"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, searching.
"In fact, at least in part, Captain Hoare is why I am here," Selene Prettyman went on.
"Ma'am?" Hoare whispered. What had this lissome Cleopatra to do with him?
"You are surprised, sir," she said. "You are known to Mr. Goldthwait, who thinks well of you."
Then, seeing that Hoare had not twigged, she offered him a tactful reminder. "Mr. John Goldthwait, of Chancery Lane."
Now Hoare remembered. Mr. Goldthwait, a small, lean, weary-looking, unremarkable man, had interrogated him extensively at the Navy Tavern when Hoare had delivered his explanation of the Vantage murder. In some way, Hoare recalled, he must be involved with Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie. He found it hard to remember that, though he had never seen the unknown Sir Hugh, since the latter never left London, he was his master and not his host Sir George Hardcastle here in Portsmouth. That, of course, was why Royal Duke flew the White Ensign. Sir Hugh was a Vice Admiral of the White, while Sir George was a mere Rear Admiral of the Blue.
Come to think of it, it had been then, too, that Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's brother, Admiral Duke William of Clarence. In some capacity, Goldthwait had been one of Clarence's train. Was Selene Prettyman likewise part of Cumberland's? If so, why?
"This puzzles you," Selene Prettyman said. "Never mind for now. Later, we shall talk. If not tonight, sir, then certainly before I return to London. I am to be found at the Three Suns. Until then…" She turned away with a gracious smile. Delancey disappeared, returning, Hoare suspected, to his Admiral's daughter, his hopes in that quarter evidently still unquenched. "While the cat's away," would be Delancey's maxim.
Hoare himself went on up the receiving line to Lady Hardcastle and her husband. In her figure and her fittings, Lady Hardcastle showed the world what her daughter would look like in thirty years. The prospect was not a pleasant one. But as Hoare knew, she was a kindhearted woman and a good wife and mother.
The Admiral acknowledged Hoare's bow for the entire family, then said to the scarlet figure at his side, "Your Highness, it is my pleasure to present Commander Bartholomew Hoare, of, er, HMS Royal Duke."
The Duke of Cumberland put his hands on his hips and stared fixedly at Hoare with his one good eye.
" What what? You call yourself Commander of a royal Duke, sir? I'll have you know that we royal Dukes are commanded by no man-except, of course, our father, the King."
Hoare held his breath. Was Cumberland jesting, or was he really displeased? He stood transfixed, awaiting his doom. The murmured voices within hearing fell silent.