Blown Off Course

by David Donachie

  Underlying her anger was the knowledge, regardless of how deep she sought to bury it, of the reason for that. She found John Pearce attractive, had done the first day she clapped eyes on him; not in his behaviour, which was reprehensible, but in his manner, which was the very antithesis of her husband: Pearce was compassionate where he was cruel, humorous where Ralph Barclay was a grouser, a man dedicated to the pursuit of women, with a very clear idea of how to trigger a compliment and bring on a blush, as against one who had no notion of the workings of the female mind at all.

  Emily was not so naive that she would miss an attempt at seduction and she knew Pearce had attempted that more than once, quite ignoring her married estate, in a way so much more assured than that of any man who had ever paid court to her. He had about him a natural urbanity so at odds with the provincial mores with which she had grown up. There was no bumbling shyness with this man – his aims were direct and obvious: she had spotted that in their first exchanged glance, the day her husband had clouted him for that very kind of look.

  ‘Fill the glasses and leave till I ring for supper.’

  Now he was staring at her, not with any trace of wickedness; in fact, his eyes were soft, brown and warm and, if he was not actually smiling, there was nothing strained in his features, underscoring that, if she was nervous, and she was, he appeared not to be. Try as she might, Emily could not avoid thinking he looked both elegant and handsome in that well-cut green coat, the concomitant thought, which she failed to stop herself from conjuring up, being that he had looked good in his naval uniform as well. Salvation for the direction in which her mind was going came from avoiding his steady gaze to look around the well-appointed room.

  ‘It was unnecessary to go to such trouble, Mr Pearce.’

  ‘That will be all, Didcot.’

  The servant was taking an unconscionable time to pour two glasses of champagne; nosy, as all servitors are, no doubt hoping for a snippet of gossip to take down and share with his confrères in the basement: if he had no absolute knowledge of what was going on, the atmosphere was crackling enough to provide a damn good guess – that settle, which had seen much service, he knew, might see more this very night.

  ‘Your Honour,’ Didcot replied, gravely. ‘I shall await the bell.’

  As soon as the door closed Pearce picked up both glasses and presented one to Emily, who hesitated to accept it.

  ‘I thought, since we have both survived our recent travails, that a toast to our shared good fortune might be in order. Surely, madam, you would not decline a celebration of being alive after being cast adrift in an open boat?’

  Taking the stem, aware that what she had just heard was an excuse, Emily looked into the golden bubbles rising to the surface. ‘Is it not bordering on treachery to drink such an obviously French wine?’

  ‘This,’ Pearce replied, grinning, ‘is a monarchical pressing. The grapes were no doubt picked when King Louis was still on his throne. So a toast, to you, to all of the crew of the Grampus and to a happy return, excepting, of course, the fool who set the ship alight.’

  ‘The last time I drank champagne was in Toulon.’

  ‘Sadly, I doubt the Toulonnais are drinking it now, but I will happily add to my toast a wish for the safety of those poor unfortunates we had to leave behind.’ With a quick nod, Emily acceded to that and drank, feeling those bubbles tickling her upper palate. ‘Now, might I suggest, we sit down and you can tell what it is you must so urgently see me about?’

  She did not move. ‘I would have thought, sir, that was obvious.’

  ‘If it is obvious to you, it is not to me.’

  ‘You would force me to say it.’

  ‘You must, in truth, do so at some point in the evening.’

  ‘I believe you intend to ruin my husband.’

  ‘If I can, I will.’

  ‘Might I be permitted to ask how you intend to proceed?’

  ‘Only if you both sit down and having done so assure me that you have come to plead for yourself and not for him.’

  ‘Would that make such a difference?’

  ‘At this point I have no idea, but I must say I would be disinclined to do anything that would simply aid your husband’s cause.’

  ‘You hate him so much?’

