Cast Adrift - Book 01

"Surely they ordered you home to attend the Regent, William."

"The Regent! Why should I wish to attend the Regent? For that matter, more to the point, why should the Regent wish me to attend him?

"To recognize your valor, of course. In the war. It was in the papers."

William rolled his eyes.

"By now they will have been informed what an unmitigated disaster the whole thing was, and I am quite sure that they will have reconsidered."

But they had not reconsidered by the time the ship reached Portsmouth. Mr. Milton, an Admiralty messenger, was waiting there to urge all haste upon Captain Stanhope. A carriage carrying the entire party flew from Portsmouth to London, changing horses twice along the way. It was a cozy ride, with Caroline, Lucy, and Sarah occupying one seat and William and a sullen Mr. Milton, who quite clearly had not anticipated that a seven-month old baby would be accompanying him back, the opposite one.

"Oh, there it is!" Caroline exclaimed as the carriage crested a hill. "London."

Lucy and Sarah craned their necks to look out of Caroline's window. William smiled at the delight on their faces.

"Yes, London never fails to thrill the country mind," Mr. Milton said in a well-practiced tone that was calculated to show his opinion of his fellow riders without completely alienating their sponsor.

His calculation proved erroneous. William opened his mouth to snap at the man, but Caroline was there first.

"'And Kings be born of thee, whose dredded might shall aw the World, and Conquer Nations bold.' A relation of yours, Mr. Milton?" Caroline asked sweetly.

"Madam?" he responded coldly.

"A reference to London in poem reprinted in the history of Britain by the poet John Milton, who perhaps recognized the same thrill. An ancestor?"

"Actually, yes, madam, according to family legend."

"How wonderful. So you must have read the history."

"Er, no, madam, I have not had the privilege."

"Then I do recommend it to you, Mr. Milton. Please, when we reach London, tell me whether you should like me to send home to Dartmouth for the volume so that you may borrow it."

Caroline sat back in the seat, observing her brother-in-law's delighted smile with considerable satisfaction.

But in the end they were several days too late. They drove straight to the Admiralty, reaching it in the very late afternoon.

"Not frozen yet, Matthew?" James asked as he departed through the door held by his coxswain. The man had spent the trip riding with the coachman.

"Oh, no, sir. Nothing like the North Sea in a gale, is it?"

"See that the ladies are taken care of, Matthew, while I go to meet their Lordships."

While William was whisked off to meet with the Lords of the Admiralty, Matthew successfully badgered an aging civil servant into showing the women to a lavishly furnished anteroom. That man was just exiting the room, having truculently acceded to Matthew's demand that the ladies be provided with tea, when his eyes widened at the sight of the two men walking toward him.

William was followed in by an older gentleman in civilian clothing, and it was all the poor man could do to keep from snapping to attention as they pushed passed him into the room.

"Caroline, please allow me to present Lord Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Lord Melville, my sister-in-law, Caroline Stanhope."

"Mrs. Stanhope." Lord Melville took her hand in both of his as she stood. "I am delighted to meet you. I heard such wonderful things about your late husband from Sir Edward, and we all mourn his passing."

"Thank you, my Lord, for you kindness."

"And now here you are in London. Unfortunately, the Regent has decided to visit his estates elsewhere, so that the small ceremony we had planned will have to be postponed. Captain Stanhope tells me that you might be interested in the theatre, however, and I would be most happy if you would be able to make use of my box tomorrow night at the Drury Lane Theatre. A Mr. Kean is appearing in a brand new production of The Merchant of Venice."

Caroline shot a quick glance at William, uncertain of what etiquette demanded. He nodded his head fractionally, and she turned back to Lord Melville.

"I should be most happy, Lord Melville."

"Excellent. I shall have my man bring the tickets to Lord William's tomorrow morning. Now if you ladies will excuse me, I must see about defeating this damnable Bonaparte. Ah, Perkins, there you are. Capital idea, that tea. Good man."

"Thank you, sir," the man said, closing the door behind the First Lord before the women and Matthew started laughing.

"Lord William?" Caroline asked William with a raised eyebrow.

"Force of habit, I'm afraid," he smiled. "Sometimes he forgets to address me as plain Captain Stanhope and I revert to the Earl's heir. Speaking of Lord William's, however, we had best get you ladies settled before darkness falls."

