Sophia was in fact utterly unaware that she had become the belle of the ball; because she knew none of the young ladies standing around in clusters whispering and plying their fans, she was blithely ignorant of their criticisms of her plain gown two years out of fashion, her headdress never in fashion, her compete want of elegance in either form or manner, features undistinguished—her tout ensemble utterly unworthy of the male attention she had so mysteriously attracted.
Because Sophia had been told all her life she was unmarriageable, and because she was ignorant of all the little female arts that fashionable life mandated were necessary to attract notice, she was unselfconscious, and of course completely accustomed to the company of young gentlemen.
It can safely be said that not a single young gentleman that night thought of Cupid, darted arrows, or eternal passions as they danced with Sophia in turn—and neither did she. They were grateful for her ease when they were not quite sure of themselves in the dance figures, and appreciated her lack of pretended shock if words like ‘devil take it’ or even ‘oh, bugger’ would slip out after a misstep.
As for Sophia herself, though she loved every dance, and enjoyed the prattle of her partners, she found the pinnacle of pleasure in her two dances with Lt. Croft —though by the second dance, the room had become so crowded they were scarce about to move. But neither thought themselves the losers as they were thus able to talk the more, Lt. Croft readily answering her questions about Frederick’s doings.
It was so very fine to be able to talk about Frederick to someone who also had his interests at heart! “Pray believe me when I say I do not cast any aspersions—far from it—but his letters have grown so short,” she finally confided. “There is less description, and then Frederick never brags. Indeed, he scarcely talks about himself at all, so it is difficult to form an idea of his motions. It was a different case when he first went to sea, and perhaps I was foolish to expect it would always be that way.”
“In my experience, the youngest mids come aboard vilely homesick,” Lt. Croft said as the round dance ended at last. “The boys who come aboard their first ship, and who miss their homes, are inclined to write reams, if they are let.”
“Homesick!” Sophia repeated in dismayed tones. “He never said a word of it. I know those letters by heart, I read them so many times.”
“Boys won’t, in my experience, they are so afraid to run aground with the others. In part it’s because they must wear a hat like officers, and have charge of gun crews; they are anxious to be taken as men, though their voices are so high we call them squeakers at least as often as reefers. And then again, some officers, in trying to toughen them the faster, handle them roughly, so the boys don’t dare to admit to any tender feelings, while bluster and oaths are smiled at.”
Sophia said with some heat, “I think you credit their motivation more than it deserves. To me, persons such as that horrid Gough are blackguards and rascals, using their rank against those who cannot answer back.”
“There is some of that, too,” Lt. Croft said, guiding them to a seat and then staring at the wall in a musing fashion, as if he did not see the dripping wax or the scuff marks, but something else entirely.
He was thinking that Frederick Wentworth, though very much his friend, and sound through and through, was a proud little devil; he seemed incapable to admitting to any sensibility that he had resolved at the great age of fifteen might be weak.
But he forbore pointing that out to Frederick’s sister, perched on her chair so anxiously, and so he said only, “I believe using ’em kindly brings them around the faster, and the good ones, like your brother, prove their worth time and again. Between the guns of the enemy and the weather, the service is rough enough, truth to tell. But I am not to be talking all night, and occupying your attention when you ought to be dancing.”
“No, no, pray speak,” Sophia said earnestly. “I don’t mind standing out, now it is so crowded, and the heat is becoming insupportable. I am so glad to hear what you tell me, though it is no more than I expected, about him proving himself. He was ever so, defending Edward against loutish village boys who thought it was funny to shove a small, short-sighted boy into ditches, and the like. Mama was used to say that our father was a dashing hero, and Frederick was bidding fair to be just like him . . .” She stopped, giving her head a little shake.
Lt. Croft said, “Shall we walk about, then, and perhaps get a little air?” When she rose very readily, he tucked her arm under his, and smiled to find it fit so naturally. “Your brother, I do not mind telling you, is rising fast as a natural leader. Three times, now, he’s cut out gunboats, right under the artillery emplacements of the French. You can’t say fairer than to predict that he’ll make captain before he’s twenty-five, influence or no.”
“Captain! But he is not yet a lieutenant.”
“No.” Lt. Croft thought about it, then looked about him as they strolled the perimeter of the room. Frederick sat with several other boys his own age in a far corner, talking and laughing. “I know he’s said nothing, because if it don’t answer, the disappointment will be the sharper. He is very hard on himself—has one standard for himself, and a more generous one for everyone else—but the fact is, we’re here because the Admiralty Board is in sitting next week. He’s to be examined, on the recommendation of Captain Bradshaw and Admiral Graves, who are well in with the First Lord.”
Sophia clasped her hands, and was about to utter a string of questions when a tall, thin figure in an exquisite coat confronted them. Croft perforce had to introduce them, presenting Mr. George Forsham to Sophia, whereupon the squire’s heir said, “May I request this dance?”
There was nothing to do but thank him, curtsey, and suppress her impatience. Lt. Croft bowed and moved away, soon losing himself in the crowd.