  ‘More, madam, than any man alive.’ That was not strictly true: there was one man he hated more, even if he had never met him, a Jacobin zealot called Fouché, whom he held responsible for the death of his father. ‘And I must tell you that hating my fellow man is not a normal state of affairs for me. I was raised to think otherwise.’

  ‘I know nothing of your background.’

  Emily was lying; quite apart from what she had picked up in conversation, especially with Heinrich Lutyens, she had been obliged to translate a letter for her husband shortly after HMS Brilliant weighed from Sheerness, one Pearce had written seeking intercession to get him released from the navy, and once his true name became known, for he had been entered in the frigate’s muster book as ‘Truculence’, his parentage was rapidly established. If she had never heard of the Edinburgh Ranter before, her husband had told her much about Adam Pearce. It was, and she knew John Pearce would smoke it, nothing less than an attempt to delay the real object of her visit, to soften him up so that a blunt refusal of her plea would be harder to make.

  ‘Would you like to know?’ Pearce asked, his motives for allowing the subject to be aired very different from her own. Before she could say yes, which by her expression she was about to do, he added, ‘That is, of course, a two-way affair. You must, in all fairness, share the story of your upbringing as well.’

  ‘I fear, sir,’ Emily replied, for the first time allowing a smile to cross her face, ‘you will be mightily bored.’

  ‘No,’ Pearce said emphatically. ‘There is no way in creation that you could bore me.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Emily gasped, taking refuge in her glass to hide a blush deeper than any which had preceded it, ‘it would be best to call for dinner to be served.’

  Having spared no expense – he was after all engaged in an attempt at seduction, even if he doubted progress would be achieved on this occasion – John Pearce set out to show that he was a man who knew his way around both board and cellar. The food had been carefully chosen as had the wines, and while he obliged Emily by telling her of his peripatetic upbringing, that was interspersed not only with enquiries as to her background but with comments on what they ate and drank, not in a swanking way, but showing he was a man of the world.

  The oysters were fresh from Whitstable, which allowed him to discuss the relative merits of those and their Normandy cousins; the fish, a deep-water bass, had been cooked in thickly packed salt to keep its flavour, the crust having no effect on the taste once filleted, accompanied by a wine from the Upper Loire; while the cut of beef, set off by a robust Hermitage, was a cross-grain one called an onglet, uncommon in England and served in a mustard sauce with small roasted potatoes.

  ‘Such detail, sir, the careful observation of what you consume, is not an English habit.’

  ‘But, madam, it is very much a French one, which is why I think their cuisine is so much more varied than ours.’

  ‘I was raised on plain fare to your tastes, I fear – roast meats and game.’

  Pearce lifted his glass of red wine. ‘Then I shall recommend it to your entire sex, given the result it has produced is one of great beauty.’

  She dropped her eyes. ‘Sir, you must not address me so.’

  ‘I would have you tell me why I must not speak the truth as I see it.’

  ‘It is unbecoming.’

  ‘Because you are a married woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a lightness of humour in Pearce’s tone as he responded to that, for he had no notion to spoil what had become a pleasant mood by mentioning to whom she was wed. ‘Then I can only conclude that it is an estate the French treat with the same attitude as they do food. To a Frenchman experience is all, in whichev
er room it is attained.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘You blush at a compliment, which I do assure you I mean.’

  ‘That is the whole point. You should not say what you mean.’

  ‘I cannot stop myself.’

  ‘You must,’ Emily insisted, feeling in her extremities a tingling sensation that went with the beating of her heart. ‘You are too forward.’

  ‘Then, if I am less so, do I have any hope of penetrating your reserve?’

  There was only one avenue that would deflect the way this conversation was going. ‘I came here to request you to desist in the action you propose to take against my husband.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘On the grounds that others will suffer should you succeed in ruining him.’

  ‘I am aware of that too, but I hope you have not come here to plead for your nephew as well as your husband.’

