'Lord, Lootenant, you are hot!'
Arabella Shaw looked up at the handsome face of the English officer.
And you, ma'am,' Lieutenant Gordon replied with equal candour, 'are beautiful.'
He smiled down at her, blaming his own goatishness on her soft body and its capacity to arouse. He clasped her waist tighter as they whirled together in the waltz. She judged him to be a year or so short of thirty, at least ten years her junior, but with a chilling absence of two fingers on his left hand. She could feel the lust in him, pliantly urgent. He might have excused his obtrusiveness by claiming an overlong period at sea, but he pretended it did not exist and she acknowledged this intimate flattery by lowering her eyes.
Mr Gordon took this for surrender; not, he realized, of the citadel, but of an outwork, a ravelin. He gathered her closer still, enchanted by the scent of her hair in his nostrils, her exotic perfume and the swell of her breasts against his chest.
Mistress Shaw endured his rough attentions and curtseyed formally as the music stopped. As he returned her to her seat, she quietly cursed her own weakness for suggesting this evening. Her widowhood had begun to irk her and she had felt the impromtu ball an occasion enabling her to cast aside more than a year of mourning, besides helping her father-in-law do what he could to stop the imminent rupture between the United States and Great Britain. He had enthusiastically adopted her suggestion of inviting the officers of both naval ships to a rout.
She had to admit her own motives were far less philanthropic. It had been curiosity which tipped her judgement in favour of making the suggestion; curiosity to see the English officers. She had been a girl at the time of Yorktown when the hated redcoats had surrendered sullenly against overwhelming odds. Defeat had not robbed them of their potent terror to a young mind and the childish impression had remained. She still thought of them as bogey-men inhabiting the dark, threatening spectres to be conjured up when children were disobedient. And once again they were at large, plundering American ships off their own coastline and carrying off innocent sailors like the Barbary pirates with whom her country had already been at war. Tonight she had thought, with a frisson of fearful delight, she would see these mythological beings for herself and she was half-disappointed, half-relieved that they were not the pop-eyed, dissolute, viciously indolent exquisites she had expected.
There had been, too, the added inducement to exhibit a new gown, a gay, uninhibited contrast with the black bombazine which for so long had hidden her figure. To this was added a patriotic justification, for the gown had been smuggled from Paris to replace her widow's weeds and she wore it in defiance of the British blockade. The wicked desire to try its effects on English sophisticates (as she imagined them to be) had honed her anticipation. She had had enough of the male society of Virginia. The rich, elderly and often dissolute men who had shown an interest in her had seemed either opportunist or calculating. Their expressions of regard had been too contrived for sincerity, or their desires too obvious for a permanent attachment. None had struck an answering longing in her own heart. For her all men had died with her husband, whose mutilated body they had found already putrefying beside his exhausted horse. They said the stump of an Indian arrow in his back had killed him when mounting, and not the dreadful, nightmare gallop of a terrified mount whose rider had fallen backwards with one foot caught in a stirrup.
They reached the table and Gordon's mangled hand gave her a sharp reminder of the mortality of men. She was suddenly sorry for him and ashamed of her soft breasts that jutted, a la Marie-Louise, to tantalize him. She sat and sipped from her glass while Gordon, handsome and eager, hovered uncertainly. She was about to ask him lo sit too, since his awkwardness was unsettling her, when he was superseded. A tall, gaunt young Scot in the scarlet and blue facings of her childhood fancy, a glittering gorget and white cravat reflecting on a pugnacious chin, elbowed Gordon aside. She sensed some tacit agreement, for Gordon withdrew unprotesting and bowing. She felt cheap, not wicked, as if the subtleties of wearing the gown were lost on these boors and had merely made of her a whore. The lobsterback officer was bending over her hand.
'Quentin Moncrieff, ma'am, Royal Marines, at your service. The band is about to strike up, I believe, and I would be obliged if you would do me the honour ...'
The leg he put forward was well muscled, the bow elegant enough, and, as if to emphasize his authority, the music began again, silencing the buzz of chatter. She submitted, Moncrieff led her out and almost at once she regretted Gordon's honest lust as Moncrieff's flattery assaulted her.
