Sarah went white, and for a moment Ramage thought she would faint. 'But - but ... he met me only once, at our wedding,' she gasped. 'To leave me all this if I was widowed!'
Ramage laughed to lighten the moment. 'I shall make a point of staying alive to cheat you out of your inheritance!'
The lawyer, missing completely the lightness of Ramage's tone and not noticing Sarah's shock (after all, Ramage realized, the man had drawn up the will and the terms were no surprise to him), said: 'Well, My Lady, I expect it will all come to you anyway if anything happens to His Lordship.'
Sarah, knowing just how many times she had already just missed being widowed since her marriage, and how many times Nicholas had nearly lost his life since she first met him, nodded politely. 'I'm sure it will,' she said, trying to keep the chill from her voice. 'Pray continue.'
The lawyer was near the end of the will. Rufus Treffry had obviously been very proud of his collection of armour, and also his sporting guns, and he expressed the hope 'though creating no trust in the matter' that his legatee would continue to maintain all the pieces in good condition. 'In fact the butler, Raven, has looked after them for many years,' the lawyer explained, oblivious to the fact that as a boy Nicholas Ramage had delighted in helping Raven.
Finally the lawyer took another document from his case. 'The deeds to the property, My Lord.' He searched for another sheet and then handed it over. 'That is just a note delineating the boundaries of your land, My Lord. You may wish to ride round the boundaries. I am sure that Raven knows them well.'
No better than I, Ramage thought. As a boy, when he was allowed to borrow one of Uncle Rufus's fowling pieces, it was curious how the best game always seemed to be roaming the neighbours' fields. To a lawyer (and to an Uncle Rufus if Ramage was caught) it was poaching, but to a young boy it had been a great adventure. And now Treffry Hall and its estate was all his. His and Sarah's. And at Chatham Dockyard his frigate was being refitted after a long period in the Mediterranean.
Ramage was lounging in an armchair watching Sarah embroidering a cushion cover the following afternoon when Raven tapped on the door and came in with a silver salver, which he offered to Ramage.
Ramage looked at the packet resting in the middle of the salver. It was too thick to be just a newsy letter from his father. He recognized the griffin seal and the handwriting, but it was obviously a packet which also contained other letters.
'This has just arrived, sir,' Raven said, and when Ramage had taken the packet he turned to Sarah. 'Is there anything your ladyship requires?'
Sarah smiled and held up the embroidery. 'I'm almost out of silks,' she said.
Raven nodded understandingly. 'I'll talk to my friends, madam. A selection of colours?'
Sarah frowned, looking at her work, and then nodded.
'A day or two, milady,' Raven said.
By then Ramage had broken the seal of the packet and found that it contained a brief letter from his father and another letter whose cover was closed by a large seal showing a slim woman wearing a crown and standing with an anchor at her feet.
'Who on earth is that from?' Sarah asked as Raven left the room as silently as he had arrived.
'The gentlemen at Lloyd's, from the look of it,' Ramage said, breaking the seal. 'Don't say some damned shipowner is complaining about that convoy I brought home from Barbados . . . No, the Committee of Lloyd's would have written to Their Lordships, and then the Admiralty would write to me . . .'
'Open it!' Sarah urged. 'Why speculate when you're holding the answer in your hand?'
How did he explain? 'You've no idea how peaceful it is just sitting here in front of the fire, watching you sewing, and knowing no first lieutenant or master is going to come to me with a problem. And knowing that there are no orders from Their Lordships in the top drawer of my desk which I have to carry out or 'answer to the contrary at my peril'. You want some smuggled silks, Raven wants to take the bay mare down to the farrier, cows have knocked down about four yards of a spile fence on the south side of the beechwood meadow, and the housekeeper wants to know if she should tell Raven to bring up another case of sherry from the cellar. That's all. No strange sail on the horizon, no ship's company to send to general quarters just before dawn, no orders in the drawer ...'
'And a loving wife to share your bed,' Sarah said unexpectedly.
'Especially that,' Ramage said, breaking the seal of the letter and then deliberately putting it to one side while he read the letter from his father.
'Father and mother send their love . . . Hanson spilled soup over Lady Cardington's dress... oh yes, and the dear lady was so enraged that father sacked Hanson on the spot and re-engaged him as soon as Her Ladyship had left!'
'It sounds to me as though Hanson and your father have an arrangement!'
'Oh, they have,' Ramage said. 'He's been with us about forty years, and you know how his spectacles keep sliding down his nose? Well, without the spectacles he can't see a thing, and probably as he served the soup his spectacles slipped, so while one hand reached up for the spectacles, the other tilted the soup tureen! Means Lady Cardington never gets invited to dinner again!'
Sarah looked puzzled until Ramage explained. 'If she came and found Hanson still in the house, she'd be most upset. As far as father is concerned, Hanson is worth any dozen guests like Lady Cardington!'
'Isn't she the woman with a very deep voice, married to that extraordinary fat Welshman?'