  ‘My pleas would be for myself. If you bring him down, you will also damage me.’ Looking into Pearce’s eyes, which were not soft now but hard and uncompromising, Emily knew she must be totally honest: nothing else would serve. ‘I must tell you that I have taken a decision to live apart from Captain Barclay. You may have suspected he sent me here to intercede with you …’

  ‘It would not come as a shock to me that he would do that, but I do think you would decline, even if he had a grip on your affections.’

  ‘It is enough that you understand it is not so. In fact, my being here would only increase his fury.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Pearce smiled, ‘I understand more than you are saying. I must also add that nothing would give me greater pleasure than that your husband should have good grounds for his feelings.’

  There was no flippancy in the words – much of the evening had been spent in a kind of banter – neither in John Pearce’s mind, nor in the way they were delivered, and in his eyes was a directness hitherto lacking: there was no way to miss the seriousness of what he was saying and Emily Barclay did not, which caused her to stand up.

  ‘I made an error in coming here and I must go. Please call for my coat and hat.’

  ‘Depart, with nothing resolved?’

  ‘It seems to me, sir, that you have made plain the price you would extract for compliance and it is not one I am prepared to pay.’

  ‘Emily Barclay,’ Pearce sighed. ‘You are beautiful beyond measure and you are also honest and very brave, which I know, for I have seen you tend to wounds on men that would make a matron twice your age blanch. It is because of that I have gone too far, pressed too assiduously, but I do assure you it is not a thing I embark on lightly.’

  ‘I do not follow your drift.’

  Pearce was aware of a subtle change in his feelings: in setting up this meal he had approached Emily Barclay in the same manner, and with the same purpose, as he would have done with any other attractive female. Yet right now he was acutely aware that he wanted her to think well of him, in a way that had nothing to do with his initial aims. It was not a shock, it did not come as a bolt-from-the-blue revelation, but John Pearce knew he was actually smitten in a way he had never been in the past. He wanted her to like him as a person and he badly wanted her company in every imaginable respect.

  ‘You see me as a rake, hence your objection to my behaviour in Italy and, being honest, I cannot deny that the opportunity to engage with you in a conversation that might prove amenable was too good to resist, yet—’

  Emily gave him no chance to finish, for she lost her composure then, as much angry with herself as with John Pearce. ‘It was more than that! You have set out to charm me, sir! You have set out to seduce me with your wines and food and your interesting life story, which does not want for a degree of sympathy, and this taking place in a private room away from prying eyes. I was a fool to accept your invitation and I should have departed as soon as I saw it was not to occur in a public place.’

  Pearce had stood up with her, as a gentleman should. Now he came closer and was impressed by the way she stood her ground, which was typical of her nature. Emily Barclay would not back down and it was very endearing.

  ‘You will, I think, not thank me for saying so, but having spent the last hour or more in your company, my interest has moved on to a degree I could hardly have thought possible.’

  ‘What are you saying, sir?’

  He took her hand and lifted it to plant a kiss on the back. ‘You know exactly what I am saying, Emily.’

  ‘My things,’ she croaked.

  ‘Only if you insist.’

  ‘Which I do.’

  ‘Of course,’ Pearce replied, moving to ring the bell for Didcot. ‘But with nothing decided, I think you and I must meet again.’

  They stood in silence till Didcot responded, each with their own thoughts, each assuming they knew what the other was thinking, which, in the way of such things, were entirely at odds with the truth. Pearce was castigating himself for being too open, while Emily saw in his sad smile an attempt to engage her sympathy and get her to change her mind and stay. He saw in the firm set of her jaw a determination to resist him come what may: to her it was set in anger at the way her thoughts were so unclear. Part of her wanted to remain in the room and she hated herself for the weakness of such a position.

  Naturally, Didcot, ordered to fetch her outdoor garments, did not help either of the principals with his mixture of obsequious acceptance of his instructions, mixed with his barely disguised smirks over what he assumed had happened. To his mind, the man he was set to serve had tried it on and got an elbow for his pains. Once in her cloak, Emily merely nodded to Pearce, thanked Didcot as her manners demanded and left.

