The lawyer took the parchment from his worn leather case, carefully smoothed it out flat on the table and perched a pair of spectacles on his bulbous nose. "Your uncle's will is quite straightforward, My Lord," he assured Ramage. "In fact I drew it up for him myself after his wife - your aunt, of course - died so unexpectedly last winter."
Ramage nodded and glanced across the table at Sarah. The lawyer was a chubby little man with a red face, a redness caused by sun and wind rather than too much port, yet his air of being a prosperous farmer was curiously at odds with his irritatingly precise manner. He had placed the will squarely in front of him on the dining room table, which was serving as a desk, and taken great care to make sure the lower edge of the page was lying parallel with the side of the table. There is no way of hurrying this man, Ramage was trying to tell Sarah.
There was a curious air of unreality about the whole affair. The last time Ramage had sat at this table his uncle, Rufus Treffry, had been alive and well: alert and brisk of manner, he had seemed good for another twenty years. His aunt (his father's sister) seemed if anything younger.
Now both were lying side by side in the Treffry family vault at Saltwood Church, a few miles away, and the new owner of Treffry Hall and the several hundred acres belonging to it was Captain Lord Ramage of the Royal Navy . . .
"May I ask, My Lord, if you have made up your mind what you are going to do with the property?"
Property? A lawyer's word for what all his life he had thought of and referred to as "Uncle Rufus's place": an imposing, four-square brick house on the high land at Aldington overlooking the great flat sweep of Romney Marsh, with the Channel a blue line in the distance sweeping round to Dungeness, the point of land marking the south-eastern corner of Kent (and, for that matter, England too).
"I haven't thought about it," Ramage said. "I don't know the details of the bequest," he pointed out, nodding at the parchment. "I don't know whether or not my uncle made any provision for the servants, but they are certainly my responsibility now."
Uncle Rufus's butler, for instance. Raven was a sinister-looking man because of a long, wide scar across his left cheek, the result (as the man had explained to Ramage years earlier) of a misunderstanding with a Revenue officer - a polite way of admitting that he had been caught smuggling. But Raven, the perfect servant in the dining room yet equally able to make sure that the horse brought to the front door was glistening of coat and shiny of harness, had been an important part of Ramage's childhood (some of which had been spent in Italy). Staying with Uncle Rufus had meant exciting hours spent along the banks of sunken lanes with Raven, handling (and being nipped by) his ferrets, pegging nets over rabbit holes, or quietly skirting the edge of one of the woods, being taught how to stalk pheasant holding one of Uncle Rufus's second-best fowling pieces (were all those splendid guns included in the will?). And learning to ride - Raven had all the standards and sharp language of an Army riding master, and the fact that Ramage was now a good rider (though not an enthusiastic horseman) was entirely due to Raven.
Ferreting and rabbiting, shooting rocketing pheasants, riding a horse over the Downs or leaping the dykes and ditches that laced the Marsh, brushing horses' coats and polishing harness, hearing stories of Marsh smugglers and tales of strings of packhorses making their way in the moonlight from the sandy beaches off Romney and Camber and "the Ness" slung with barrels of smuggled brandy for the squire and lace for his lady . . . that was Raven. What were Raven's links with the smugglers? Ramage's concern was only curiosity; like most of the people living along the coasts of Kent and Sussex, he saw smugglers and smuggling as a part of life. Sensible folk looked the other way, and only a fool paid customs duty and excise on his liquor.
"Ah, yes," the lawyer said, "the staff are mentioned in the will."
"We would be interested in the details," Sarah said unexpectedly and the lawyer, unused to women (even the daughter of the Marquis of Rockley) taking an active role, looked startled.
"Yes, indeed, My Lady. Should I begin reading?"
"Unless you would like more tea?" She gestured towards the large silver urn that Raven had left at the end of the table. "Or perhaps something stronger?"
"Oh My Lady, no thank you: never before noon, and rarely even then. My wife, you see. A very strong-minded woman, and if she smells liquor on my breath too early in the day, she thinks I will be damned."
"You will, too," Sarah said and then looked despairingly at her husband when she saw the little lawyer had taken her remark seriously. But at least he was now holding up the will with one hand and adjusting his spectacles with the other.
The man coughed twice, as though it was part of a ritual before reading a will, and then put the will down again. He looked up at Ramage.
