Chapter Thirteen
Her first fear was that he had died in the night, but she quickly discarded that notion. Anyone who could kiss like Captain Spark was firmly planted on the road to recovery. Her second thought was anger. So you could not wait to leave, she considered as she stared down at the pallet and its sleeping new occupant. This was replaced quickly by despair. They have shipped you out for London and a court martial, but I am not there.
With eyes that scarcely saw, she went back into the main chapel. Adam followed her. He touched her arm.
“Is it Holland now?”
he asked quietly.
She gave him a searching look that made him turn red and stare at his shoes.
“Adam, where is thy backbone? We have to get to England! That’s all there is to it.”
A brief conversation with the hospital steward confirmed her fear.
“Oh, my, yes, he was shipped out on last night’s tide, miss,”
the clerk assured her, looking down through bloodshot eyes at his endless list of dead, wounded, and misplaced.
“Something about a court martial at the Admiralty in two weeks.”
He chuckled, remembering.
“Damned ... er, excuse me ... bless me if he wasn’t a bit exercised over being so rudely hauled up from his bed of pain. I do believe that was how he put it.”
“Then you have considerably cleaned up his conversation for my benefit.”
she replied, her voice crisp.
“Has he sailed?”
“Yes, miss. You’re too late.”
She left the building in a rage, too angry to cry over this latest misfortune. She was at the bottom of the stair, fuming, before Adam caught up with her. He grabbed her and sat her down on the bottom step.
“Hannah, thee is not fit for society!”
he said, his demeanor more commanding than usual.
“We’ll never get anywhere with thee in a total rage.”
He was right of course. She leaped to her feet and walked to the broad stone banister leading down from the church. She wanted to pound on something, but the only thing there was a chestnut horse, its reins looped over the carved marble flowerpot. She turned her face into its shoulder instead and cried, standing there until she felt calm enough to look at Adam again. The animal was obliging in the extreme, wickering softly at her as she stood there.
“He is a good horse, madam,”
said a voice behind her.
She whirled around to stare at an elegantly tall officer with more gold on his shoulders and sleeves than probably was deposited in the whole U.S. Treasury. His tanned face was in no way marred by his beaked nose. He looked like a man who could lead armies, and here she was sobbing into his horse.
“I am sorry, sir,”
she managed, and scrubbed her hand across her eyes and backed away from his horse as though she had been attempting its theft.
He shook his head and smiled down at her, taking off his lofty hat.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I have cried into Copenhagen a few times myself, and not so long ago.”
His words were spoken quietly, so none of the equally gold-braided men who followed him down the steps could hear.
“May I introduce Copenhagen, Miss ... Miss ....”
“Hannah Whittier of Nantucket,”
she said, and held out her hand shyly.
He took it in both his gloved hands.
“You are a long way from home,” he said.
Her eyes teared again at his words and without saying anything else, he whipped out a handsome monogrammed handkerchief.
“Perhaps I should not have mentioned that, Miss Whittier,”
he said while she blew her nose.
“Obviously I don’t need to remind you of the miles between this dirty city and what I am sure is a more pleasant existence. Here, sit down.”
He indicated the bottom step again and she sat, her eyes on his face. He dusted off the step and joined her, waving on the officers around him.
“Gentlemen, find something to occupy yourselves, if you will. Miss Whittier, my name is Wellesley, Arthur Wellesley.”
She heard Adam’s soft whistle behind her.
“Mr. Wellesley?”
she asked.
“Not precisely. I command this ragtag army, my dear. I am the Viscount of Wellington.”
“Oh, my,”
Hannah said, her eyes wide.
“I didn’t mean to cry all over thy horse!”
He threw back his head and laughed, and it was the most extraordinary laugh Hannah had ever heard, high-pitched and somewhat horselike itself. Copenhagen tossed his mane at the sound as though horse and master shared a conspiracy.
“My dear, I am sure he will dry,”
said Wellington.
“Now tell me what is troubling you.”
Adam tugged at her arm.
“Hannah, thee cannot bother this gentleman!”
She shrugged off his hand.
“Sir, I am perplexed at how difficult it is to do a good deed for the British.”
Wellington took off his gloves.
“I did not know it was so hard, my dear.”
“It’s no wonder thee lost the War for Independence,”
she continued steadily, ignoring Adam, who had thrown up his hands and stalked up the steps to sit behind them, his head in his hands.
“All I have been trying to do is help Captain Sir Daniel Spark—do you know him, sir?—get a dispatch from a French ship to London, and I am scotched at every turn.”
