Chapter 2

“I declare, Mister Lewrie, London must be the world’s largest little city,” Mrs. Chiswick stated over supper. “Once we left Charleston and sailed for home, we lost all track of you, and then, up you pop like a jack-in-the-box!”

Alan had debated whether to beg off and run home to his set of rooms to Dolly, or stay and catch up on old times with the Chiswicks, whom he hadn’t seen since Yorktown and the evacuation of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was Caroline Chiswick who decided the matter for him. She had blossomed from a gawky and almost painfully thin young girl of eighteen to a lovely young lady of twenty-one, his own age. She was still slimmer than fashion dictated, and was taller (or gawkier) than most men preferred, at a bare two inches less than Alan’s five foot nine. But the hazel eyes of the Chiswicks were like amber flames into which he was drawn with the certainty of a besotted moth. Her light brown hair glittered in the candlelight as though scattered with diamonds. And her delectable mouth beamed the fondest of smiles at him from the moment he had helped hand her out of the coach. The cheekbones were high, still, the face slim and tapering to a fine chin. Her eyes still crinkled at the corners, and formed little folds of flesh below the sockets of a most merry, and approving, cast, as they had that last day on deck when she and her parents had been sent ashore at Charleston.

The way she laid her gloved hand on his coat sleeve and gave it a squeeze, and the pleading, wistful, way she had gazed at him as she had said, “Oh, please sup with us, do, Alan!” had knocked all thoughts of Dolly Fenton from his head.

Alan had had to introduce Peter Rushton and Clotworthy Chute to them. And when Clotworthy had learned they were in London to seek out some position for the younger brother, Burgess, it was all Alan could do to drive Chute away from the possibility of a few hundred pounds. Thankfully, the weather had driven his friends into the relative warmth of the carriage, and the Chiswicks into Gloster’s, before cFotworthy could offer his “good offices” and connections with the influential of the town on their behalf.

“You can’t imagine what a pleasant surprise it was for me, as well, Mistress Chiswick,” Alan replied in turn. “Last I heard of your family, you were considering taking passage for Eleu-thera in the Bahamas to try your hand at fanning there.”

“Land’s too dear in the Bahamas,” Governour stated. “For cotton or sugar, you need slaves, and slaves cost too much, so we didn’t have the wherewithal to start over out there. There’s been some talk of a compensation treaty, so the Rebels may someday make restitution to all the Loyalists who had to flee. But I’d not hold my breath waiting for a penny on the pound of all that we lost.”

“We’re in Surrey, near Guildford, with our uncle Phineas, now,” Burgess Chiswick, the younger brother stated. “Cattle, sheep and oats. Some barley and hops, too. You must try our beer and ale! It’ll never be like the Carolinas. Never be like our own place, not really, but...” He shared a glance with his mother, shrugged and shut up.

“Govemour manages the estate for Uncle Phineas,” Caroline said to fill the awkward gap. “He was most kind to help us with our passage, and to give us a place to live. And although it is nowhere near as grand as our former home and acres, it is a solid enough croft.”

“Aye, it is,” the mother agreed firmly. “We’ve a roof over our heads, a tenancy with enough acreage for a good home-farm. Rent-free, may I remind you, Burge. ‘Tis more than we could have hoped for, and a deal greater than most could ever dream of in these unsettled times.”

“And Mister Chiswick?” Alan inquired. “He is well?” The last time Alan had seen their father in Wilmington, he’d been daft as bats.

“Improved most remarkably, sir!” Burgess was happy to relate. “He does for our acres wonderfully well. ‘Twas amazing what a piece of land and herds did to inspirit him after all those trying months.”

“Indeed, you would not know him now, Alan,” Caroline chorused. His feebleness had been embarrassing to her. “Now, he’s ruddy and hale, out in all weathers with the flocks and herds like a man half his rightful age! Dealing with the crofters and the lesser tenants.”

And a tenant himself after all these years, Alan thought glumly. No matter they’ve food in their bellies and a dry hearth, it must still be a mortifying come-down from being Tidewater planters along the Lower Cape Fear.

“I’d think there’d be work enough, Burgess. Or do sheep put you off your dinner?” Alan teased.

“God, I hate the bloody things!” Burgess burst out, which set them all laughing. “And ... well, I don’t know if you have any interest in things agricultural, Alan, but what with Enclosure Acts being passed every session, and with the changeover of crops, there’s little to do. The poorer crofters have been run off the common lands, and gone to the cities and mills for work, and there’s no need for a large tenantry, no permanent laborers anymore. Which leaves little for me to do, either,” he concluded with a wry shrug.

