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.