The Covert Captain, page 8
She was fast and small and she could fight; she cracked her forehead against his, caught his breastbone with an elbow, and shoved. Her uncle’s hand was no longer cold as an eel down her bodice.
“You ought to be killed,” he sputtered. His nose was pouring blood. Her last gown was ruined.
Eleanor ran. She shut herself into the first chamber with a good lock upon the door, turned the key and lent the oaken door the strength of her back. It was Nate’s room, the bedstead empty, the curtains burned and the naked windows showing starlight; it smelled still of ambergris and a young man’s pomade. Haphazard upon the desk were a sabre and a bicorne and Nate’s discarded pocket. His chests and his armoire were full.
“I was, God, I was weary of fever-nursing. It seemed I had done it for years, and for nothing. So I cut my locks and I changed my name, and there it was.”
She was two hours upon the road to London, riding flat out, when someone behind hailed. “Whoa, Miss Nora, Miss Nora!”
Hiram Sloane, stained and sweated from riding ’cross country, lumbered his great gelding up into the road. The horse was pack-laden as if for a journey, bundles near to spilling in the moonlight. The sabre she had abandoned—she did not know how to use it—gleamed silver where it was tied to Hiram Sloane's cantle.
“Miss Nora—Master Nate—you have forgot your arms, and your letter of commission!”
“I had my seventeenth birthday at Benavente, pissed myself in the saddle, and should have deserted; but I had to run about stealing horses for my lieutenant, as he would keep getting them shot from under him.”
“To think you knew Sherry, so long ago!”
Fleming shrugged. “I was not his friend, not truly, until much later. When I met him I should only have said, I see why they follow him, and I did the same.”
Harriet opened her eyes in the last watch of night. There was rushlight in the room, and over and around her face there spilled a glory of gold. She blinked full awake, shook herself free and stretched; she smiled and could not stop smiling. Her ankle brushed over Eleanor’s bare calf.
Eleanor sat up, alert, bewildered; the edge of her hand came just short of Harriet’s throat.
“Nora?!”
“Harry. Oh, Christ,” she said sadly. “I am too much a soldier.”
Harriet twined her fingers through Eleanor’s, finding a bit of her smile again. “Give ye good morning is more usual, in the peace,” she said, to steady them both.
“Good morning; it isn’t quite four.” Eleanor turned aside to twitch the rushlight. The moment’s brightness showed the sharp mark above her breasts where linen had drawn too tightly.
“Nora,” began Harriet, and did not know the words to continue. She touched Eleanor instead, half to please, half to comfort.
“The least of half a dozen hurts, dearest, and the one I’m most used to. I am old, you know.”
Harriet stuck out her tongue. In the wild light she dared look longer at Eleanor than she did even clothed, in daylight. There were marks she knew, sabre cuts and old leather-burns on fingers and wrists, but most of her scars had gone hidden. The long silver line on Eleanor’s right forearm, Genappe, the round-and-jagged dip in her left shoulder, Orthez. Harriet drew the bedclothes back and Eleanor flinched, one knee tucking to her chest, just as the light smoked and dropped.
“Mend the light?”
“We might as easily leave it out.”
“Mend it,” Harriet insisted. “One hears, madam, that lovers sometimes regard one another.”
“Madam, I have never had the leisure.”
The dressing-table was too far to reach; Harriet struck her tongue on her teeth and leant over Eleanor, then threw herself over Eleanor’s knee when she could not find the rush by touch. She burned her fingertips and cursed.
“I shall spend my bride-price on candles,” said Harriet, “and look at you all I like. Stop gloating. I’m singed.”
For apology, Eleanor drew Harriet’s burned forefinger into her mouth.
“Oh.” The air around them was suddenly thick to breathe, and Harriet went dizzy. She shivered, because the air touched her skin, because Eleanor’s skin did; she wanted a thousand things at once. “Oh, Nora.”
She said it over and again, without knowing whether she soothed or summoned. She laid her tongue upon every scar she could find, and when she must breathe it was Nora; she learnt her way while the light lasted, kissed the inside of Eleanor’s knee and upward until Eleanor thrashed, begged, whimpered, and Nora, Harriet murmured, all of a piece with yes and mine and for me.