He quickly escorted the women back to the carriage and gave the driver an address in one of the better parts of town. And there, walking down the steps of the enormous townhouse where the carriage stopped was a familiar face.

"James. How nice of you to meet us," Caroline said as she extended her hand to allow James to kiss it.

"My pleasure. William's messenger foretold your arrival only yesterday, and I have been busy shaking up the household staff. I wonder you do not dismiss them all, William. A lazier group of slubberdegullions I have yet to see."

"Now, now, Mr. James Stanhope," said an older woman who had bustled out the door immediately after James. "There's no need for you to show off your fancy education or call us any names. The house is clean and fit for visitors, my Lord, despite your brother's attempts to rearrange all of your furniture."

"It was just a few beds," James said in as surly a voice as his smile would allow.

"Thank you, Mrs. Woodward," William said smoothly. "I'm sure it's all quite perfect. This is Mrs. Stanhope, Miss Burton, and Miss Parker. There in Miss Parker's arms is young Michael Stanhope."

"Your nephew?" the housekeeper cried with delight as she stepped up to coo at the waking baby.

"Yes," William said. "Terrible when you're no longer the center of attention in your own house, eh, James? Ah, Briggs, just help Matthew bring those things into the house, would you? Then I believe we would all be grateful for an early dinner, Mrs. Woodward."

Slowly at first, but then with breathtaking speed, Caroline found herself submerged in Regency London. William had not visited in a year, and was obviously considered a prize catch among the women in the upper echelons of society. That he paid so much attention to one woman was at first a source of jealousy, but word quickly circulated that she was his late brother's wife, and the women's envy at their familiarity quickly turned to derision. Caroline, after all, had none of their advantages, other than her fresh good looks. She was not versed in current London fashions, much less the Paris fashions of a year or two ago that were only now making their way across the Channel. She had apparently never learned to apply powder or rouge. She did not even converse properly, having a much more plainspoken manner than any of the women to whom she was introduced.

At the various parties to which she was invited, or which, far more often, William urged her to attend as his guest, she could sense the stares of the others, the halted confidences, the quiet snickering. A breeze from a window would bring her words like "provincial" and "dowdy." She found herself looking, far too eagerly and often, for William or James to cut her out of the small groups of women with which she was forced to spend time. But James attended very few of the parties, and William was almost always talking about the American War with other men of property and influence.

"Colonel Heatherington took me to the most marvelous performance at the Drury Lane Theatre the other evening," said Jane Arbuthnot, the leader of the small circle of women in which Caroline had found herself trapped at this particular party.

"I do so adore the theatre," Katherine Packenham said. "I suspect you did not have much theatre in Dartmoor, Mrs. Stanhope."

Both women had been unsuccessful in attracting the favors of Captain Stanhope, and were quite pleased to have someone so close at hand on whom they could take out their frustration.

"Dartmouth," Caroline corrected her. "No, we did not. But I did enjoy the Drury's Merchant of Venice several weeks ago. Is that what you saw, Miss Arbuthnot?"

"Perhaps," Jane laughed. "One so seldom goes to the theatre to actually watch the theatre, Mrs. Stanhope. One usually goes to be seen going to the theatre."

"Oh, I am sorry," Caroline replied. "It really was such a marvelous interpretation. My understanding is that all London is talking about it."

"Perhaps all the other parts," Katherine answered with a gay laugh.

"Perhaps," Caroline acknowledged. "But it was such a well done and sympathetic interpretation of Shylock that the audience burst into applause on any number of occasions."

"Yes, they were tiresome," Jane said. "Shylock would have been the Jew, would he not?"

"Why, yes," Caroline smiled.

"What the world needs, Mrs. Stanhope, is not a more sympathetic interpretation of Jews, but simply fewer Jews."

"I am sorry you feel that way, Miss Arbuthnot. Mr. Kean's performance is fully supported by Shakespeare's text."

"That may be so." Katherine had decided to add her opinion. "It wouldn't surprise me, Mrs. Stanhope, to learn that you spent a great deal of your time with your nose in a book. Perhaps the London air will improve your complexion."

"Perhaps," Caroline said again to the woman, this time through clenched teeth.

**********

"Lord William, I do so apologize for dragging you away from your acquaintances in London," Caroline said morosely as she once again dined in the Captain's cabin on board H.M.S. Wallace.

"Caroline, let me assure you first that you did no such thing. I could see how unhappy those harridans had made you. The only one who seemed to be enjoying herself was Lucy."

