'I regret it most exceedingly, Hoare,' the admiral declared over the tweeting pipes of ceremony, before he stepped from Royal Duke into his waiting barge, 'but the service requires that you report to me at Admiralty House on Wednesday morning, for orders. At eight bells of the morning watch, shall we say? You are to proceed to London immediately thereafter. Tonight, however, I give you permission to sleep away from your ship.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' was all the surprised, crestfallen Hoare could say. He was both ashamed to have forgotten the requirement, set down in standing orders, that no ship's commanding officer could sleep away from his ship without his admiral's permission, and dismayed to learn that he must leave his marriage bed on the very morning after its first use.
Hat in hand, he stood at Royal Duke's entry port until the barge disappeared astern. Already, obedient to some signal Hoare had failed to observe during the excitement aboard Royal Duke, the frigate that had conveyed Sir George to Weymouth was weighing anchor. Hoare could hear the faint scratching of the fiddler on her capstan head, and the steady stamp and go of horny feet as, inch by inch, her crew won home the single anchor she had dropped on arrival. He watched, arm about his bride's waist, while, as if by clockwork, fore topsail, jibs and spanker appeared just as the admiral swarmed up her tumble-home. And watched, too, to see her 'round the breakwater, tack nimbly, and set a course for her day's journey home.
'It was a great compliment, sir, and a deserved one, that Sir George found the time to leave his post and travel here for today's ceremony.' It was the Reverend Arthur Gladden's voice at Hoare's elbow. Somehow, Hoare observed, it had already acquired a clerical cadence, even so soon after its owner's admission to holy orders.
'We can thank Lord Nelson for it, Gladden,' Hoare whispered. 'Since Trafalgar, the Royal Navy no longer need send to sea any bottom that can swim.'
'A sad, sad loss, nonetheless,' Mr. Gladden remarked.
'Indeed.' While respecting the late Lord Nelson's blazing courage, which he personally deemed all but suicidal, and respecting above all the hero's ability to weld the disparate captains under his command into that famous band of brothers, Hoare could not bring himself to feel the same about either his strategic genius or his personal morals.
'Well, we must be off,' Gladden said. 'Come, Anne! We have a long journey ahead of us, and two services for me to prepare, together with my sermon. This Christmastide-my first as a priest of God, of course-has left me sadly behind in my duties, I fear.
'By the bye, Hoare,' he added, 'I had thought to weave into my Sunday's homily that 'happy outcome of all our afflictions,' which is epitomized by the union which I have just been privileged to sanctify. Come, Anne!'
Hoare paid Gladden little attention, for he was thinking about the remark he had overheard Miss Austen make. She might be sardonic, but she was perceptive. He must learn to mind his dourness. As for the lady's acidulations, she appeared to save them up until the right occasion arose to use them. Perhaps she, too, kept a commonplace book, just like the one he kept in one corner of his mind, in which he preserved his own infrequent wit and wisdom. These irreverent phrases might come in handy one day, or be passed on to an admiring younger generation.
At least, he thought, she must eventually resign herself to seeing her old friend married to this man whom she apparently deemed so unsuitable a match. He knew her to be a highly intelligent woman, yet her attempts to put a spoke in Hoare's wheel had been feeble from the first, perhaps even half-hearted. He wondered what had moved her to make them to begin with.
Gladden's little sister had already parted from her lieutenant, and was awaiting her brother in the stern sheets of one of the pair-oared wherries that were hanging about Royal Duke to take off her guests. She turned to wave a kerchief sadly at Mr. Clay. The little lieutenant stood now, as Hoare had, hat in hand, until he saw his special guest safe ashore. Then he stood aside for his commander to leave the ship. The bride's people loaded the couple's portmanteaux into Hoare's gig, while she thanked the weary instrumentalists. As she did so, Hoare took Mr. Clay aside.
'I'll be back aboard in the morning,' he whispered. 'While I'm away, you must prepare her for sea. We must be in Portsmouth on Wednesday, before four bells of the morning watch.'
