Rondo Allegro (41 page)

Parrette’s face was grim. “I confessed my part of that sin,
and was absolved. I said my vows in good faith, and so even though he was a
worthless man, I believe I have a right to his name. And so do you.”

Michel shook his head slowly. “Maybe, maybe. But not in the
eyes of Boney’s laws. And what sort of justice has he brought? Fouché would
have murdered you along with the others if he had caught you. And what is the result
of his butchery? Boney rewards him.” Michel shook his head. “I do not yet know
where I might settle one day, but France is dead to me.”

Sorrow contracted her heart, though she was not certain that
she saw herself as a Frenchwoman anymore.

“This is a good berth,” Michel said, seeing her expression.
“Sayers is now acting captain. He’s as good to us as Duncannon, whose rules are
his own. Mr. Gates says, another year or two, and I would be ready to put up my
bond, supposing we come across a prize so I can raise the ready. He will give
me a good character, and I would like to be a purser. I am good with numbers.”

“And that is what I wished to talk to you about,” Parrette
said. “I have been putting by my own earnings for a shop. But I will put up
your bond, or buy a little house for us, anywhere you like, if you wish to give
up the sea.”

Michel grinned down at his mother. She was so small. In his
memory she had been tall and strong, flying between him and his roaring,
fist-swinging father, until the night his father yanked him out of his bed in
the middle of the night and told him he was going to be a drummer boy for the
Revolution. When he tried to run to his mother, he found her lying senseless on
the floor. He had thought her dead.

He patted her bony shoulder awkwardly. “I’m grateful, I am.
But no man rightly lets his mother do what he must do himself, and Collingwood
is sure to give us a cruise, on account of the dons who slipped back into
Cadiz. Why, even if we don’t earn prize money, there’s the head count on
prisoners, and in any case we have to clap a stopper over ’em or they’re sure
to be up to their old capers. You take care of
her
.” He pointed with his chin toward Anna’s cabin. “She needs you
more.”

“I shall. That was my promise to her dear mother.”

“And when she’s right and tight, why, then you go and buy
that shop. It could be when I do give over the sea, I’ll come join you. I would
like to be married someday, and the three of us can live together.”

Parrette smiled. “You’re a good boy. I will have a Mass said
for your safety.”

“You do that, ma,” he said, but again cast a quick look
around.

She successfully interpreted that quick, guilty glance. It
grieved her heart that these English seemed to have an animus against Roman
Catholics, but perhaps he could be led back to the true church in time. That
would not happen now, and she did not want to crab her gratitude that he was
alive, that she had found him, that they had reached safety. So she said only,
“If we must leave, be sure that when I know where we are settled, I will send a
letter to this ship.”

“Do. So that I will know where to write back when I know
something.” Michel bent and kissed her, then they parted, he to vanish into the
swarm of activity.

o0o

The next morning, Parrette intercepted Anna before she
could go to the captain as usual. “Mr. Sayers wants an interview,” she said.

Anna had scarcely seen the lieutenant since the burial at
sea, as he stood swaying behind the captain with his bloody bandage around his
knee.

Sayers looked up at her entrance. “Mr. Jones,” he said to
the midshipman busy writing at a side table. “Jump to the galley and discover
if the cook can put up some punch for us, then see if the launch is arrived.”

The boy bounced up, happy to get away from having to copy
papers out in fair. “Yes sir, cook, punch, and launch.” He shot out of the
wardroom.

Sayers nodded at the sentry, who pulled the door shut behind
the midshipman, leaving the lieutenant alone with Anna. “Pray take a chair, please.
I trust you will forgive my neglect of you. It has not been intentional.”

“I quite understand, Lieutenant,” Anna said, her expression
one of polite inquiry.

To her surprise, instead of coming directly to his point he
fumbled with his pen, so for a moment all she saw was his pale hair, and then
he reached past his neat stacks of papers to a battered book, and withdrew a
sealed letter from beneath it.