"A copy of the relevant parts of the will was sent to your father to await your return to England, My Lord."
Ramage almost sighed aloud. How to explain to a lawyer that copies of documents mattered less than actions? That people owning large estates which had passed from father to son for generations took much for granted, so that a brief remark could describe as much as two pages of a lawyer's writings? Ramage had never seen the copy of the will sent to his father; when he had returned from this last affair in the Mediterranean his father had said simply that Rufus had died "and of course the property goes to you."
The "of course" took notice that Rufus had no children and that Ramage was his only nephew; it took in what they had all known for years, that Treffry Hall would go to Ramage - who else? But all that was mixed up with things like noblesse oblige and family affairs that lawyers never really understood because they could not be written down in their curiously stilted legal language. Stilted and legal, Ramage realized, because their phrases had stood the test of probate law and litigation and there was no mistaking the meaning, but nevertheless it always sounded stilted to ears that rejoiced in the rich flow of Shakespeare.
"Yes, so my father told me," Ramage said, "but circumstances prevented me from reading it. So please proceed . . ."
Again a deep breath, again a twitch at the spectacles, again two coughs, and the lawyer launched into the will. "I, Rufus Charles Aldington Treffry, being of sound mind ..."
Aldington? Ramage thought as the lawyer droned through the preliminary phrases, I didn't know that was one of his names. Ramage knew the family was one of the oldest in Kent, and that Treffry Hall had a history almost as old as the county, but he had not realized that the Treffrys went so far back. One of the habits of belonging to such an old family as the Ramages was that you tended to regard almost everyone else as a parvenu!Although come to think of it, it was not part of family history that there had been any fuss when Admiral the Earl of Blazey's young sister had become engaged to and then wed a Kentish landowner.
Ramage was startled by a double cough and looked up to see the lawyer, spectacles now in his hand, looking at him. "We now come to the sections concerning you, My Lord," he said apologetically, clearly having noticed that Ramage's attention had wandered.
"Oh, indeed. Please continue," Ramage said, aware that Sarah was looking at him with an expression combining love and exasperation.
First came the bequests to the staff. A tidy lump sum for Raven, another for the housekeeper, and three more to the cook, gamekeeper and head gardener, "All of whom," the lawyer said as though an explanation was necessary, "had been in Mr Treffry's service for many years."
"And all of whom have been paid regularly since then by my father until I could get back to England and take over the management of the estate," said Ramage, irritated by the lawyer's almost patronizing manner.
"Oh, indeed, My Lord, and in any case I could have arranged a loan on their bequests, using the terms of the will as collateral."
Why is it, Ramage wondered, that just as I begin to think you are not a bad fellow after all, you make some crass remark like that?
The man resumed reading. Treffry Hall and all its furnishings and appurtenances, outbuildings, livestock and contents, and the land comprising the estate, was left to his nephew but (so Uncle Rufus was a realist, since Nicholas Ramage was a serving officer who had nearly been killed several times already) should that nephew predecease him, Rufus Treffry then indicated who should inherit.
Sarah went white, and for a moment Ramage thought she would faint. "But - but ... he met me only once, at our wedding," she gasped. "To leave me all this if I was widowed!"
Ramage laughed to lighten the moment. "I shall make a point of staying alive to cheat you out of your inheritance!"
The lawyer, missing completely the lightness of Ramage's tone and not noticing Sarah's shock (after all, Ramage realized, the man had drawn up the will and the terms were no surprise to him), said: "Well, My Lady, I expect it will all come to you anyway if anything happens to His Lordship."
Sarah, knowing just how many times she had already just missed being widowed since her marriage, and how many times Nicholas had nearly lost his life since she first met him, nodded politely. "I'm sure it will," she said, trying to keep the chill from her voice. "Pray continue."
The lawyer was near the end of the will. Rufus Treffry had obviously been very proud of his collection of armour, and also his sporting guns, and he expressed the hope "though creating no trust in the matter" that his legatee would continue to maintain all the pieces in good condition. "In fact the butler, Raven, has looked after them for many years," the lawyer explained, oblivious to the fact that as a boy Nicholas Ramage had delighted in helping Raven.
