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You had better let her alone, you will but provoke her.

The rectory stood a stone’s throw from Iffley Cottage, a distance Horace Langworthy should have covered with a hop, step, and a jump reflective of his lightened load, but anyone who chanced to see him would have thought him a perplexed, rather than a triumphant, man.

He could hardly account for himself.

He hadn’t wanted to marry her, of course.

Despite his friend Sebastian Barstow’s boasts and brags, Langworthy didn’t think Mrs. Sebastian held a candle to Mary Pence, lacking altogether “the sparkle of spirit and the languish of tenderness.” As soon as he pronounced this, however, the image of Mrs. Sebastian’s barely suppressed fury returned to him, and he almost laughed aloud.

All right, then. Mrs. Sebastian had spirit enough, he supposed, beneath her quiet exterior, but there remained nevertheless a vast divide between Mary’s spirit of liveliness and wit and Mrs. Sebastian’s spirit of bad temper.

As for whether the latter had any “languishing tenderness,” he could not say, but certainly he had seen no hint of it.

How would Mary Pence have responded to such a situation, for instance?

He could see her in his mind’s eye and knew without a doubt she would have been delighted.

Delighted to receive an offer of marriage, whether she expected it or not, and whether she intended to accept it or not.

Because it was a feather in her cap, was it not, be the suitor ever so humble?

Mary Pence aside, how could any young lady possibly regard a proposal as an affront? As an insult?

Yet Mrs. Sebastian had done precisely that.

No, he hadn’t wanted to marry her, but that didn’t mean he would not have appreciated a sign of…

gratitude, for heaven’s sake! A bare acknowledgment that his offer came at a cost to himself.

Did it not require him to lay down his own desires for life and to take up, with attendant expense and inconvenience, another man’s burden?

That alone should have elicited a sense of obligation.

Not to marry him, of course, but at least to be courteous and gentle in refusing!

Doubtless an out-and-out acceptance of his proposal would have been a remedy worse than the disease, he recognized, but a softer refusal would have been a balm on the wound Mary Pence dealt him.

As it was, Mrs. Sebastian’s indignation and coldness had compelled him to act as if the whole question were a matter of supreme indifference, almost a joke.

He unconsciously came to a halt where the wall enclosing the churchyard began, steadying himself with one gloved hand and feeling his own anger rise.

That’s right. Would it have been too much to ask of her, that she simply pretend a minute’s hesitation? The merest pause, to indicate she gave it due consideration?

But no.

It was, No, thank you. It was, Heavens, what a farfetched idea. It was, Good-bye and best of luck.

Barstow’s “perfect pearl,” indeed!

With a grimace he tugged at a tendril of moss. Why, there wasn’t a thing perfect about her! Not one single thing.

She was cold, insipid, inert, and very nearly plain. That is—she was all those things, except when one roused her temper. When in a temper, Langworthy had to admit Mrs. Sebastian Barstow was made passionate, quick, and very nearly beautiful.

“What of it?” he muttered. “Who wants to spend life leg-shackled to a woman who is only beautiful when she is beating and berating one?”

It didn’t make a jot of difference in any event. He would never see her again, as long as he lived. He would take the first coach to Newbury on the morrow and be in Portsmouth before the week was out.

Portsmouth.

Langworthy’s runaway reflections jarred to a halt here.

And what would he do in Portsmouth, an inner voice jeered, besides wear a path from the back bedroom at his uncle’s house (where he knew himself to be de trop ), to the docks, to the Clerk of the Cheque to collect his half pay, and thence to the Long Rooms, where he would gamble away that same half pay?

There would be nothing else to do, nowhere else to go.

Now that Mary had renounced him, there would be no days spent walking with her, nor evenings passed in the bosom of her family.

All must be avoided. She must be avoided.

No, the only advantage of Portsmouth would be, should hostilities recommence, Langworthy would be on hand when ships were commissioned and placed on a war establishment.

But even that required luck and a delicate balance.

It would be no use to be on hand, if one had been too long there, doing little beyond developing a peacetime reputation as a penniless idler.

