Title: Next of Kin
Author: Das T.
Fandom: Hornblower [the books]
Pairing: Hornblower/Wellesley, Hornblower/Bush, Wellesley/mysterious somebody. Everything implied though.
Author's Note: rare pairings! Rare pairings, a penny each!
Spoilers: for "The Commodore" and "Flying colours".
***
The fact that his sister was married again left Richard Wellesley, the noble Marquess and His Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with an inexplicable feeling inside him that vaguely resembled indigestion. He stole a glance at Lady Barbara over the rim of his glass and in a sudden fit of nostalgia thought about the long-gone years of braid-pulling and friendly tripping in his father's estate. Every feature of Barbara's face was a warm memory, sweet and comforting like that taste of port on his lips, and he was ready to smile snugly into the wineglass, brotherly love oozing from all his relaxed pores, when his eyes made an ill-advised shift.
Hornblower, his new brother-in-law, was looking at Barbara - his Barbara! - too. His eyes, Wellesley noted, had quickly acquired the same domesticated gloss of warmed wine and a cozy fire-place a-glowing that, together with a leisurely posture, unmistakably labeled him as a newly and happily wed.
When Barbara dropped a generous invitation to her renowned brother to spend a fortnight with them, Wellesley literally leaped at the chance. He left London in a turmoil of emotions, in which a sporting interest prevailed. Not that he had any particular thing against Barbara's spade-work in rebuilding her hearth and home; but he had to admit that he indeed had a thing against the particular shingle she was determined to hang out on it this time.
He observed Hornblower with the classificatory attention of a true zoologist. He always grinned when vain rumours compared his sister to a thoroughbred - and a restive one, he used to add when the rumours chanced to come from male lips. But there were no land terms for Hornblower, and no aerial ones. He had to be a fish; Wellesley bit his lips under the demure cover of the napkin and chided himself for such trivial metaphors, but there was no denying it. You couldn't picture Hornblower and, say, a yew-tree alley in a country estate, but you could easily picture him among sails and seagulls, and it felt right. A Portuguese man-of-war then, to finish with zoology, a jellyfish with a poisonous sting and a large crest, which had been made even larger by his recent marriage to the sister of the ex-Governor-General of India.
His presence here, as Wellesley, the responsiblee eldest brother, had chosen to believe officially, was to test and measure. Whether the sweetness of love or the acid of disagreement, he wanted to be there when Barbara would be taking her first sip of it.
With no more than a mere nod, Hornblower accepted the rules of the game. Of course, Wellesley hadn't imbibed that much of feudal spirit to demand the presence of witnesses to rate the new spouse's performance; but damn him if the morning after he wasn't counting everything from Barbara's limbs down to the last curl in her immaculate hairdo to check that all indeed was where it was supposed to be, a happy smile on the young wife's face included.
As long as the smile was in place, Hornblower was allowed to walk the Earth, and its part in Wellesley's domain in particular.
"Your plans for tomorrow, Hornblower?"
He observed the respectful look his brother-in-law addressed to his wife and ticked off another score for the man on his mental list.
"Anything particular you had in mind, Richard?"
One of the first commendable ticks on Hornblower's list of credits that Wellesley had been compiling so meticulously was the clever use of the noble relative's name. Skepticism aside, he had to admit that there was something disarmingly charming in the little Richard Arthur's open smile that made the kid's elder namesake melt his usual stern face into a foolish grin. Yes, it was Barbara who had named the brat so; and yes, it was Hornblower who didn't object. As if he would! No, Hornblower might be a watery Protheus, soaked in brine and evasive like the tide, but he was no fool to deny his son the honour of being named after two most distinguished people of his time, both of whom were now his relations.
"I was thinking of a quiet stroll in the garden in the early morning. While our ladies will still be asleep, that is. How many times have you seen the sun rise over the hills that didn't swell, Hornblower?"
"Not many, Richard, not many. Fewer yet those were the English hills."
"Then if Barbara doesn't mind, of course?"
Like all Wellesleys, Barbara was too intelligent to deny the men their right to open male talk. And she didn't.
***
"Can you row?"
For a moment Hornblower's face acquired that tense expression of overstrained mental activity that, as Wellesley had come to know, meant the options were being weighed with an apothecary's precision until only one would be left. The flawlessly right one, of course, the Marquess thought with a sneer.
"No."
"Hmph."
"I hope I haven't disappointed you, Richard."
"No," Wellesley coughed in the morning fog, desperate to blame the raw British climate for his momentary confusion. "Not at all. I assumed all seadogs can."
"And seamen do. Seadogs usually get a cozy place on their backs while they do all the hard work."
"Quite a reversal of the evolution chain, no?"
"Yes, you start on your career as a man and end it often being something entirely different."
"It's your Navy that turns the man's outlook upside down. In the infantry, you start low and climb high. The sky's the limit, but the start may be as low as dirt."
"Is it why your brother sometimes calls his troops 'scum of the earth'?"
Wellesley turned to look at his new kin and found Hornblower's face to be a blank wall of polite and innocent interest.
"This is merely a coordinate reminder. A launching point, so to say."
They strolled the remaining distance to the lake in silence and stopped on the brink of water near a small boat. The alleys were perfectly empty in this early time, and yet Wellesley wished for even more privacy to sound the questions that had been on his tongue ever since Barbara had blurted out that fateful 'yes' before the altar.
"Shall we?"
He got into the boat first and waited for Hornblower to pass him the neat basket they had picked up in the kitchen. While his brother-in-law was giving the boat a push to shove it off the shore, Wellesley's brow was cocked skeptically. Nearly slipping in the mud under that intense stare, Hornblower threw his long legs over the board and grabbed the oars right in time before they dropped into the water and drifted away.