Time had gone from her head. She was teasing tremors from Eleanor’s inner thigh when the rushlight hissed and sent them into darkness; Harriet, made bold, twisted to brace Eleanor’s legs upon her shoulders. She stilled, with Eleanor’s pulse beating mad against her ear.
“Harry!”
She cast a steadying hand over Eleanor’s hip and pressed forward; thought one shocking clear moment of her salvation, and darted out her tongue.
The door would rend from its hinges in half a moment. “Cap, oi, Captain Sir! Pray wake, and look sharp!”
Eleanor was waking. She reached beside the bed and hurled what came to hand, a lady’s shoe; on a moment the rattle and pounding ceased.
“I am—Cornet, I am indisposed!”
“Beg pardon, Captain, only it’s the major, and he’s that drunk. I cannot shift him.”
“Ten minutes,” she gasped. “Saddle Malabar and the major’s Kestrel, if we must go and rescue the princess!”
Beside her upon the camp bed, a protest went muffled into the pillows.
“Only I mislike to wake Queen Mab, Captain, she’s snappish in the dark…”
“I’ll give thee snappish, lad, damn ’ee for a nuisance!”
Cornet Blakeney retreated, at speed and in fear; Eleanor turned to lay conciliatory kisses anywhere Sabine would allow.
“C’est bullshit!”
“I know,” she replied, raking her hair into a painful queue. “I’m terribly sorry. Wait for me, if you may?”
She knew it would be empty quarters on her return. With a mutinous pout, Sabine turned to the wall. “Why must you go at all?”
“Because it would shame the regiment were he to die in his own sick.” Eleanor scowled. Her nerves were unspooled to the edges, and when Sabine touched her naked back Eleanor jumped.
“I suppose you must dress.”
“Hard luck on the village if I didn’t,” Eleanor answered, set her feet on the freezing floor, and reached for her coverall and shirt.
“Arms up.” Sabine was deft by now with Fleming’s bandages, wrapping the first layers even before Eleanor had clasped her hands behind her head.
“Thank you.” The last of desire had given way to duty as Sabine fastened Eleanor’s sleeves and her coverall braces. Sabine knelt, wrapped in Fleming’s army blanket, with her dark hair falling round her; she gave several critiquing touches at the coverall’s front buttons.
“You make really a fetching man, you know.”
“Merci, mignonne,” said Eleanor and kissed her, but it little comforted her when she had closed the door.
Blakeney was below, with the horses, sulking against one of Sherbourne’s mounts in the cold. He wore his pelisse straight on, and a greatcoat over all; he held Fleming’s horse with a hand gone blue and red.
“Your gloves, cornet?”
“Sir!” He stood straight, if not tall. “Lost them, Cap, Sir.”
“If the lieutenants take your uniform, tell the major,” she said. She had said it before. "You are not obliged to punch them, but you are obliged to keep your kit.” Eleanor crouched on the frozen ground and gave the boy hand and knee, tossing him up to the saddle, then peeled her own gloves off and handed them to Blakeney.
“I will have a shilling out of you every quarter-day,” she promised. “See you keep those; they belong to the King.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“It is as well you came to fetch me,” Eleanor said, when they were upon the road. “I have wanted a word.”
“With me, Sir?”
“Concerning your conduct.” She drew a breath shocking cold, and did not hedge. “You must break it off with Captain Fraser.”
“Why, would you have me come to you instead? Are you upon the outs with Major Sherbourne?”
Eleanor let out a whoop. She folded over her pommel, kicked in her stirrups, and bashed her forehead on Malabar’s startled neck. “Major Sherbourne!”She cried. “Art’a daft as a brush, Cornet!”
“…What?”
“Have you run mad, young sir,” said Eleanor, slowly and with diction. “To suggest Major Sherbourne takes liberties with my person, or I with his!”
Blakeney hunched away, as far as he could without losing balance as they rode abreast. “You need not give me lies,” he muttered. “All the squadron knows you are sodomites.”
