Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

Chapter 10 A Morning Pleasure Party

Thursday

26 February 1807,

IF FRANK RECEIVED ANY REPLY FROM TOM SEAGRAVE TO his express of Tuesday evening, I was not informed. My brother was unwontedly silent this morning as we sailed down the Solent. It was so early that the dusk had barely lifted from the New Forest, so early that the faint winter light had no power to warm me, and I huddled in my old pelisse while the frigid spume raced across the small vessel's hull.

Etienne LaForge was braced in the bow of the boat drinking great draughts of fresh air. To him, the cold and wet seemed immaterial. He had donned this morning a black wool coat, serviceable and unadorned. His hair, overlong from inattention, was bound at his nape with black ribbon, and his countenance was alight with freedom despite the manacles at his wrists. I had winced at the sight of those bonds, heavy and remorseless about his fine hands; but I did not question them. Frank had warned me that the French surgeon's motives must be suspect. It was possible, after all, that the man had schooled his story to the hints I had given him — that having heard a little of Seagrave's court-martial from the Marine guards, he had fabricated Chessyre's perfidy with precisely this view to escape. Frank had no intention of appearing a fool; he had sacrificed reputation enough in taking Tom Seagrave's part. Did LaForge intend to hurl himself from the hoy halfway to Portsmouth, he should sink like a stone from the weight of his irons.

The Frenchman had bowed low, the perfect gentleman regardless, as we stood on the Water Gate Quay. There was no cause for LaForge to feel shame at his bonds; he was a prisoner solely from unhappy circumstance; yet I did not think there were many Englishmen who should have worn humiliation so carelessly.

“Miss Austen! Your taste for the macabre runs to hanging, I see. Shall you be very disappointed if the Captain survives?”

“Monsieur LaForge.” I had bowed my head in acknowledgement of his greeting. “You must recollect the friend of the bosom — the Captain's wife. I go to Portsmouth solely to comfort her.”

A twitch of amusement, peculiarly his own, had worked at the corners of his mouth. “La pauvre petite. But as I have agreed to tell whatever I know to whomever will listen — perhaps your comfort will be unnecessary, hein?”

We had now been underway nearly half an hour, and Gosport was fast approaching to the larboard side; the squat dark shape of the Isle of Wight loomed like an enormous turtle. Mr. Hill, as a sailor of long standing and a responsible gaoler, stood stoutly next to LaForge in the bow, the two men spoke but little. Given the tearing breeze, Hill's attention seemed fixed upon securing his periwig to his skull. LaForge's eyes eagerly swept the horizon, as though he expected to find salvation there. My brother was engaged in steady conversation with the vessel's master — a conversation that consisted mainly of assessing the wind and clapping on sail — and so I was alone amidships, with my gloved hands clenched upon the edge of my seat.

Mr. Hill chanced to look around — chanced to furl his wizened face in a smile, which I returned — and that swiftly it seemed the two men could not sustain the picture of lonely self-sufficiency I presented. As one, Mr. Hill and Etienne LaForge picked their way over coils of rope, dodged taut lines and shuddering canvas, and settled themselves beside me.

“That is better.” Mr. Hill sighed with relief, and dropped his hands to his sides. The gusts of wind in this part of the vessel were greatly diminished in relation to the bow. “I never wear my wig at sea if I can help it; but circumstances this morning must dictate the strictest attention to propriety. One cannot present a ragged appearance before Admiral Hastings.”

“You look very well, sir,” I assured him. “You shall disgrace no one in your present guise.”

Etienne LaForge raised one eyebrow. “Is it not the custom for surgeons to look pitiful and go in tatters? I had thought it was requisite to appear as the dregs of humanity, a testament to impoverished circumstance.”

“Surgeons are a mixed lot, I warrant you,” replied Mr. Hill equably. “Five drunkards for every sober man, most without the scantiest learning, and not a few fleeing charges of murder at home. But you have seen the same in the French Navy, surely?”

“Zut,” cried Monsieur LaForge, “you ask me to impugn the honour of the French? Never! Besides, I cannot claim to be a real surgeon. I am versed in the physical sciences, not the sawing of bones; I was pressed into service aboard that ship, and know very little of the navy, French or otherwise.”

“Aha!” said Mr. Hill with satisfaction. “I thought there was something peculiar in your air, sir. Too much the gentleman to be merely a sawbones — there was the matter of your attire, that handsome walking-stick, and all those books you brought from the Manon. Great intellect is not often wanted aboard ship.”

