"You need not have sent me the warning," Bennett told him immediately upon his arrival at the Swallowed Anchor. "A Mr. Dupree of the twenty-ninth Foot waited upon me this afternoon. We agreed on tomorrow, at the usual hour. Dupree insisted on swords, and I had no recourse but to accept. I'm told that your opponent, Pargeter, is a formidable swordsman-at least when he's sober."
Bennett looked at Hoare questioningly and perhaps a trifle apprehensively. As far as his friend knew, Hoare suspected, he had never before faced a swordsman on the field of honor. It had always been pistols.
"I'd have preferred fists," he whispered. "Drunk or sober, the son of a bitch misused my name and grossly insulted the lady who happened to be in my protection at the time. I wonder if he knows she's a Colonel's wife and the very good friend of the Duke of Cumberland."
Bennett whistled. "Flying a bit high these days, ain't you, Hoare? I'm surprised at you. You've been lying pretty low lately, since you began making those visits to Weymouth."
"Believe me, my friend, Mrs. Colonel Prettyman is a business acquaintance, nothing more."
Bennett was a sea lawyer-a genuine one, one in the service of the Admiralty, and not one of those semiliterate lower-deck troublemakers who went by that name in the Navy. He knew when to keep his mouth shut, but Hoare could read his mind.
"Business, eh?" Bennett's voice was skeptical.
"Your good health, Bennett," Hoare whispered, raising his glass of claret.
On their previous excursion of this kind, Hoare and Bennett, with their opposite numbers and the surgeon referee, had had to wait their turn on the convenient strip of greensward over the town while a pair of boys settled their grievance. Today's deep blue dawning saw the party in sole possession of the field. Mr. Hawley, the surgeon, who had experienced even more of these affrays than Hoare, oriented the line along which the combat would open so that neither opponent would have the sun in his eyes when it rose. Subsequently, as usual, the engagement would take its own course.
From a long mahogany case, Hawley removed a pair of swords, taking a third for himself. Even in the gloaming, Hoare recognized them. He had used them or their like as fencing sabers, for they had been borrowed from the atelier of the emigre cidevant Vicomte Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac. Their buttons, however, had been removed and their points brought to a razor sharpness.
"My opponent ought to be told that I'm used to these weapons," Hoare said, ostensibly to Bennett, but in a whisper loud enough to reach the two soldiers.
"I don't give a damn whether he was raised with them in his cradle," Pargeter said.
Each of the duelists doffed his uniform coat and handed it to his second. Each stepped up to Hawley, the referee, to select his weapon and tested it between his hands before taking his place as instructed. During the referee's instructions, Pargeter let his gaze wander about the glade while Hoare listened intensely. Pargeter, he saw out of the corner of his eye, moved well. He would be a tough opponent. Hoare thought he would be lucky not to be struck first: First blood was to conclude the affair. The two saluted each other and crossed blades across the referee's.
Hawley raised his referee's sword sharply, to clear the fighters' blades. A tap, a clink, and the dance was on.
Pargeter's wrist was firm, his eyes level in the growing light. They circled once, back, feeling each other out while holding themselves in reserve. Hoare parried Pargeter's first lunge, threw it aside, lunged himself, was stopped, and the two came chest-to-chest in a bind. With a shove, Pargeter made to thrust Hoare back, out of balance, but Hoare was prepared and would not be toppled. It was Pargeter who rocked back.
The point of Hoare's blade pressed up, none too gently, into the soft flesh under Pargeter's chin.
"Did Spurrier put you up to this?" Hoare whispered harshly in Pargeter's ear as the seconds cried, "First blood!" in unison.
Hawley whipped his sword up, disengaging the combatants.
"Lower your weapons, gentlemen," he commanded.
He had no need to inspect Pargeter. A trickle of blood, detectably red in the sunrise, stained the soldier's cravat.
"Show me your palms, sir," Hawley said, turning to Hoare.
Hoare spread his hands, as if in appeal. They were whole.
"I see blood on only one of you gentlemen," Hawley said. "I declare honor satisfied."
"Do you need medical attention, sir?" he asked Pargeter.
"For this pinprick? Don't be an ass," Pargeter snarled. His blood was up. So was Hoare's.
"Henceforth, mind your tongue, sir," Hoare rasped.
"Henceforth, fellow, mind your back," was Pargeter's reply.
Neither showed ready to shake hands with his adversary. The three noncombatant members of the party stood at a loss. At last, both groups drifted away, in clouds, almost palpable, of business left unfinished.
Chapter XI
How it happened Hoare could never be sure. Perhaps it was through Selene Prettyman's mysterious authority, perhaps by Admiral Hardcastle's less mysterious command. Whoever and whatever lay behind the invitation to Broadmead, Admiral Hardcastle had been adamant. Hoare was to accept it, despite his protests that, if he did so, his other undertakings for the Admiral would languish and priceless evidence dissipate like dew in the morning sun.
Hoare's best efforts to get Admiral Hardcastle to change his mind had been futile. Besides, the Admiral had let drop a hint that Sir Thomas Frobisher was to be a guest as well. The two knights being un-friends, Hoare knew that Sir George would not mind at all if Hoare were to put a spoke in Sir Thomas's wheel. So here was Hoare, less than forty-eight hours later, trotting smartly on a sorrel hack along the Portsmouth-Bath turnpike beside the berlin carrying Felicia Hardcastle, her former nurse and present abigail, and an elderly female cousin.
They had broken their journey at a roadside inn outside Salisbury and overnighted at Wylye. Only at these points had Hoare to endure Miss Hardcastle's company, for which he was grateful. Felicia Hardcastle was a kindly lass, but she talked. Most of her talk was about the virtues of Lieutenant Peter Gladden, to whom, she confided to an unsurprised Hoare, she was now secretly betrothed. At Wylye she had digressed briefly to extol the scenic quality of Stonehenge.
"Just think, Captain Hoare; it would be only a few miles out of our way! And just think of the letter I could write to dear Peter about its awesome, eerie presence! Oh, do let us break our journey there, sir!"
Hoare was having quite enough to do with one prehistoric henge monument these days, he felt, without being required to view another. Moreover, he wanted to get the trip over with. He despised horses and hated riding them. He found them disorderly, disobedient, unpredictable, and happy to tittup and fart about wherever they pleased, leaving their excrement underfoot to be trodden in by their betters. He could never understand why country gentlemen were any more enthralled by a horse than they were by a medlar tree. Certainly the latter's leavings were more useful. So he had stood firm despite Miss Hardcastle's pleadings and pouts.
The party drew up the long curving drive that led to Broadmead. From his station on the berlin's larboard quarter, he could hear his charge's squeals of anticipation. Even though her lover was at sea-he was newly promoted first in Frolic, 22-she was agog to meet his family. Here Hoare had the advantage over her. The entire Gladden family believed he had saved their elder son, Arthur, from a hanging and now behaved toward him as though he were a saint, if not the Savior Himself. Felicia Hardcastle, as he had become tired of experiencing, was only slightly less full of worship.
Hoare was pleased to see that Sir Ralph and Lady Caroline successfully hid any distress at their first sight of their daughter-in-law elect. They and the Reverend Arthur all greeted Hoare with great warmth. As was only proper, Miss Anne Gladden's welcome was more reserved, but the expression of her periwinkle blue eyes, as they looked up into his from so far below them, was as sweet as he remembered and her smile as endearing.