Finally the lawyer took another document from his case. "The deeds to the property, My Lord." He searched for another sheet and then handed it over. "That is just a note delineating the boundaries of your land, My Lord. You may wish to ride round the boundaries. I am sure that Raven knows them well."
No better than I, Ramage thought. As a boy, when he was allowed to borrow one of Uncle Rufus's fowling pieces, it was curious how the best game always seemed to be roaming the neighbours' fields. To a lawyer (and to an Uncle Rufus if Ramage was caught) it was poaching, but to a young boy it had been a great adventure. And now Treffry Hall and its estate was all his. His and Sarah's. And at Chatham Dockyard his frigate was being refitted after a long period in the Mediterranean.
Ramage was lounging in an armchair watching Sarah embroidering a cushion cover the following afternoon when Raven tapped on the door and came in with a silver salver, which he offered to Ramage.
Ramage looked at the packet resting in the middle of the salver. It was too thick to be just a newsy letter from his father. He recognized the griffin seal and the handwriting, but it was obviously a packet which also contained other letters.
"This has just arrived, sir," Raven said, and when Ramage had taken the packet he turned to Sarah. "Is there anything your ladyship requires?"
Sarah smiled and held up the embroidery. "I'm almost out of silks," she said.
Raven nodded understandingly. "I'll talk to my friends, madam. A selection of colours?"
Sarah frowned, looking at her work, and then nodded.
"A day or two, milady," Raven said.
By then Ramage had broken the seal of the packet and found that it contained a brief letter from his father and another letter whose cover was closed by a large seal showing a slim woman wearing a crown and standing with an anchor at her feet.
"Who on earth is that from?" Sarah asked as Raven left the room as silently as he had arrived.
"The gentlemen at Lloyd's, from the look of it," Ramage said, breaking the seal. "Don't say some damned shipowner is complaining about that convoy I brought home from Barbados . . . No, the Committee of Lloyd's would have written to Their Lordships, and then the Admiralty would write to me . . ."
"Open it!" Sarah urged. "Why speculate when you're holding the answer in your hand?"
How did he explain? "You've no idea how peaceful it is just sitting here in front of the fire, watching you sewing, and knowing no first lieutenant or master is going to come to me with a problem. And knowing that there are no orders from Their Lordships in the top drawer of my desk which I have to carry out or 'answer to the contrary at my peril'. You want some smuggled silks, Raven wants to take the bay mare down to the farrier, cows have knocked down about four yards of a spile fence on the south side of the beechwood meadow, and the housekeeper wants to know if she should tell Raven to bring up another case of sherry from the cellar. That's all. No strange sail on the horizon, no ship's company to send to general quarters just before dawn, no orders in the drawer ..."
"And a loving wife to share your bed," Sarah said unexpectedly.
"Especially that," Ramage said, breaking the seal of the letter and then deliberately putting it to one side while he read the letter from his father.
"Father and mother send their love . . . Hanson spilled soup over Lady Cardington's dress... oh yes, and the dear lady was so enraged that father sacked Hanson on the spot and re-engaged him as soon as Her Ladyship had left!"
"It sounds to me as though Hanson and your father have an arrangement!"
"Oh, they have," Ramage said. "He's been with us about forty years, and you know how his spectacles keep sliding down his nose? Well, without the spectacles he can't see a thing, and probably as he served the soup his spectacles slipped, so while one hand reached up for the spectacles, the other tilted the soup tureen! Means Lady Cardington never gets invited to dinner again!"
Sarah looked puzzled until Ramage explained. "If she came and found Hanson still in the house, she'd be most upset. As far as father is concerned, Hanson is worth any dozen guests like Lady Cardington!"
"Isn't she the woman with a very deep voice, married to that extraordinary fat Welshman?"
"Yes - he was created about five years ago and she has never got over suddenly becoming a lady without any effort on her part. A bass voice and a falsetto brain - my mother's opinion!"
"And Lloyd's?" Sarah asked as Ramage put down his father's letter. "I think you're scared of it!"
"No, just savouring it. After all, one doesn't want to eat the tastiest thing first."
"I always do," Sarah said firmly. "I can't bear the suspense."
Ramage put the letter down, stood up and walked over to select a thick log before putting it on the fire.
"You've never seen me in a temper yet," Sarah said, "but when I let myself go . . ."
Ramage glanced at her and stared at an ankle showing below the hem of her dress. "I'll wager ten guineas to an empty bottle you stamp your foot!"