That order given, he handed his bride into the gig and followed her out of his command.
They would spend their wedding night in the house that Dr. Simon Graves had left to his wife, and in the bed she had shared with her late husband. The next day they would part company, since Hoare must obey his summons to Portsmouth. Sir George Hardcastle, who was known to be a hard and a merciless man, tolerated tardiness not at all. Hoare did not look forward to breaking the news to his bride that they must part so soon. They had known it must happen sooner rather than later, but-their first wedded morning? That was too much of enough.
'And how do you do this morning, my love?' Hoare looked down at his bride's figure beside him, her black hair spread across the pillow. Sleepily, she looked back at him.
'To tell you the truth, Bartholomew, I'm sore,' she said. 'Sore down there, and somewhat surprised at the entire proceedings. The practice is much more intriguing than the theory, I find. Thank you, my dear. You are a most understanding man, I think.' She drew his head down to hers, nibbled his ear, and kissed him deeply.
As Hoare had expected, Eleanor had been a virgin. Her late husband had been paralyzed below the waist when they had married, so their union had never been physically consummated. Her imagination cannot have lain idle, however, and her new experience of the night before had apparently only aroused her enthusiasm. Hoare found its intensity startling, and arousing in its turn. The beneficent cycle took its natural course.
Downstairs in the sunny parlor, the maid Agnes and the manservant Tom served the Hoares a late breakfast with their tea- kedgeree, kippers, kidneys, and toast. The child Jenny had taken a bowl of porridge in the kitchen earlier, but now sat demurely between bride and groom, handling her tableware with extreme care and absorbing food in silence and enormous quantities. Under the care of her late father, the child had been under nourished, so she had much catching up to do. She was doing her best.
Neither servant even attempted to suppress a knowing expression, and there were audible giggles in the direction of the kitchen when Eleanor Hoare, folding her napkin and slipping it into its ring, moved to her tuffet and sat down in a somewhat gingerly manner, gathering her skirts about her.
'My, how happy I shall be when my mourning can come to a close,' she said. 'Mourning is most unbecoming to a person of my coloring, or lack of it.'
She did not wait for Hoare to whisper his denial, but continued, 'I think you are procrastinating, Bartholomew. When you were seeing him over the side yesterday, Sir George talked with you longer than mere convention would require.' The sparkle in her eyes belied the severity of her tone.
'Well?'
When not preoccupied with other matters during the night, Hoare had puzzled over how to break to his bride the news that, instead of their making their wedding trip to Great Dunmow in Essex, where she planned to introduce her new husband to her people, he must leave her here like every sailor's wife. He had best be forthright, he decided at last; this woman did not take well to being cozened.
'I must leave you this morning, my dear,' he said, 'and return in Royal Duke to Portsmouth. From there, I must leave her to ground upon her own beef bones… and grind up secrets for the Admiralty's bread, while I go on to London and report to their Lordships.'
'Oh,' she said. 'Ohhh!' echoed Jenny.
'Are we to we accompany you?' Eleanor asked, preparing to rise. Hoare shook his head.
'That is not possible, I fear,' he said. 'As you know, Sir George frowns heavily upon captains who keep their wives aboard. And not only must I travel fast; I cannot say how long I shall be required to dangle about in London…
'No, I think you have two possible courses of action. The first is to remain here in comfort, safe and sound, until I can rejoin you. The second is to proceed to Portsmouth by land, hire suitable lodgings for us all, and settle down there or in the surrounding countryside, to await me.'
'There is a third possibility,' Eleanor said. 'We could descend upon Father and my brothers in Great Dunmow, and await you there. After all, Great Dunmow is far closer to London than we would be down here on the coast. And after all, they will already be expecting us. For poor papa, the arrival of one less guest would only be a relief; I can hardly say the same of the family's most likely reaction to the news that our stay will be indefinite.'
'And me?' Jenny's voice was plaintive.