'Yes - he was created about five years ago and she has never got over suddenly becoming a lady without any effort on her part. A bass voice and a falsetto brain - my mother's opinion!'
'And Lloyd's?' Sarah asked as Ramage put down his father's letter. 'I think you're scared of it!'
'No, just savouring it. After all, one doesn't want to eat the tastiest thing first.'
'I always do,' Sarah said firmly. 'I can't bear the suspense.'
Ramage put the letter down, stood up and walked over to select a thick log before putting it on the fire.
'You've never seen me in a temper yet,' Sarah said, 'but when I let myself go . . .'
Ramage glanced at her and stared at an ankle showing below the hem of her dress. 'I'll wager ten guineas to an empty bottle you stamp your foot!'
'Oh, you are a beast! Read the letter!'
'I know what it says, so there's no hurry.'
'What does it say, then?'
'The Master and Committee of Lloyd's request the pleasure of our company at a dinner being given to some visiting bashaw, and we are not going all the way to London for that!'
He sat down and picked up the letter. A couple of minutes later, after he was obviously beginning to read it a third time, Sarah said ominously: 'Well?'
'Well, it's not for some bashaw after all,' Ramage said lamely. 'It's a dinner, though.'
'For whom?'
'Me, actually,' Ramage said, his voice a mixture of puzzlement and modesty.
'Nicholas!' Sarah, now completely intrigued, was also impatient and on the verge of losing her temper. 'Nicholas, what's it all about?'
'I'll read it out, darling. It's addressed from the 'Merchant Seaman's Office' and is dated the beginning of last week - the same day we left London to come down here. A Monday, wasn't it?'
'Darling, what does it matter?' Sarah demanded.
'It was Tuesday, actually, but as you say, it doesn't matter. Well, it's headed, 'At a meeting of the Committee for Encouraging the Capture of French privateers, armed vessels & c, Rawson Aislabie esquire in the Chair'. . . Then there's a break and a sort of heading before it goes on with the point of it all.'
'You're teasing me,' Sarah said crossly. 'You wait until tonight; I'll pay you back!'
'No,' Ramage protested, 'it's damned difficult reading this sort of thing; it's not a continuous paragraph. Anyway, 'Resolved' - that's the Committee resolving, you realize -'
'Oh, I thought it would be the French privateer captains: oh, do go on, Nicholas!'
'Yes, well, they resolved 'That Captain the Lord Ramage of His Majesty's ship Calypso be requested by this Committee to accept a sword, value one hundred guineas, in acknowledgement of his very gallant behaviour in the destruction of two French frigates and the capture of two more, along with seven merchant ships, in the action off Diamond Rock; and in testimony of the high sense this Committee entertains of the protection he has thereby afforded to the commerce of Great Britain.'
'There's a covering letter explaining about the resolution and asking me to suggest a date,' he added. 'And it says I can also bring any of my officers present at the action as my guests.'
Sarah was puzzled. She accepted the reference to the sword as though her husband deserved a dozen, but when had it happened?
'That was before - why, before you came down to Isla Trinidade and we first met. Two French frigates taken? And you destroyed two more? Is that when you captured the Calypso?'
A bewildered Ramage nodded. 'Southwick and the rest of them usually refer to it as 'The Diamond Rock Affair'. It's taken Lloyd's long enough to make up their minds!'
'You're hardly ever in England,' Sarah pointed out. 'No sooner are you home than you sail again. Then you spent that brief peace marrying me and honeymooning. Then we were captured and you escaped and went to Devil's Island when war broke out again . . . Then you went off to the Mediterranean, and we've only just returned from there, with all those unlikely people you rescued, including me. So the Committee of Lloyd's haven't had much time . . .'
She stared at the log on the fire which was now beginning to sizzle and flare. 'You'll wear uniform. I have that white dress. I wonder if your mother would lend me the pearls?'
Ramage laughed. 'And the tiara too! She hates wearing it.'
Sarah suddenly looked embarrassed. 'I forgot! Of course, she'll want to wear the pearls. I'll wear my emeralds.'
'What about me?' Ramage grumbled. 'I have an enormous problem, and all you think of is pearls and tiaras.'
Sarah, distressed, said quickly: 'What problem, darling? What's the matter?'
'Do I wear a sword to the dinner? - it is correct uniform. But what do I do with the old sword while they present me with the new one, 'Value one hundred guineas'? I can't stand up there wearing one sword and holding another in my hand: I'll look like a sword cutler plying for business!'
'Your father will know,' Sarah said. 'Anyway, I can always hold your regular one while you march up to collect the new one.'
'It's all such a fuss,' Ramage grumbled. 'Pity I can't ask them to send me a hundred guineas, and I'll use it to buy you some new jewellery!'
'Clothes perhaps,' Sarah said laughing, 'but not jewellery. I inherit a quantity from my mother, and I expect your mother will . . .'