"Oh, you are a beast! Read the letter!"
"I know what it says, so there's no hurry."
"What does it say, then?"
"The Master and Committee of Lloyd's request the pleasure of our company at a dinner being given to some visiting bashaw, and we are not going all the way to London for that!"
He sat down and picked up the letter. A couple of minutes later, after he was obviously beginning to read it a third time, Sarah said ominously: "Well?"
"Well, it's not for some bashaw after all," Ramage said lamely. "It's a dinner, though."
"For whom?"
"Me, actually," Ramage said, his voice a mixture of puzzlement and modesty.
"Nicholas!" Sarah, now completely intrigued, was also impatient and on the verge of losing her temper. "Nicholas, what's it all about?"
"I'll read it out, darling. It's addressed from the 'Merchant Seaman's Office' and is dated the beginning of last week - the same day we left London to come down here. A Monday, wasn't it?"
"Darling, what does it matter?" Sarah demanded.
"It was Tuesday, actually, but as you say, it doesn't matter. Well, it's headed, 'At a meeting of the Committee for Encouraging the Capture of French privateers, armed vessels & c, Rawson Aislabie esquire in the Chair'. . . Then there's a break and a sort of heading before it goes on with the point of it all."
"You're teasing me," Sarah said crossly. "You wait until tonight; I'll pay you back!"
"No," Ramage protested, "it's damned difficult reading this sort of thing; it's not a continuous paragraph. Anyway, 'Resolved' - that's the Committee resolving, you realize -"
"Oh, I thought it would be the French privateer captains: oh, do go on, Nicholas!"
"Yes, well, they resolved 'That Captain the Lord Ramage of His Majesty's ship Calypso be requested by this Committee to accept a sword, value one hundred guineas, in acknowledgement of his very gallant behaviour in the destruction of two French frigates and the capture of two more, along with seven merchant ships, in the action off Diamond Rock; and in testimony of the high sense this Committee entertains of the protection he has thereby afforded to the commerce of Great Britain.'
"There's a covering letter explaining about the resolution and asking me to suggest a date," he added. "And it says I can also bring any of my officers present at the action as my guests."
Sarah was puzzled. She accepted the reference to the sword as though her husband deserved a dozen, but when had it happened?
"That was before - why, before you came down to Isla Trinidade and we first met. Two French frigates taken? And you destroyed two more? Is that when you captured the Calypso?"
A bewildered Ramage nodded. "Southwick and the rest of them usually refer to it as 'The Diamond Rock Affair'. It's taken Lloyd's long enough to make up their minds!"
"You're hardly ever in England," Sarah pointed out. "No sooner are you home than you sail again. Then you spent that brief peace marrying me and honeymooning. Then we were captured and you escaped and went to Devil's Island when war broke out again . . . Then you went off to the Mediterranean, and we've only just returned from there, with all those unlikely people you rescued, including me. So the Committee of Lloyd's haven't had much time . . ."
She stared at the log on the fire which was now beginning to sizzle and flare. "You'll wear uniform. I have that white dress. I wonder if your mother would lend me the pearls?"
Ramage laughed. "And the tiara too! She hates wearing it."
Sarah suddenly looked embarrassed. "I forgot! Of course, she'll want to wear the pearls. I'll wear my emeralds."
"What about me?" Ramage grumbled. "I have an enormous problem, and all you think of is pearls and tiaras."
Sarah, distressed, said quickly: "What problem, darling? What's the matter?"
"Do I wear a sword to the dinner? - it is correct uniform. But what do I do with the old sword while they present me with the new one, 'Value one hundred guineas'? I can't stand up there wearing one sword and holding another in my hand: I'll look like a sword cutler plying for business!"
"Your father will know," Sarah said. "Anyway, I can always hold your regular one while you march up to collect the new one."
"It's all such a fuss," Ramage grumbled. "Pity I can't ask them to send me a hundred guineas, and I'll use it to buy you some new jewellery!"
"Clothes perhaps," Sarah said laughing, "but not jewellery. I inherit a quantity from my mother, and I expect your mother will . . ."
"So in a few years' time you'll be tottering under the weight of Rockley and Ramage jewellery. Me? I'll just have a hundred guinea sword to hang on the wall ..."
