Absolute Honour (11 page)

‘Clary …’ he said, trying to sound firm. Then both reacted to the cry from the corridor, a heavier tread that made the floorboards
creak. Clary emerged, but was still bent over the bed, when the door opened.

‘What are you about there, girl?’

Mrs Hardcastle, the tavern’s landlady, stood in the doorway, making it seem small. When Jack saw who it was, he sighed. Temptation
came in various forms.

‘Lieutenant Absolute, dear sir! Say the fever has not returned.’ She marched in, elbowing Clary aside. ‘A jug of water, quick
there!’

The maid hovered, reluctant to cede the ground. ‘The master’s asked for ale.’

‘Then why are you still here? Be fast about it, you lazy slut.’ She turned back, did not see the tongue stuck out at her before
Clary left. ‘I heard your cry, dear man, and hastened even thus from my bed.’

Mrs Hardcastle gestured to the loose gown that just contained her. She was built along similar lines to the Widow Simkin,
with a bosom Jack could have rested his pint pot upon. Perhaps it was the way this was so often thrust at him, or the resemblance
to his recent Quaker lover, but Jack had, with more firmness, already declined what was only slightly more subtly on offer.
To begin with, there was a Mr Hardcastle somewhere about, the innkeeper. Yet even if the husband was drunk and unconscious
by supper, it was not that which finally deterred Jack.

With little to do but lie and think, he’d mused on his recent history of both death and love. In a little less than two years,
he’d killed perhaps a dozen men and made love to just two women, a disparity in numbers he dreamed of
correcting. And yet … Those two had both been older than him by many years. Their experience had taught him well and he had
been a diligent, delighted student. But he had loved neither Fanny Harper nor the Widow Simkin. The only girl he had loved,
and in anything like an honourable fashion, had been Clothilde Guen, the goldsmith’s daughter of Thrift Street, Soho. Her
innocence and stirring sensuality were a vivid contrast to the voracious widow and the skilled courtesan. What was she doing
now? he wondered with a sigh. Absolute gold had expiated Craster’s crime, enabled her to marry a man she did not love for
the sake of respectability. She had probably borne him two children by now.

Mrs Hardcastle, with a deep bend to gather the bed clothes, offered further glimpses of what could be his. The maid returned,
set down the beer and began a tussle over a blanket. For a long moment they had it stretched out above him, obscuring his
view of the door, but he had no need to see to recognize the speaker.

‘The divil! Sure and that’s not a shroud you’re laying over my poor friend?’

‘About bloody time,’ said Jack.

‘Am I in the nick, dear heart?’ Red Hugh strode into the room. ‘Shoo, you vultures, and leave my comrade to recover his strength.’

‘I can assure you, sir,’ Mrs Hardcastle had drawn herself up, more like an enraged goose than a vulture, ‘that we—’

‘Be calm, pray,’ interrupted the Irishman, ‘for if my friend has been too sick or too particular to take advantage of what
you would tender him, I’d be delighted to hold up the honour of the Lords of McClune with each of you, one after the other,
or both at once, as you may choose.’

‘You … you damn’d potato face!’ Mrs Hardcastle, firmly putting away what had been on offer, swept furiously from the room.

Clary, however, lingered. ‘Shall I prepare a room for your honour?’ she said, with the smallest of curtsys.

‘It would have to be a very
large
room, to be sure,’ he guffawed while Jack groaned. ‘But alas, my jewel, I am come to collect and not to stay. So if you’d
just bring the twin to that,’ he pointed at the jug of beer, ‘– for what’s my poor comrade to drink? – then we’ll trouble
you no more.’

‘Oh, I’m sure
you’d
give me no trouble at all, sir.’ She stared quite brazenly at the Irishman’s groin, then swept out with that familiar gurgling
laugh.

Red Hugh gazed after her. ‘The trollop! Sure, I’m tempted to take that room. I am certain they rent by the hour here.’ He
turned to Jack. ‘As I am also certain, my lad, that you’ve been having a fine auld time.’

‘Actually, I have not.’

‘Too sick?’

‘No, I am quite recovered.’ Jack sighed. ‘Too …’ he waved a hand. ‘I have been musing on honour.’

‘Ah, honour!’ With a leap, Red Hugh was instantly lying beside Jack on the bed, snapping at least two struts in the process.
With his hands behind his head he continued, ‘Did I never tell you my favourite poem?’ He coughed:

‘She offered her honour

He honoured her offer

And for the rest of the night

It was honour and offer.’

