Rondo Allegro (42 page)

I beg you will not render our lives Hideous in the Extreme by
such a measure. But however, it is now your Decision and you may do what you
Like. But you must visit the Solicitor, or at the Least
[another half-dozen
underlinings]
write, that we may know our Fates.

With better hopes, your still loving sister, and I am very
sorry you did not write back about the Handkerchiefs I embroidered for you with
mourning edgework, though I know my stitchwork is Not All it ought to be—

Your loving Sister,

Harriet

Anna refolded the letter, more confused than enlightened.
The only thing clear was that the captain had a sister, and she felt it was his
duty to return home.

She tucked the letter back into her pocket as Captain
Duncannon was brought up to the dock as carefully as possible. She watched
anxiously. Had he stirred, or was that an effect of the motion that could not
be completely avoided?

He was still again, but breathing. She listened to that
breathing as they were conveyed in the back of a wagon with two other badly
wounded men from other ships. Anna was scarcely aware of her surroundings,
hearing only a mix of Spanish and English voices.

Every jolt she felt in her heart, the more because one of
the men groaned feverishly. Parrette stayed by her side, a silent presence, as
they followed the orderlies into the military hospital, and the captain was
carried to a cool, quiet room away from the general wards.

When the captain was lifted from the cot to the waiting bed,
this time she was certain she saw his head move beneath the covering sheet, and
one hand flex.

“He wakes,” she cried. And then lower, “He moved. I am
certain of it.”

“I saw, too,” Parrette said.

A man in a physician’s scratch wig and black coat had
appeared, a tired-looking man with enormous side-whiskers that came all the way
around his face under his chin, leaving his cheeks and mouth bare.

He glanced into the cot, took the captain’s pulse, looked
under his eyelids, then shook his head solemnly. “It is only the movement of
the cot. He is in a coma. The danger is extreme,” he added, low-voiced. “There
must be no voices, no excitement at all.” He turned to Anna. “You are Captain Lord
Northcote’s lady, I apprehend?”

There was that title again! She touched her pocket
containing the letter before saying, “I am.”

“I wish to assure you that he will get the best of care, but
what he needs most of all is quiet. Generally in these cases, if the patient
survives the initial crisis, there is a strong possibility that he will waken.
But I must warn you that the vitreous humors are suffused.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there is a decided chance that he will wake blind.
I warn you of possibilities, to emphasize the severity of the case. We cannot
speak of certainties.”

At her shocked expression he relented enough to add, “I
venture to hold out a cautious hope. Even if he does wake blind, there is
always a possibility that with time, and perhaps some judicious blood-letting,
that the humors will clear, and restore his sight. But he must be made to be
quiet, completely quiet, with no excitement, no speech, even, until the crisis
is safely past.”

“How long will that be?” she asked, aware of Parrette behind
her, and at the door, a young midshipman restlessly waiting.

The scratch wig inclined in a bow. “No one can say. It could
be an appreciable time. If he does waken in possession of his intellects, he is
going to require absolute quiet, and a room devoid of light. You could do the
most good by going ahead to prepare his home to receive him.”

He bowed and turned away to one of the several men waiting
for his attention. Anna, left alone, became aware of whispering, and when she
turned her head, it was to discover Parrette in close conversation with a stout
middle-aged woman wearing a coarse apron over her linsey-woolsey gown, a plain
cap on her head.

Anna nearly stepped away when she recognized the brown
stains on that apron as blood. Parrette said, “Mrs. Sperring here says they are
over-charged in this place.”

“It’s severe, your la’ship,” this woman said in a broad
accent that Anna found difficult to understand. At least the woman was too tired to
speak quickly. “Severe, like. We’ve no proper place for a lady. We’re running
out of beds as ’tis.”

“She tended wounded on one of the other ships,” Parrette
said.

To this Mrs. Sperring added, with a mirthless laugh, “Afore
that I was running powder, skipping like a boy.”

The two women looked expectantly at Anna, who recognized
moral certainty. Though she was supposed to be the lady of rank here, it was
very clear where authority lay. It was her place to bow to greater need, and
withdraw.