"At least you won't have to spend your prize money buying me shiny baubles. You'll be able to pay a cutler to keep your sword sharp! Anyway, you must write and tell the Committee when you can go to London. And your officers," she reminded him. "Southwick will enjoy this as much as you. He thinks of you as a son."
"Grandson," Ramage corrected, "but in fact if anyone deserves a sword from Lloyd's, it's Southwick."
"I seem to remember he has a sword of his own the size of an oar. It's big enough for Father Time to use as a scythe!"
"And that's just how he uses it. He whirls it round his head, bellows like a bull, and charges along a French ship's deck. The bellow paralyses 'em with fear and the blade slices 'em in half."
Sarah shuddered and then said: "Yet he always puts me in mind of an old bishop: the kindly round face and all that flowing white hair."
"Like a mop drying in the wind!"
"Yes, but it looks very distinguished. Think of his sword as a crozier, and he has a very rich voice: I can just imagine him in a pulpit preaching to his flock."
"Tell that to Paolo Orsini! The poor boy still makes silly mistakes working out sights, and Southwick still hollers at him. I'm sure Paolo would reckon that by comparison a bull's bellow would sound like music!"
"Apart from Southwick, which of your present officers were with you at Diamond Rock?"
Ramage's brow furrowed. Diamond Rock ... so much had happened since. Sarah, for instance. Diamond Rock was long before they had met and were married. Yet already he found it hard to remember a time when he was not married to this tawny-haired woman whose body made those Greek statues seem clumsy, whose sense of humour kept them both laughing, and who understood his moods almost better than he did himself.
"There's Southwick, and young Paolo," she reminded him.
"Yes, and Aitken. Wagstaffe was there, but he's gone to another ship. Rennick, of course: one can't forget the Marines! And Bowen, the surgeon. Two of the lieutenants were Baker and Lacy: good youngsters, but neither with me now."
Sarah was keeping a check as Ramage did little more than reminisce. "So you must write to Aitken, Southwick, Rennick and Bowen and Orsini. Well, I know all of them well enough. Any others?"
Ramage shook his head. "No, my present three other lieutenants all joined the Calypso long after the Diamond business ..."
"Very well, that's five of them you have to write to. And the Committee of Lloyd's. And your parents - they'll be excited. Do you think I could bring my parents? They'd be so proud."
"Proud? I'm sure the Committee of Lloyd's would be proud to have the Marquis of Rockley and his wife present at their dinner. He must be one of the most powerful men in Parliament, and I'm sure Lloyd's always likes to have friends there!"
"Well, they're getting good value with your father," Sarah pointed out. "He may not have the Admiralty in his pocket, but the new First Lord listens very attentively when he speaks, and that would be a help to Lloyd's."
"The Committee of Lloyd's are only concerned with getting even more frigates to escort even more convoys," Ramage commented. "Still, a hint over a glass of sherry often does more than an official letter."
"Your officers and your parents, and my parents - so much for the guests. Do we post up to London? Which is the post road?" Sarah asked.
"From memory that starts at Folkestone, and you get fresh horses at Hythe, Ashford - where we'd join - and then Lenham, Maidstone, West Malling, Wrotham Heath (you need fresh horses as well as an extra pair to climb that dam' long hill), and then Farningham, Swanley - and after that I get mixed up. The most important thing, according to Raven, is that there are no turnpikes on that road! There are plenty on the Dover, Canterbury, Faversham, Sittingbourne, Rochester and Gravesend road, though."
"I hope that doesn't mean the Ashford road will be in poor condition. We haven't had much rain lately. Does that mean we breathe dust the whole way?"
"My dear, don't think that turnpike tolls mean good roads! The people who own the land and establish the toll gates put that story about." He thought for a minute or two, staring at the flames dancing in the fireplace. "You know, Raven hasn't been to London for a long time - Uncle Rufus hated cities - and I don't like having to borrow father's carriage every time we want to go out. And we both hate posting . . ."
"So why don't we take Raven and our own carriage?" Sarah finished the sentence for him. "Yes, and let's not hurry. I don't know Kent, so why don't we take a week or two, staying at whatever inn takes our fancy?"
"You've had one honeymoon, you know," Ramage said teasingly.
"Yes, I vaguely recall it, but that was in France and, if you remember, it started the war going again ..."