be the son of his un-friend Sir Thomas, Spurrier's master. And the woman beside him would be-surely not the frog- soldier's wife… his sister. Yes. Hoare had once been left, loitering, to gather cobwebs in Sir Thomas's second-best salon while he awaited the Knight-Baronet's pleasure. He had had the time then to learn the Frobisher features from a row of male and female ancestor portraits. The men were all frogs, their womenfolk lizards. The sister's wispy emerald green faux-pucelle gown displayed her light top-hamper and pronounced tumble-home to no advantage.
'Honored, sir,' the frog said. 'Heard of you, of course, from the guv'nor. Lydia, me dear, this is the, er, famous Captain, er, Hoare, who interests Pater so much.'
Hoare bowed over the slabsided woman's languidly extended hand. From the lines on the hand and the face above him, she looked nearly Hoare's age, though she could hardly be thirty. No wedding ring on the hand. A Frobisher and still single? There was a mystery here. Since she must be worth a good thousand a year, it would be of no consequence to any brisk young fortune hunter that she herself could very well pass for forty-three, in the dusk with the light behind her. A well-turned phrase, that, Hoare told himself, and set it down in his mental commonplace book.
'And what happy circumstance brings this invasion by the Army?' Hoare could not believe his whispered words. He could not remember ever sounding so unctuous. It was catching.
'Oh… H. R. H., of course, sir.' Miss Frobisher's high-pitched voice grated down his spine like a seagull's cry. 'We three are pillars of the Duke's little coterie, you must know.'
'How fortunate for the Duke, and how lucky for us coarse sailors that you accompanied him.' Hoare felt his face take on a civil leer that he knew must match Captain Spurrier's.
'What progress have you made in the matter of the corpses and the carriage?' Hoare asked.
'La, sir, surely you can find a topic of conversation that is better suited to the occasion!' Miss Frobisher declared.
Spurrier disregarded the lady. His response was airy. 'Oh, none, sir, none. H. R. H.'s demands take precedence, don't ye know?'
'Ah. Well, then, can you enlighten me about the unseemly rites that I hear take place in the Circle where the bodies were found?' Hoare was mindful of Thoday's observation about the peculiar sacerdotal garment he had seen in the Captain's quarters.
'Unseemly, sir?' Spurrier's expression froze. 'You disparage things of which you know nothing. That is unwise, sir.'
'Ah,' Hoare continued in his whisper. He turned to the frog. 'By the by, Mr. Frobisher,' he said, 'I am ashamed to admit that I do not recognize your uniform. It is an unusual color.'
Frobisher's grin nearly split his face in two. 'I am hardly surprised, sir. It is the uniform of the Dorsetshire Fencible Horse, sir. Our regiment is known only for having run away at Sedgemoor, its only engagement, before it was even ordered to charge Monmouth's rebels.'
'Oh?' Hoare asked. The frog's candor was astonishing but engaging.
'Yes, Captain. That is one of the reasons why I chose the Fencibles-the Brown-Bottomed Bastards, I've heard us called. You see, I'm a coward.'
'Ah, yes. 'The Fencibles, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well,' ' was Hoare's comment. Mentally, he wrote this phrase, too, into his commonplace book.
'That's just in the first place,' Frobisher said. 'In the second place, there's that matter of the crown of Ethelred.'
'Martin!' His sister's voice was horrified. 'You must not speak of the Frobisher honor in such a connection!'
'I have heard something, Mr. Frobisher, about the royal blood of a Frobisher ancestor, but I confess that I know nothing of it. Pray enlighten me.'
'Not here, Captain, if you don't mind.' Frobisher's grin widened. 'Don't you agree that it would be a bit of beyond to discuss my father's dubious claim to the Crown-'
'Martin!'
Martin Frobisher and his sister might be siblings; they were not friends, it seemed. The green gentleman dismissed her protest and pressed on. '… while preparing to be received by a son of the man who wears it today?'
