Rondo Allegro (30 page)

Lord Nelson laughed. “No one expects a lady to give an exact
accounting of warships. Let us turn to a subject you must know well. What was
the great Paisiello working on when you left Naples? What have you seen in
Spain?”

Anna could talk knowledgeably about that! Without admitting
that she had performed in some of them, she began to name operas, but scarcely
had she progressed beyond
I riti
and
Nina
before before others exclaimed that
they had seen this, or heard of that.

The conversation turned to London theater—famous
performances—famous performers—no one wrote opera like the Italians, except for
that fellow Mozart—Englishmen couldn’t write opera anymore than Dutchmen.

Mrs. Fellowes was resigned to another long naval dinner. She
had no ear for opera, and disapproved of its stories, which always seemed to be
about disreputable, if not immoral, persons. For her, the point of the evening
would come after the ladies retired. She hoped that Mrs. Duncannon was a
reading woman. Otherwise, the evening would end in dull female chatter about
fripperies.

Mrs. Porter was the most comfortable, content to enjoy the
sight of the captains enjoying themselves, and Lady Lydia the least. She tried
very hard to regain the attention she had come to expect as her due when a new
bride, and she made a little business of joining the toasts with what she
thought a daring, dashing air.

As the meal wore on, the gentlemen spoke much too rapidly
for Anna to follow, using expressions she did not understand. She watched their
faces instead, the ruddy cheeks and bright glances that threw her back to the
Paris cafés with the soldiers. She shook off that memory, and listened to the
deep buzz of men’s voices. Was there an English word for it? The
frémissement
, the
bourdonnement
, a sound felt as strongly as heard.

She was not used to wine, except watered. Though she only
sipped, the jacketed, gloved servants behind each chair kept her glass filled,
as they did the men’s. She noticed that Lady Lydia began by tossing hers off
with an arch look. Mrs. Porter only lifted hers to her lips when they toasted
the King, then put it down again. Mrs. Fellowes never touched her glass, and
Anna left hers, relieved.

The food came and went. Anna had long since sated her
hunger. Still the men talked on, faces flushed, laughter louder and more broad,
their conversation utterly impenetrable as they talked about ships, parts of
ships, armaments of ships. The only French words were names of ships and
commanders, and places like Toulon. She could not descry what
polishing Cape Sicié
meant, but it
caused a general roar of laughter.

Anna looked down at her hands in her lap below the gilt rim
of the china dish, thinking how very strange a turn her life had taken. She did
not see Vice-Admiral Collingwood watching her narrowly as the talk wound on,
touching now and then on Lord Nelson’s strategy should Villeneuve come forth.
He shifted his gaze from Anna with her downcast eyes to Henry Duncannon,
halfway down the table, whose attention to his wife was no more than polite.

Anna was deep in reverie when some signal occurred that she
had missed: the men were stirring, the plates vanishing rapidly. Lord Nelson
turned her way and said with an earnest, confiding air, “If Villeneuve brings
them out, your station will be in the orlop, in course. Remember, put the
knives to heat. The poor wretches will take it kindly. I shall never forget the
horror of a cold knife cutting into my flesh.” He tapped the pinned sleeve and
then rose.

Anna had no idea what to say. He held out his hand and
kissed her fingers, then turned a little as he let her hand go, as if he
expected her to do something. She raised her eyes, seeing the women all
standing. Mrs. Porter looked at her with a significant smile, and Anna
remembered her mother telling her how Englishwomen withdrew after a meal.

She followed Mrs. Porter, consciously moving against the
pitch, unconscious of her grace, though all the men were watching.

As soon as the door to the Admiral’s day room shut behind
them, Mrs. Porter whispered to Anna, “They
will
serve wine to us. I assure you they are all very well brought up, but custom in
the service is impossible to overcome, and so they will talk across the table
like perfect hobbledehoys. However, we forgive them. Especially before an
action.”

A scratch on the door caused her to pause. In came one of
the stewards with the long sailor’s pigtails, bearing on an embossed silver
tray a beautiful tea service.

Lady Lydia cast herself in an armchair and lay back,
groaning. Mrs. Porter said to her, “Come, dear, some tea will set you right
up.” And to the sailor serving as steward, “We can pour for ourselves. Thank
you.”