Both had the same end in view; she had clearly been pointed out as a widow, perhaps in a moment of weakness by the rather gauche-looking American officers grouped around one table muttering amongst themselves and regarding their visitors with suspicion. She supposed she had upset them by dancing exclusively with the British; it was a good thing her brother was not here, though Lieutenant Tucker would doubtless keep him informed.
Moncrieff's remarks blew into her ear. Oh yes, they knew her for a widow all right, a woman who in their opinion must, by definition, need a man and who, moreover, would be discreet in having one. She did not know a sizeable wager rested upon her virtue.
She was tiring of the evening as a self-satisfied Moncrieff led her back to her table. She tried to recall what she had said to him, but found the intimidating glares of Lieutenant Tucker and his cronies only made her reflect what a pity it was that events always had the contrary result to what had been intended. She was beginning to wish she had not suggested the evening in the first place as much as regretting the décolletage of the French gown. Inspiration saved her from surrender to yet another eager young officer who appeared to head a queue of blushing midshipmen.
'Mr Moncrieff,' she asked in her low drawl, 'would you be kind enough to introduce me to your captain?'
She had missed the arrival of the British officers. They had been prompt — some talk of a race between the boats of the two ships, she believed, though where she had learned the fact, unless it was from Moncrieff's panting eagerness to pour his heart's desire into her ear, she could not be sure — and her maid had not done her hair properly so she had been late. Her father-in-law had greeted them all and the ballroom was already filled with chatter and the glitter of uniforms by the time she had joined them.
'The Captain, ma'am? Why ... er, of course.'
She sensed the response to discipline, felt the effect of iron rule even here, in the privacy of Castle Point. Moncrieff ceased to be himself and became merely an officer, correct, precise and formal. She felt a momentary pity for him and his colleagues, a wildly promiscuous desire to touch them all with herself and release them from the thraldom of lust and duty.
Moncrieff surveyed the company as the music began again and Lieutenant Tucker, his arm about the waist of Kate Denbigh of Falmouth township, prepared to out-do the British and show them how a Yankee officer danced the polka.
'This way, ma'am.'
Moncrieff was eager to be rid of her now, eager to slide his own arm round the slender waist of a younger, less worldly woman than the Widow Shaw. He led her to an open French window where a solitary figure stood, half merging with the heavy folds of a long blue velvet curtain.
Moncrieff coughed formally. 'Sir? May I present Mistress Shaw…'
The captain did not turn, indeed he did not appear to have heard and she thought the authority of a British captain too elevated to acknowledge an American widow hell-bent on escape from his officers. His indifference riled her far more than their concupiscence and she felt humiliated in front of Moncrieff. She played a final desperate card and dismissed the marine officer.
'Thank you, Mr Moncrieff.'
Lamely Moncrieff carried out the final ritual of his duty: 'Captain Drinkwater ... Mrs Shaw...' He bowed, disappointed, and withdrew.
She hung there, flushing, resenting this necessity of suspension between the two men — two Englishmen!
'I was admiring the view, ma'am,' th
e captain said, almost abstractedly and without turning his head. 'The moonrise on the Potomac ... yours is a very beautiful country.'
He turned then, catching her wide-mouthed, angry and flushed. She was, he saw, voluptuously handsome, her black hair a legacy of Spanish or Indian blood, her skin creamy from some Irish settler. Too lovely to contemplate, he thought with a pang, and swung abruptly away, disturbed despite his fifty years.
She saw a stoop-shouldered man, whose epaulettes failed entirely to conceal something odd about his shoulders. He was of middle height with still-profuse and unpomaded hair. The iron-grey mane was drawn back and caught behind his head in an old-fashioned, black-ribboned queue which she longed to tug, to chastise him for his rudeness.
'You are not dancing, Captain?' she said desperately at this infuriating indifference.
He was aware of his ill-manners and turned to face her properly. 'Forgive me, ma'am. No, I am not dancing. Truth to tell, I dare not…'
His forehead was high, his nose straight and his face at first seemed to be a boy's grown old, an impression solely due to the twinkle in his grey eyes. But his skin was weathered and lined, and the thin scar of an ancient wound puckered down his left cheek.