“Nor evident in the conduct of its sailing,” LaForge retorted. “That is one blow to French honour I may freely give.”

I remembered that the same bitterness had marked his views of the dead captain, Porthiault. LaForge had called him a fool, and evinced no regret at the man's violent passing. He wished, as well, to remain in England rather than return to France. Life under the Monster's claws must be brutal beyond enduring.

“I myself fell in with the Navy purely as a view to research, you know,” continued Mr. Hill. “I am a passionate ornithologist, and one cannot stay at home and hope to master the subject. Was the Manon your first berth?”

“Yes,” returned LaForge abruptly, “and I pray God it may prove my last Having seen the inside of Wool House, I have no grande envk to see the rest of the world.”

“And where in France do you call home, monsieur?” I enquired.

“The Haute Savoie,” he replied, “not far from the Swiss border. It is a beautiful country, quite unlike your England.”

“And yet you wish to exchange the one for the other,” I rejoined, stung.

“Beauty is not the sole recommendation for a méthode de vivre,” he said. “Whether I remain in this country, or flee to another, I am not likely to see my Haute Savoie again.”

This last was muttered in so low a tone, I could not be certain I had heard the man correctly; but when I would have begged his pardon, and asked him to repeat his words, he turned the conversation by exclaiming, “I commend you, mademoiselle, for an excellent sailor. Votes avez depied matin. No sickness, no cries of womanly fear at every movement of the boat — it is in your blood, yes? You enjoy the sea as your indomitable brother?” He gestured at Frank, who was still engrossed in the matter of sails.

“Who may regard the constant life of the waves and be unmoved, monsieur? Who may witness the ebb and flood of the tide and not yearn to be carried far from shore, to know the multitude of peoples and places about the globe?” I enquired wistfully. “I should dearly love a man's experience of the sea, but must be content with stories of my brothers' wanderings.”

The master of the hoy shouted suddenly to his mate; the canvas was reefed, and the vessel slowed as it turned. We had achieved the entrance to Portsmouth harbour once more — to starboard, the ships at anchor off Spit-head; to larboard, the mass of buildings tumbling towards the quay. Within the sheltered port itself were anchored a few men o' war. One of these, I knew, must be the Valiant, with its signal flag for court-martial fluttering at the mizzen.

“And there, I presume, sit the rest of the Manon's complement,” observed Etienne LaForge wryly.

My eyes were drawn to the massive stone prison that rose forbiddingly above Portsmouth — a prison in which perhaps hundreds of French sailors languished in expectation of exchange. I had not spared it a thought on Monday. Were the men within ill and despairing? And had they anyone to write their letters?

“Steady, Jane,” my brother said at my elbow as the hoy dropped anchor. “You will not scold us if we do not accompany you to the quay. Our course lies with Admiral Hastings's ship — the Valiant, just to larboard there. The irregularity of LaForge's circumstance is such that we ought not to delay in paying our respects.”

“Of course,” I replied with intrepidity, as though the experience of two days on the water had made me a seasoned sailor. Frank paid off the hoy while Mr. Hill handed me into the cockleshell of a skiff; Monsieur LaForge's hands, after all, were bound.

I TOOK TWO WRONG TURNINGS BEFORE I PETITIONED FOR aid, and found my way at last into Lombard Street. Once there, I managed to distinguish the Seagrave household from its companions in the uniform row of small cottages. This is a more remarkable feat than it sounds, for all passage of the narrow lane and entrance to the residence were blocked by a stately and expensive carriage. Two sets of arms — both unknown to me — were empalled on the panels, surmounted by the bloody gauntlet of the baronet.[14] Not all of Louisa Seagrave's acquaintance among the Great had ceased to notice her, it seemed.

I hesitated on the paving-stones before the door. If Mrs. Seagrave already entertained a visitor, I could scarcely be wanted. I did not like the duty that awaited me in any case, and should relish the opportunity to avoid it. The lady must be presently in a pitiable state, and the visit of a relative stranger might oppress rather than sustain her. Surely, if the lady of a baronet had come to call—

All these excuses and more flooded into my mind; but I will confess that I was troubled most by Mary's careless suggestion that Mrs. Seagrave was going mad. Bodily illness I may face without blenching, and all manner of infirmity or dereliction; but a soul unsound in her mind is the most terrifying of spectacles. My own brother George had been born without his full wits, and was banished while still a child to the care of strangers paid well to maintain him. We rarely saw him, and spoke of him still less. I glanced over my shoulder at all the bustle of Lombard Street, the carters shouting for passage against the claims of the elegant equipage, the maidservants trudging over the wet stones in their patterns. When I looked back at the Seagraves' door, the choice was made. Louisa Seagrave was standing at the window, staring at me.

