Set several years after Retribution. Hornblower is about 28ish.
Swallowing nervously, Horatio Hornblower wondered for the hundredth time why he had allowed Pellew to persuade him to attend this ball during their shore-leave. While the admiral may have been quite at ease amongst all these members of high society, Captain Hornblower most certainly was not.
He had been standing in the corner for almost twenty minutes now, cautiously sipping his sherry and trying not to meet anyone's eyes. He was also trying in vain to wrack his memory.
The moment he had entered the large, airy room, Hornblower's attention had been drawn to a young fair-haired girl of around nineteen. She was slightly built, with blond hair and pale blue eyes. A pretty girl by all accounts, but that was not why Hornblower was surreptitiously observing her. He was beset by a nagging notion that he had seen this girl somewhere before, and he could not for the life of him remember when.
He continued to watch her as she took to the floor with a red-coated young colonel for a set of two dances. Hornblower could not help but notice the ease and grace with which she moved. Damn it, where had he seen the girl? Her very smile was familiar!
"Lady Charlotte is a remarkably fine looking girl, do you not agree, Hornblower?" an army captain, whose name he could not remember, suddenly noticed the direction in which he was looking.
"What? Ha-hm, yes, remarkably fine." muttered Hornblower distractedly, now driven to full-blown frustration. He had been trying uselessly to jog his memory for over an hour now. If he could not place her soon, he would seek out Admiral Pellew and ask if he knew who the girl was.
His heart almost stopped when the dances finished and he saw the girl head towards him. Good God! His face flushed with embarrassment. He dearly hoped she had not been offended by the way he had been watching her.
The expression on her face as she approached however, was not one of frustration. In fact, she looked almost frightened.
"Captain Hornblower?" she enquired shyly. He nodded in reply and bowed politely.
"Excuse my impertinence in approaching you like this, sir," She blushed deeply and stumbled over the words as she curtseyed. "But my name is Charlotte Kennedy. I believe you knew my brother, Archie."
Of course! Hornblower almost shouted the exclamation aloud. That was why he recognised her! Looking at her now, it was hard to see why he had not spotted it before. She was simply a female version of Archie; the same eyes, the same hair, the same smile!
"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady." he replied solemnly, grateful that the army captain had revealed her rank earlier. "Indeed, I did have the honour to serve with your brother. Archie was my best friend."
"Would…would you mind very much if I introduce you to my brother?" Charlotte stammered. Hornblower was quick to perceive that her social shyness was even greater than his own. "Archie mentioned you so often in his letters, I am sure Duncan would want to know you."
"It would be an honour, my lady." Hornblower spoke gently, trying to put the young girl at her ease, though she still remained extremely nervous as she beckoned silently to someone on the other side of the room. Minutes later, they were joined by a young man, wearing the uniform of an infantry major, who Hornblower guessed to be a similar age to himself; somewhere between twenty five and thirty.
When he looked into Duncan Kennedy's face, Hornblower had to swallow a lump in his throat. It was as though Archie were standing there in front of him, alive once more. Duncan Kennedy was his spitting image, down to the last detail. Suddenly, the pain of Archie's death ripped through him once more.
After the necessary introductions, Lady Charlotte Kennedy turned to Hornblower with a sad desperation in her face.
"You will think me very forward, Captain Hornblower, and I apologize for my impertinence," she said, her quiet voice full of politeness. "But…we were told so little when Archie died, Duncan and I, and I wondered…I wondered if you could tell us what happened? Please?"
Horatio Hornblower gulped. He would never insult Archie's sacrifice by lying to the brother and sister who had so obviously loved him. But when he told them the whole story, what would their reaction be? Would Duncan Kennedy flare up in anger and demand that his brother's name be cleared. Would the quiet respect and admiration he saw in Charlotte's timid eyes be turned to scorn? It was a risk he would have to take, for he could not tell them anything but the truth.
And so he did.
For the next quarter of an hour, he told the pair the entire story: how he and Archie had been overjoyed to be transferred to Captain Sawyer's ship, how their excitement had turned to horror when they witnessed his tyrannical ways, how the lieutenants had conferred and decided to act, how he had pushed Sawyer.
The old pain, which had dimmed slightly over time, was suddenly rife in his heart again. His voice thickened as he described that last, chaotic battle, where Archie had taken a bullet to the chest and tried to hide it. And when he told them of Archie's last, noble sacrifice, Charlotte had tears running down her face too. His story now finished, he stood nervously awaiting his judgement.
He watched tensely as Duncan Kennedy handed a handkerchief to his sister and patted her back comfortingly. She rubbed it over her eyes, before she raised them to meet Hornblower's. Such strikingly blue eyes – Archie's eyes. He gazed back into them; suddenly awash with memories.
It was Duncan Kennedy who broke the silence between the three.
"Thank you." he said, sadly and gratefully. "Thank you for sharing your memories of him. It means more to us than you could imagine." Hornblower was not quite sure he understood. Why did Duncan not hate him right now?
"I know you must think me a coward and a terrible friend…" he began hurriedly, but Charlotte cut him off.
"Of course not!" she cried, her voice still unsteady with hitched sobs. "I can see it in your eyes – you miss him as much as we do."
"I do miss him. All the time." Hornblower admitted bleakly. "But you must believe me, I would never have dreamt of besmirching his honour. But he sacrificed so much for me; I would not have insulted his memory by rejecting his last gift to me."
"We do not blame you, Captain Hornblower." said Duncan honestly and Charlotte nodded at his side, even being so bold as to reach out a squeeze his hand comfortingly.
"We would never blame you for accepting his gift." she said fervently, tears spilling down her cheeks as she gave him a weak smile. "It is what Archie would have wanted."
And standing in the corner nearby, unseen to everyone in the room, Archie Kennedy nodded with a smile