She responded to the dry twist of his mouth, her anger melting now she had his attention. 'Dare not, sir? Do I understand a British captain is afraid?'
He grinned, and again there was the suggestion of boyishness, disarming the mild jibe. Drinkwater himself warmed to the gentle mockery which reminded him of his wife, Elizabeth.
'Terrified, ma'am ...'
'Of what, pray?'
'Of betraying my incompetence before my officers.' They laughed together.
'They sure are a scarifying lot,' she said. 'I have just escaped their clutches.'
'Ah,' said Captain Drinkwater, looking her full in the face and seeing for the first time she was no longer a girl. 'And am I to understand you feel safer here, eh?' He did not wait for a reply, but went on. 'If I attended to my duty I should remonstrate that your gown has an obvious origin, which I disapprove of, but I am not yet too dried up to be so ungallant.'
'I am glad of that,' she said, now strangely irritated by the success of her ploy in wearing it, 'but we conceive it to be no right of yours to blockade our coast.'
'Ma'am, in all seriousness, we have not yet begun to blockade your coast.'
His eyes wandered past her bare shoulder as he tried to mask the gall her remark provoked and to forget the terrible cost in British lives that the blockade of Europe was costing. What its extension to the seaboard of the United States would mean could only be guessed at. It was not the roaring glory of death in battle that was corroding the Royal Navy, but the ceaseless wear-and-tear on ships and men condemned, officers and ratings alike, to a life deprived of every prospect of comfort or privacy. It was over a twelvemonth since Collingwood had died at his desk aboard the Ocean. Five years after Trafalgar and without leave during the whole of the period, Nelson's heir had followed his own brother, whom Drinkwater had once met, to an early grave. It was a bitter pill to swallow, to be deprived of Elizabeth and yet to see this woman done up in the height of Parisian fashion. He sighed, aware she was no more mistress of her own destiny than he was of his. Providence ruled them all and it was no excuse for discourtesy. There were parsons and squires aplenty in Kent and Sussex who roistered to bed full to their gunwhales with cognac. Had he not seen himself, on the island of Helgoland, the lengths to which men would go to trade in proscribed goods? There were too many transgressors to offend this woman on the far side of the Atlantic. He made amends as best he could.
'I regret I did not catch your name, ma'am.' He made a small bow. 'Nathaniel Drinkwater, Captain in His Britannic Majesty's Navy, at your service.' He recited the formula with a tired ruefulness he hoped would pass in part for apology, in part for explanation.
'Arabella Shaw,' she replied, 'widow...' She did not know why she had revealed her status, except perhaps to prick his stiff British pride and ape his own portentousness.
'I'm sorry, ma'am, I had no idea.' He looked gratifyingly confused.
'It seemed common knowledge among your officers.'
'Hence your escape?' he asked and she inclined her head. 'Then I apologize for their conduct and my own failure to render sympathetic assistance.'
'Lord, Captain, you make me feel like a derelict hulk!' She was smiling again and he was feeling an unaccountable relief.
'You are familiar with a nautical metaphor?'
'I am no stranger to boats, Captain, while my brother is a Master Commandant in our un-Britannic navy.'
Comprehension dawned upon him and it was Drinkwater's turn to flush. 'Forgive me ... Mrs Shaw, of course, I am sorry, I had not realized, you are the daughter of the house...'
'Daughter-in-law, Captain. Unfortunately I was not here to receive you ...'
'We were inconsiderately early,' he said quickly and then turned to look round the dancers. His eye fell upon the bald head of their host. 'I thought the tall lady in brown silk with Mr Shaw ...'
'Oh, she'd like to become Mrs Shaw, but she is actually still Mrs Denbigh, from Falmouth, a widow and a somewhat designing woman with two pretty daughters ...'
'Ah, and you are the young lady whose horse we startled this morning ...'
'With your preposterous cannon, yes, I spoke to my brother Charles about that. Why on earth you should have wished to disturb the peace and tranquillity of half Virginia with such nonsense passes my comprehension!'