She said slowly, “Is there perhaps another physician?
Another hospital? Somewhere I can take him, where there is no crowding?”

Mrs. Sperring laughed. “Bless you, dearie, this
is
the best. And the admiral’s own man,
you just spoken to. There ain’t any better, not for a month’s travel in any
direction.”

Anna let her breath out. Gibraltar was little more than a
rock in the sea, poised between two continents, with war all around. “Lieutenant
Sayers spoke of England.”

Mrs. Sperring’s broad brow cleared. “Yes, your la’ship, the
very thing. You can do no better than that. On his waking, he will want to know
you are there.”

“Very well. Thank you,” she said, and finding Perkins
hovering beside the door, she went up to him. “Are you being let to stay?”

“It’s orders,” Perkins said, loud enough for that
gallows-faced cove in the scrub wig to hear. “It’s orders, I’m to be right
here. I’ll sleep right here on the floor next or nigh him.”

“Oh, thank you,” she murmured and slid the letter into his
hand. “When the captain wakes, pray give this to him. Tell him the seal is
broken because Lieutenant Sayers said I must open it.”

Perkins touched his forehead. “I’ll see to it, Missus
Capting, your la’ship, that is. The lieutenant told me the news. You can lay
your life I’ll see to him. Good journey to you.”

“Thank you, and to you.”

“This way,” Parrette said. “They await us.”

o0o

Two hours later, as the tide turned, she and Parrette
stood together on the tiny deck of the
Mermaid
.

They watched until the harbor receded to an unevenly curved
line below the towering Rock, and the ships dwindled to dots with gently
swaying masts.

The captain of the
Mermaid
waited until the harbor had dropped below the horizon before sending his single
middie to his guest. The boy touched his hat respectfully. “Captain Neville’s
duty, ma’am, and should you like to join him for dinner, the watch is about to
change.”

Anna knew what that meant: she mustn’t keep him waiting.
Nothing short of the worst hurricane, or the heat of battle, kept the navy from
its regular round of whistles and bells, and a captain’s invitation was
tantamount to stringent command.

She paced beside the midshipman, a thin, earnest-faced boy,
and descended the short distance to what was a fine little cabin, divided into
two chambers.

Captain Neville, wearing his formal blue coat, hovered
outside the carved doors of his cabin. He was very handsome in the English
style, fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a ready smile. “Welcome aboard, Lady
Northcote,” he said. “Pray accept my wife’s best wishes and earnest excuses.
She is unwell, and desires me to assure you that only illness prevents her from
joining us. But if you wish to wait upon her following the meal, you would be
most welcome.”

Anna said what was proper as a white-gloved steward quietly
served a meal. Charles Neville guided the conversation along unexceptionable
topics. In this way they soon arrived at music.

Finding his guest very well informed on a subject he
relished, Captain Neville kept them at it until the cover was removed.
Remembering the dinner aboard Nelson’s flagship, Anna scrupulously withdrew,
freeing Neville to return to the deck.

Anna perforce then had to call upon Lady Lydia, lying in the
sleeping cabin adjacent. One look at her made it clear that being unwell was no
pretext.

Lady Lydia, so lively and pretty aboard the flagship, was
almost unrecognizable, her hair tangled, her complexion greenish with nausea.
“You are here at last,” she said fretfully. “On no account, I told Charles,
must the smells of food be permitted inside here. Oh, I am so
very
ill, this motion will be
mortal
before I can ever get home.” Her
lips worked, her face paled as she clapped her hand to her mouth.

Anna said hastily, “I shall withdraw now, shall I? I will
visit you on the morrow. Perhaps you will feel better.” She closed the cabin
door on the poor young wife.

Parrette was waiting. She took Anna down to the tiny
canvas-walled space that belonged to the lieutenant, now made over to the
guests. There were two hammocks, one low, and one high, as there was nowhere
else for them in the small ship.

Mindful of how sound carried, she repeated the gist of the letter
to Parrette, speaking in Neapolitan.

Parrette, watching her with narrowed eyes, waited until she
was through and then observed, “You are now Lady Northcote, and you must now go
to his home.”