He roared and, after a moment, Jack laughed too. ‘And is that how you honour
all
ladies?’

‘Indeed not. There was one …’ That darkness came into his eyes again. ‘But another hour for sorry tales, eh?’ He swung off
the bed. ‘Where’s that damn’d beer? We must toast my endeavours. Ah, there you are, you minx.’

Clary returned, placing a jug beside the other on the small
table. She looked as though she would speak but a shriek from Mrs Hardcastle summoned her. With a distinct sway of her hips,
she left.

Red Hugh watched her go again. ‘I’m certain I would not have lasted a week of that temptation. Probably not much over the
hour.’ He made for the jugs, handed one to Jack, the pewter pots disdained. ‘I never took you for a puritan, Jack. Your own
tales of actresses and Quakers hardly indicated it.’

‘I am not one. But …’ He stopped. He had his own sorry tale. He had never mentioned Clothilde to his companion.

Red Hugh was studying him. ‘Well then,’ he said eventually, ‘your health! Now tell me, lad, before I give you all my news,
what are your plans?’

Jack had thought of several. He had his duty to his King, even if the dispatches he bore were half a year beyond their expectation.
His regiment? He had no thought as to where the 16th Light Dragoons and its commander, John Burgoyne, might be. He’d left
them training in London in the summer of 1759 when he’d been sent as King’s Messenger to Wolfe at Quebec. That was over eighteen
months before. His father? Well, Sir James would probably still be at war in Germany, waiting out the repercussions of his
slaying of Lord Melbury in the duel at Vauxhall, the duel Jack had provoked by daring to woo Melbury’s mistress, Fanny Harper.
While his mother …

The thought of her uplifted him. ‘I suppose I go to London.’

‘How?’

‘How?’ It was a strange question. ‘By horse, naturally. I am a cavalryman not a bloody Grenadier.’

‘Jack, you’re swaying on the edge of that bed. I think anything livelier is beyond you. And why do you go?’

‘To deliver—’

‘Out of date messages.’

‘And to report—’

‘To a regiment that is probably at war somewhere else.’

Jack was starting to be annoyed with the badgering. ‘And what would you have me do, sir?’

‘Come to Bath.’

‘Bath?’

‘It’s where I’ve been this last week.’

Jack laughed. It was such an absurd idea. ‘And what would I do in Bath? Take the waters?’

‘Exactly. It’s what invalids do. And as your physician, I advise you that galloping to London and then, no doubt, throwing
yourself onto the delights of the town will undo all my good work and the work of our little friend here.’ He tapped the nutshell
still on Jack’s neck. ‘You can send the dispatches on with an officer fit to bear them, and word to family and regiment, who
will summon you if duty calls and your health permits. Meanwhile, you can recover properly from an illness that has nearly
killed you.’

The man had a point. And Jack had always wanted to visit a city so dedicated to pleasure. ‘But what of you? I thought business
and family were both drawing you away.’

‘Now isn’t that the most marvellous thing? For haven’t I discovered that the two of them are also met? And are they not the
both of them in Bath?’

Jack was finding the Irish-isms a little hard to follow. ‘Does that mean they are or they aren’t?’

‘They are.’ The Irishman beamed. ‘I’ve a deal to clinch in the city that might go halfway to undoing my family’s entire woe.
And now my cousin has just arrived there to seal my happiness.’

‘Your cousin?’

‘Laetitia Fitzpatrick, the most beautiful girl in all Ireland.’

‘
Is
she?’

‘She is.’ The jug was halted halfway to the lips. ‘But you can take that gleam from your eye, Absolute. For you’ll be getting
nowhere near her, sure.’

Jack frowned. ‘Why not, pray?’

Red Hugh laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘Lad, you have told me your history of courtesans and widow women and the like. And
did I not discover you just now with two tavern hellions fighting over your favours? I’ve told you, my boy, you remind me
strangely of myself when I was your age,’ he smiled, ‘which is the main reason I’ll be keeping you far away from my lovely
cousin.’

Jack laid down his beer. ‘Sir, I agree that some of my actions may not always have been entirely honourable. But I would remind
you that, youth aside, I am also the son of a baronet and raised a gentleman.’ He flushed. ‘And as such, I know how to behave
with a lady.’

Red Hugh regarded him thoughtfully. ‘Well, Jack, I shall weigh your future conduct against your past misdeameanours.’ He smiled.
‘Still, seeing as we’ll all be neighbours I suppose there’s every chance that you may meet her anyway.’

‘Neighbours?’