“We were hopeful of an Army career for Burgess here,” Governour said as their food arrived. “Uncle Phineas can’t extend his generosity so far as to buy Burgess a set of colors, but we both know he’s an experienced officer. He made lieutenant with our regiment of volunteers before the war ended.”

From the tone of Governour’s voice when speaking of generosity from their blood relation, it was a slim sort of beneficence, and most like as cold as charity. It would cost this uncle Phineas nigh on four hundred pounds to settle Burgess as an ensign in even a poor regiment, and that with no support to maintain himself in the mess later, either, if the man was as miserly as Governour hinted. He didn’t sound like the sort who’d spend money just to get young Burgess out from under foot, not unless there was a satisfactory return on his investment.

“If not a regiment, Burgess had a decent education, Alan,” Caroline told him, drawing his attention most willingly back to her. “There must be something clerical for him to do. He knows lumber from our mill before the war. Horses. Trade. I’ve come to learn it’s not socially acceptable to admit to a career in trade here in London, but there surely is something he could do to earn his way in life.”

Law, Parliament, the Church, military service, banking or such careers were for the upper crust, Alan knew. Burgess was too old at twenty-one to be ‘prenticed out to learn a trade, and it sounded as if farming was out, too. What little was left for him? That this spectacular specimen of mankind would grub away his days in some counting house, clerking and writing for a bank or mill owner? It was a ghastly thought. And, with the country inundated with veterans returned from the war, jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth already, with a hundred queuing for every opening, and a thousand more tramping the roads from one rumor of employment to the next.

“Bow Street Runners!” Alan spoke up with sudden inspiration. “You know, that Fielding fellow’s watch service. Replacing the parish Charlies with a police force. It’s a bloo ... a devilish un-English idea if you ask me, having a police force like the Frogs over in Paris do. Might as well declare martial law and have done, but they’d look kindly on a well set-up young fellow with military experience. I’ve read he hires ex-servicemen, sergeants and corporals, mostly. Good men handy with a staff, who can take care of themselves. Surely, they’d need someone like you, Burgess. You could show ‘em what Red Indians fight like.”

“It’s a good idea, Burge,” Governour opined heartily. “Not too much different from the Army, I suppose. Get in on the ground floor, so to speak. And with your education, and your skills, you’d move right up quickly.”

“Aye, it’s a thought,” Burgess piped back, but Alan could see, even if the others didn’t, that his heart wasn’t exactly in it. From their time at Yorktown, besieged by the Rebels and the French, and in their daring escape after being blown downriver in those damned barges the night before the surrender, Alan was pretty sure being a constable of the watch was not the career Burgess Chiswick would care for.

He was a strange young fellow. So woods-crafty, so in control of his troops by an almost natural sense of superiority. Yet down in his depths, Alan had always caught an inkling of fear, of uncertainty. God knew, Alan had seen enough war to make his own knees knock every time he heard a cannon go off, and he still couldn’t quite credit the Navy with making him a Commission Officer and giving him command of a ship of war, even one so small as Shrike in the closing weeks of the war—he of all people by God knew uncertainty like a close relation! But with Burgess, he felt a ... softness. A nature too soft for the slings and arrows of life, like setting foxes to outfight hounds. And yet the ember of ambition burned within his breast, the wish to do great things perhaps beyond his measure.

“Who knows?” Burgess went on between bites of his fish course. ‘There’s always the sea, like you. Or the East Indies. I’ve heard officers with ‘John Company’ come home at least a chicken-nabob. Fifty thousand pounds in diamonds and rubies’d suit me right down to my toes.”

“I pray not, Burge,” Caroline said, frowning. “So far away, so harsh and hot. Why, they die like flies among the Hindoos, do they not, Alan?”

“So I’ve read, Caroline,” Alan replied, and was rewarded with another of those deep gazes, and a slight touch of her hand on his in thankfulness for backing her words. A touch that struck a spark between them as remarkable as their first timid kiss on the Desperate frigate’s midnight quarterdeck two years and more before.

Why’d I act so miss-ish with her before? Alan wondered. I even entertained a thought of marrying her, even if she was poor as a church-mouse. ‘Course, that was back when I still had hopes of Lucy Beauman and her daddy’s guineas. Any other girl, I’d have bulled her aft by the taffrail and damned anyone in the watch who’d interfere. Governour or Burgess would have called me out and skewered me for it, though. Maybe that’s why I didn’t. Maybe that’s why.