Her puzzlement sharpened to worry. She looked down at the
scrawled direction on the letter:

To the Rt. Hon.’ble Lord Northcote

Captain, H.M.S. Aglaea

“What does this mean? I do not understand. Who is this
person?” Her brow drew together. “Northcote. I have heard this name, certain.”

“It is the hereditary title,” the lieutenant said slowly,
“of our captain’s family. Ma’am—Lady Northcote, I understand I should say—by
your leave, I think you’re the only one who can open it.”

“But this is not my letter,” she said, not hearing his
correction. “And nowhere is mention of his name, his true name. Can it be an
error?”

“It is the correct direction,” Lt. Sayers said patiently,
“if—if something happened to the captain’s elder brother, who was the baron,
and he had no son to inherit, the title would fall to the captain.”

She still looked blank.

He hesitated again, striving to find some compromise between
delicacy and making things plain to a lady who, however gallant, was still a
foreigner, and therefore ignorant. “News is always sporadic for seamen,” he
said. “We can go as much as six months, even a year before the post catches up,
if we have been on a long commission. Then, there is lost post. The packet
carrying six months of post had been swamped in the hurricane that drove us off
our stations, for example, and most of the letters in our bag were ruined. One
of those was probably for the captain, had we but known.”

He paused again.

She still waited with that air of puzzlement. “And as for
the newspapers, it is easy to miss announcements without you have the right
date.”

And she still said nothing.

So he said, “Captain Duncannon, to my knowledge, has not
been in the habit of communicating with his family.” He could have said,
When we were boys, the only thing I knew
about him was that he had one brother, an arrogant blood in the sixth form
.
And we knew better than to ask questions,
these past years.
“Given our present situation, and all that is implied in
the direction on this letter, I think it best to tender it to you.”

He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and Anna’s
heart contracted in a way that had nothing to do with the gentle motion of the
ship.

Why was he so short with her, so reluctant to speak? The
idea occurred that her situation, her questions, were merely another burden to
add to his impossible number.

She said, “Must I open it now, or was there something else?”

“Open it at your leisure,” he said, in a lighter voice,
clearly relieved to see her take responsibility for it. “There is another
matter that cannot wait. Before the battle, the captain made me promise to send
you home should anything happen to him.”

To Sayers, the word ‘home’ could only have meant one thing:
the place of his birth, to which he longed to return in order to marry his
patient betrothed. And so Captain Duncannon’s wife—that is, the new Lady
Northcote—must of course be sent to Barford Magna, Yorkshire, England, where
the captain had been born.

He said, “Captain Neville, who it happens is a particular
friend, awaits you now. He has agreed to take you to England. He is carrying
the latest dispatches.”

“England!” she repeated.

“It is your home,” Sayers said with utter conviction. “Here
is a purse. It is his own money, which I know he would want me to surrender to
you. It should see you comfortable until you have had a chance to make your
arrangements.”

He handed her a small purse containing crackling bills. “I
feel obliged to say, while there is life there is hope, but I still believe he
would desire you to go ahead of him. He will receive the best of care, from the
most experienced medical men. The admiral promised that for all his wounded
officers—his own physician is waiting for the captain now, once the launch
reaches land.”

“Is it not my place to remain with him?”

The lieutenant pinched his fingers between his brows again,
his voice tense. “I have received word that given the many wounded in carrying
off the ships, the hospital here at Gib is overcrowded. There is no place, none
at all, for a lady. Please. The arrangements have been made, and the best thing
you could do is go ahead and see to his affairs as best you can.”

To him that meant all the specifics of the transfer of an
estate, but to her it meant nothing whatsoever. It was going entirely too
swiftly. But the way he looked away from her and at his desk reminded her that
he already had an impossible number of immediate demands on his notice.

She said, “If I may be permitted to bide long enough only to
see him safely to the hospital.” She spoke the words knowing that there was
nothing she could materially do, and further, no one wanted her there. But it
seemed the right thing to do. “How will I find out his progress?”