Wellington absorbed this bit of information without a blink.
“I know the Spark family. Does he not command a commerce raider?”
“He did, but it sank in the harbor on Terceira. And now he has been sent to London for a court martial, and I still have the dispatch. He needs me, sir.”
He looked at her.
“I don’t doubt that for a moment, Miss ... Whittier, did you say? And are you a Quaker, miss?”
“I think I am,”
she replied, some doubt in her voice, “although I have not been acting precisely as a Quaker should lately. I mean, I’d like to murder the Lords of the Admiralty for being so pigheaded about this court martial. I mean, couldn’t it wait?”
Wellington laughed again.
“I am sure you are not alone in your wish to see the First Lords to Hades, my dear. Show me the dispatch.”
She took it from the front of her dress, but did not hold it out to him.
“See here, sir, can I trust thee?”
she asked.
One of the British officers standing close by laughed. ‘That’s enough, Beresford.”
the viscount murmured.
“Obviously this little lady has been through a few trials for this dispatch.”
“Oh, we have, sir,”
she agreed.
“More than thee knows.”
She hesitated another moment, then held it out to him.
“You can safely assume that I have the good of England in mind, Miss Whittier,”
Wellington said as his hand closed over the dispatch. We are waging a lonely battle against the Corsican tyrant, and we have few friends in the world. Unfortunately, your nation is not among them. Perhaps I should be suspicious of you?”
She turned shocked eyes on him, and then smiled to see that he was grinning at her.
“Thee is a dreadful tease, sir,”
she said, to the silent enjoyment of the officers around the viscount.
“Go ahead and read it.”
He did, leaning back on the step and propping himself up with his elbow. She could see how tired he was and could only wonder at the terrible responsibility he shouldered. And now he is digging trenches around this city, and I am bothering him with one more little detail.
He looked up halfway through the dispatch and motioned to one of his officers to sit beside and read, too.
“My God, sir,”
said the officer, his voice low, as he scanned the closely written page. They continued reading in silence, then Wellington folded the dispatch and handed it back.
“Yes, you do have to get to London. Miss Whittier,”
he said after another moment’s reflection.
“And promptly, too. Beresford, what do you know of the Navy? Are not court martials at the Admiralty conducted the last week of each month?”
“I believe so, my lord,”
the officer said.
“That would give her two weeks, wouldn’t it?”
Wellington nodded.
“My dear, do you have any objections to a prompt removal from Lisbon?”
“The more prompt, the better,”
she replied.
“We had to climb out of a second-story window at the American consulate this morning to get here, and I do not think the consul will want to see us again in this life.spa
The viscount winced.
“To the contrary, I strongly suspect he will be looking for you.”
“I should think he would be glad to be rid of her, sir.”
Adam spoke up then, coming closer to the steps.
“I am Adam Winslow. Hannah and I have known each other forever, and I was impressed from my ship by Captain Spark.”
“Worse and worse,”
murmured Wellington.
“And still you wish to help him?”
“No, I don’t.”
Adam said bluntly.
“But Hannah won’t let it alone until she does, and believe me, thee doesn’t wish to be nibbled to death by this particular duck.”
“Adam!”
she exclaimed as the viscount laughed again.
“He will think I am a pest.”
“Thee is.”
They glowered at each other. Wellington shook his head.
“Temper, temper,”
he said, and got to his feet. He pulled up Hannah after him.
“My dear, I know I can get you on board a fast packet to Portsmouth, if you don’t object to a bit of subterfuge.”
“Sir, I am well acquainted with subterfuge by now. Haven’t I been in close company with the Royal Navy these six weeks and more?”
He clapped his hands together, his mind made up.
“Very well, then, since the American consulate had probably alerted the waterfront, Miss Whittier, we will have to be a bit smarter. I would like to avoid an international incident, if I can, so would you mind terribly dressing as a cabin boy?”
Hannah and Adam looked at each other, their eyes merry.
“Sir, that was what she did on the Dissuade, and do you know, Captain Spark even sent her into the lookout to spy for French cruisers?”
Wellington shook his head and lifted the reins from off the flowerpot. He mounted Copenhagen.
“I am continually amazed at the resourcefulness of the Royal Navy, Miss Whittier. I recommend that you remain here until Adam can find you some suitable kit. Then I expect to see the two of you—and that infamous dispatch——at the H.M.S. Dauntless in an hour or less. The navy is dashed particular about wind and tides.”
