She shook her head and digested the fact in silence, comparing it with her own bereavement and catching the wistful note in his voice.
'If you miss them, Captain,' she asked softly, 'why do you come here?' There was a hint of Yankee hostility in the question.
'That is a question I frequently ask myself, Mrs Shaw.'
She sensed his retreat and found it surprisingly hurtful. Silence settled on them again and after a while she shivered.
'Shall we go in?' he asked.
They turned back to the brilliantly lit ballroom. He was already remote again, ready to detach her as they approached the French windows. She stopped short of the light spilling on to the pave.
'Do you ride, Captain?'
He halted, surprised. 'Ride? After a fashion, an indifferent bad fashion, I'm afraid.'
'Would you care to see some more of my beautiful country tomorrow?'
He thought of the enchantment inherent in such an invitation, the release from the isolated and tedious splendour of his command, the surrender to landscape, to fecund greenery after the harsh tones of sea and sky. Then he thought of the ship and the discontent seething between her decks, of men mewed up by force, of the guard-boat and the sentries with their orders, his orders to shoot...
He had left a disgruntled Metcalfe aboard this evening; how could he leave them again and go gallivanting about on horseback in full view of the ship's company?
She took his hesitation for imminent refusal. She knew her brother's return from Washington was as likely to bring rebuttal to the English peace overtures as acceptance, that the English frigate might overnight become an enemy and be compelled to put to sea. A sense of panic welled up within her, a sudden, overwhelming urge to see this man again; she tried to find something wittily memorable to say to him and compel him to change his mind.
'I promise my habit will be less contentious, Captain,' she said, furious that her voice trembled.
He could not ignore her, or cast her aside. He told himself he had been more than off-hand with her earlier, that her father-in-law wanted peace and was clearly a man of substance and influence, a man to be encouraged; he told himself that such a meeting might aid the peace process just as he told himself a dinner party at Castle Point might include Captain Stewart and therefore open a discussion of potential interest to a British naval officer.
'Have you a mount docile enough for a sailor?'
'Certainly,' she laughed, 'provided you will lead me in to dinner.'
He inclined his head and bowed, grinning widely. 'I'm honoured, ma'am.'
She smiled and dropped him a curtsey, and they re-entered the ballroom to be engulfed in the gaiety of the scene.
The moon was almost at its culmination when they left Castle Point. The early hostility between the officers of the British and American ships had been skilfully averted by Mr Zebulon Shaw. The protestations of peace and amity, the toasts proposed, seconded and swallowed in assurance of the fact, and the fulsome, wine-warmed expressions of mutual goodwill had healed the incipient rift between the two rival factions. A breach of manners towards their host had thus been avoided. Furthermore, Drinkwater's presence had curbed the taunts of the Americans and intimidated his own people. As far as Drinkwater knew, none of his officers had disgraced themselves, the virtue of the local maids remained intact, if intact it was at their landing, and with the exception of Mr Frey whose farewell had been overlong, all had come away merry, but light-hearted.
It would doubtless have warmed Mr Shaw's heart, Drinkwater thought as he waited to board the gig, if he could have seen Frey finally rejoin his companions, for he strode down the path to the water in company with Lieutenant Tucker, apparently the best of friends. It was only later that Drinkwater learned the cause of this unlikely alliance. While Tucker courted Miss Catherine Denbigh, Mr Frey had been smitten with her sister Pauline.
As for his own farewell, it had consisted of the promise of a meeting on the morrow.
And too long a glance between Mrs Shaw and himself.
CHAPTER 7
A Riot in the Blood
His acceptance of Mistress Shaw's invitation troubled Drinkwater the following forenoon. He did not advertise his forthcoming absence from the ship, indeed he busied himself with the routine of paperwork to such an extent as almost to convince himself he had no appointment to keep. Mullender guessed something unusual was afoot, since the captain called for his boots to be blacked, but Mullender, being incurious, gave the matter little thought, and although Drinkwater had a coxswain, the man had never replaced Tregembo as a servant and confidant.
Oddly it was Thurston who almost by default came closest to the captain's soul that morning. Called in to make up the ship's books and to assist in the standing routine inspections of the purser's and surgeon's ledgers, Thurston fell into conversation with the captain.
Until then he had kept a respectful silence and attended to his duties, aware of the awful punishment Drinkwater had it in his power to dole out. He was conscious that the captain was neither inhumane nor illiberal, in so far as a post-captain in the Royal Navy could be expected to be either, having been guided in this matter by older heads who were less willing to heed the trumpets of revolution and had pointed out the virtues of service to the common weal. Thurston was intelligent enough and by then experienced enough to know the sea-service was different from life ashore and that, for cogent reasons, libertarian concepts were inimical to survival at sea. He had therefore learned to tread warily where Captain Drinkwater was concerned.
Drinkwater, on the other hand, now regarded Thurston with more interest than suspicion. By keeping the man to hand and working him hard, by altering his status from pressed man to captain's clerk and by making him a party to a measure of the frigate's more open secrets, Drinkwater had sought to seduce the revolutionary by responsibility.
Prompted by his guilty conscience, he addressed Thurston while the clerk cleared away pen, ink and sand.
'Well, Thurston,' he began, 'are you settled in your new employment?'
'Well enough, thank you, sir, under the circumstances.'
'What circumstances?' asked Drinkwater, puzzled.
'Of being held against my will, sir.'
Drinkwater gave a short cough to mask his surprise at the man's candour. 'I believe you to be luckier than you deserve, Thurston. You could have been transported.'
'That is true, sir, but that would have been a greater injustice. It in no way mollifies my outrage at being carried to sea. Both punishments, if punishments they be, are unjust.'
'Sedition is a serious matter,' said Drinkwater, regretting starting this conversation yet feeling he could not dismiss its subject lightly, despite the increasingly pressing nature of his engagement. 'You do not truly advocate rule by the mob?'
'Of course not, sir, but the mob is a consequence of the ill construction of government. By exalting some men, others are debased, until this distortion is inconsistent with natural order. The vast mass of mankind is consigned to the background of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aristocracy.'
'A puppet-show, you say,' Drinkwater said, somewhat nonplussed.
'Indeed, sir, there is no class of men who despise monarchy more than courtiers.'
'You have had much experience of courtiers, have you, Thurston?' Drinkwater asked drily.