington’s rudeness. She came round to the driving side, and handed Harriet down.
“Unless you should rather not drive Darnley, madam?”
“What say you?” Having searched the captain’s countenance for any message but plain concern, Harriet gave herself to the task at hand.
“Speak him fair and rein him firm, same as any silly child. I shan't let you come to harm.”
Harriet nodded. She had kept hold of Fleming’s hand, and even now could not let go, though nothing passed between them.
Philomela sneezed.
“Pray excuse me.” Fleming cleared her throat. Then she took off her greatcoat, cast it over the curricle seat, and went forward to the horses. Harriet could not help but watch her work. Philo moaned, near Harriet, of the spectacle they should make; the black racehorse and Lord Sherbourne’s old roan, with a matched one limping behind, like a funeral. And in this cold!
“Do shut up, Philo!” Harriet snapped at last, and struck the curricle wheel. “Is all well, Captain?”
“All’s well! Come and I’ll show you…” Captain Fleming broke off, and her head went down out of sight by Black Darnley’s flank. Harriet wished to weep.
The captain did not address her again until Lady Partington had been made snug, under Fleming’s greatcoat, in the curricle, and the black racehorse had begun to stamp and test in the traces. She whispered, under the guise of offering Harriet her knee, “I thought you meant to leave London.”
“I cannot abide Bournebrook in dead of winter,” Harriet shrugged, as if every memory, every touch of Captain Fleming’s hand slid off her. She could not keep it up. Her eyes blurred, her heart hammered, and worse, her hands were shaking; worst of all, when Fleming clasped them, Harriet leant forward and sobbed—once—into the captain’s shirt.
“Madam.” Fleming put her off, gently.
Harriet recovered herself, somewhat, before Philo could lean out and stare. “You drive,” she got out, without disaster.
“What?”
“Put me up on Strawberry. Pray you drive—I dare not.”
“I have no saddle for him, and if the shoe—”
“If he throws the shoe, he will do it at a walk, for me as likely as you. I know how to ride, for God’s sake!”
The captain bowed. Her face showed not the flicker of a smile. As if she moved a sack of meal, she did as Harriet bade. “People will stare,” she warned, “at a woman astride in the Row.”
“If you can bear it, why should not I?” Harriet could not find the wit to care if Philo heard.
Harriet stood in the snow in Clarges Mews, shivering and stamping, until she could no longer feel her feet. She was still closer to Half Moon Street than the place she meant to be, but she could not make herself go forward. She looked down the corner as far as she could, but number thirty-nine, Clarges Street, was out of view.
Grooms were beginning to cross the mews, and somewhere near, an ash-pan was emptied over the area rails and banged clean for good measure, iron ringing upon iron in the cold. The sun was quite up, and if she hoped for stealth, it was gone; she had slipped from the house in an old cardinal-cloak of her mother’s, that her pelisse might not be seen missing, and twenty years in a cupboard had not faded it a jot. For a moment she gave herself over to the thought she might be recognized by someone of the ton, and then told herself the ton was jolly well still asleep, half of them in Sherbourne’s guest bedrooms. Surely it is not calling upon a gentleman if you do it before his milk-seller, Harriet told herself, and half-slid, half-splashed down the street.
Number thirty-nine’s door had a scar upon it from the corn-law riots. It had weathered to a wet gray against the black paint, and a crack chased its way from the gash in the wood to where the knocker would have been, if anyone who cared for fashion was at home. The stucco housefront was still near the same gray as the rest of the row, but pieces had started to fall round the windows, showing plain outmoded brick. Snow was heavy as fleece upon the stairs. If she mounted them, she would be wet to the shins on a moment.
Harriet took them clumsily indeed, but she gained the door. Then she drew a deep breath and could not knock.
When the door opened, Harriet shrieked and nearly tumbled into the street.
“I ought really to hang the knocker, but dash it to hell, I can’t find it.”
“C-captain!”
Fleming looked unslept, her hair loose and her frock-coat swinging open over an old cavalry coverall. She made half a pass at straightening up, and went into rather a sarcastic bow. “I passed you in the mews ten minutes since, madam, but you seemed intent on your affairs. You had better come in; I have cut toast enough, and the coffee is still hot.”
It was not the scene Harriet had pictured. She stepped over the threshold into the dimness, and it was not, either, how she had pictured that. The woman she had known as Nathaniel Fleming was not at her elbow—was, in fact, half down the corridor and indifferent—and Harriet herself was sharpish close to tears.