He wheeled Copenhagen around and held his hand out for Adam to mount behind him. The other officers found their horses and mounted while she stood on the steps of All Saints.
“I must make a flying nip to London and a conference with the small brains at Whitehall. You can be my cabin boy, Miss Whittier, since you are so good at it. See you soon. And don’t murder anyone until Adam returns.”
She watched them leave, then returned to the chapel, where she sat in a shadowy corner until Adam returned an hour later with clothes draped over his arm. He held them out to her.
“Wellington is a great gun, Hannah, for all that he is Brit,”
he whispered.
“Hurry now. We have to catch the tide.”
She took the clothes and ducked into the narrow stairway leading up to the bell tower. It was only a moment’s work to pull off her dress and petticoat and get into sailor’s canvas pants and shirt, wool this time. She balled up the dress and petticoat and wedged them under the lowest step, wondering what the priests of All Saints would think when a housecleaning eventually uncovered them.
Adam knocked on the door to hurry her along.
“I’m coming!”
she hissed, and rebraided her hair down her back. Someday I will wear my own clothes again, she thought as she hurried from the chapel with Adam and ran with him, hand in hand, down the steps.
Wellington stood on the dock waiting. She ran toward him, out of breath, and he thrust his valise into her hands, commanding her to follow closely by his side.
“The American consul has been stalking up and down the docks for the past hour and more, Miss Whittier,”
he whispered under his breath as they strode along to the jolly boat.
“And I have been perjuring my soul and assuring him that the British would never be party to any deception regarding an American female of tender years.”
He lifted her into the boat, luggage and all, and hurried to sit beside her, obscuring her from any view from the waterfront. Adam scrambled in behind them as the helmsman cast off the rope and raised the sail for the Dauntless.
“Of course, we could have simply given thee the dispatch to take to the Admiralty,”
Adam said as the boat skimmed over the water, outlined by the setting sun.
Wellington nodded.
“You could have tried, my young friend,”
he said, “but whydo I have the feeling that would not have been good enough for Miss Whittier here?”
“Because she is a totty-headed female,”
he replied.
“I have known her for years as a sensible Nantucket girl, and now see what happens when she gets one ocean voyage!”
Yes, indeed, Hannah thought as the jolly boat swung around to meet the Dauntless. I do not know that I would recognize myself if I saw me on the street. I used to be biddable, like Mama, never saying boo to a goose, and here I sit beside the Viscount of Wellington, one of the great men of Europe. She rested her chin in her hand. And somewhere Daniel Spark needs me.
Hannah spent the voyage from Lisbon to London in the great cabin that the captain had vacated for Wellington, listening to rain scour the deck of the cruiser, and working her way through a great pile of darning.
“Thee does not have a pair of socks without holes,”
she grumbled to the viscount as he sat day after day in the cabin, bringing his journal up to date and writing reports.
“My dear, that is yet another unglamorous consequence of war,”
he murmured as he wrote.
“Does ‘attrition’ have one ‘t’ or two?”
“It has three,”
she replied, and he threw down his pen.
“Well, it does.”
He shook his head, smiled at her, and picked up the pen again.
“Captain Spark must be a man of considerable patience to tolerate you,”
he said, his eyes on the report spread before him.
“Oh, he has no patience at all,”
she said, cutting the thread with her teeth and picking up another sock, quite unruffled by his jest.
“He calls me dreadful things like ‘shark chum,’ and blasphemes and uses expressions that would make my mother go into spasms.”
“And he has no qualms about impressing Americans,”
Adam added from his corner by the stem galley.
“Has the man any good qualities?”
Wellington asked, putting down his pen at last and rubbing his eyes.
Hannah was silent as she bent over her darning. He loves me, she thought, and that shows right good sense. He kisses most excellently, and that is nothing to tell the Viscount of Wellington.
“He is fearless in a fight,”
she said at last.
“And ... and when I am afraid of something, like climbing the rigging, he makes me face down my fear until it does not scare me any longer.”
“Excellent man,”
Wellington said. He rested his head in his hand.
“I could use him when I visit Whitehall next week and try to explain to the armchair generals why I lost so many men at Vimeiro and why we struggle now to hang on to Lisbon.”
He was silent then, his sharp features shadowed and then revealed by the swaying lamp.
Hannah put down her darning.
“Captain Spark would say that once thee has faced the guns, nothing can frighten thee,”
she said, her voice soft.
Wellington looked at her and nodded.
