“Captain Lewin is in command of the frigate there,” Howard explained to Olivia. “I asked him to join us, so that you could hear the news. By the by, I’m sorry to hear you’re sailing.”
Olivia noticed that he, too, looked at her with something of the shrewd, hard, medical gaze with which Perrin and Cammock sometimes looked at her. She resented the look as an impertinence, half wondering if there was something strange about her face—some sudden growth of eyelid or droop of hair.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry we’re going, too, for several reasons. But I hope we shall meet again in England. You must come and see us when we’re settled there.”
“That will be delightful. In what part do you think of settling?”
“In Devon. Near a place called Flaxley.”
“Oh yes. Indeed. Flaxley. That’s near the sea. I know Flaxley, Mrs. Stukeley. There’s a beautiful old house there. I once stayed a night there. What was the fellow’s name, now?”
“Then you know my uncle. Do you? Neston Pile.”
“Pile. Yes. Pile. Of course. So he’s your uncle, Mrs. Stukeley? What a fine old man he is.”
“Yes,” she said, with quiet indifference. “He is very much loved.” She would have given much to be back at Flaxley sitting in the great hall there. A Vandyck hung in the hall, the portrait of Sir Nicolas Pile, her great-uncle, once the king’s standard-bearer, who had been killed in the fight at Naseby. He looked down upon the hall in melancholy honour, a noble guardian, full of grave pride, helpful to those who sat there. Howard’s words gave her a longing to see that austere, sweet, thoughtful face looking down upon her, a longing all the more keen for the knowledge that perhaps she would never again see him, now that her uncle had been so horrid to Tom. The pang of homesickness went shrewdly to her heart; but she sipped her wine, her face unchanged, her smile ready.
“What brought you to Flaxley, I wonder?” she added. “I wonder if I was there then.”