“You may depend upon me for that,” Sayers said. “It is no
more than he has done for all the ship’s people, a task I will take scrupulous
care to honor as he did. I shall write to you at this direction.” He indicated
the letter in her hands.

In those few words everything the letter represented,
hitherto lying utterly outside her experience, suddenly engulfed her.

“You will have an opportunity to speak to the physician once
the launch reaches the dock, where I am told everything is in waiting,” Sayers
finished.

She could see that the interview was at an end, and rose.

He stood painfully, reaching his hand out to her. “Madame, my
lady, permit me to take this opportunity to thank you, on his behalf, and on
behalf of the ship’s people, for all your exertions. I have only to add that in
this very minute the launch for transporting him is in preparation, while the
water is relatively quiet, the tide flowing in.”

They shook hands, and she walked out, half in a daze. Once
again her life was taking an utterly unexpected turn.

She pocketed the letter and purse and went up to the deck,
where she found a party of big, strong pigtailed seamen carrying the captain’s
cot, step by careful step. Perkins had tucked him mummy-tight down into the
cot, a sheet over his face to ward the sun.

Parrette stopped her, and mutely handed her the bonnet that during
those long hours of waiting she had made over into something smart. Anna
obediently put it on, tied the ribbon under her chin, and then reluctantly
pulled on the gloves that Parrette handed her, before being bundled into her
traveling cloak, also new-furbished.

When she was done, the men were still involved with their
tackles, so Anna ventured down to the sick-berth to take her leave of the
midshipmen. Mr. Bradshaw cried almost tearfully, “Oh, that I had known, I would
have written a letter home!”

Though she still did not believe she would actually travel
to England, she could not prevent herself from saying, “Should all come to
pass, I will call upon your family myself, and carry your best wishes, shall
I?”

He flushed, his whole countenance changing. “Tell them about
the battle, will you, Mrs. Duncannon?” He held out a hand, and she gripped his
fever-warm fingers. “And you might also hint that an increase in my mess
allowance might not go amiss, as the indent for someone my size is
significantly more than it was when I was no bigger than a walnut. Only don’t
put it so, if you will, but make it polite, like.”

She smiled and agreed, but her throat hurt as she took her
leave of them all.

Parrette was waiting for her at the railing as she watched
over the shifting of their trunks into the launch.

Anna and Parrette were helped down last. Anna sat by the cot
carrying the captain. She glanced up to take private leave of his ship. Her
time aboard it had been short in measure of days, but she had run through all
the range of emotions to such a degree that it felt she had lived there for
years, whereas Spain was a faint memory, almost a dream, by comparison.

The journey to the wharf was not long in duration. While the
seamen watched the water and boat traffic, Anna slipped the letter from her
pocket and, uneasy yet intensely curious, she worked her finger under the seal.

The handwriting was a rounded fist, decorated with
flourishes that made it difficult to read.

Northcote Manor

Dearest Henry:

I can quite understand your not writing after John died, given
everything that has Transpir’d, though you might have thought of Mother. But
however, I promised
[the word promised underscored three times]
myself I would
not take up my pen just to Quarrel with you, after all this time.

Emily would have nothing said, or changed, in any way, save the
Notice taken that was due to our Position, until she was brought to bed, as she
was so very certain she carried a boy, and she found some London man-midwife
who assured her All the Signs were There for a Boy. He charged her a thumping
ten guineas, too. But it was all for Naught, and poor little baby Amelia made
her appearance this fortnight past. Emily scarcely looks at her, so Nurse and I
have made her our very own.

We are all at sixes and sevens here. You can have no notion how
Horrid John left everything. I know you would rather be Anywhere but Here, but
it is now your Duty. Even if you wish to pass the Title off, our third-cousin
Harry’s little boy is only Six Years Old, which would leave us in a very horrid
Situation.