“It would be a capital way to renew the family fortunes,” Burgess insisted. “To get on with ‘John Company.’ Even as a clerk to some trading house out there would put me in the way of money beyond measure. And it wouldn’t be but for a few years.”

“Your friend Mister Chute intimated he had influence, Alan,” Governour said. “Perhaps he could suggest something.”

“I’d not trust him any farther than I could spit, Governour,” Alan replied. “I knew him at Harrow, before I was expelled. He still owes me half a crown for tatties and gravy after all these years, and devil a hope I have of ever being repaid. He makes a career of making efforts on people’s behalf. But he charges a pretty penny for it.”

“Ah, that kind.” Governour scowled again.

“And I thought after Mister Richardson’s novels about such doings, they’d be a law to stop such as he,” Mrs. Chiswick all but cried in alarm. “Harrow, though. A good school, for all I’ve heard tell. And what did you do to get yourself expelled, Alan?”

“Tried to blow up the governor’s coach-house. And his privy,” Alan was forced to admit. “Come to think on it, Clotworthy Chute and Peter Rushton were both in on it with me, and left me holding the bag. Or the wick, in this case.” The food had been swill, the new governor of the school had strict ideas about discipline, and most schools were run by terror, anyway, with the students ready to riot at any provocation. Just before term ended, when parents came to fetch their children and saw the one instance of decent victuals (put on for their benefit and not to be seen again), they had decided to do something grand. A small keg of gunpowder had been procured, with a length of slow-match. It had been only extreme bad luck that the governor had been on his way to the privy behind the stables when the charge went off.

The intent had been to destroy the man’s splendid coach and let him know how reviled he was among the students. But the measure of powder was a lot more than it ought to have been. Alan had lit the slow-match and run back away from the stables and coach-house what he thought was a safe distance to watch the show, and Clotworthy, Peter Rushton and a couple of other young scamps had hidden in the box hedges, tittering with anticipation.

The roof had been blown off. The doors and windows disappeared in a whoof of flame and smoke, and the carriages inside had certainly been turned into heat and light. But the horses had panicked and broke free from the stalls, and ran all over the county as the barn caught fire. Everyone had run for his life, and Alan had had the misfortune to choose the wrong direction, had not thought to put down his port-fire and had collided headlong with the governor, ramming his head right into the man’s stout stomach and nightshirt, which abrupt collision had addled both of them, and Alan was last to his feet, with the incriminating evidence by his side.

“I could have tattled on the others, but I didn’t,” Alan said in conclusion of his tale, “and he still won’t pay me for those tatties. Or the beating I got, either.”

“Were I your father I’d have tanned your bottom, sir!” Mrs. Chiswick declared, swooning with laughter with the rest. “No wonder a career at sea, where you could indulge your passion for explosives, resulted. Oh, what a scamp you were, sir!”

“And still is, I’ll be bound,” Caroline added fondly. “I can see where your sense of adventure comes from, Alan.”

“And where is your father, now, Alan?” Governour asked. “In London as well?”

“Last I heard from him,” Alan lied smoothly, “he went to Portugal. Something about the wine trade, I believe.”

Such as getting closer to the source of his sherry, Alan told himself, hoping they wouldn’t pursue the topic any further. By the time he’d brought Shrike back to pay her and her crew off at Deptford Hard, his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, who had been pursuing a suit against Sir Hugo, had told him he’d fled to the Continent, leaving a host of creditors behind, and was rumored to be living in Lisbon where even the impoverished could scrape by, as long as one did not upset the church authorities and the Inquisition by one’s behavior.

“Even so, he must indeed be proud of you, sir,” Mrs. Chiswick continued. “To become a Sea Officer in only three years.”

“Well, there was the war, ma’am. They were pretty desperate, you know.” Alan chuckled in mock deprecation.

“Yes, tell us what you did after we lost track of you, Alan,” Caroline urged, totally ignoring her portion of Dover sole and wine.

“Urn, Battle of St. Kitts under Hood. And then our ship Desperate fought a French twenty-eight-gunned frigate and took her as prize the same day,” Alan said, sounding as if it was nothing much to take note of, but secretly glad to have a chance to boast. He’d had few enough in the last months—half of London had tales of battle and bravery and the populace was heartily sick of hearing them by then. “Passed the examination board right after, and was made first lieutenant into the Shrike brig. Made a nuisance of ourselves along the Cuban coasts ... took a fair amount of prizes. Ran guns to the Creek and Seminolee Indians. Ended up anhissi to the White Clan ...”

