Your loyal servant,
Capt. Richard Powlett
Eli continued to stare at the paper long after he’d finished reading. The words jumped and shuddered before his eyes with every bump of the carriage over their path.
How was he going to explain this?
The lords commissioners would call upon him to answer Powlett’ssuspicions. Perhaps they had done so already, and a letter would be awaiting him at the town house.
But he couldn’t answer them completely. If they asked the wrong questions, he’d find himself in worse straits than he already was, and Geórgios would find himself in a hangman’s noose.
I’m going to be court-martialed. The knowledge swallowed him up like a plunge into ice water.
“What are you reading?” his mother asked. “You’ve been staring at it the whole way.”
He hesitated. How could he protect her from this? She was sure to panic, and his father would do nothing but complain, as if Eli’s problems were a horrid inconvenience. But he couldn’t very well leave them to hear the news from another source.
“A letter from Captain Powlett to the lords commissioners of the Admiralty.” There was no use putting it off. He would have to prepare them for what was to come. “He’s written to express his concerns about my absence.”
Eli passed the page across the carriage. His heart pounded as his mother read.
“But this makes it sound as though you’ve done something wrong.” She handed the letter to Eli’s father. “It’s hardly your fault the pirates didn’t ransom you! Why should this captain be writing to anyone about it?”
“He’s simply doing his duty, as he sees it.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“First the lords commissioners will probably want to investigate, and then they’ll decide whether the matter should end there or I should be tried by court-martial.”
“But why should they want to hold a court-martial when you were captured? It isn’t your fault!”
It might not be his fault he’d been captured, but Eli certainly feltresponsible for the fear in his mother’s eye now. And Jane. He couldn’t stop thinking about her face back on the grounds of Osterley Park.
I couldn’t even tell anyone how much it hurt me, because you were someone else’s fiancé.A sick feeling coiled in his guts. He’d done that. It didn’t matter that he wanted nothing more than to make her happy. He’d wounded Jane so deeply, he could likely never make it right.
“It’s not so bad as it sounds,” he tried to reassure his mother. “A court-martial often clears the officer of any wrongdoing. Besides, it might not even get that far.”
Eli spent most of the ride back explaining the next steps in the most reassuring manner he could muster as the scenery rolled by, unnoticed.
“Please don’t spread the news to anyone else. I’ll ask the lords commissioners for the same courtesy when they summon me. Perhaps we can keep it out of the papers.” They might succeed, though it was too much to hope they could keep it secret if his case went to trial.
Would Jane learn of it? The thought was like a wrench twisting his guts one turn too tight.
Should he pay her a call in town to warn her before she heard it somewhere else? But no, she’d asked him to stay away.
She’d made her wishes clear. He wouldn’t go to her with his hat in hand, begging for sympathy now that he faced a reckoning for his mistakes.
Maybe all this worry was for nothing. It was only a letter, after all.
But when they arrived at the house, Eli found there was a message from the lords commissioners already waiting for him. He was informed, in the most respectful but definite terms, that he was to report to the Admiralty immediately, and that they would soon be convening a court of inquiry to look into Captain Powlett’s concerns.
“What does that mean?” asked his mother, fluttering nervously at his elbow as he read.
“It just means they don’t know what to do about the captain’s letter yet,” he explained. “An inquiry is a bit like a grand jury. They’llappoint judges who will look at all the evidence and decide whether it’s enough to support a court-martial or not.”
“Why should they hold one trial just to decide if there should be another trial?” his father complained to no one in particular. “If you ask me, all this nonsense was dreamed up by judges and barristers to give themselves more ways to make money.”
It would do no good to tell his father there were no barristers in naval proceedings, only captains and admirals with more than enough to occupy them.