I had taken passage down the Solent. I could not turn from a fellow-creature in torment. I smiled at her, stepped up to the door, and pulled once upon the bell.

The door was immediately flung open by two dark-haired boys who scuffled and shoved at each other in their haste to be first to greet the visitor: Charles and Edward Seagrave. Charles's stock was undone and trailing down his shirtfront; Edward, the younger child, had a bright smear of jam across his forehead. A hunk of bread torn from a loaf was still clutched in his fist.

“Have you any news of Papa?” he demanded without preamble. “Has he been akidded?”

“Acquitted, you imbecile,” retorted Charles. “Of course he has! Papa could never be guilty of murder, whatever Nancy says.” His large grey eyes, heavily lashed and startlingly like his mother's, turned full upon me. “I've seen you before. You came with Papa's captain friend. You'll be wanting Mum — only she's shut up with Aunt Templeton, the old carcase.”

“I won't go into Kent!” Edward cried shrilly, and dashed his bread at my feet. Involuntarily, I stepped backwards off the threshold. “Not without Papa! Aunt Templeton is a monster?

A delicate clearing of a throat — apologetic and halfhearted — alerted me to the presence of a third person in the dimly-lit hall. I craned my head around the two boys — Edward was now crying bitterly, and Charles was berating him in furious whispers — and glimpsed the shining domed head of an elderly man, exquisitely dressed in silk knee breeches and a coat of black superfine.

“I beg your pardon,” he murmured, coming forward with one hand outstretched. He made me a deep bow in the fashion of thirty years ago, his right leg extended painfully behind him, then raised his quizzing glass to survey my figure. “I am Sir Walter Templeton. Forgive the … ah … high spirits … of the little boys. They are quite overset by events in this house. Quite unruly. There is no managing them. So my wife, Lady Templeton, assures me.”

His words, although stern, were uttered in such failing accents that I wondered at his true convictions: he might have been reciting a verse learned by heart.

“Not at all,” I replied. “I am quite used to boys and their antics. I am happy in the possession of no less than six nephews at present, and shall undoubtedly be blessed with more.”

“How very fortunate,” Sir Walter managed. “I was never so happy as to possess a child of any kind. It has been … a great sorrow.” He glanced down at young Charles, and his elderly face creased in an angelic smile, rendering his countenance unexpectedly carefree and childlike.

“Uncle!” cried Edward. “You promised that we should make paper ships today, and launch them off Sally Port!”

“So I did,” he declared, and laid a hand upon Edward's shoulder. Then casting a furtive glance at me, he added, “I cannot like the oppression of the household at such a time. I thought it best to divert the children with a little harmless sport.”

“Excellent notion,” I agreed — and would have said more, but that the door at the far end of the entrance hall was thrust open with a bang, and the housemaid Nancy hastened forward, her one good eye balefully upon me.

“Leave yer card!” she barked. “The Missus is seeing no one today, as any fool with a heart should know. Disgraceful, to call at such a time, with the Master about to swing at the yardarm!”

“He's not!” cried Charles angrily.

Nancy rounded upon the boy with her hand raised, and found her wrist firmly seized by Sir Walter Temple ton.

“That will do, my girl,” he said in a voice somewhat stronger than previous. “Pray be so good as to present the lady's card to Mrs. Seagrave.”

The maid no doubt intended a stinging rebuke, but Sir Walter had released her and was already steering the two boys firmly towards the kitchen, muttering in quiet tones about the Sally Port, and the necessity of fetching a quantity of paper from the nursery. I proffered the offending card, and grudgingly, the maid took it.

“If your mistress is otherwise engaged this morning, I shall wait for her reply.”

An ejaculation from the parlour doorway must serve as answer enough.

“Miss Austen! You are come again to cheer my solitude!” Louisa Seagrave cried. “Pray do not give the slightest attention to that ill-bred slattern, but hasten to the fire. You must be perishing of cold. Do I understand the situation correctly? Are you only now disembarked from the Southampton hoy?”

I drew off my bonnet and gloves, handed them to Nancy — who crushed them under her arm with a snort of contempt — and crossed the hall. I am. My brother could not be absent from Portsmouth on such a day; and when I learned of his intention, I begged to join him. Do I disturb your peace unforgivably?”