  It was odd, the consequences of her departure: for John Pearce, as he surveyed the disturbed table, there was the realisation of a degree of disappointment that had nothing to do with thwarted carnality. For Emily Barclay, sat in a hack, there was a feeling of emptiness in the pit of her stomach that, having eaten and drunk well, she found inexplicable.

  ‘I’m damned if I will see him again,’ she swore, in the way that one does to seek fortitude.

  Ralph Barclay sat stripped to the waist, feeling an apprehension of forthcoming pain of the kind he had experienced too often of late, which caused him to ask the doctor attending him for a tincture of laudanum. The man’s frown was annoying, as was his Scottish burr as he advised a dependence on the opiate to be injudicious, unwelcome advice to a fellow who had come to see it as something to ease not just physical discomfort but those of the worried mind as well. He was also wondering why it was all medical men now seemed to be Scots, a damnable race even to a man whose antecedents, and indeed his very name, were Caledonian, though so far distant in the past that such an association could be discounted.

  ‘Are you ready, Captain?’ the man asked, once he had sunk the black and bitter liquid.

  ‘Aye,’ Barclay replied, though he would have preferred to wait till the laudanum took full effect, not a welcome notion given he was paying this fellow by the hour.

  The doctor approached his stump and leant to sniff, seeking corruption, grunting that all seemed well. ‘There is no anger on the surface either, sir, so I propose to give it a wee tug if you are game.’

  Game! Ralph Barclay thought, this is no damned game, but he nodded for the fellow to proceed.

  The string of the ligature hung from the end of his stump, the skin around it puckered and pale, the arm above now wasted where it had once been muscled, for it was never used now. Gently the doctor took hold of the end and his patient closed his eyes in anticipation, keeping them so and wondering what this quack was doing. He only opened his eyes when the doctor spoke.

  ‘Come away clean, sir. Your arm is fully healed.’

  Looking down at the stump, Ralph Barclay saw the ligature was no longer there and only then did he see it swinging in the hand of the smiling doctor. His heart lifted and not just from the lack of hurt, for testing it previously had always been painful. With the wound healed he could return to duty. HMS Semele wo
uld be his.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Having never met a special pleader before, John Pearce was unsure, having spent an hour of the morning with one, whether he was glad to have broken that run. Not that Theodore Lucknor was an unpleasant fellow, far from it: he had a lively countenance on a head somewhat too large for his body, a mass of thick, curly and unruly black hair, eyes that positively sparkled with the various emotions he took no care to conceal, added to a booming voice – exaggerated by the confines of his cramped office – and a mischievous grin when the occasion warranted it. That he saw the justice of the case this man before him wanted to pursue, he left in no doubt, it was how to carry it forward that puzzled him and that was his occupation in life, to prepare court papers in pursuance of the wishes of his client.

  ‘Perjury, sir, is a crime that must be pursued in a criminal court, it is not a matter that can be brought before a judge as a civil matter. The question, and it is a trying one, is how to get that unwieldy article, the law of the land, to act.’

  That last statement was accompanied by a loud smack of his fist on the desk, which both sent up a cloud of dust and dislodged several spills of paper: Lucknor was not a tidy man, nor did he take much care in his dress, while his fingers, stained black with ink, showed how much time he spent with a quill in his hand.

  ‘If I had those court martial papers …’

  ‘I am bound to say, Mr Pearce, that the case would not be advanced one jot by their survival. True, given other factors, they would have proved deadly in court, but it is the very things, those other factors, which you must have.’

  ‘There is no doubt, Mr Lucknor, that an illegal act was committed in the Pelican, and there are folk who still frequent the place who know that well.’

  ‘But you must have evidence of the identity of the perpetrator, sir, and that can only be provided in an unquestionable manner – given you say that Barclay did not enter the tavern – by those with whom he did the deed. I refer to the members of your press gang, and they, I hazard, will not come forward and volunteer to incriminate themselves in an act being touted as illegal.’