'I suppose so,' Hoare said. He was finding he could like this man. 'I seem to recall your father's having told me… when he and I first met and before we so unfortunately became estranged, that you held a commission as an officer of the Foot Guards.'
'Me?' Frobisher's laugh was suited to his figure; it was a peculiar batrachian croak.
'My dear man! I've already admitted to you that I'm a coward. How can you imagine the Foot Guards accepting a coward of any shape, let alone mine?'
'Your candor is refreshing, sir,' Hoare said.
'Speaking of uniforms,' he whispered with a spanking-new, oily smile, 'I must also admit, Captain Spurrier, that the facings of your coat are also unfamiliar to me.
'Fourteenth Hussars, sir,' Spurrier said coldly. 'I would be happy to make you better acquainted with them.'
Hoare was about to respond with a remark that might have been about turncoats and might lead to an encounter he was becoming inclined to seek from this bounding man.
But Delancey, the flag secretary, bustled up, followed almost immediately by Francis Bennett, legal counsel to the Admiralty in Portsmouth.
'Francis,' Delancey said to Bennett, with a cool nod.
'Francis,' Bennett replied. The two men shared not only the same Christian name but also the same ambition to be the aide closest to Admiral Hardcastle as well as-or so Hoare had heard it whispered-enjoying the favors of the same mistress. Bennett had served Hoare as second in his rencontre with the late Lieutenant Wallace of Vantage. Delancey, however, like Hoare's friend Peter Gladden of Frolic, was Miss Felicia Hardcastle's suitor. Hoare knew well whose side he was on. Delancey could go to the devil.
'I must take you away from your friends, Captain,' Delancey drawled to Hoare with obvious pleasure. 'I need hardly remind you of the purpose for which you were commanded here. Not invited, commanded.'
None too subtly, Delancey ran his courtier's eye over Hoare, hoping, Hoare knew, to find a flaw in his dress that would make his presentation to Cumberland impossible, after all. Finding none, he let Hoare make his bows to Miss Lydia and her two attendants before he led him through the crowd, to and into the sacred circle about His Royal Highness. It made Hoare think of the Nine Stones Circle, with which he had already become all too familiar.
Perhaps the order of introduction to the royal party was dictated by Hanoverian protocol. Like everyone else, Hoare knew that Cumberland, if he failed to bounce his brothers, one after another, off the steps to the English throne, aspired to that of Hanover. Whatever the reason, fat Felicia Hardcastle, being lowest in order of precedence, was the first within the circle to whom Delancey presented his captive.
Unintentionally, perhaps, the girl put Mr. Delancey in his place by asking hopefully if Hoare had any news of 'dear Mr. Gladden' and by looking sorrowful when he said he could give her none.
'But did you know, Captain Hoare,' she asked him with a happy sigh, 'I am invited to his family, at Broadmead, just at the edge of the New Forest? I am so excited I can hardly speak! And I hear that you, too… But la! I must not tell!' She batted her little pinkish eyes at Hoare.
'Come along, Captain,' Delancey said sourly, with a reproachful look at his Admiral's daughter, and stepped past her to make his bow to the woman with the sapphire eyes. Hoare followed suit.
'Mrs. Prettyman? May I introduce Captain Bartholomew Hoare? Captain Hoare is the-'
'Oh, I have heard of Captain Hoare. I am Selene, Captain Hoare. Selene Prettyman, wife of Colonel Ferdinand Prettyman,' Mrs. Prettyman said.
Mr. Delancey took patronizing pity on Hoare. 'Colonel Prettyman is one of H. R. H.'s equerries, Captain,' he explained as Hoare lowered his head to her extended gloved hand. 'Presently indisposed, sad to say,' Delancey added.
Hoare rose from his bow to see those sapphire eyes fixing his own faded gray ones from beneath long lashes. As he had thought, they needed to look up only slightly. The lashes were black. They made the eyes enormous,
