An Awkward Commission by David Donachie Read Free Book Online

called for: speed to Marlborough, then a slower mode of transport – a stage coach – from there to Charing Cross, this by a man who was cursing himself for not buying a horse.
    Both in post-chaise and stage coach he was mostly uncommunicative with his fellow passengers, alone with his own thoughts, none of which were pleasant, declining to even discuss the latest news from Paris, which was that the firebrand revolutionary Marat had been murdered in his bath. As he listened to this being discussed, he did feel the temptation to intervene when opinions composed of arrant nonsense were being advanced, for he knew the man through his father. The dwarfish Marat had been one of the people who had originally welcomed Adam Pearce to Paris, lauding him as a true son of the Revolution who had fallen foul of his own government merely for his expressed and printed opinions. That welcome had not lasted; the leaders of the Revolution had no more time for an honest radical speaker than King George and his ministers. Marat was a prime example of the breed; the scrofulous troublemaker could not bear the notion of being behind the mob. Like so many of the Paris enragés , he wanted to be ahead of them, leading them on to further excess and murder. To John Pearce’s mind he deserved to die in such an ignominious way, given that he had demanded, through the pages of his journal, L’Ami du Peuple , death of so many others.
    The trouble was, that in thinking about Marat, he could not avoid ruminating on other things. Though he knew it to be pointless he could not help but go over what had happened in Paris, gnawing at the notion that by some actunspecified he could have changed the outcome and saved his father’s life. To force himself away from those thoughts only brought Pearce back to why he was in this damned conveyance in the first place; his own utter unreliability, and that led in turn to gloomy reflections on his future prospects, which were not dazzling, given that his upbringing, while making him an independent soul, had ill-prepared him for anything like a career.
    The one occupation that was definitely out of the question was that he should follow in his father’s footsteps and become a radical speaker and pamphleteer, a scourge of the powerful and titled. What had been much sought after in the year ’89, after the Fall of the Bastille, was not welcome now. After four years the mood of the nation was almost wholly set against change, having seen from across the Channel what happens when the props which a polity needed to exist were removed. Worse than that, he had no other real skill that he could think of to turn to; an ability to ride, to fence, a superficial knowledge of the Classics and fluent French, plus reasonably polished manners seemed to be either in abundant supply or not at present required outside the possibility of becoming a schoolmaster. That was an idea he abhorred, just like the army, which anyway he could not afford; a commission cost too much. None of it mattered anyway, not until he fulfilled the purpose of the journey he was now on.
    Arrival in London, and the prospect of a warm and affectionate welcome, provided another disappointment, as a rather arch footman at the Fitzherbert London townhouse informed him that her Ladyship had left for the country, having sent the few possessions he owned to be stored at Nerot’s Hotel in King Street to await his return. A letter that had arrived had been forwarded there as well, for which he owed the household payment of sixpence, since it had comeexpress. Standing on the stoop, for he was not allowed into the house, Pearce was aware that the footman, obsequious a matter of days ago – though markedly less so now – could be lying. Annabel might well be at home or at least in London, but he was also acutely aware of the fact that he could do nothing about it. Had he been but a dalliance for a rich and titled lady who had taken a fancy to a young, handsome, and