Ah, but if war did come again, wouldn’t Mary be sorry! To have thrown in her lot with her shore-bound, one-legged captain, when he, Langworthy, would again have the opportunity to go to sea, to rise, and to capture untold amounts of prize money.

The vision warmed him, but however the newspapers rumbled with rumors that neither side perfectly observed the terms of the Treaty, that revenge must wait. And if he could not return to Portsmouth with an imminent appointment to dangle before Mary, he had better linger in Oxfordshire.

“I will stay,” he decided, now brushing the dirt from his gloves and tugging on his coat to smooth it.

“Why should I not? Rearden has invited me, and I may as well save a few shillings and have a look about me.” That his continuance in the village would irk Mrs. Sebastian Barstow now only added to its appeal.

Yes—if he could not yet make Mary Pence’s heart burn with regret, he could at least bide his time retorting Mrs. Barstow’s disdainful dismissal with disdain of his own.

His eyes lit at the thought of it, and had his old comrade Sebastian Barstow been alive to witness it, he would have recognized at once the spark presaging one of Langworthy’s famous larks.

“Oh, sir,” cried the maid Polly when she opened the rectory door to him. “We are all in uproar, we are. The boys have returned, you see, and then some!”

Indeed the passage was crowded with trunks and baggage, through which they had to pick their way, while a clamor of voices reached them from the parlor.

“Look here, Langworthy,” Rearden greeted him, his extravagant whiskers trembling with mirth.

“From an empty rectory to an embarrassment of riches. Not only have Mr. Terry’s two pupils returned, but they are accompanied by other schoolmates from their time at Keele’s.

Come, come, lads, settle down and meet my new friend. ”

There were four boys called to order, the oldest and tallest an adolescent of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, and the younger three closer in age and fidgetiness.

“Langworthy, may I present Terry’s pupils, the so-called Tommies? The elder Tom Ellis and the younger Tommy Wardour. And these other two are Iffley neighbors and Keele’s School pupils, Peter Dere of Perryfield, great-nephew of the local grandee Baron Dere, and Gordon Barstow of Iffley Cottage.”

Langworthy gave the last of these a sharp, appraising look, noting his dark brown hair and clear green eyes. The coloring was different, but something about his carriage and expression recalled the boy’s elder brother.

“And boys, this is Mr. Horace Langworthy, a navy man. A lieutenant, in fact. Now ashore because we are at peace. Langwor—”

“My brother was in the navy and a lieutenant,” interrupted young Gordon. “He died, though.”

“Now, now, Master Barstow,” chided Rearden, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Manners.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Yes,” interposed Langworthy. “I knew your brother.”

“Did you?” Gordon’s eyes widened. He had been only six years old when Sebastian Barstow died, and though his memories of him had dimmed, his curiosity about him had not.

“I did. A fine fellow. I suppose you want to be a navy man yourself?”

The boy colored, and Langworthy belatedly remembered how Sebastian said it had taken every penny his family could scrape together to send him to sea as a midshipman; now there were no more pennies to scrape, even if Gordon’s mother could be persuaded to let another son go.

But that was not what discomfited the boy.

“I—don’t especially want to, sir,” answered young Barstow.

“Because I think I would prefer to be an explorer like my teacher Mr. Keele who traveled in Egypt. Or an ambassador to foreign lands, like Macartney, who went to China.” There was a hint of defiance in his voice, as if he expected Langworthy to ridicule his ambition.

“That’s something!” cried his new acquaintance, however. “I’ve never seen either myself. We were far off in the West Indies and altogether missed the Battle of the Nile. And as for China—that might as well be the moon.”

“Yes, that’s what my sister Sarah said,” sighed Gordon.

Instantly Langworthy’s back was up, and he came to the right about. “She did, did she? Then don’t you listen to her, young man. For she looks like the timid, whey-faced sort, and we all know that fortune favors the bold.”

While Gordy was flattered by the dashing lieutenant including him among the world’s valiant, this lèse-majesté against his beloved sister-in-law made him uneasy.

Gallantly Gordon screwed up his courage to pipe, “She is quiet, sir, but I don’t think Sarah is any more pigeon-hearted than other ladies. ”

“No?” Langworthy injected just a hint of doubt. “Well, I suppose you would know, as you live among a fair lot of them.”