“Not at all.” Her fingers, when she clasped my own, were chilled to the bone. The parlour fire could not be adequate. Her face was sallow, her breathing hectic, and her entire appearance one of the deepest suffering; but I could not judge her mad. “You know, then, where my husband is gone. You know that a few hours alone may decide it.”

“A few hours — and all the most active intelligence of his true friends, exercised upon his behalf,” I declared. “You must not sink, Mrs. Seagrave — you must not give way. Let us talk of books; let us dandle the baby — let us walk out into the cold, if we must! But I shall not allow you to sink!”

“You are very good,” she murmured, and swayed in the doorway. I caught her arm and helped her into the parlour beyond — it was a small room, rather dark, with a single round table placed in the center and two or three chairs arranged around it. I settled Mrs. Seagrave on the sopha crammed into the bow window, and turned to face the second lady standing silently near the hearth. The mistress of the magnificent carriage, I presumed.

“Pray forgive my weakness, Lady Templeton,” Louisa Seagrave murmured, “and allow me to introduce Miss Austen to your acquaintance.”

Her ladyship was an austere personage, thin and tall, with a magnificent carriage to her head and a pair of glowing dark eyes. I should judge her a quarter-century junior to her husband, and where the Baronet was all diffidence and kindly hesitation, she was all decision and contempt. Like Louisa Seagrave, Lady Templeton was dressed entirely in black, though of an elegance the Captain's wife should never achieve. She did not waste her smiles upon a woman only just disembarked from the Southampton hoy; it was unlikely we should meet again, and a baronet's wife must always be sparing in her notice. A stiff nod, which I returned with my usual courtesy, was all the acknowledgement I received.

“I suppose you are one of Mrs. Seagrave's naval connexions?” she enquired.

“I am fortunate enough to have two brothers presently serving His Majesty,” I replied.

“And their rank?”

“The elder is a post captain, the younger a master and commander.”

This intelligence effectively thwarted further attempts at conversation. Nothing less than an admiral, it seemed, would do for a Lady Templeton. But her business was hardly with me; I could be ignored as a flaw in the paintwork, or a bit of thread discarded upon a table.

Her ladyship pulled on her gloves and grasped her reticule. “I may not tarry any longer, Louisa. I have wasted for too much time as it is. You know what Luxford shall be in such an hour. I may only repeat that I am not in the habit of brooking refusal. I expect you to afford my arrangements the consideration they warrant, and to vouchsafe a reply to the inn by midnight. Sir Walter and I shall be forced to start for Kent no later than ten 'clock on the morrow. Pray attend to the hour. You were never a punctual child; I hope the years have effected some amendment.”

Mrs. Seagrave pressed her hand against her eyes. “Will you not stay, and take refreshment? I believe that Sir Walter intended some project for the boys' amusement—”

“Nonsense,” returned Lady Templeton briskly. “Sir Walter must attend me to the George at once. We have not the time for frivolity. We are not come upon a pleasure party, I would have you know.”

“Charles and Edward take such delight in Sir Walter—”

“I should prefer to see less of delight, and more of self-control! They could do with firmer management, Louisa. We shall procure a tutor post-haste, once they are removed to Luxford. I certainly cannot be expected to set up as nursemaid, however much Sir Walter may enjoy his second childhood!”

Louisa Seagrave's lips parted, as though she would muster some reply; but then her sallow face flushed an unbecoming red, and she fell back into silence.

“I shall not wait for that wretched girl you chuse to call a maidservant, but shall show myself out,” Lady Templeton concluded. “The horses cannot be expected to stand long in this damp weather. Gibbon will be exceedingly angry.”

Louisa Seagrave struggled to her feet. “We must not make poor Gibbon angry; he has suffered too long already in your service.”

If Lady Templeton caught the barb beneath the simple words, she did not chuse to evidence it.

“I thank you for your attention,” Mrs. Seagrave continued formally, “and wish you every conceivable comfort on your journey into Kent; but I cannot say whether it shall be in my power to accept your kind—”

“Do not be a fool again, Louisa.”

The abrupt warning, delivered without softening civilities or the slightest attempt to guard their subject from contempt, stopped Mrs. Seagrave's pleasantries in her mouth. She bowed her head, and made no effort to escort her visitor to the door.

My gaze followed the upright, formidable figure of her ladyship as she swept into the passage; and when the door had slammed with finality behind her, I could only look to the Captain's wife with silent pity.