“You are right, of course.”
He reached across the table and touched her cheek.
“And I think I understand why Captain Spark tolerates you.”
She blushed and picked up the sock again.
“Sir, I think if thee would cut thy toenails more regularly, thee would have better socks.”
“Hannah!”
Adam groaned.
“Won’t thee ever be still?”
She grew quieter as they reached the coast of England and sailed into Portsmouth Harbor, wondering why she had not just given the dispatch to Wellington, as Adam had suggested. We could be on our way home, and I would eventually forget Daniel Spark, she thought as she stared out the stem gallery windows to the gray ocean, rising and falling on oily swells. As the anchor chain ran out of the hawser hole and the sailors furled the sails in Portsmouth Harbor, she told herself that once she knew for certain that he was well, she would have no trouble leaving. Not a bit.
The further benefit of being pressed into the service of Arthur Wellesley, Viscount of Wellington, showed itself as soon as they drew up to the wharf, where a post chaise waited. Wellington flipped a coin to the helmsman while Adam lifted Hannah onto the dock. He bundled them inside the post chaise and nodded to the coachman.
“These are good horses?”
he asked the coachman.
The man grinned and bowed.
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
“Then spring ’em, my good man,”
Wellington commanded.
“We have a date at the Admiralty.”
They drove all night, Hannah asleep against the viscount’s shoulder as they raced through the silent countryside. When she woke in the morning, her neck stiff and her back aching, she wondered if he had slept at all. He was staring out the window, his eyes half closed, his expression unreadable, as though his body was here in the coach but his heart remained in Lisbon with his troops.
She sat up, and he glanced at her, then resumed his stare out the window.
“Have you ever considered, my lord, how often in life we find ourselves wishing we were where we are not?”
she murmured.
“It seems that is all I have done lately, and I think thee has the same difficulty.”
He nodded.
“I should be in Lisbon. Oh, Beresford knows his business, and mine, too, but I am commanding.”
He clapped his hands together in a frustrated gesture.
“It is so hard to convince people that I truly know what I am doing. I know how to fight Napoleon, and it is not by explaining my every move to the First Minister!”
He paused then, as if surprised at his vehemence.
“Well, we all have our troubles. Hannah, what will you do once you have given Captain Spark the dispatch?”
“I expect I will return to America,”
she replied, wishing the idea had more appeal.
“I wonder,”
he said, then stared out the window again.
Her first view of London was hazy smoke rising from countless chimneys, to drift, dirt-colored, around low clouds that promised rain again. She looked for St. Paul’s Cathedral, which she had seen in books, but it was obscured by the fog that settled everywhere. She shivered.
“When did summer end?”
she asked of no one in particular.
“I think when you were below deck darning socks,”
the viscount said.
“I trust you have better weather in America. I know we do in Spain.”
His voice sounded wistful, as though he wished himself back to the hot summers on high plateaus.
It was well past noon when the post chaise slowed to a stop in front of the three heavy pillars distinguishing the Admiralty House from other, less dramatic government buildings. The viscount helped Hannah from the carriage and stood there a moment, his hands in his pockets.
“Perhaps I should come in with you,”
he said at last.
“My own business can wait, and I worry about what kind of reception you Americans might get from the porter.”
They hurried up the steps, just ahead of the rain that had been threatening all morning, and into the antechamber with its black-and-white marble floor. Wellington set his hat on straighter and strode to the porter’s desk, looking down at the man who sat scratching away with his pen.
“Are there any court martials in session right now?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,”
said the porter, “but they have begun after noon recess, so you cannot enter.”
“We have come from Portugal with an important dispatch,”
the viscount replied, rapping his knuckles on the desk.
“We demand entrance to Captain Sir Daniel Spark’s court martial.”
“Well, you cannot have it,”
the porter replied, turning back to his paperwork.
“The rules apply to the army as well as the navy.”
Wellington stepped back, surprised. Hannah tugged at his cloak.
“I told you how difficult it was to do a favor for the English people,” she said.
The viscount nodded and withdrew to the chairs by the large windows. He thoughtfully regarded the porter, who was deep in his forms again.
“I am forced to agree with you, Miss Whittier. This calls for a classic army response. Adam, can I trust you to make an appropriate diversion in this antechamber while I whisk Hannah into the trial?”
Adam grinned and held out his hand.
“Does thee have a match, my lord?”
The viscount smiled back and handed Adam a box from his pocket.
“Make it a good one, Adam. I’ll go your bail if the navy hauls you away.”