Still shaking and gasping with laughter suppressed, Eleanor reached to clap his shoulder. “Upon—upon my word, Cornet, the squadron is wrong. Mine nor the major’s cards fall out that way.”
“C-Captain Fraser says you ought to have risen lieutenant-colonel—but you do not wish to leave the major. And you are ever in his tent before engagements!”
“Conning maps, lad, or am I meant to be buggering Exploring Officer Kent as well? He is rather often present.” Eleanor swallowed the last of her mirth, and said more gently, “A hundred men’s lives are enough for me to bear. When you are older, you may find it so.”
“You are not in love with him, then, truly?”
“No, my hand upon the Testament.”
“Then you cannot understand about Jack and me!”
Eleanor sighed. “Must I give an order, Cornet Blakeney? Quite omitting to take your skin off for speaking him Jack in my hearing.”
“Give any order you like. I will not leave off with him. I cannot.”
“If you cannot leave off, resign your commission and go home to England, and shame your mother the less! If Fraser has coerced you—”
“No!”
“Captain Fraser has a wife but lately returned to London.” Eleanor watched his body tense. “He does not love her, if that comforts you, but never a moment think that he will leave her.” She tapped Blakeney’s stirrup with her boot. “It is my duty to break your heart to save your neck,” she said, low. “If you make your name as a Ganymede, it will not go easy for you.”
He was still young enough to look always gangling and hungry; sketched in her night-vision, the cornet’s countenance was like a knife. “It is too late for that, upon my word! The lads—from the beginning, even before—”
“Thrash ’em,” said Eleanor, promptly. “Or send ’em to Sherbourne for thrashing, or myself. The army is no place to be a gentleman.”
“Captain,” said Blakeney at last, and if he sniffled into his collar, the night was cruelly chill. “What shall I do?”
“Go to Fraser’s quarters—I will give you some nonsense to carry—and say he must give you up, because you would not see him hang.”
“Hang!”
“Jesus, lad!” Eleanor thought she should have to catch the boy before he brained himself in the road. Cornet Blakeney kept his seat, just, but she braced his near shoulder all the same.
“I did not know—I did not believe—what’s that?”
There was a hummock in the road ahead. It was indistinctly shaped, well-muffled, and it was singing.
“Some come here to fiddle and dance, some come here to tarry! Some come here to fiddle and dance, I came here to…marry!”
“We have found the major,” said Eleanor, and dropped from the saddle without catching Blakeney’s glance.
Chapter 11
A word in private, Sherry?”
“Go on, then.” Sherbourne hauled his game leg up to toast before the fender. “Drink, will you?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Speak your mind, old Spaniel. This isn’t a campaign tent.”
Eleanor stood at parade rest notwithstanding, to keep from clasping arms behind her back and scuffing her boot-toe in patterns along the carpet. “Sherry,” she began, and failed. “I’m not young—”
She swallowed and wished she had taken him up on strong drink.
“…Holy hell, you haven’t a tendre for me, have you?” Sherbourne eyed the captain. “I’ve changed my mind. Hold your tongue!”
She stared back, and decided to get it over at once before things got thicker. “Major, I should like to speak for your sister’s hand in marriage.”
“Good God, man! Is she increasing?”
Eleanor fell back a pace at the snarl of his gaze. He had eyes very like Harriet’s, she thought, but they threatened her ruin for reasons entirely apart. “Upon my word, no.”
Sherbourne subsided. “You gave me a fright, Spaniel. Marry my sister!”
“Sherry, I am in earnest.”
“You can’t afford her, lad! Or she can’t afford you, much the same thing. I love her dear as life, but Pater left precious little in the estate; she’s only got two hundred pounds a year. And b’God I know what you draw.”
“We have spoken on that account.”
“Think what a life it will be for her, following the drum.”
Eleanor winced. “You know very well, sir, I shall not be fit for action again.”
“You’ve gone skittish because it’s peace, and peace is deuced boring. Never mind this nonsense of sir and Major. If the King called you—hell, if I called you—”
“Then I should invalid out of the regiment, Sherry, and draw a pension fit to keep your sister.”
“And until then, shall you rub along nicely on bread and water in that pile in Clarges Street, with the roof that knew Cromwell when he had his head?”
