And that left her no choice at all.
"Very well, Mr Audley." As she came to her no-choice decision it occurred to her that she'd been manoeuvred into this surrender by Paul Mitchell and Mr Aske and Mr Bannen just as surely as Endymion and the Pomone and the Tenedos had brought Decatur's President within range of the Majestic's seventy-four guns. But Decatur had struck his flag then without loss of honour, so she could do the same.
Paul Mitchell smiled at her. "It'll take you out of circulation too, Elizabeth. And that's probably just as well at the moment."
She didn't know quite what to make of that, because she knew she couldn't trust him. But it sounded well-meant, and she wanted to believe that it was.
"I don't see how I can help you, Mr Audley. But if it really is Number Seven . . ."
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"Ah . . .how we've been lucky there." Audley had brightened with her surrender. "Owing to Mitchell's . . . exuberance ...
we cannot put any questions to your burglars. But before your arrival on the scene they had collected all they wanted to steal, it seems. So at least we know what they wanted."
Paul Mitchell nodded at her. "Number Seven, Elizabeth."
"The old Vengeful, Miss Loftus," said Audley.
V
"PUT ON YOUR seat-belt," said Paul. "Aske keeps telling me that I must wear it at all times. It's getting to be a habit."
The belt clicked, and she had better keep her wits about her, snapped the sound of it. "And now?"
"And now. . ." his foot went down on the accelerator ". . .and now . . . tell me about Number Seven, Elizabeth."
"Where are we going?"
"Ah . . . you must have made quite an impression on David, because he's doing you a great honour—you should be pleased . . . and reassured—you're going to Steeple Horley."
"Steeple Horley?"
"The old house— his house . . . You'll like his wife—Faith is a great lady in her way—" he snorted as he changed gear "—to be married to David Audley she has to be a great lady."
Great lady? " His wife?" Elizabeth looked down at her creased dummy3
and shapeless dress. It wasn't even very clean, either: there was something suspiciously like a stain right in the middle of it—she had last worn this dress when she'd helped the Vicar's wife with her meals-on-wheels for the old people of the parish. It was certainly not what she would have chosen to wear for a great lady. "Oh lord!"
"Don't worry!" He observed her consternation. "I don't mean
'grande dame', I mean she's sympathetic. And she's not a lot older than me—than you too, Elizabeth. Like they say, he married a much younger woman . . . and they live in this marvellous rambling old house under the downs—we haven't got far to go."
Elizabeth was still appalled. Apart from the dress there was her face and hair, which were irreparable. There was probably a mirror on the other side of the car's sun-visor, but she couldn't bring herself to look in it. Everything was bad enough as it was, but to have to meet another woman was downright unfair. She hunched herself up at the thought of it.
"Don't worry, Elizabeth!" He exerted himself to reassure her.
"It's a good sign—his inviting you to his home . . . you'll meet his daughter too—a skinny little blonde creature, the image of her mother, and very sharp like both of them ... it means he's not about to peach about those safe deposit boxes of yours to all and sundry, I'd guess—for a start."
"I thought that remained to be seen," said Elizabeth guardedly.
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"So it does. But although David's a damned tricky bastard, he's not mean with it. Putting one over on other people is what he enjoys, too—putting one over the Inland Revenue, or whoever deals with death duties . . . that'll appeal to him." He gave her another quick glance, but this time a fellow-conspiratorial one, which told her that under the skin, and in spite of their publicly abrasive relationship, Paul Mitchell returned the loyalty and regard which David Audley felt for his subordinate—the same thing which had made the survivors of Father's old crew stand in the rain for him in their best suits so recently, in that secret society to which she had never been admitted.
"What's the matter?" Her silence bothered him.
"I have the feeling that I'm being press-ganged, that's all."
"Hardly that. It's your knowledge we want, you won't be expected to fire the cannon and shin up the mast. And there can't be anything dangerous involved, not this time."
" 'Can't'? How do you know that? After what's happened already?"
Paul shook his head. "David wouldn't invite you to his home if he was worried about anything. He's pretty careful that way
—that's why the invitation is reassuring." He drove in silence for a second or two. "Surprising maybe ... I admit I find it a little surprising . . . but damn reassuring nevertheless, Elizabeth. So tell me about Number Seven."
Press-ganged or not—and shanghai'd might be a more dummy3
accurate description for all that had happened to her during the last 24 hours—but press-ganged or shanghai'd or whatever . . . and reassured or not about her own fate and the fate of her inheritance, she had to trust to Paul Mitchell's judgement and David Audley's good faith, even though they were both men outside her experience.
"Where do you want me to begin?"
"Twelve Vengefuls," said Paul, nodding at the road ahead, on which the homeward-bound Sunday traffic was thickening to slow him up. "The Armada Vengeful, hanging on to Medina-Sidonia's shirt-tail up the Channel—King Charles's Vengeful, betraying him at Bristol in 1642, and Cromwell's 50-gunner in the First Dutch War, wrecked on the Goodwins . . .—then Pepys' Vengeful, scuppered by the Dutch in the Medway in
'67—then Rooke's Vengeful fighting alongside the Dutch at Gibraltar in 1704—"
Was that his own research, or had he read Father's earlier chapters?
"Then Number Six, protecting our loyal American colonists from the French in '59, but eventually getting wrecked off Cape Hattcras in '81 trying to stop the French helping those revolting Yankee rebels— historical irony, you could call that, I suppose." He drove in silence for a time. "Number Eight—
muzzle-loaders versus breech-loaders— I enjoyed Number Eight . . . He had a nice line in scorn, did your father—'the mechanics of incorrect decision-making, brought to a fine art in the mid-Victorian navy'—" he gave her a quick half-look, dummy3
half-nod "—and so to Number Nine—"
But he had missed out Number Seven altogether, thought Elizabeth, staring at the handsome profile.
"The armoured cruiser—'the ugliest Vengeful of them all, and in her day arguably the worst sailer and gun platform in the whole Channel Fleet' . . . But she was also the one that obstinately refused to sink when they used her as a target ship in 1897, wasn't she—'to the surprise and embarrassment of all concerned'—right, Elizabeth?"
Not just a handsome face; though: somehow, between last evening and the moment he'd bounced back into her life, and apart from whatever else he'd done, he'd read those carefully-typed pages closely enough to memorise passages from them accurately.
"Plus my Number Ten, from Jutland, and his Number Eleven, full-fathom-five off Finisterre, or wherever . . . and we don't need to worry about that submarine we gave to the Greeks after the war—we know all about that apparently, and it doesn't signify. So that makes the full Vengeful tally—