"Very good then, Hancock," Hoare said. "For the time being, we must satisfy ourselves with one-way service from Dorchester to here. Take a half-dozen birds to Dorchester. You'll find your shipmate Thoday there, at the Mitre inn. Report to him, return, and begin working up another half-dozen to carry news the other way."
Once Hancock had left and Hoare could let himself breathe again, he tied his cravat in the simple knot he used for all occasions, stuffed Taylor's texts into a pocket, and called for his gig. Not a minute was to be lost.
The last time he had been commanded to an Admiralty House reception, one of Vantage's Marine officers had run athwart Hoare's hawse, and Hoare had been obliged to shoot him the next morning. Hoare's shot had gone where he wanted it to, however, hitting Mr. Wallace in the buttock. A few days later, the Jolly had been blown to pieces in Vantage with all but a handful of her crew. Tonight, the Admiral's Flag Lieutenant, Francis Delancey, stopped him at the head of the stairs leading to the ballroom.
"You're to be presented, sir. I'll find you when the occasion arises. Kindly do not remain hidden."
Hoare knew Delancey had no love for him, holding both his name and his muteness in disregard and envying him his recent promotion, so he simply nodded and continued into the ballroom. Fortunately, he could already see more than one friend.
The room, torrid as usual from the flame of the tapers in the massive chandeliers, held as many scarlet coats as blue, for the reception was in honor of His Majesty's only true soldier son, Lieutenant General His Royal Highness Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, commanding the Southwestern District of the British army's home forces. While a small clot of intimates in blue and scarlet surrounded the Admiral's royal guest, the other courtiers appeared none too eager to approach him very closely but surrounded him in a respectful ring.
Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's elder brother William, Admiral and Duke of Clarence, and found him kindly if stupid. It was common knowledge, in fact, that all of His Majesty's children were stupid. Most were more or less dissolute as well, some merely eccentric. Only Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was positively vicious.
It was the first time Hoare had laid eyes on His Majesty's fifth son. He found the sight a dismaying one. To give the Duke his due, it was through bravery, not birth, that the left side of his florid Hanoverian face was fixed in a permanent snarl and his blinded left eye turned wildly outward. Those were scars of honor, Hoare knew. The Duke had received them from a shell burst at the battle of Tournai in '94, at the same time as his right arm was disabled and a mere week before the French bullet had deprived Hoare of his voice and his seagoing career.
But long before Tournai, rumors had floated that Cumberland was fond of tormenting others. If he could not gratify himself by inflicting physical pain, he would make do with causing the mental variety. His servants were known to be of two kinds: accomplices and victims. Some were both. According to further rumor, which could hardly be substantiated, his behavior toward his sisters went beyond mere cruelty.
Within the ring of guests that surrounded Cumberland himself stood four others. Three of them-the Admiral, his lady, and their decent, dumpy daughter, Felicia-were familiar; the fourth was not. A woman more than tall enough to look the Admiral in the eye, she was clad in a watered Tussore silk, of the same vivid blue as the Duke's Garter ribbon. It brought out the color of her eyes. Raven-haired, ivory-skinned, she stood proud and slender in diamonds enough to buy the Navy a brig, if not a sloop-of-war. Her sapphire glance passed over Hoare casually, kindled him, left him. She shone.
Surely this was not H. R. H.'s Duchess, Hoare thought. He believed he remembered that, like his brothers, Cumberland had been laggard in marrying. If he had married, he would have surely been put out at stud to one of the blowsy beauties from Saxe-Hesse-Beanstalk or another of those toy German principalities whose principal exports were portly Princesses. This vision could be none of them.
Hoare took a glass of hock from one of the trays being passed by seamen in fancy dress and began to circulate, smiling. Since this occasion was his first appearance at a formal affair since he had put up his swab, he had to heave to frequently for a toast of congratulation.
"Ha! Captain Hoare! Fancy seeing you here! I had thought you fully occupied on my manor!" It was Captain Walter Spurrier, Sir Thomas's man in Dorchester, in his mysterious scarlet and gold.
Overlooking Hoare's obvious surprise at seeing him in this company, Spurrier grasped his arm as if they were the closest of boyhood friends.
"Hoare, let me make you known to my good friend, Frobisher. Martin, Commander Bartholomew Hoare of HMS-"
"Royal Duke, sir. Your servant, I'm sure," Hoare whispered, again caught by surprise. By his frog-shaped figure, actually stuffed into a bottle green satin uniform coat, and side-whiskered like Spurrier, the man could only 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."