“You have been honoured with a glimpse of my paternal aunt,” she told me with a shaky laugh. “I learned only yesterday of the passing of my father — Charles, Viscount Luxford — at Richmond three days since; he is to be buried Tuesday at Luxford House, in Kent.”

“You have my deepest sympathy,” I said. “The loss of a parent must always be felt. I hope that he did not suffer long?”

“He died of apoplexy, after too rich a dinner; and I am sure that no man died happier than Father. He was always the sort to relish a good meal.”

It was difficult to know how to greet this intelligence. I was uncertain whether Louisa Seagrave possessed a brother who might accede to the tide, or if the estate was entailed upon another — whether she had seen her father since her headlong marriage, much less this redoubtable aunt. She was breathing heavily, as though under the spur of considerable emotion. She certainly had not mether relation with composure; but whether love, remorse, or hatred ranked uppermost in her spirits, I could not determine.

“Lady Templeton wishes me to accompany her and Sir Walter into Kent. She thinks it necessary I pay my respects.”

“That must be natural.”

“There was never anything natural in the connexion between myself and my family, Miss Austen,” Mrs. Seagrave retorted with asperity. “To think that I must now make my appearance in Kent, with my little boys in tow — the heiress returned like a bad penny, with her questionable progeny behind her — and at such a time!”

“Heiress?”

“My father has no sons, and the estate is not entailed. Lady Templeton thinks it likely that Charles— But I cannot be tiring you with such tedious family business. I shall not speak of it. Tell me what you have been reading, Miss Austen! I hear that Mrs. Jordan was in the theatre at French Street; did you happen to see her play?”

There was in her whole manner a feverish inattention to word and air that suggested the gravest anxiety. I had no notion how long a period Lady Templeton had demanded for the presentation of her schemes, but surely little of constructive activity had been accomplished in the Seagrave household this morning. Scattered about the room were signs of occupation too swiftly abandoned: a novel face downwards against a seat cushion; a boy's stick and hoop thrust into a corner; needlework hastily set aside. Mrs. Seagrave had been working at something — a small gown of dimity, no doubt for the new baby. Such is the desperate occupation of a woman's hours, while men decide the fate of the beloved, and all of existence may be summed up in a single word—guilty. We women sew, as though the world entire must hang upon a thread.

“Should you like some refreshment? A glass of wine?” I enquired. “Let me fetch you one.”

“No — that is, perhaps a small draught of Dr. Whar-ton's Comfort. It is there, on the Pembroke table—” She gestured towards the center of the small room. I collected the blue bottle, uncorked it, and offered it to her. She did not wait for a glass of water, but tipped the flagon's neck between her lips.

Whatever Dr. Wharton had prescribed, it appeared to answer her affliction. Louisa Seagrave sighed and stopped up the bottle's mouth with a hand that trembled only a little. “That is better,” she whispered. “I shall do.”

I sank into a chair. She remained standing, her sharp profile turned towards the front windows, in the direction of the sea. “They will fire a gun,” she murmured, “if he is to hang. It is no distance at all, from Lombard Street to the quay. We shall hear it. Can it be that any in Portsmouth is deaf to the sound of guns today? But perhaps they shall take him across to Spithead, and hang him there.”

“Do not speak of it,” I urged her. “It shall not come to that.”

The restless eyes returned to mine. “You cannot believe him innocent! My dear Miss Austen, make no mistake. My husband deserves to hang.”

It was the one pronouncement I had least expected, and I could find not a single word to answer it. I stared at her, horror pricking at my spine. Perhaps she was mad.

“He killed that poor fellow as surely as though he fired the ball himself.”

She knew, then, of the wound to Porthiault's temple. And yet Seagrave himself had never mentioned it when he described the French captain's last moments. He had merely spoken of a blow to the head — some wound undiscerned, that had stunned the man or killed him outright. It was Etienne LaForge who had examined the skull, and located the hole from the ball. But if Louisa Seagrave could speak of it so readily …

“Your husband has told you this?” I whispered.

Her lips worked, and then her entire countenance crumpled with the fierce violence of grief. “He did not need to say a word. I know the love he bore that child. I witnessed it every day, in the diminished affection he gave to his own sons — in the flight of all love and honour from myself! I did not have to be told.”