“The devil you say!” Governour burst out. “Of their fire, ey?”

‘Took a Foreign Office party up the Ochlockonee and the Chatahootchee to get the Indians to side with us against Spain if we landed troops, but nothing came of it,” Alan said, frowning between sips of wine. “Got ambushed by the coastal Apa-lachee. Had an exciting hour or so, ‘til the Seminolee showed up and rescued us. Then we got stuck in at Turk’s Island in the Bahamas to retake it from the French. That didn’t work, either. My captain was wounded pretty sore, and Hood gave me command temporarily, really. The war ended two weeks later, and we brought her home to pay off with the first batch of ships.”

“You actually commanded a ship!” Caroline exclaimed. “Alan, I cannot imagine! You remember, mother, how masterful he was, how nautical, the morning we sailed down the Cape Fear? ‘Quartermaster, half a point to’—to what-you-may-call-it—‘helm up and hands to the braces’? Lord, Alan, I knew you were a competent sailor even then, as a master’s mate. But to run a ship of your own, well!”

“For the shortest commission in naval history, I expect,” he replied, almost glowing inside on the warmth of their regard. “But I also expect Governour and Burgess have more interesting adventures, and I’m dying to hear them. Allow me to sport us all to another brace of this rather good wine, and tell it all to me.”

* * * *

He stayed long past his intended departure time, partly because the Chiswick brothers indeed had exciting tales to relate. Of how they had used the remnants of their North Carolina Loyalist Rifle battalion alongside depot troops and recovered sick from Simcoe’s Queen’s Rangers around New York for a few months as scouts and raiders to keep the Rebels on the hop, then had been trans-shipped to Charleston to defend the approaches to the city from Rebel probes. Partly because he was with Caroline Chiswick, who had been beautiful before, but was now so incredibly, deliriously handsome.

“And you stay in London how long?” Alan asked as they stood on the icy street once more, whistling up another coach to take them back to their lodgings.

“We may spend two weeks at the outside,” Governour informed him. There probably wasn’t money enough to allow them to rent rooms and buy food for longer. Burgess would have to be settled in that time, or he would have to return to Guildford and take what little the countryside had to offer.

“We must see each other again, sir,” Caroline insisted, from the frame of the same dark red velvet, hooded traveling coat   ; she’d worn in Wilmington in 1781. It was a little shiny in places from too much wear, but still presentable enough, and it made Alan feel an urge to buy her a new one, a cloak fine enough to suit her, and what he felt she deserved from life.

“Call on us, do, Mister Lewrie,” Mrs. Chiswick agreed. “We lodge in St. Clements Street. Oh dear, I forget the house number, but it’s a decent enough house, I’m told. Governour knows it.”

“Panton Street for me,” Alan said. “I’d never be able to afford it but for Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews and his wife. You remember I wrote of them, Caroline.”

He and Governour exchanged addresses while Burgess managed to flag down a coach, one of the few that would still risk horses on the streets that were now icing over under the constant drizzle of sleet. Caroline and her mother huddled for warmth to one side by the door.

“Goodnight, and thank you for the wine, Alan. Do call on us!”

“Aye, I shall,” Alan told Mrs. Chiswick again, then turning to Caroline, said, “We have so much to catch up on.”

Which sentiment Caroline agreed with heartily, and gave him a last smile of invitation, and a firm nod of her head as they said their goodnights as well. Then the coach trundled off, leaving Lewrie to trot home on his own, swaddled up in the voluminous dark blue watchcoat he’d never thought he’d find a use for back in the West Indies.

* * * *

His lodgings were one pair-of-stairs up from the main floor in the front of the house. Once a substantial mansion, Lady Maude Matthews had turned it into sets of rooms to let. For a very decent fifty guineas a year, about half what Lewrie suspected it was really worth, he got a sitting room with fireplace and mantel, and two whole windows—the Window Tax be damned—that overlooked Panton Street, a fashionable address for foreigners, secretaries and under-ministers to overseas embassies, well-heeled younger blades such as himself; home, too, to a regiment of mistresses. The set of rooms bent in an L, with a bed-chamber to the rear along the outer wall, and from a tiny window, in that room, he could look down upon Oxenden Street, and farther down to the Haymarket and St. James’ Market. It was inclined to be a trifle noisy in the mornings, but he’d learned by then to sleep through almost any din, as long as he wasn’t at sea. Civilian noises and alarums meant nothing to a weary sailor who’d developed the habit of trotting (or crawling) up his own stairs at “first sparrow-fart” every morning and caulking like a sodden log until noon.

