Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the matter of treason

"Charmed, Mr. Prickett," the lass said at last. "I believe you were once of considerable assistance to Mr… to my new father."

"I hope so, Miss Hoare." For once, Hoare could hear, the boy was not speaking in exclamations. "Your new father?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Prickett! My old father was quite different! Shall I tell you about him?"

And the two were off. Later, out of the corner of his eye, Hoare saw that his daughter was brushing some trivial atom of lint from Mr. Prickett's buttoned jacket. With this instinctive grooming gesture, Hoare realized, she was laying claim to him in a manner that was gently but pointedly proprietary. To all the world, Miss Jenny had marked out Harry Prickett as hers.

Hoare still had an apology to make. He wove his way through the dancers to where Miss Austen still stood, unclaimed and solitary among the other returned empties, "dowding it alone," as she had described herself on that memorable evening when he had first met his Eleanor.

"I have done you a disservice in my mind, Miss Austen," he whispered.

She turned to him in surprise. "Why, sir, how is that?"

"I had come to believe you more hard-hearted than one might have wished. Now, having seen the unpretentious courtesy with which you introduced those two children, I happily change my opinion. You are a kind soul, after all."

The lady looked away in embarrassment. On her slightly faded face, her blush made her no more beautiful.

"Between us, sir," she said, "we have much to account for to each other. Will you be so kind as to escort me outside for a moment, where we may speak undisturbed?"

Outside, in the fragrance of the spring evening, Miss Austen stood straight and stared Hoare in the face.

"I, too, have a confession to make, Mr. Hoare, and I wish to make it here and now." Her voice shook slightly. "I was mistaken in my judgment, and you were, at least partially, in the right."

"I?"

"I beg pardon, sir. I was using the second-person pronoun in its plural sense. I meant you and my dear Eleanor.

"From our first meeting, in the Graves's drawing room," she went on, "I allowed myself to convince myself that you were no more than the latest in the gaggle of unscrupulous adventurers who had chosen Eleanor-a married woman and a good wife-as their innocent target and were prepared to go to any lengths to achieve their goal. Among them I included the late Edouard Moreau, whom we all knew as 'Edward Morrow,' and Sir Thomas Frobisher. Now, I was certain, I must add you to the number of those against whom I must do my best to protect her.

"It was hardly helpful to my cause, sir, when I began to detect in her a degree of fondness toward yourself that ill became a lady in her position. Not only a wife, but the wife of a gentleman and a cripple.

"In due course, I have learned once again that, no matter how a person may strive to divert one of Eros's arrows from a target he has selected, one never, never succeeds."

"I-" Hoare began, but she raised her hand.

"Let me have my say, sir, I beg. It hardly improved matters," she said sternly, "that gossip reached my ears, first of your involvement with Mrs. Katerina Hay-a new widow as well, like Eleanor! — and then the Prettyman woman. You can imagine my distress."

"I had nothing to do with Selene Prettyman," Hoare whispered in protest, "more than our mutual involvement in scotching Spurrier's plans."

"Such an involvement was close enough to cause talk, I assure you," she replied with a return to the asperity that Hoare had been accustomed to hearing in her tones when addressing him.

"In fact," he went on musingly, as if he had not heard her, "I continue to wonder why she did so. I remain perplexed at the true purpose of her game. Was she working for Goldthwait, do you suppose, or for Sir Hugh Abercrombie?"

"Perhaps she did not know," Miss Austen said. "But, considering what I know of her character, she was most likely to be most interested in maintaining her relationship with the Duke of Cumberland. In feathering her own nest, in short."

Hoare-or at least, so he hoped-suppressed his surprise that Miss Austen was aware that any relationship whatsoever existed between Selene Prettyman and that authentic royal duke, let alone referring to it in conversation with a member of the opposite sex. While Mrs. Prettyman had made no secret to him of her position as Cumberland's mistress, and while Admiral Hardcastle had known of it, it was hardly a subject for open conversation between a single lady of a certain age, such as Miss Austen, and any gentleman.

He smiled. "In any case, she was-and is-far too high a target for me, even had I been so inclined."

But the lady was not prepared to let her prey off the hook as easily as that, and switched to her alternative bait.

"You give me no such assurance, I note, in the case of Mrs. Katerina Hay."

And he could not. Within days of her bereavement, the widow of Vantage's murdered captain had, indeed, seduced him. There was little he could say. He rolled over and exposed his belly.

"Have mercy, Miss Austen," he whispered. "At the time in question, I hardly knew Eleanor."

"That has nothing to do with the case, as you well know, my dear sir," she said with another smile. "It is history now, however… or at least I will assume it to be so, unless I should learn anything to the contrary."

Hoare wondered whether Miss Austen's smile was genuine, or concealed a threat that, as far as she was concerned, any betrayal of his wife, her bosom friend, would meet with her severest displeasure. Well, he had lived for some time past, and he supposed he could do so again. Besides, nothing was further from Hoare's mind than betraying the sturdy woman whom he found himself loving more, day by day.

"In any case," the lady said, "I confess myself to have been mistaken from the outset. I could not ask for a more honorable, kindly, loving companion for my dear friend. May we be friends? Pace?"

Hoare felt a lump rise in his throat.

"Pace," he echoed. Even had he not been mute, he could not have summoned more than his whisper. Mute, he bowed over Miss Austen's hand. Then, after a pause, "May I invite you to join this quadrille?"

"Of course, sir. With pleasure."

"She has kindled, you know," Miss Austen said as they set to in the first figure.

"What? Who?" Hoare nearly missed his step.

"Your Eleanor, of course. Did you suppose I referred to myself? Or your daughter?"

"But she has told me nothing of this."

"She probably does not know as yet, herself."

"But, then, how do you know?"

"It is hard to explain, sir. Something in the expression, I suppose. In the way she looks at your Jenny."

"Dear me," he whispered.

Hoare and Miss Austen came into one figure and passed on to the next.

"You have done it again, I see," he whispered as he sighted two dignified children who, knowing themselves deemed still too small to join their elders, performing their own private pavane, quadrille, or volta off in a quiet corner of the ballroom.

"Sir?"

"Your matchmaking. I do not understand how you do it. First my lieutenant and the Honorable Anne… now Mr. Prickett and my daughter."

"It is my metier, Captain Hoare, as it is that of every woman. I cannot help practicing it. I am a woman, and it is the sworn duty of every woman to find a husband for every friend she owns. Besides, I am far from certain I made that match without the help, perhaps unwitting, of another. Or, in fact, that that person was a female. If I recall, you played an equal part with me in the more mature of the two affairs to which I must believe you refer."

"And, ma'am, if as you say, it is a woman's duty to find husbands for all her friends, what then is the duty of a man?"

"Why, sir, to let himself be found. What else?"