“So everyone seems to expect of me. I will do what’s right,
but he never told me of this home, or these people, and I expect it is the same
for them. How am I to thrust myself upon people who
I
expect have no idea I even exist?”

“You will do it because it is your duty.” Parrette shrugged.
“Speaking of everything that is proper, Lady Lydia’s Mrs. Timothy gave me the
cast aside magazines, and I shall address your clothing. If they waited upon
the birth of a possible heir, then the death is not recent. You will not be
required to wear black.
Toutefois!
You
will be in proper half-mourning when you step off this ship in London Harbor,
or wherever they choose to land us. I am going to need to visit warehouses as
soon as may be. You’ve only the two gowns in correct shades.”

Anna thanked her, but with a grave, almost absent air.
Parrette’s brows snapped together. “You have misgivings?”

“Not about the clothes,” Anna said hastily. “Thanks to you.
It is this place we go to. About that I have misgivings.”

“Where else should we go?” Parrette asked, and seeing Anna’s
uncertainty, pushed on relentlessly. “It would be madness to return to Spain.
Or Naples, with war there, too. Back to France? Do you think, even if Company
Dupree were to return to Paris, would you have your place back? Is that what
you truly want?”

Anna sat on the lower hammock. “I want him to be well, to
talk to me, to decide together if we are truly man and wife. After that, I can
look to the future.”

“You
are
man and
wife,” Parrette said. “But a marriage is not the piece of paper you signed.
That began it. A marriage, a good one gets made and remade every day.” Her
voice trembled.

Anna studied Parrette’s steady gaze, knowing that Parrette
had had the worst of marriages, and yet she had done her best. Anna knew she
had nothing to complain of, except fear of the unknown. And that was everyone’s
fear during wartime.

“Then we are off to this Yorkshire, wherever that may be, to
await his recovery,” Anna said, and felt guilty when she perceived the tension
easing from Parrette’s brow.

The next morning, as the sloop sailed with slanted deck
before a driving wind, Parrette made Anna put on her second-best silk day gown,
a soft silver-gray, from which Parrette had unpicked the green and crimson
embroidery, and removed most of the lace.

After breakfast she went to the little cabin where she found
Lady Lydia sitting propped on pillows in the cabin. Lady Lydia looked less
green than she had the previous evening.

Her maid, a silent woman hovering in the background, had
managed to dress her hair with a fresh ribbon, and she wore a bed jacket of
ribbon-threaded lace.

“Good morning, Lady Northcote.” Lady Lydia eyed her visitor
with an expression not unlike a discontented pout, before she forced a smile,
twining a curl fretfully around a finger. “This illness puts me all out of
patience. It is by rights supposed to be worse in the mornings, but
I
am plagued with it all through the
night. You ought to be grateful you are not in child while being tossed
unmercifully by the billows, is all I can say.”

Anna murmured a sympathetic politeness, to which Lady Lydia
replied with a sigh. “At all events, I know it is ill-bred to tender
congratulations. Charles told me this morning that no one aboard
Aglaea
— no one in the fleet—had
actually known that Lord Northcote, the previous baron, had died Christmas last
year. And here I’d thought Duncannon had had scruples about using the title
until he should find out if the baby was a boy. At any event, I am now to
discover that Emily Northcote was
not
delivered of a boy, and I must say—but no, I am not to indulge in
commérage
, Charles says. So
I will say nothing about
her
, but I
believe I can say that I pity Miss Harriet Duncannon with all my heart, as she
was to be presented to society last spring, as I was.”

Commérage.
The English word was ‘gossip,’ as if using French
mitigated the meaning. Lady Lydia became absorbed in untangling the ribbons
tying her bed jacket, and Anna caught the last of a sidelong glance, and
shifted the subject. “Pray, if you would be so kind, I must consult your advice
on a point of English etiquette.”

Lady Lydia’s face flushed with pleasure. Few people disliked
being asked for advice. “Your accent is so charming! Let us speak in French,”
she said, switching to that language. “Then we are less likely to have the
servants prating all over, whatever we might say.” Her French was good, if
stilted—probably, Anna thought privately, as stilted as her own English.