He stepped into the sitting room, where a small sea-coal fire burned in the grate, and the embers and flames were reflected into the room by a brass back-plate. It was the only light in the room until his manservant Cony woke up at his entrance and used a paper spill to light him a candle or two.

“Mistress Fenton still here, Cony?” Alan asked as he shrugged off his watchcoat and went to thaw out before the fire.

“No, she ain’t, sir,” Cony was forced to admit. “She did come, but when the church bells went ten o’ the clock, she went on ‘ome, sir.”

Cony shyly handed Alan a folded and wax-sealed letter that had been waiting on the silver tray by the door.

“She lef ya this, sir,” Cony told him. “I ‘spect you’d be wantin’ a brandy’r somethin’ warmin’, sir?”

“Aye, thankee, Cony. I’d admire that,” Alan said, drawing a well-preserved William and Mary chair he’d found at a second-hand shop closer to the fire to read it. Alan Lewrie had gotten too many notes or letters from women to imagine that it was good news. Which explained his waiting until he had a brandy in hand and one sip in his belly for fortification before he broke the seal and unfolded it.

“Ah,” he said after a first, quick, perusal. Cony was thankfully busy in the other room, putting a warming pan into his bed and building up the fire in the second fireplace so Lewrie could retire and undress without turning blue from exposure.

If it had tears splashed on it, it couldn’t be more plaintive. This wasn’t the first time Alan had so shamefully ignored her, he read, and he had to admit Dolly was right. There were so many other things to do in a city as great as London. So many interesting people to hear speak, edifying exhibits to visit. Theatres, dramas and comedies to gawk at. Oranges to be bought and hurled at poor players. So many young women to bull.

She is getting a little long in tooth, Alan told himself. His putative mistress was getting on for thirty. There were the first hints of wrinkles around her mouth, kissable as it was. The first crow’s feet around her peculiarly dark green eyes, bright as they were still. Or perhaps, it was because she was available for his pleasure so little of the time.

In the beginning, when he’d run into her at a supper dance back in the summer, it had been intriguing to have her again, to pick up where they’d left off on Antigua. And having her free, with another man to pay her keep, and enjoying her between the magistrate’s visits, with one ear to the hallway and the latch was exciting, too.

“Just as well,” Alan decided. “Come to think on it, I was getting a trifle bored with her.”

“Yew say somethin’, sir?” Cony asked from the other room.

“Just maundering, Cony; pay me no mind,” Alan called back;

“Aye, sir.”

Dolly had been so grateful for his assistance, and his money which kept her during the war. She’d made a real shore home for him, an activity he strongly suspected she’d want to do again, if he had enough money to support her as he once had. Dolly Fenton was at the upper end of marriageable age, and her magistrate wasn’t doing her much good in that regard. Only the most fascinating widows ever got a second man to take them on, he knew. The best Dolly could hope for was someone incredibly rich to keep her on the side, as her magistrate did. Someone titled, who could keep a mistress openly, care for her all his life and leave her well provided for when he turned up his toes.

Damn hard lot for most women, Alan thought, folding the letter up with a sense of finality. Wonder what Caroline Chiswick’s lot’s to be? American Loyalist, not a hundred pounds for her “dot” if she did marry. Country girl, even lovely as she is. Service with some family around Guildford? Married to some pinchbeck “Country-Harry” and up to her ankles in dirty children and sheep the rest of her life? God, what a thought, he shivered with more than cold.

“That be all, sir?” Cony asked.

“Aye, Cony. You go caulk.”

“Tomorrow’s me day off, sir,” Cony reminded him. “If there’s anythin’ you’d be a’wantin’ afore I go in the mornin’, sir?”

“Hmm,” Alan pondered, tossing Dolly Fenton, and her letter, on the coals. “I’ll have a couple of letters for you to run about the town. One to St. Clements Street, to the Chis-wicks.”

“The Chiswick brothers ‘ere in London, sir?” Cony brightened.

“And the mother and Mistress Caroline, too. You tell ‘em I sent you, and I expect you’d want to visit them as well after all we went through during the siege.”