Sophia made an effort to smile politely at her partner, reflecting that she would be able to speak with the lieutenant again—at which time would have her questions all in order.
She was not aware how far the hour had advanced. This was the supper dance, which meant, she discovered, she was expected to remain with her partner and walk into the next room, where refreshments had been laid out. Here she and Mr. Forsham engaged in painstakingly polite conversation, he falling back on the dull phrases inculcated in him by his tutor as correct, and she using Mr. Gregory’s well-remembered scripts. His mood balanced between discomfort and interest, and hers between boredom and an increasing anxiousness to return to the lieutenant for more conversation about Frederick and the sea, until at last the heavy cake had been consumed, the ratafia-punch drunk, and they could return to the assembly room, whereupon he bowed in correct form, and left the greatly relieved Sophia to look for the lieutenant.
But here again her hopes, modest though they were, once again were thwarted. There were only two more dances remaining, and both were claimed by her first friends, Herrick and Bartholomew. After that everyone was in motion toward the cloakroom.
Sophia, afraid to lose the lieutenant entirely, managed to find him while Frederick was conscientiously procuring their wraps, and she said, “Pray, Lt. Croft, if you have no other claims on your time, might you write to me about Frederick? I fear that his becoming more active is going to bring him to less time for letters, and I would not tax him about it for the world.”
Lt. Croft would like nothing better!
He looked down at her wide gaze, words about propriety on his lips. But then, he reflected, who would kick up a dust if he sometimes added a line to one of Frederick’s letters, or even asked to include a scribble under the same seal?
He knew that she had no friends looking after her welfare save her brothers, and as for Croft himself, after his mother remarried and began a second family, though she remained fond of him, it had been at a distance. She was become a Delafield, with Delafield children and interests. He would inherit nothing; his old uncle, the retired curate, was a second son, his married cousin having inherited the family property. No one would con
cern themselves about his doings. His fate and fortune rested solely in his own hands.
“I will,” he promised.
CHAPTER SIX
Sophia settled into a quiet life. She would have made friends if she could, now that there was no Mrs. Gregory to curtail her time, but she discovered that, polite as she was whenever she set foot in the village, she received only politeness back. Inexperienced as she was, she did not understand that the country folk were quite as scrupulous about rank as ever the squire’s wife could be. They knew to a nicety what degree of respect was due to an unmarried young lady from outside the county.
Miss Wentworth’s birth was respectable, her brother on his way to becoming an officer in the navy, and her second brother destined for the Church. That much had been noised all about the village and the surrounding countryside before Sophia had settled in. Therefore, though the squire’s wife considered her below notice, the shopkeepers and the laborers regarded her as just that degree above their touch to return her tentative overtures of friendliness with curtseys and touches to hats that did not encourage lingering outside of business. And as the two spinsters living closest to her had no use whatsoever for another spinster much younger, she found herself with her own company much of the time.
Late in November Sophia received a hasty note from Frederick:
I am made! I passed the Admiralty Board—I am going out as fourth lieutenant aboard a third-rate—the Phoebus of 74 guns—to the Mediterranean Sea . . .
She also received her first visitor, none other than George Forsham, who had not forgotten the friendly young lady from the dance who all the fellows had been wild after, who had twirled no fan, or giggled, or pressed with artificial languishing for the flattery and compliments that his sister and her friends seemed to demand as their due.
He spied her in church one Sunday, sitting alone. The afternoon being fine disinclined him to the fatigue of witting with his mother’s company and listening to their dull talk. It had never changed all twenty of his years. An impulse seized him to walk across the park, over the bridge, and through his father’s fields to the Widow’s Cottage.
He had taken care to provide himself with an excuse. He carried the morning papers, with their columns of naval news.
Sophia received him with surprise, and the newspapers with honestly expressed gratitude. Her only thought was that this was a pleasant interlude in her otherwise lonely existence
She had little to offer him, being used to cooking only for herself, and this a Sunday, but he would not listen to her apologies—”I have a long dinner of at least six courses and as many removes awaiting me at home,” he said earnestly. “My mother having decided that cold food on Sundays is for the likes of Methodists, and if God had wanted His people not to eat well on Sunday, He would not have given them the means to make fire.”
At the end of his speech he blushed violently, recollecting that this was exactly the sort of thing his sister taxed him for, saying that it was infinitely tedious, and could he not say anything with bon ton?
But Sophia accepted his words as unremarkable, saying that her brothers were partial to goose when they could get it, and ham, and did he agree?
He remained no more than a proper quarter hour. But she was so easy to speak to, so free of the vapid titters and languishing utterances of Amelia and her friends, that he found himself well pleased. Her birth was respectable, or he would not have ventured this far, but she was not of course of sufficient rank to be invited to country affairs. Even better, she was plain—as plain as mud, the girls had said disparagingly after the assembly that they had all pronounced the dullest duty in a thousand eras—but that was all right with him. He assured himself that he would be in no danger of falling in love.
Before he left, therefore, he took care to engage himself for another visit. “For there will be fresh news, you know, that I would be honored to bring.”