“What can they do? Impress me?”
Adam asked as he struck a match and held it under the nearest drapery.
“Resourceful chap,”
Wellington said as he watched the smoke rise in a choking cloud from the ancient cloth.
“Come, my dear. We have an appointment with the First Lords, whether they know it or not.”
By now the porter was staring at the window, where smoke billowed. Screaming, “Fire! Fire!”
he scrambled from his chair, knocking over the inkwell, which spread ink all over his precious paperwork. Adam went to the next window, set another fire and dart?ed out the door as the viscount grabbed Hannah by the elbow and steered her down the hall.
The first chamber yielded nothing more than a clutch of clerks, busily working over another stack of documents.
“We should send Adam in here,”
Wellington said as he closed the door.
“Think what a bonfire that would make. Do you suppose anyone actually reads that stuff? We could be doing the navy a favor.”
Hannah laughed and let him tug her along the hall to a massive doorway at the end. It was guarded by two sailors, but the viscount didn’t even pause. He slammed the door open and looked around him in satisfaction. “Ah, yes,”
he said and patted Hannah’s shoulder.
“Well, here you go, my dear.”
He bowed over her hand.
“I am certain my wife would thank you for darning all those socks. And I will try to trim my toenails more frequently.”
She let him kiss her hand, her eyes merry.
“Good luck with Napoleon, sir. I think thee will win.”
He winked and left the room, his cloak billowing out behind him. Hannah turned her attention to the chamber before her, sighing with relief to see Captain Spark, handsome in full uniform and with his arm in a sling, standing by his chair, a grin on his face. Others rose, among them Mr. Futtrell and several Marines from the Dissuade. She started down the aisle, but was stopped by the sailors from the doorway.
“Let me go!”
she shouted.
“I am so out of patience with the Royal Navy!”
And then Spark was beside her.
“I recommend you release her at once,”
he said, scarcely ran>“Lively now,”
he added and the sailors let go.
“What is the meaning of this!”
shouted a loud quarterdeck voice from the long table at the front of the chamber. The First Lords were standing now, too, craning about for a better view.
“Is that a woman?”
“Yes, my lord, quite a woman,”
Spark replied, tucking her arm in his good one and pulling her toward the front.
“Hannah Whittier from Nantucket, Massachusetts. She has a little present from the Bergeron for you, my lord.”
He turned to Hannah and whispered, “Where is Adam?”
“Setting fire to the curtains in the antechamber,”
she replied.
He stopped and put his hand on her shoulder.
“And whose idea was that?”
“Why, Arthur Wellesley, the Viscount of Wellington. He thought a diversion would get us past the porter.”
Spark stared at her.
“Hells’ bells, you have been keeping excellent company.”
“He is a fine man, Daniel, and I wish thee would not swear,”
she said as she took the dispatch out of the front of her shirt.
“Who do I give this to?”
“Give it to that red-faced walrus with the pop eyes,”
he whispered.
“That is Lord Tichenor.”
He hurried her toward the long table, where the lords all stood, surrounded by lesser ranks of officers.
“My Lord Tichenor, we request permission to approach the table.”
“This is highly unusual, Sir Daniel,”
bellowed the admiral, his voice still equal to any battle or hurricane.
“God bless me, it is a woman!”
“Well, more of a young lady, actually, but she will grow,”
Spark amended.
“Give him the dispatch like a good girl, Hannah.”
She handed it over.
“This is from the Bergeron, which Captain Spark sank. It makes excellent reading, sir, so we saved it for thee.”
Spark looked around the room until he located Lord Luckingham. He leaned across the table.
“My Lord, you may wish to set a stronger guard at the door before you begin reading.”
“As you were!”
the first lord shouted.
“Find that ... that young lady a chair. My God, madam, have you no shoes?”
“Why, no,”
she replied, unable to keep the laughter from her voice.
“We could not find any that small in ship’s store, and it was warm in Portugal when we left.”
The officers in the room laughed. The admiral banged on the table with the flat of his hand, and then stopped suddenly, sniffing the air.
“Do I smell smoke?”
he demanded in the same rasping voice.
“Yes, sir,”
she replied.
“My friend Adam had to set fire to the curtains to distract the porter long enough for me to get in here.”
The admiral stared at her. Captain Spark shrugged his shoulders.
“Americans, sir. What can one say?”The admiral clutched the dispatch to him and sat down slowly. His eyes narrowed.
“Madam, you come from a distempered race.”