"Wasn't that professional?" The Marquess maneuvered to sit on the bank side by side with his relative to offer his liberal input in the hard task of rowing.
It took them a while to tune the timing of their strokes to row the boat straight. The dawn was colouring the morning fog a tender pink when they reached the middle of the lake; Wellesley looked up at the sky - a pale blue medallion in the frame of the trees - and concluded that mornings like this were what made dying for England worthwhile.
Hornblower's dark curls and forever disheveled appearance were an odd contrast to the pastoral. Long and lean, his figure was folded nearly double to fit onto the small bank, and his knees were propped high almost near Wellesley's face. Between their boots, the basket stood demanding immediate attention. With the oars hanging languidly, the boat soon came to a standstill on the perfectly smooth water.
"So, Hornblower?"
"So, Richard?"
To ease his way into the questioning he was about to undertake, Wellesley opened the basket and fished out a portion of cheese and beer for each of them together with two cigars, the careful wrapping of which betrayed her Ladyship's delicate touch on this rustic meal.
"I want to ask you one simple question, Hornblower." The beer wouldn't last for ever, and so he might as well start asking what he had planned to. "Are you happy?"
The expression on his kin's face prompted Wellesley to expect one of those eloquent 'ahems' that Hornblower earnestly and wrongly assumed to be the best defence against open indecision.
"I am, Richard. Of course I am."
"Oh, spare me that 'of course' business. It doesn't add anything to convince me. I take it for granted. And your frankness I don't."
Hornblower's dark eyes blinked at him expectantly. "I can't imagine anybody being unhappy when married to Barbara."
"And I can. And the number of those people is far greater than the number of those delusional enough to think her a perfect spouse. Is your illusion big enough?"
"If by illusion you mean love, then - yes."
"And you don't miss your ship, and the sea, and the risk? Hornblower," the Marquess narrowed a suspicious eye at his relative, "be frank with me. I may be a poor seaman but I have become a good soldier, despite what Mother used to tell of me. Honesty is your only recipe to win my affection."
Behind the polite facade, he could see that Hornblower was thoroughly nettled by the condescending ease the words were pouring off the noble lips. If the man had been thinking that being on terms of endearment with Lady Barbara was enough to get into the family, it was high time he learnt the truth.
"I do." He waited for more details but only induced Hornblower to confirm his words with a nod.
"Your ships?"
"Yes."
"The waves?"
"Yes."
"Your crew?"
"Sometimes. Some of them."
"And does a certain First Lieutenant Bush hold a place among those chosen few?"
Hornblower coughed in bewilderment, the sound much like the one a sheep makes when the shepherd creeps up on it with his shears.
"William Bush, if I remember correctly." Wellesley hid his triumph behind a thick veil of cigar smoke as he leaned back on the board to enjoy his small victory. "That's what comes from being close to the source of information that is the government, and I happen to have very good memory. The only problem is to sift the facts from the rumours."
He thought that if there was anything he was going to fall in love with in his new relative, it was his mimic variety. Hornblower's eyes opened just a tad too wide, and his cheeks turned a faintest shade of pink to match the dawn's palette. Wellesley thought if there was anybody in the troops under his and Arthur's command back in India whose name could have the same effect on him, and felt his own face become a mirror of Hornblower's as far as colouring was concerned.
"Oh, William," dropped Hornblower with a casualness that was hopelessly belated. He shifted on the bank in a vain attempt to assume a relaxed pose but only found his long legs inevitably bumping into Wellesley's.
"Don't you think sometimes," the Marquess ventured on philosophically as they strove to find a compatible disposition for their limbs, "that eventually for a commander the Navy, as well as the army, comes to be represented by just a few faces? Sometimes even one face? Mind the beer!"
Hornblower's bony shin invaded the space near Wellesley's calf, rocking the boat and threatening the basket with cruel overturning.
"Yes, Richard... Move over here... Yes, that's good. Steady on. Right." Wellesley closed his eyes momentarily when Hornblower's heel massaged his toes. "You've made a very shrewd observation."
"And is this Bush," in a sudden fit of benevolence the Marquess leaned forth to flip off the ash that had fallen from his cigar onto Hornblower's breeches, "exactly that very kind of face?"
His fingers froze on the breeches' fabric as he watched in surprise as yet another expression made an appearance on his brother-in-law's face.
"Yes," said Hornblower wistfully, his glance directed right through the Marquess' skull into the far away distances of day-dreams. "William is honest, and reliable, and strong, and..."
"And he was in France with you."
Hornblower came round with a start as his thigh registered a grip of steely fingers.
"He was..."
"Were there any women?"
"We didn't need women. Err, I mean, in that situation we had our hands full of all kinds of things to completely forget about..."
"Hornblower," Wellesley interrupted menacingly. "What is the colour of Barbara's eyes?"
"What?"
"And Bush's?"
Hornblower watched for a long time how the ripples settled to calm on the water around the boat before mumbling a reply.
"Blue."
"I'm not even surprised." Wellesley leaned back and made an inviting gesture towards the oars. "When we return, my dear Horatio, would you kindly dedicate a quarter of an hour of your precious time to the close observation of your wife's features? And mind it that I will be checking the time with my watch."
He surveyed with sublime contentment the honest effort his brother-in-law was putting into every stroke as he rowed them back to the shore, his thin lips sealed into guilty silence.
"A quarter of an hour," he repeated and watched with satisfaction as his new kin trotted along the alley like a good schoolboy.
If things went well with the new member in the family, he might yet tell Hornblower about the face he associated his army with. But he felt, deep in his guts with the same promise of indigestion, that the family tale about Richard Sharpe and his eye colour would require something stronger than beer.
Much stronger.