The man set the tray on the desk, knuckled his forehead and
exited.

Mrs. Fellowes sat down beside Anna on the bench that ran
under the bulkhead, her back straight. “I promise, Mrs. Duncannon, the
gentlemen know what is due to us. Their manners are rather more nice when they
are on land.”

Lady Lydia pulled fretfully at her reticule resting on the
nearby table. “They were so bor-ring.” She extracted a beautifully embroidered
square of linen, and pressed it to her lips before saying, “I thought it would
never end, this ten ages at least. Neville will stare when I tell him how rude
they were, so unlike during summer! It is this war at fault. All they think
about is the Nelson Touch, all they talk about is the Nelson Touch, until I am
brought to the brink of extinction from
ennui
.”

“Drink this, dear.” Mrs. Porter held out a cup and saucer,
balancing nicely on the long roll.

Lady Lydia sullenly took the cup and saucer, sipped, and
wrinkled her nose. “Ugh! Simply scalding.” She faced Anna and said in stilted,
heavily accented French, “One was given to expect to have civilized talk, one
was promised.” And then in English, shrill and indignant, “Who can expect
civilization when they will make anyone a captain? Berry no better than a merchant’s
brat, Prowse the son of a collier or cook, Conn the same, or worse, and Irish
as well.”

“Drink up your tea,” Mrs. Porter said soothingly. “I have
blown upon it. There is no scald.”

Lady Lydia gulped her tea, and hiccupped.

“You must remember not to empty your wine glass, without
they water it first. It is not what you are used to,” Mrs. Porter murmured.

“But it was so
tiresome
.
Four months ago
I
was the toast of
the fleet. Everybody was agreed, it was the romance of the new century.” She
turned to Anna. “I met Charles at a ball, and Cupid’s dart struck us at exactly
the same instant. It was fate! I carried my point against the entire
family—Charles said no one could have more courage—and married him on my
seventeenth birthday. I came away with him—we could not be parted an instant. I
knew I would die if we were. But men are so fickle. Here I am, old and
forgotten in four months, and so I must warn you, do not look for anything
better. They will drop us both in an instant for their war.”

She hiccupped again, then closed her eyes. “Oh, I am so very
unwell.”

A body of sound echoed through the thin walls,
Hear him, hear him!

“Dull, dull, dull.” Lady Lydia put her arms on the table,
and laid her head on them. “I am dull as a nightcap.”

“That’s right. Rest your head. The gentlemen will be at
their toasts for a time,” Mrs. Porter said comfortably.

She paused as the cabin rolled, then with a step and a turn,
neatly for so stout a woman, she sat at Anna’s other side. “Now, tell us how
you met—what happened. We have only heard that it was sudden, and in Sicily,
very like Captain Fremantle’s romance.”

Mrs. Fellowes said seriously, “You cannot conceive how
surprised his friends were, to discover Captain Duncannon married. He never
spoke of it, but he never speaks of anything of home, or family, or friends.
One only sees him come alive when he is playing Bach with certain of his
officers.”

“A disappointment in youth has been spoken of,” Mrs. Porter
whispered, as a moan emanated from Lady Lydia’s folded arms. “He was used to be
against women on board. Would sit apart at balls, if he even attended. Could
only be got ashore for musical events. They say he has never been home, not
even when his father died, and his brother Northcote succeeded to the title.”

“Have you met Lord Northcote, his brother?” Mrs. Fellowes
asked, her expression one of extreme reserve. “He goes up to London every
season.”

Lady Lydia groaned, and murmured something in which the
words ‘Lord Northcote’ could barely be made out. Then she subsided.

“I have never been to England,” Anna began. She had expected
interrogation from Lord Nelson—and indeed, she had thought it begun at the
dinner, but he had not followed that first question with anything about war, or
ships, or the like. But here were these women and their questions.

Well, she could ask questions, too. “Captain Duncannon, when
I heard last, was captain of the
Danae
.
But was there not a mutiny?”

Mrs. Porter sighed and shook her head. “It would have been
better for those poor souls on board, was Captain Duncannon still in command,
but he was given his step and promoted into
Aglaea.
Danae
was given to a man known as a
hard horse captain, a real Tartar.” She leaned close and whispered, “There was
indeed a mutiny. The crew killed all the officers, and deserted to the French.
A terrible thing, terrible!”