“Exactly what I have been telling her, my lord,”
Spark said cheerfully.
“Come, Hannah, you can have my chair.”
She sat down next to Mr. Futtrell, who flashed her a grin and then turned his attention to Lord Tichenor as he read the dispatch. Captain Spark found another chair and pulled it next to her.
“You made it,”
he said simply, and took her hand.
Halfway through the dispatch, Lord Tichenor looked up and cleared his throat. He gestured to the Dissuade’s Marines.
“Stand by the door, men,”
he ordered, then returned his attention to the paper. The two other lords stood behind his chair, reading over his shoulder.
“We were almost through,”
Spark whispered, leaning close to her.
“Naturally, I could not say anything about the dispatch, because I did not have it.”
He looked into her eyes.
“You are a wonder, Hannah.”
“I am nothing of the sort,”
she protested, but her voice was soft.
“How could anyone stand in the chapel at All Saints and see all those wounded men, and not want to do something to end this bloodshed faster?”
He nodded, then turned his attention to the front, where Lord Tichenor was on his feet now. He clasped her hand more firmly, twining his fingers through hers as though he did not wish to let her go again.
“About those kisses in the chapel,”
he whispered, his eyes still on Lord Tichenor.
“I meant every one of them, Hannah.”
Lord Tichenor rapped on the table for silence. He held out the dispatch toward Lord Luckingham, who sat in the front row, supremely unconcerned.
“Lord Luckingham, ispered,aps you might find this document interesting,”
he said, and gestured for him to come to the table.
Luckingham strolled to the front, a question in his eyes.
“He doesn’t have a clue,”
Hannah whispered.
Lord Tichenor’s voice was all affability now.
“Start reading here, my lord. It’s a letter from the governor of Antigua. Take your time; savor it, you bastard.”
The chamber was silent now, as a hundred officers, men, clerks, and barristers stared at Lord Luckingham. Luckingham snatched up the document from the table. The paper began to rattle in his fingers and the color drained from his face, leaving behind the wide-eyed stare of an animal in a trap.
“You can’t possibly believe a document delivered by an American, my lord,”
he said at last, turning the word into an epithet.
Hannah was on her feet in a second.
“We have dragged that document through hell, my Lord Tichenor!”
she shouted.
“I have seen men die for it! I don’t care if thee are all pettifogging, arrogant Englishmen! No nation deserves to suffer a traitor!”
Her words rang out in the chamber. Lord Luckingham threw down the document and leaned against the table, as if his legs would no longer support him. He covered his face with his hands as the Dissuade’s Marines led him away. Hannah sighed and sat down again.
Lord Tichenor watched the traitor until the door slammed. He sat down again, a frown on his face, and looked again at the other papers before him.
“Now where were we?”
he murmured to himself.
“Ah, yes, Captain Spark, I believe we have to deliberate now and conclude your court martial.”
Hannah leaped to her feet again.
“My lord, I hope thee is not going to cut up stiff because the Dissuade sank. Thee was not there to see all that water pouring into the hold and hear those pumps clank.”
The first lord’s lips twitched, but he managed a stern face.
“Miss Whittier, sit down!”
he ordered.
“One doesn’t get to be first lord without hearing pumps. Captain Spark has already been ably defended and does not need American counsel from some barefoot chit.”
“Very well,”
Hannah muttered and let Spark pull her back into her chair.
The first lords rose and left the chamber.
“They could be gone all afternoon deliberating,”
Spark said.
“Then they are perfect idiots,”
she replied.
“Hannah, be quiet,”
he said, but he was smiling.
“Thank you for all you have done.”
The clerk announced the return of the first lords, who filed right back into the chamber almost immediately. Captain Spark rose to his feet on their command. Lord Tichenor took Spark’s sword, which lay on the table before him, and turned the hilt toward the captain.
“You are exonerated of all charges, Captain Spark. The lords admiral are of the opinion that your defeat of the Bergeron and subsequent removal to the Azores showed the sort of verve and pluck that England expects of its navy. You are honorably acquitted, sir. You need only wait for further orders.”
Spark smiled and stepped forward for his sword. He saluted, then put the sword back in his scabbard. He bowed.
“Thank you, my lords admiral.”
Lord Tichenor bowed in return, then gestured to Hannah.
“Thank you, Miss Whittier, for your service to our nation,”
he said, his voice softer now and his eyes more kindly.
“Perhaps somewhere in London, Captain Spark can find you some shoes.”