pulled back in a simple knot, and bound with ribbons of a similar colour; it was nothing very extraordinary in its arrangement. I felt positively dowdy; and suffered, of a sudden, from an access of shyness.
The sensation was increased when a broad-shouldered, chestnut-haired fellow jostled my arm in attempting to ease by me. He glanced at my face, muttered an apology, and swept on with only the barest civility of manner. I thought his countenance familiar. There was a mix of worldliness and contempt in his eyes that struck me like a blow. I had seen this man before.
“Frank! Frank—”
My brother turned from assisting his wife with her pelisse.
“That gentleman by the staircase, ascending to the boxes—with the woman in dark grey. We are acquainted with him, surely?”
The chestnut-haired man had a hand under the elbow of his fair companion. I had not noticed her previously, a testament to my confusion; she was extraordinarily lovely, with a haunting, fine-boned beauty. Her cheekbones were high; her nose aquiline; her deep-set eyes heavily lashed. A luxuriant mass of gold hair trembled elegandy above her nape; her ears were two pink shells. And though she was dressed in dark grey, with complete sobriety and disregard for ornament, the lines of her gown could not disguise the exceptional in her figure. It was a wonder that every male eye was not turned the lady's way. Her companion bore her along like a prize he had seized.
“By Jove,” Frank murmured. That is Sir Francis Farnham—a member of the Navy Board. I wonder what he is doing in Southampton?”
“Seeing to his ships, one must assume.”
“He should far rather work his coded signal lines from a safe distance,” Frank retorted.
“You would refer to the Admiralty's cunning flags, which communicate intelligence from Lpndon to Portsmouth?”
“Sir Francis never goes near the water if he may help it, and thus is a great advocate for telegraph—and every new form of jiggery-pokery the Admiralty may advise. It is said they contemplate a signal-line that will run the length of the Kingdom—God help them when the wind blows too strong!”1
“You seem quite familiar with the effects of Sir Francis's administration,” I observed.
“I made the Baronet's acquaintance some years ago in Kent, when I commanded the Sea Fencibles; I warrant he will not remember me now. He is grown so very great in Influence!”
“Ramsgate,” I said thoughtfully. That is where I have had a glimpse of him.”
“He does not observe,” Frank persisted, craning his neck; “he has already ascended. I shall seek him out during the interval, however. Sir Francis governs the Transport Board, and I should dearly like to consult with him on the matter of those Frenchmen in Wool House. The Transport Board holds authority, you know, over prisoners of war.”
“His wife is very lovely.”
“Wife! That is Phoebe Carruthers; Trafalgar widowed her. Perhaps Sir Francis hopes to secure her as his second lady—though I should have thought him capable of attaching a woman of greater fortune. He is handsome and rich, and Mrs. Carruthers possesses little more than her beauty.”
“Many men are happy with less.”
“I wonder at her sensibility, Jane. I should not have thought her in a humour for play-acting.”
“And why is that?”
“Cannot you see that she is in mourning? It was her son—the Young Gentleman—who fell dead from the shrouds on the StellaMaris”
BUT BY THE TIME WE HAD WITNESSED MRS/JORDAN'S skill, and laughed until our sides ached, and stood once more to seek the foyer—Frank's project of appeal on behalf of the French prisoners must perforce be postponed. Sir Francis Farnham and his companion were gone.
1Frank Austen is referring here to the Royal Navy's semaphore system of communication, which only replaced the older form of signal-flag communications in 1816. “Telegraphy” refers not to the electrical system of transmission invented by Samuel Morse in 1837, but to a series of signal towers that relayed orders from the capital to the coast—Editor's note.
Chapter 10
A Morning Pleasure Party
Thursday
26 February 1807,
~
IF FRANK RECEIVED ANY REPLY FROM TOM SEAGRAVE TO his express of Tuesday evening, I was not informed. My brother was unwontedly silent this morning as we sailed down the Solent. It was so early that the dusk had barely lifted from the New Forest, so early that the faint winter light had no power to warm me, and I huddled in my old pelisse while the frigid spume raced across the small vessel's hull.
Etienne LaForge was braced in the bow of the boat drinking great draughts of fresh air. To him, the