Mrs. Fellowes, tired of old naval news, got to what
interested her. “I take it you are a well-educated woman? A reader? Captain
Duncannon is known all over the fleet for his interests in music.”

Anna turned her way. “I was educated at the royal palace in
Naples—I do not intend
forfanterie
,
what is the English word?”

“Bragging,” came a muffled moan from the table. Then another
hiccough.

Three heads turned that way, then back as Anna continued. “I
cannot tell you if that is ‘well’ or not well. It is all that I know, do you
see? Reading, I read everything that comes in my way.” She smiled suddenly. “It
is perhaps well that I recently discovered an English book,
Clarissa
. It helped me in a prodigious
way to recollect my English, because it is many years since I spoke it, so. The
book is so very, very long, that I had to come away before I finished.”

“
Clarissa
, a
profound tragedy,” Mrs. Fellowes said approvingly.

“A tragedy? Never say so! It is so light, so
débonnaire
, but perhaps this Lovelace is
the worse ignoble?”

“I haven’t Richardson’s books,” Mrs. Fellowes admitted, “but
I can find them for you, somewhere in the fleet. I could also make you a
package of books to read, if you would care for that.”

“Oh I would be so very grateful! I can hear, my English is
much out of the practice. At dinner, I comprehended one word in fifty.”

From the cabin beyond men’s voices boomed:
His Majesty, George the Third, God rest his
soul!

Mrs. Porter cocked her head. “And that will be the end of
it.” She rose, and moved to gently shake Lady Lydia, who sighed, moaned, and
sat up. “Come drink this off, quick. It will help you get overboard. At least
you haven’t a long pull ahead of you.”

“Charles said he would come under
Victory
’s lee,” Lady Lydia mumbled. “He knows what is due . . .”
Her voice died away as everyone pulled on gloves, hats, and cloaks.

Out in the main cabin, the men were also in general stir.
Vice-Admiral Collingwood waited for an opportune moment, and pulled Captain
Duncannon aside, abaft the wheel outside of Captain Hardy’s quarters. “Nelson,”
he murmured, “is as you know as shrewd as he can hold, except when it comes to
a certain lady, and Naples.”

Duncannon assented with an inquiring look.

Collingwood whispered, “Unlike these others, I happen to
know what Troubridge was about when he bustled you into that marriage. She
might be as ignorant as she appears, or she is very practiced indeed, but we
shall not put ourselves to the trouble of answering that. You are to keep her on
board, using whatever excuse you wish, until we have been brought to action.
After that, you may do what you wish with her: whatever knowledge she possesses
will be irrelevant.”

Collingwood did not wait for an answer, but moved rapidly
away to where Nelson stood with Fremantle, Pellew, and Hardy in close
conversation.

Captain Duncannon turned from him to the lady, his—no, the
word ‘wife’ would not stick in his head—his responsibility standing with the
other women as a couple of sailors got Neville’s tiresome bride into a bosun’s
chair. In contrast to Lady Lydia’s affected airs, Anna moved with a kind of
style that caught at his heart, and he shifted his gaze, appalled at himself.
The very last thing he needed in his life right now was a wayward, useless
tendre
. He had no use for beauty: it was
false, at best, dangerous at worst.

He waited until she was let down into the gig, and gave his
coxswain the nod. Once the boat was some distance from the flagship, he asked,
“I trust you were pleased, ma’am?”

Which of her many emotions to share? She had at least rid
herself of her fears about the tyrannical captain who could cause a mutiny.
“Admiral Lord Nelson was everything that is most kind. And such a beautiful
ship.”

“I apologize if you were sadly bored by the conversation. It
cannot be helped. We must always get onto the details of our profession.”

“I could understand but little,” she admitted. “It was
entirely to be expected, and there is no fault. Indeed, Mrs. Fellowes promised
to share some books with me, that I may better my English.”

“A laudable idea,” he exclaimed. “What do you read? There
are books to be had aboard
Aglaea
.
Not an entire library, in course, but between my officers and me, I fancy we
could accommodate you, if you do not object to mere novels.”