The Moonless Night Read Online Free PDF

with her toilette, but the caller did not seem to find anything amiss with her dark hair, bound back with silk primroses, her large brown eyes, sparkling with excitement to be at last doing some entertaining, nor even her gown, not quite in the highest kick of fashion, but stylish. The unwarranted treat of having company lent a high color to her cheeks.
    Only Biddy was disappointed. No prince, not even an invalid. The young gentleman, Mr. Benson, looked remarkably robust. Not that he was a big, stout ruddy-faced man. They were good patients for leeching. This one was elegant rather than large. Hardy, but lean and athletic, with a pair of broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. He was thirtyish, dark and good looking. Sir Henry presented him as a family connection on his wife’s side.
    “My daughter is said to resemble her mama,” he pointed out, the assumption being that Mr. Benson would have known the mother.
    “You must have had a very pretty wife, Sir Henry,” Mr. Benson replied, destroying that illusion.
    “So, you are come to get a peek at the Corsican,” Sir Henry went on, then explained to the family. “I finished up with my petition in Plymouth, and found Mr. Benson there, with no place to rest his head for the night, for the inns are full to the rafters.”
    Biddy knew this was nonsense, for she had been told specifically to turn out the gold suite, but naturally she said nothing. The gentleman said, “Very kind of you to give me rack and manger.”
    “I am happy to do it. Everyone is putting up guests these days. You would not be at all comfortable at the inn—my wife’s cousin, after all. What do they say of Bonaparte in London?”
    “There is a spirit of optimism that we have caged the lion at last. This will be the end of him. Saint Helena is spoken of as a place of exile.”
    “Exile! It is execution he wants. We saw how ineffective exile was at Elba. He’ll be back at our throats with another army within a twelvemonth if he isn’t executed. I have a petition going around. I have been in touch with Bathurst about it. You will want to add your name to the list.”
    “Yes, certainly,” the man said, looking surprised. He was handed the sheet, and said as he wrote, “There is no talk in London of executing him, actually. A closer watch must he kept on him than was done at Elba of course, but it is exile only that is discussed. After all, he did give himself up voluntarily to Captain Maitland, and asked for mercy in his Themistocles-letter to the Prince Regent.”
    “As to that,” Sir Henry began, assuming his customary scowl, “It was an impertinence on the Corsican’s part to write such a missive. ‘I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself on the hospitality of the British people.’ Hospitality, mind you, not mercy. And to put himself under the protection of our laws, as though he were a British subject, and not a damned—ah, dashed prisoner of war.”
    “Still, in common courtesy it was expected the Prince of Wales might at least have answered the letter. It was a gratuitous insult to ignore it,” Benson answered reasonably.
    To suggest his beloved Prince Regent, the First Gentleman of Europe, was lacking in courtesy roused Sir Henry to wrath. “We'll give him a taste of English hospitality. Chains and the rack is what he wants! If it were me in charge of the man, he would be hanged like a common felon.”
    “Let us hope your petition proves effective, Sir Henry,” Mr. Benson said, handing it back to him, “but I think myself that he is a very uncommon felon.”
    Marie, examining their visitor closely, thought she discerned a trace of amusement on the stranger’s face, a touch of laughter hiding in the dark eyes. She wondered why he was with them. A connection of Mama’s, of course, but not a close connection. He didn’t even know what she had looked like. She supposed that he must have a yacht that was to be kept at Bolt Hall. Nothing else would account for such