“I swear she will not know want, Sherry, and if I have little enough on the bank, at least she will have my honor and my name.”
“Oh, hell,” said Sherbourne. “You mean to keep on with this!”
“I mean only to have your answer.”
“She’s clever, Fleming, You don’t want clever. It’s nothing but a trial. You’re a beau yet, you’ve a war-wound, one turn round the floor at Almack’s and you could beat them off with sticks—”
Eleanor lifted her chin.
“Don’t,” Sherbourne put up his hands as if to meet a punch. “Don’t, Spaniel. Take her if you want her! But don’t give me a word about devotion, or love. Not from you! I can’t bear it.”
“…Sherry?”
“Take her, I said. Write to Bournebrook church and have the banns called. Write to my man of business; there’s a ring. Write to Mother, damned if I shall do it. And I suppose Harriet must have some damned-fool party, and empty the town of champagne. See to it, Spaniel.”
She legged him a bow. “Thank you, Sherry. With all my heart—”
“Oh, get stuffed!”
She had grown adept at creeping from her brother’s house. Plundering the kitchens Harriet was less sure of, and trade at such an hour could only be done in ready money, so the breakfast was not what she could have wished. Still there was a pot of chocolate, half a dozen currant cakes, and an eggworth of butter wrapped in grease-paper; and in her reticule, clinking against the coins, was Fleming’s spare front-door key.
There was no sign of life on the first floor, only the wind down the chimney stirring the dust of a cold fire. It was eerie to see Eleanor’s parlour without the warm clutter of her presence; the faded figures upon the walls were not friendly, and the étagères at the room’s edges seemed waiting for some soul fifty years gone to return and pick up this curio, that ammonite. Harriet did not linger, even to take off her cloak.
Eleanor was asleep, bedclothes cast wildly round her, and never stirred when Harriet set down her basket. Harriet drummed upon the box-bed’s panels, softly; Eleanor rolled further into the pillows.
“Nora. Nora, dearest!” Harriet stepped from her shoes and climbed into the bed. She fit herself under the topmost quilt, slid her arm along the warm angle of Eleanor’s hip, and waited.
Eleanor woke from the absence of a dream. There was a familiar tickle of curls against her collar, and welcome heat and softness at her back.
“Harry,” she said, and turned to her for a kiss. “How came you here?”
“Afoot, and an hour ago.” Harriet sat away, giving her best to look stern. “You’ve slept passing late. Will you be missed in the Row?”
“I had set today aside for diverse purposes,” Nora answered. “A lie-in not least. But I do think it is the law in England,” she went on, drawing Harriet back down to her by the wrists. “A gentleman may avail himself twenty minutes on Tuesdays for tumbling such ladies as sneak into his chamber.”
“Twenty minutes!” Harriet scoffed. “Time enough for a gentleman, maybe. And I never snuck—sneaked. I am possessed of your house-key, and I am saint enough to bring your breakfast.”
“Are not you the breakfast, madam?”
“Madam, cease,” Harriet answered, “Or I will quit the room.”
Eleanor cast her hands to the pillows, smirk spreading to a grin. “Stand away, then.”
Harriet kept her seat. She pushed Eleanor’s nightshirt high as she could, baring stomach, ribs, breasts to her touch while Eleanor fought at the sea of linen; she warmed her fingertips against Eleanor’s nipples until, beneath her, Nora cried out and could not be still.
“How anyone mistook you a man, once you were abed with them,” Harriet said softly, wadding the nightshirt to toss away, “I declare I have no idea.”
“Was not—pray don’t stop—abed with many, and all knew hart from hind!”
Harriet froze.
Eleanor opened her eyes, and after a pained moment covered them with her hands. She breathed out in a hard rush. “Dearest, I meant you no—”
“I’m not,” said Harriet. “They knew? Women. And—you knew. That they.” The weight of her body slipped from Eleanor’s thighs. She looked mazy, trying once and again to speak. “How?”
“How did you know your eyes are dark?” Eleanor gave a question for answer.
“I… I must have looked in the glass, when I was small.”
