Sir George had made it clear that his visit was not official but entirely personal. He had agreed to give the bride away, her valetudinarian father being unable to travel from Essex all the way to Weymouth, and her resident brother being at odds with her. His flag, therefore, was not to be hoisted the moment his shoulders appeared at deck level. This was fortunate, Hoare thought as he swept off his hat in salute, since Sir George's shoulders all but topped Royal Duke's low freeboard before he had even raised his bottom from his seat in the barge's stern sheets.
Nonetheless, Hoare had had Mr. Clay muster side boys in advance-eight of them, as was proper when receiving a flag officer aboard-and seen that they were kitted out with white gloves. The boys were clean and tidy. Since Royal Duke carried no genuine boys, none was under twenty, and two were women.
"Congratulations on the day, Hoare," the admiral said upon replacing the hat he had doffed in salute to the Royal Duke's imaginary quarterdeck. "She looks sprightly enough-your command, I mean, of course. I suppose the bride looks the same."
"I cannot say, sir," Hoare whispered. "I am not permitted, you know, to see her today until the ceremony takes place."
Sir George withdrew his watch and inspected it.
"Lacks only a minute of seven bells. She had better clap on sail, or she'll be late. Hate a dilatory officer."
It being the occasion it was, Hoare dared a jest.
"Ah, Sir George," he whispered, "but you are superseded in command for the time."
"What?"
A-ha. The fish had struck.
"The bride, sir. At this moment, the bride is queen. She commands us all, even yourself."
Below his fashionable Brutus crop, the admiral's face reddened. He had arrived unrigged and unpowdered, and without his wife or daughter. He disapproved, Hoare knew, of officers who traveled with their women aboard. In fact, it seemed, he disapproved of women entirely, if they attempted to exercise the least authority. Then Sir George smiled, and Hoare felt his heart beat once more.
"Why, of course," he said. "Ungentlemanly of me. I must-" He was interrupted by the prolonged twittering of massed calls from a body of boatswains posted beside the after hatch. Hoare had hastily trained several of his unusual crew in a special call of his own composition; this was to serve as the wedding fanfare. Just in time, the Reverend Arthur Gladden assumed his place with his back to Royal Duke's mainmast, fully vested and as blue as the admiral's pendant, prayer book in hand. Upon his clearing his throat meaningfully, Hoare and his admiral parted. Hoare took post to one side of the clergyman; Admiral Hardcastle darted to the hatch head, ready to accept the hand of the woman he was about to give away the moment she appeared in the hatch.
The bride was preceded on deck by two other females: Miss Austen and a skinny little girl-child, her ash-blond hair skinned back, two-blocked so that her huge black eyes bulged under their heavy brows. Both bore posies.
The pair took their places on either side of the companionway, just beyond the waiting admiral. A pause ensued.
Not by chance, the two disparate bridesmaids had chosen- or had had chosen for them-simple gowns of an identical soft peach hue, cut in the oddly seductive Directoire style, with the waist positioned just below the breasts-or, in the case of little Jenny Jaggery, whose nose was running a bit in the cold- where her breasts would make their appearance in Nature's good time. Breasts or no breasts, Hoare always found the fashion quite appealing.
The pipes rose to a crescendo as the bride rose from the depths, Persephone personified. Within its cage of ribs, Hoare's heart gave a convulsive leap. The twittering of the pipes ceased, to be replaced by the music of a trio-hand-harp, violin, and kit-fiddle. The sound was sweet, lilting, and somehow Celtic.
As a widow and still a recent one, Eleanor Graves had chosen for once to conform to custom. Her small, sturdy form was clad in a froth of black lace, without the least decolletage. Her cap and veil, however, were white, formed from the most diaphanous Mechlin. Behind the veil, she had drawn her thick black hair into a firmly disciplined knot. All told, the bride could have been charged with appearing severe, were it not for the warmth of the brown eyes and the soft smiling lips that greeted Hoare from behind the veil.
Up the deck of Royal Duke she marched on the arm of George Hardcastle, Knight of the Bath, Rear Admiral of the Blue, Port Admiral at Portsmouth. Composed as always, she and her escort came to a halt before Mr. Gladden. The latter cleared his throat once again.
"Dearly beloved…," he began.
Despite himself, Hoare could not help remembering. The words of the Roman priest in Halifax as he united Hoare with Antoinette Laplace, a full score of years ago, had been spoken in French and in Latin, and had been openly grudging. But they had been essentially the same as those that Arthur Gladden was speaking now, as were Hoare's own whispered responses and those of the woman at his side. Hoare did not mind-nor did he care-that, for Eleanor, too, this was a second marriage. He had known and respected Dr. Simon Graves. As far as he was concerned, their previous respective marriages only went to show that each of them was capable of faithful love. When he looked down at her, and she met his eyes, his heart leapt again.
At Mr. Gladden's final words, "man and wife," the music broke out once again, jubilant. Now, the trio that had marched Eleanor Graves to the altar marched Eleanor Hoare and her husband back, supplemented now by the sound of pipes. Not the martial great pipes, but the softer, more melodious Irish version. At the sound, the bride burst forth in a gurgle of laughter, took the arm of her groom, and commenced to march back toward Royal Duke's taffrail. But Hoare forestalled her and broke ranks. He seized the bride's waist in one arm, took her right hand in his left, and commenced to twirl her, laughing down the deck.
As he pranced, Hoare overheard Miss Austen murmur an aside to Miss Anne Gladden. The latter was not listening; with fondly jealous eyes, she was watching her beloved Mr. Clay spinning-or perhaps being spun-along behind the bridal couple, partnered by the powerful figure of Sarah Taylor, master's mate and cryptographer. Mr. Clay's spin was brief, for he was quickly cut out by the slightly large, navy and gold form of Sir George Hardcastle, KB, Rear Admiral of the Blue. For Sir George, as was well known, was mad for dancing.
"I do believe," Hoare had heard Miss Austen say, "that I have never before seen the happy bridegroom anything but dour. Why commonly, he could 'tak' a cup o' dourness yet' to the covenanting kilted Scots in Dumfries."
Nobody but the dour one appeared to have heard her, for thereupon decorum went overboard for the day Without regard for rank, age, or precedence, the entire wedding party formed into as many sets as were needed to accommodate them, and set to a-dancing. Only a few, the grinning clergyman and former naval officer among them, must stand aside to watch the merriment. Even little Jenny Jaggery, squealing with excitement, found herself being half-partnered, half-carried through the figures by Leese, the yacht's lantern-jawed sergeant of marines. Long before the spirit left the crew, breath left first one and then another, and they collapsed, red, sweating in the cold damp breeze, panting and laughing. Seeing that only the most durable members of the lower deck still stood up, the musicians shifted the music into a hornpipe. In a cleared space before the yacht's wheel, four of the youngest, hardest durable hands now paired off and skipped through their proudest paces-cuts, the shuffle-and-half, buck-and-wing, the lot.