"Lucy will enjoy herself wherever she has a chance to tease your Mr. Cooper. But your ceremony..."

"The Regent is not expected back until the end of February. More than enough time for me to run you home and return. And you were miserable, my dear. Even if you had avoided parties entirely, I daresay you would have remained miserable for quite a time to come. So there is no need to apologize for my having offered to return you to Dartmouth. Second, Caroline, if you call me Lord William again I shall have you towed behind us in the jolly boat until we reach port."

"I beg your pardon, William. And thank you again for making arrangements for Sarah and Michael to return by carriage."

"Again, Caroline, it is nothing. If the wind holds in our favor, you may perhaps reach Dartmouth before they do.

"Yes, come in," he called in answer to a knock.

The ship's other midshipman, Mr. Chapman, entered with a worried look on his face.

"Mr. Wainwright's compliments, sir," he said, naming the ship's lieutenant. "The glass is dropping very fast."

"Very well, has he reduced sail?"

"To bare poles, sir."

"Bare poles?"

"He says he has never seen it drop so quickly, sir."

"Very well. I shall be on deck shortly."

"What is it?" Caroline asked as William pushed himself away from the table.

"A storm," William said with a worried expression. "And if it's a storm that Lieutenant Wainwright has not seen before, it must be quite a storm indeed."

CHAPTER FOUR

26 February 1814

H.M.S. Wallace

My Lords,

I have the privilege of informing your Lordships of our meeting with the newly commissioned French frigate L'Empereur two days ago. Following the gale of 20 February, we found ourselves driven far from our intended course and the mizzenmast shattered by lightning. Shortly after we had cleared the wreckage away, we spotted the French ship in the northeast. I deemed it best to avoid a meeting, but because of our condition was unable to carry out that particular plan. Accordingly, we adopted a somewhat unusual ruse de guerre in order to convince her captain that we were a French merchant ship. Particular credit for the success of our deception goes to Able Seaman Paul Laphin and a passenger, my late brother's widow, Mrs. Caroline Stanhope.

William paused, his pen poised above the inkwell as he wondered just how much of the ruse de guerre he should put in the official letter. Word of what had happened would quickly circulate throughout Portsmouth, where they would presently make port, and would eventually find its way to the Admiralty. That would be enough, he thought, recalling the events of that particular day with a broad smile on his face.

"Oh, my heavens!" Caroline had exclaimed when she came out on deck, blinking in the morning sunlight that finally shone upon the ship. "One of your . . . your --"

"Masts," William filled in the word.

"Yes, one of your masts is missing."

"Lightning, I'm afraid. It will be a rather slow crawl back to Portsmouth after all."

"Where are we?"

"Ah," William answered, "that is just what we were trying to determine. Thank you, Mr. Martin. We are all agreed as to the latitude, of course, but our only chronometer has been damaged, and I have asked Mr. Martin and our young midshipmen here to make their own calculations of our longitude. Let me see. Well, Mr. Rutledge believes that we are re-tracing Hannibal's route across the Alps."

He cocked an eyebrow at the young officer, who was making sure that he had applied sufficient polish to his shoes that morning.

"And Mr. Chapman has us about to enter Halifax harbor in Canada."

Mr. Chapman was intently examining the men cutting away the last of the fallen rigging.

"The master, on the other hand," William said with a nod toward Mr. Martin, "has us slightly west of the Bay of Biscay. I concur, Mr. Martin. Let's proceed northeast until we get a little closer to Brest, and then we'll head north for home."

"Very good, sir," the master answered. "We should have this cleared away shortly and be ready to make sail."

William nodded absently, and turned back to invite Caroline to breakfast.

"Sail ho!"

"Where away?" William yelled up to the lookout.

"Nor'east, sir. Hull-down. I can only see the tops of 'er sails, but she looks French."

"Damn. Belay that earlier order, master. The storm must have driven the blockading squadron off the coast, and Boney's got one of his ships to sea. In our condition, we'd be sitting ducks, even for another sloop. Let alone something larger. Better head northwest until we can lose him."

The master headed back for the wheel to give his orders, and William finally issued his invitation. They had no sooner finished breakfast, however, when he was summoned back to the quarterdeck for more bad news.

"I think she's seen us, sir," Mr. Martin said. "A frigate. She's throwin' out signals."

"Damn," William said again. "We've got the weather-gage, but not the ship to use it. Yes, Mr. Wainwright?"