The downstairs parlour was bright, and the fire was good. A pair of high, hobnailed boots was steaming dry at the fender, and a cloak hung from the chimney-corner with rather a smell of wet horse. At the height of Harriet’s eye, upon the wall, a faded god chased a faded nymph; further on, one of them had changed into a column of cloud, or a tree. The black-and-white Holland tiles shifted and clicked a bit beneath Harriet’s feet, but the floor was shining clean.
“Pray you be seated, Lady Harriet.”
“Miss Fleming,” she replied, still standing; but she could not keep up the style. “Captain—Nathaniel—oh, God rot it,” Harriet said, “I do not even know your Christian name.”
“I think that is as well, madam.”
“I should like to have it.” Harriet persisted. “There are…things I have come to say.”
Perched upon the edge of the most distant sofa, the captain gave her familiar forward shrug, coming to rest with her elbows on her knees.
“Please—”
“Christened Eleanor. Called Nora. What have you come to say, then?”
Harriet paced. She had taken off her gloves and wrung them, but it did not help her speak. “I think…I think I must be in love.”
“Give you joy of it,” said Eleanor. “I had rather you threw the coffee at me.”
“No, Nora, I meant—”
Eleanor neither moved nor spoke, but something like hope mingled with exhaustion in her face.
“It is love, I think, when a person sends you mad as Bedlam, and yet without them you have no gladness and no rest?”
“Madam, if you are in love with a half-pay army captain, I must advise you let it go.”
“I will throw him over on the moment,” said Harriet false-lightly. “If I might have you instead.”
“Tell me the truth?” Harriet asked. They were stretched before the big, outmoded hearth in Fleming’s tiny study; Eleanor lay with her head on Harriet’s lap, and Harriet had smoothed Eleanor’s bright hair out into a fan.
“What would you have me tell you?”
“Dearest,” said Harriet, “”I want to know everything, all, from true life, not from ballads.”
“Everything, all?” Fleming repeated, but trailed off humming Polly Oliver, because she did not know where to begin.
“What sort of girl were you, before?”
The girl by the graves was freezing, mist sticking her mother’s black sarsnet gown against her skin. The sleeves were too short and the skirt was too long, and the bodice flapped loose until she crossed her arms. Her hat had gone, in a wrench of pins, half through the service, and the moor-wind had tangled her long pale hair all in hopeless knots. She was wearing a grown woman’s shoes—she was a woman grown—and spoiling the blue-black silk with bloodied blisters.
“Colly, what will we do?”
Her eldest brother—newly Sir Colquhoun—was in his Cambridge chambers. She had thought all the week, as the bodies lay in the buttery, that the letter had gone astray. Then he had made answer, on a black-edged card with a gaudy gilt wafer: See to it, Nora.
“I suppose I was the sort of girl you get when your father has three sons before you and knows you only to hand your pin-money on quarter days. I read everything my brothers did, and better, and quite usurped the music-master; I was exceeding happy, for a female.”
She was not quite alone in the house. There was Hiram Sloane, to stand as groom and footman and butler, and Mrs. Hiram Sloane, for the cook and charwoman’s part. There had not been a governess or a lady’s maid at Moorlowe since the death of Lady Fleming; Nora was grown used to sprinkling gowns and crimping pie-crusts for Mrs. Hiram Sloane, currying horses and carrying water at need. Lately her father’s brother, his man of business, had come to look over Colquhoun’s estate. He gave Nora five minutes’ nonsense upon riding astride as unsuited to a gently bred woman; she looked at the ceiling and traced the dried-amber skitter of a leak from the roof. He boxed her ears, once each, and now he kept to her father’s rooms and she must endure him only at dinner.
“My first brother is at Moorlowe with the title,” Eleanor said. “Reynard died when my mother did—when I was twelve. Nathaniel—I must have been sixteen.”
“Oh, Nora, how awful.”
“He was…he wanted so very much to go for a soldier. My father bought the commission, and he and Nate both were in coffins before the ink had dried.”
With pen-hand shaking she scratched the quill-end again, and again, and again over Nate’s death-lines, until all the ink and sand had flaked away clean. She shook the quarto and blew the truth away. Then she wrote, with exceeding care and flourish, Eleanor Charlotte Fleming, Anno aetatis suae Sixteene, keeping the magistrate’s misspelling. She crept from her father’s study and into the corridor soft as the dead.
“So you took it up in his stead,” said Harriet. “Why on earth, Nora?”
