Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [8]
“I see her,” was all he said.
CHAPTER 2
“Damn them! Damn their eyes!” Paul Jones spat, hands bunching into fists. Sun flashed from the buckles of his highly polished shoes as they crunched on the gravel as he strode back and forth. Sweat glistened on his forehead and upper lip as if his frustration was boiling out into the summer air.
The gardens at the Hotel Valentinois were exceptionally beautiful that year, Therese de Chaumont thought, turning a deaf ear to the captain’s blasphemy. She sat quietly on the long seat, immaculate coiffeur untouched by the breeze, satin ruffles of her gown falling in a carefully arranged cascade about her tiny feet. A parasol defended her complexion and bare shoulders from the summer sun while a fan lay in her lap should the heat become uncomfortable.
While the captain ranted, she viewed the work of her gardeners. The lawns were perfect, symmetrically divided by raked gravel paths into rectangles, arcs, and octagons. Flowerbeds blossomed, kaleidoscopes of color contrasted by lustrous evergreens. Although the blooms gave her immeasurable pleasure, the trees were her special delight. Sycamores, poplars, ash, and beech arranged into copses to breathe life, but best of all she loved the oaks. Tall and broad and strong like a man in his prime, eager and reaching for the sky, but firmly rooted, something to cling to. But what brought joy also brought sorrow. With the passing of the seasons their branches grew a little wider, a little denser, adding to their beauty, while hers was flawed a little more each year. A wrinkle, a sag, a bulge. As she contemplated the ageing process, a butterfly tumbled and danced over the nearest flowerbed. Her eye picked out a dying flower among healthy companions. She looked away to her trees, knowing how the flower felt.
“It’s all so unfair!” Paul Jones spluttered.
Therese’s reverie snapped and she glanced at him, still pacing as though on a quarterdeck sailing into battle. “L’Epervier wasn’t pretty then?” she asked, amused, recalling their encounter when he had left her arms to fly to Le Havre.
He grunted. “Pretty enough, but only a corvette. Sixteen guns, that’s all, and shot to pieces. They didn’t tell me that in the dispatch. I trailed a hundred miles to see a floating hulk that needs a six-month refit. I’m a captain not a lieutenant getting his first command. Do they expect me to rout the English navy with a crippled sixteen gunner?”
“I thought you could do it in any vessel?”
He humphed, not rising to her bait. “Not even I could accomplish it with that ship.”
“What did you do, Cheri?”
Jones stopped pacing and turned to study her, his eyebrows raised. “Do? What do you suppose I did? I sent that midshipman back to the Commissioners with a letter politely but firmly declining the command. And then do you know what they had the gall to do?”
How beautiful he looks, she thought, offering no comment.
“On my last cruise in Ranger, unescorted, I took six ships, one of them Drake, an English man-o’-war, and believe me it was no easy victory. The English fought well and hard. Then what could I do with a squadron? I could harry the English just like the foxes they so love to hunt. I could turn their attention from America to defending their own island. I went to M’sieur Sartine, your fine Minister of Marine. He sat there in his silk suit with a lace handkerchief held under his nose all the time we talked. Perhaps we Americans offend him in some way…”
“But no, Cheri, they say he has bad lungs. He coughs blood all the time,” Therese interrupted quietly. The comment did not divert his attention.
“Be that as it may. Regardless, it is application to duty we are discussing. He invited my ideas so I outlined several that would benefit both America and France.