“The child,” I repeated, as comprehension broke. “You would speak of the Young Gentleman! The boy who took a musket shot, while aloft in the shrouds, and was dashed to the decks with the roll of the ship. But why—”

“Master Simon Carruthers,” Louisa Seagrave said. “Nearly two years he was in my husband's keeping, and dearer to him than any child in the world. A bright, healthy lad with a courageous heart, a shock of blond hair, a ready grin. The boy's father — Captain Carruthers— was a great friend of Thomas's, and killed at Trafalgar. Simon's place on the Stella was meant to be a great favour, a mark of esteem. Do you know what they do to a lad of that age, when he dies in battle? Do you?” Her voice was shrill, as though she teetered on the brink of hysterics; it demanded of me some answer.

I shook my head.

“They toss him overboard without a word of farewell, without a prayer for his parting soul. He slips astern like a sprig of jetsam, and is lost to the fishes and the rocks. No mother may bathe his body for burial, or stand by his graveside with a posy for remembrance.” She covered her face with her hands and began to sob wretchedly. The sound was guttural and harsh. “Such dreams as I have had, Miss Austen! Such visions of decay — the nightmares that haunt my sleep! Those are pearls that were his eyes …'”

The high, piping voice of six-year-old Edward, raised in protest as his uncle Sir Walter was torn from all the delights of boat launchings at Sally Port, drifted through the ceiling from the nursery upstairs. I shuddered. It was horrible to think of such innocence blasted, and made food for fishes.

“But a French musket brought down the boy. Surely you cannot—”

“Seven years old. But seven years old! No stouter than one of my own boys should be.” She turned upon me as a wolf might avenge the baiting of her young. “Simon Carruthers should not have been at sea. I blame my husband! As who could not! He is guilty of the grossest folly — guilty of abuse and murder! It was Thomas who would have the boy torn from his mother at the tender age of five — Thomas, who being denied his own sons to parade about the quarterdeck, must borrow the heir of a hero, and throw the child into all the violence of a fighting ship in the midst of a brutal war. Madness, this crush of young lives in the gun's breech, like the maul of apple blossom beneath a booted heel! Can you bear to think of his mother, Miss Austen?”

His mother. The beautiful Phoebe Carruthers, in her gown of dark grey, her mass of golden hair. I had thought her a sort of Madonna when I glimpsed her in French Street last night, before I even knew of her mourning. Strange that a woman with every cause for grief should venture to a play.

“Are you at all acquainted with Mrs. Carruthers?”

“One cannot reside in Hampshire, and yet be ignorant of Phoebe Carruthers,' Louisa Seagrave replied. “She is reckoned the most beautiful woman of the naval set; certainly she has suffered the most. The entire Admiralty is at her feet, I understand, from respect for her courage. Even Thomas—”

She broke off, and stared at her hands. “You think me bitter, no doubt. You think me vengeful and cruel to urge my husband's sacrifice. There are some, I know, who do not hesitate to call me mad. But I cannot view the Navy's folly, Miss Austen, without I declare it criminal. I would not give my sons to Thomas when he longed to take them to sea. I refused him — and my refusal has long divided us. It is the rock upon which our marriage has broken. But I am justified in that poor child's death! And if God is yet in His Heaven, Tom will hang for what he did.”

There was a bustle in the hallway and the parlour door swung inwards to reveal my brother. Behind him I detected the forms of Mr. Hill and Monsieur LaForge. All three were subdued; and from the turn of Frank's countenance, my heart sank. I feared the worst.

“Mrs. Seagrave,” he said with a bow, “pray forgive an intrusion so unannounced. We thought it best to inform you—”

“Oh, God, pray tell me at once!” the lady implored.

Frank hesitated, and his eyes sought my face. “Captain Seagrave's court-martial has been suspended by order of Admiral Hastings.”

“He is free, then?” Mrs. Seagrave asked faintly.

“For the moment. But he remains under charge. Suspension, I am afraid, is not the same as acquittal.” Frank glanced over his shoulder at the pair on the threshold. “I must apologise for carrying strangers in my train, and thrusting them upon you at such an hour. Mrs. Seagrave, may I present Mr. Hill and Monsieur LaForge, two gentlemen who have been most active on your husband's behalf.”

Louisa shielded her eyes as the gentlemen made their way into the room, then sank once more upon the sopha. From her attitude, she might be overpowered with relief and thankfulness; I alone of the party must suspect the truth.

“The Lieutenant, Mr. Chessyre, failed to appear?” I enquired of Frank in a lowered tone.

“Mr. Chessyre is dead,” my brother returned without preamble. “He was murdered last night in a brothel beyond Southampton's walls, his body discovered only this morning.”

I pressed one hand to my lips in horror.

Louisa Seagrave began to laugh.