He remembered Captain Stewart walking at the head of the chestnut and talking to its rider. Righteous indignation lent colour to her cheeks.
'I think a flag of truce is in order, Mistress Shaw, do you not?'
'Is that what you have come here for? A flag of truce, or something more durable? My father-in-law sees no advantage in a war.'
'What about your brother?'
She shrugged. 'He seems to be like most men — eager to fight.'
'He would not be so eager had he spent his lifetime thus.'
The conviction in Drinkwater's tone made her look at him with renewed interest. 'I know you to have brought a diplomatic mission ...' She looked round the ballroom.
'No, he is not here. He has some notion of propriety that it would not be politic for him to step ashore until he has official approval...'
'So you too are against an open breach between our countries?'
'Certainly. And so, I think it is not indiscreet of me to say, is he.'
'I am glad of that. You must meet my father-in-law later. Come, show me the moonlight on the Potomac, Captain Drinkwater.'
She slipped her arm in his with sudden, easy familiarity, and they stepped through the French windows on to a battlemented terrace which crowned the rising ground upon which the house was built.
'My late husband's grandfather intended to build a castle on the hill here, hence its name. It was barely started when he was killed at the Battle of the Brandywine. This terrace is called "The Battery", though it mounts nothing more offensive than a flower urn or two.'
'Your husband's grandfather had a fine eye for landscape, ma'am; it reminds me of an English deer-park.'
Your English deer-park, perhaps?' she asked shrewdly.
He laughed, thinking of Gantley Hall and its two modest farms. 'Lord no, Mrs Shaw, my own house boasts nothing more impressive than a walled garden, a kitchen garden and an orchard which would fit upon the terrace here.'
Mrs Shaw nodded to another couple taking the air. 'And is there a wife, Captain Drinkwater, to go with all this domesticity?'
He looked at her, about to ask if it mattered either way, while she waited, herself annoyed that it did. He nodded, turning the knife in the unguessed at and, for her, unexpected wound. 'And a son and daughter. Do you have children, Mrs Shaw?'
She shook her head and digested the fact in silence, comparing it with her own bereavement and catching the wistful note in his voice.
'If you miss them, Capta
in,' she asked softly, 'why do you come here?' There was a hint of Yankee hostility in the question.
'That is a question I frequently ask myself, Mrs Shaw.'
She sensed his retreat and found it surprisingly hurtful. Silence settled on them again and after a while she shivered.
'Shall we go in?' he asked.
They turned back to the brilliantly lit ballroom. He was already remote again, ready to detach her as they approached the French windows. She stopped short of the light spilling on to the pave.
'Do you ride, Captain?'
He halted, surprised. 'Ride? After a fashion, an indifferent bad fashion, I'm afraid.'
'Would you care to see some more of my beautiful country tomorrow?'
He thought of the enchantment inherent in such an invitation, the release from the isolated and tedious splendour of his command, the surrender to landscape, to fecund greenery after the harsh tones of sea and sky. Then he thought of the ship and the discontent seething between her decks, of men mewed up by force, of the guard-boat and the sentries with their orders, his orders to shoot...
He had left a disgruntled Metcalfe aboard this evening; how could he leave them again and go gallivanting about on horseback in full view of the ship's company?
She took his hesitation for imminent refusal. She knew her brother's return from Washington was as likely to bring rebuttal to the English peace overtures as acceptance, that the English frigate might overnight become an enemy and be compelled to put to sea. A sense of panic welled up within her, a sudden, overwhelming urge to see this man again; she tried to find something wittily memorable to say to him and compel him to change his mind.
'I promise my habit will be less contentious, Captain,' she said, furious that her voice trembled.
He could not ignore her, or cast her aside. He told himself he had been more than off-hand with her earlier, that her father-in-law wanted peace and was clearly a man of substance and influence, a man to be encouraged; he told himself that such a meeting might aid the peace process just as he told himself a dinner party at Castle Point might include Captain Stewart and therefore open a discussion of potential interest to a British naval officer.
The flying squadron nd-11 Page 9