“That’d be wondrous fine, sir! I liked the Chiswicks!”

“And there’ll probably be a dram or two in it for you, and some of the mother’s ginger snaps. I’ll leave the letters on the tray by the door,” Alan promised. “Tell one of the housemaids to do for me, so you can depart early as you like.”

“Aye, thankee, sir.”

“And I expect you’d be needing some cash, hey?” Alan teased his longtime hammockman, wardroom and cabin servant. “Can’t make a grand show with the young ladies without a shilling or two.”

He dug out his purse and gave Cony his four shillings.

“Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly, sir,” Cony said, pocketing the coins and almost skipping down the hall to his own bed belowstairs with his week’s wages ready to burn a hole in him.

“Damme,” Alan spoke to himself aloud (a habit he’d developed in those few weeks he’d inhabited the captain’s great cabins aft in Shrike), “I don’t believe I’ve been home this early in weeks. And by myself, at that. What a novelty it is!”

He trailed into the bed-chamber and shucked his street clothes for a silk nightshirt, and a dressing gown thick and heavy enough to serve as a horse blanket. Sleet rapped on the panes, and the glass was frosted almost opaque as a muscovy-glass lantern on the windows.

Alan surveyed his little kingdom, the first home of his own he had ever had that the Navy or his father hadn’t provided. He’d had it repainted a cheery pale yellow before he moved in, with snowy-white wood work. The mantel and hearth were milk-veined grey marble—the genuine article instead of some painted slate most builders tried to foist off on the unsuspecting. There were some nature scenes hanging on the walls, the anonymous sort of thing sketched on some aristocrat’s Grand Tour of the Continent. Roman ruins, Greek temples, viaducts with tall poplars lining narrow roads, almost awash in happy peasantry and well-rendered animals of indeterminate breed— cattle, mostly. There was a copy of some Frog artist’s imaginings of a Sultan’s harem, though the women weren’t as Junoesque as the classics depicted them. Alan suspected the copyist had used some slimmer Covent Garden whores as models. And he wasn’t so sure but that the one reclining on the couch in the foreground wasn’t ‘Change Court Betty, who had been one of the first whores he’d ever sprung money for. Once he saw it being loaded into a cart to be auctioned off with the rest of a household’s belongings, he had to have it. Besides, the painting was so inspiring, and a harem had been one of his favorite fantasies since puberty.

A portrait of his mother Elizabeth hung on the inside wall of the sitting room near the door, over the sofa. His granny had given it to him on his visit to Wheddon Cross. A portrait of himself as a naval lieutenant hung beside it. He’d had one done for his granny, and had thought a second copy could always come in handy as a present for some future amour.

The furnishings were quite good—half London was always selling up and moving to stay a step ahead of creditors, or buy their way out of debtor’s prison, so the selection had been quite varied. Deep blue velvet, sprigged with bright vines and flowers, covered the sofa and two upholstered high-backed chairs. The tables and exposed wood shone with bee’s wax and lemon oil, and no one hardly ever noticed the odd nick or scratch the previous owners had caused. And he had the bench before the fire, and the two side chairs as well. The dining table, sideboard and wine cabinet made the far end of the room a cheery, cozy place to eat or play cards. Cards, mostly. The most fashionable young men dined out at clubs or chop-houses, sending down to an ordinary for meals if at home. And if he did have to entertain and feed guests, he could send Cony out shopping, and trust the kitchen in the basement of the lodging house to come up with something presentable, though he did it seldom.

He could maintain this lifestyle for some time yet, if he was careful with his money. Three hundred pounds a year had been enough to keep a single gentleman in style before the war, and with no need for a horse or coach of his own, and only the one servant, two hundred would do now. He could not purchase every book that struck his fancy. Could not entertain lavishly. Would have to watch for bargains instead of spending like a lord on the Strand.

Oh, he’d had to buy plates, saucers, silverware and serving utensils for the first time. Stock that wine cabinet. In his reverie of accounting his possessions, he opened it and poured his glass of brandy back up to full. Yes, it could be a good life, he decided. Best he’d lost Dolly Fenton, after all. She’d have turned expensive.

“Speaking of Dolly,” he said aloud again with a weary mutter.

He had notes to write. One to Dolly, a parting shot to salve his ego. One to the Chiswicks, and Caroline, laying the ground for a proper reunion with her. And one to Lady Delia, to let her know she could expect him by early afternoon, if the weather would allow.