She expressed her appreciation, and when he was gone, sat down to the newspapers without a second thought to her visitor, except to thank him in her mind for his disinterested generosity.
Her eighteenth birthday thus passed unnoticed, for it never occurred to her to mention it to her single caller.
o0o
Christmas arrived, and with it all its traditional celebrations. Edward returned home for a few days, and ate his way through all the good things she had been putting up in expectation of his visit.
As a gift, Edward gave her a book that had become all the rage, Mr. Lewis’s The Monk, and she presented him with a fine new coat, having noticed his wrists extended out of his old one. After Epiphany he duly returned to school, and she resigned herself to another long stretch of loneliness. At least she had this new novel, which she found uncommonly silly.
But loneliness was not to be her lot after all.
By February, George’s calls upon Sophia Wentworth had become a regular thing. She learned to make seed cakes and tarts with damson jam—all the things she knew young men were fond of, that seemed proper for callers.
With no other reading matter save The Monk, Edward’s Greek tomes, and heavy works of theology, she read every single word of the newspapers. That furnished plenty of conversational topics; she, freely admitting her total ignorance of the world, asked questions, and he discovered he rather liked being looked up to for his knowledge and experience. He was far more used to being told what to think of politics by his good father, the squire, and of people by his mother, who could not forget—and never let her children forget—that she was second cousin to the wife of an earl.
George discovered that he rather liked having a secret from his family, and looked forward to his visits, which he took great care to hide by always setting out when no one was looking, and keeping the visits short enough that no one ever wondered where he was at.
Sophia’s supreme delight, however, was occasioned by the receipt of a letter from Frederick, which included a close-written page in a strange hand, unlike Frederick’s slanted, bold strokes. She liked the even letters, clear to read:
Miss Wentworth,
Your brother having agreed that between the two of us, we can make up a Single capital letter, I am herewith setting myself to write a little each Ev’n before I retire, if I am honor’d with a little time in the Wardroom.
Indeed, those first few days we had no time for anything but keeping the Ship afloat. We had taken aboard a great many landsmen—hard Bargains most of them, from the Prison hulks—who knew not starboard from larboard. It fell to me to divide them into Watches and oversee their education, in the course of which we were overtaken by a Storm while still in the Channel.
We were taken aback, nearly every article not Battened down swept to sea or broken, including alas in the Wardroom, where we discover’d our new Steward was “well to live” on account of having got at the officers’ wine. As a result every article was broke with the exception of the cover of a very large mess Teapot.
This we handed round as a measure to one another with Wine from a black jack, while we waited out the squall. We were thus at it, gunwale under, when we heard a Noise in the after-hold like the rush of many waters.
“A butt end has started!”
And from below came many shouts, “We are foundering!”
The bosun gave the alarm, and the captain ordered us to investigate, which we did with Difficulty not only because the ship had turned on its beam, but because the off-watch, including the sick, had hopp’d and hobbl’d out of their hammocks.
Down went the captain, all giving Way before him, us trailing like Ducklings, and abaft us the Carpenter and his mates, their hair standing on End. And what did we find? It was a large Cask of Peas that had broke upon a Bulkhead in a lee lurch, and the Peas rolling madly about made a Noise exactly like the rushing of water.
Whereupon the Captain took snuff and went straight to the cabin, leaving the Carpenter and the Purser blaspheming right and left about the d—’d Peas, each blaming the Other for what no one could hel
p.
The next day—today, before I wrote this, while we dined with the Captain on seas like Glass, he with a knowing look said, “May I help you to pea soup, Captain Croft?”
It was then, after his little joke, that I discover’d I was to be appointed to my first Command, in a sloop-of-war named Sybil, attached to the fleet. I am only a master and commander, with a single epaulette on the left, and so can be thrown back onto the Beach as a lieutenant at anyone’s whim, but it is the first Step and as I had always meant to begin as I would go on, the First Order I gave was that my lieutenant and two Reefers need not Powder, for I am giving it over for good, unless order’d by the Admiralty.
For though officers above Commander are exemp’t from the Wretched Tax, it is only the old and the Hidebound who still demand we go into battle with it blowing in our faces and snowing our well-brush’d coats. Whereupon my new officers gave me three cheers.
But here am I writing about myself, when you will be wanting to know the details of your Brother’s examination before the Admiralty. So I am passing this back to him before I depart for my new command, and he will finish and send it on . . .
Sophia smiled. How well that sounded, Captain Croft! She must include congratulations to him when she wrote to Frederick.
After another interminable wait, another letter came. It began in Frederick’s hand with a long description of wind and weather gage, and the sails required to make the most of both, followed by:
. . . I had to lay this aside because no sooner were we attached to the grand fleet than we were sent off in chase of a French privateer, out but a short time from Brest. Sybil was ordered in company with a Brig to the attack. The wind being SSE, directly on her beam where she likes it best, we came up under tops’ls and topgallants . . .
I am dashed tir’d and so I will give you a shot-by-shot Account when next we meet. Suffice it to say we won, though we took significant Damage below the water line from Johhny Crapaud’s broadsides, more than at first we knew.