"It's Cooper, sir," the ship's lieutenant said. "He has an idea you might like to hear."

"Matthew?"

"Paul Laphin, sir, the Guernseyman in the foreguard?"

"Yes?"

"Well, sir, it's 'is opinion, like, that if we removed the stump of this mizzenmast here, we would look very much like one o' them Biscayans that cruise up and down these here waters."

William smiled.

"And the gunports, Matthew? Most Biscayans don't have quite so many guns."

"Aye, sir," the coxswain agreed nervously. "But I was thinking, sir, that if we strung the ship with bunting, like, for a celebration o' the captain's wedding, we could pull the cap over their eyes, like, for a good while."

Captain Stanhope stared at his coxswain, more impressed with the man's cunning than he was willing to let on.

"Let us suppose that we can do so. What is preventing her from coming within hailing distance and inviting the bride and groom over for a dinner?"

"Nothing, sir," Matthew said with a crooked smile.

"And how do you propose that I pull that off? I don't have more than five words of French, and I know for a fact that Mr. Wainwright speaks less than I do."

"Aye, sir, but Paul, 'e speaks a sort of Channel French, and, um, Mrs. Stanhope, sir --"

"Absolutely not," William ruled it out immediately. "We will do nothing to endanger Mrs. Stanhope or her maid."

"Aye, sir," Matthew agreed. "Although being as how the Frenchies are right over the horizon and all..."

"It's a good point, Matthew," William said after another minute's consideration. "Are you sure that Mrs. Stanhope speaks French?"

"Oh, aye, sir. Which I heard her speaking with your cook at home, sir, what has the French."

"Very well. Mr. Wainwright, please pass the word for -- excuse me, please ask Mrs. Stanhope and Miss Burton to join me on deck. I believe that Mrs. Stanhope is still finishing breakfast. And Miss Burton is probably, um . . ."

"In the cabin, sir," Matthew said quietly. "Which I brought her her breakfast this morning."

"Yes," William drawled. "In the cabin. Mr. Wainwright, I want this mast unstepped and the hole covered with whatever cargo you can find. And then break down everything on the deck that marks us as a British naval vessel. Hoist the French colors. And get every man-jack who's not needed elsewhere to work on sewing bunting. Those bastards are going to sew like they've never sewed before. Oh, not you, Matthew. No, no. You wait here for the moment."

"Sir?" Matthew asked suspiciously.

"Ah, Mrs. Stanhope, Miss Burton," William said with a smile. "I trust you slept well, Miss Burton."

Without waiting for an answer, William launched into an explanation of the plan, concluding with the request that the women immediately set to work sewing a French dress for Mrs. Stanhope to use later that afternoon.

"We shall be more than happy to," Caroline answered, "although..."

"Although what?"

"Although we are both tolerable seamstresses, Captain, we are neither one of us particularly quick."

"So you might need some assistance? Matthew."

William turned to his coxswain with a knowing smile.

"Sir?"

"Who's the best tailor on board?"

"The best tailor, sir? That would be . . ." Matthew looked about him wildly. "That would be, er..."

"That would be you, would it not, Matthew?" "Aye, sir," Matthew said in resigned whisper.

"Very well, report to the cabin and place yourself under Mrs. Stanhope's orders."

William watched them walk away, Caroline with a determined expression, Matthew with a hangdog look, and Lucy perfectly delighted at the turn of events.

The day that followed was one of the most tense that Captain William Stanhope had ever experienced. Covered in cloth bunting, the Wallace was indeed required to come within hailing distance of the French ship, where Laphin's fear nearly queered the deal. The man was so scared of giving away the ruse that he was even more taciturn than usual.

Fortunately, Caroline was superb. A spring thaw was already starting to warm the sea air, and Caroline took full advantage. She, Lucy, and Matthew worked furiously to reproduce a dress that she had seen in London, one that provided a nearly obscene display of décolletage. Even Captain Stanhope, dressed in an ordinary merchant seaman's outfit, had stared when she came on deck. Once they grew close to the French ship, she explained the situation in perfect French, charming the French captain as well as the leering sailors that seemed to have an astonishing amount of work to do in the frigate's rigging. As William had expected, an invitation brought the happy couple over to the French ship for a celebratory supper. Hours passed, with William's anxiety at the danger to which he had exposed his sister-in-law gnawing at his churning stomach.