‘Aye, lad. My cousin and her guardian – Mrs O’Farrell, another cousin of mine and her aunt – as befits relatives of the Earl
of Clare, have taken a house in a new construction called the Circus. It’s in the Upper Town, where everything is sparkling
and bright. They’re even offering one of the houses to King George when he visits in a fortnight. And haven’t I found rooms
for us in the very same circle?’

‘Such rooms cannot have come cheap. How have we paid for them?’

‘And why do you think you rest at the Llandoger Trow? This is where all the prize agents gather. They have assessed a lieutenant’s
share of the
Robuste
at near two hundred pounds, not the five thousand of a treasure ship but handsome enough. They have advanced each of us forty.
Which reminds me.’ From a pocket came a sack of coin. ‘There’s over twenty guineas there, after our Bath accommodation expenses.’

Jack weighed the bag in his hand. Twenty guineas to add to the thirty he’d got for the ermine, which he’d sold to a Bristol
furrier. It was a lot of money, over a year of lieutenant’s pay. And he had dreamed of all the things on which to spend his
share of the prize. Why not begin with a little luxury in the pleasure capital of England?

He raised his jug and toasted. ‘Well, then, sir – to Bath!’

‘Bath!’

Now he was committed, all his concerns dropped away. Messages would be sent, regiment and family placated for a time. But
the best thing, he realized, looking around the room lately haunted by his ghosts, was that in whatever adventure lay ahead,
no dead man would plague his dreams at the end of it.

Rain on the road and a horse’s thrown shoe delayed them. By the time they reached Bath, Red Hugh insisted they proceed direct
to the theatre. They were dropped a few streets away, the carriage sent on to their lodgings with their sea chests.

‘But why the hurry?’ Jack grumbled, as the Irishman dragged him through the crowd.

‘I hate to miss the beginning of a play,’ came the reply. ‘And besides, I told my cousins I’d accompany them to their box.’

Jack stopped and two men bumped into him, before cursing and passing around. ‘I can’t meet your cousin like this.’ He gestured
to his uniform, the ghastly one he’d worn since Quebec and during his illness, ill-fitting and stained. ‘My good one’s in
my trunk.’

Red Hugh had barely turned. ‘It makes no nevermind. I have no intention of introducing you to Laetitia tonight – if at all.’

‘Nevertheless, one can’t appear at the theatre dressed in rags.’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much, you Macaroni. For I doubt we’ll get a ticket we’re so late. Now come!’

They did get tickets but only in the sixpenny gallery,
among those whose clothes aped Jack’s in poverty. Red Hugh, as ever, stood out in the quality of his attire, Jack feeling
like a shabby servant beside him. Once they had forced themselves onto the benches – and Jack was sure he would not last an
act if the fat woman next to him did not remove her elbow from his ribs – the Irishman leaned forward to view the crowd below.

‘Is she there?’ Jack said, trying not to sound too curious.

Red Hugh leaned back. ‘Their box is unoccupied at present.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps Mrs O’Farrell has been unable to lure Laetitia
away from her books.’

‘She’s studious, is she?’

A snort came. ‘I use the term books loosely. Laetitia’s only flaw is that she is obsessed with
novels.’

‘A flaw I share. I am myself fond of Richardson, Gaunt—’

‘No, no, Jack. Not those kind.
Romantic
novels!
The Tarnished Heart. Sundered by the Moor. By Bower and Byre.’
He shuddered. ‘These tales all seem to concern a wealthy heiress, forced to marry aged and ugly Lord How-Do-Ye-Do. So she
elopes with impoverished Ensign Who’s-Me-Father instead. Lives in a byre, starves prettily to death in a bower, no doubt.
Or t’other way round.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘You know, I’ve heard the maid declare that, whatever our uncle, the
Earl’s, plans for a noble alliance, she will choose for herself and let rank and money go hang. Why, no doubt she would even
consider you, a mere baronet’s son, too elevated by far. She will marry for love, she says, and the poorer the suitor the
better! Imagine such a thing. This, sir, is what comes of reading.’

Before Jack could counter that the words ‘mere’ and ‘baronet’ should not be placed in conjunction, the small orchestra, which
had been playing various country airs, now struck up something more martial. The audience sighed and settled. ‘Did I never
tell you, lad,’ said Red Hugh excitedly, ‘that I played upon the Dublin stage myself in my youth?
Minor roles,’ he circled a wrist, ‘tragic parts. At Smock Alley, where your own mother so shone.’ His own eyes gleamed as
he leaned forward. ‘Ah, the play’s the thing.’