Chapter 4

“So you see, Sir Onsley, I thought it best if we came to you for advice regarding Burgess’ future,” Alan told his host. Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews was all tripes and trullibubs, fat as a porker before slaughter when Alan had served on his staff at Antigua, and now he’d been retired by a supposedly “grateful” Admiralty, had put on enough weight for three all-in wrestlers. He’d never been blessed with the brains God promised a titmouse, but he knew just about everybody who counted, and even in retirement controlled bags of patronage and “interest,” the lifeblood of a successful career.

“Damme, Mister Lewrie, but yer concern for the welfare of a colleague does ya credit,” Sir Onsley heaved with deep breaths as he lolled in his wing chair, one foot up on a hassock—a foot wrapped in hot, damp cloths, to alleviate the agonies of the Admiral’s latest bout of gout. “And these bona fides, Mister Chiswick, sir, shew much the same enterprise and pluck as I’ve come to expect from our Alan. Like bookends, you are, lads. Hewn and carved from the same hearty oak!”

“You’re too kind, Sir Onsley,” Burgess remarked, sitting prim and nervous on the edge of his chair by the roaring fire. He wore his best pale blue “ditto” suit, with a plain, long-skirted older waist-coast, and clutched a black cocked hat across his knees. His own glass of brandy sat untouched on the side table.

There hadn’t been much enthusiasm shown for his efforts to get a position so far, and the Chiswicks had prevailed upon Alan to see if he had any influence with anyone at all, a task Alan had happily undertaken because it would allow him to see Caroline almost every day.

“Devil I am, young sir, devil I am,” Sir Onsley maundered. “I say no more’n the plain truth. I’m a plain old tarpaulin hand meself, not given to pissin’ down some young’un’s back for no cause.”

Oh, spare us, Alan almost groaned! Sir Onsley’s flagship Glatton hadn’t stirred from her moorings once in a full three years’ commission, and had been rumored to be hard aground on a reef of beef bones. It had been his small ships and tenders to the flag that had done the dirty work against the French, Spanish and Dutch and had reaped Sir Onsley a princely one-eighth of their prize money, which had sent him home rich as Croesus to a place on the Board of Admiralty, where he’d drowsed the last three years of his career away.

Still, he was a useful old stick, Alan thought, and kept his expression respectful and admiring. Who knows, Alan might actually have need of his good offices in future, slim as that chance might be now there was peace, and nine-tenths of the Navy laid up to rot.

“Been to Sam Hood about this yet, Mister Lewrie?”

“Not yet, Sir Onsley,” Alan replied. “I did write to him, just a short note. No reply so far. I doubt he recalls me, fond as he might have seemed after Turk’s Island. I’m sure he passed it off as one more half-pay officer looking for employment for himself.”

“There’s devilment afoot still in this world, young sirs,” the old admiral warned them, laying a thick, be-ringed finger to the side of his rather large and drink-veined nose. “Losin’ this war’s encouraged the Frogs no end. Their Navy showed rather well in the East. I know not why the nation feels so secure. All I hear up in the House of Lords is deficits and bankruptcy, hand-wringin’ and budget-cuttin’. Meantimes, they’re over there on the Continent just diggin’ like the furtive rats they are, looking for an openin’ to throw us over for good and all, damme their blood. And heroes such as you pair sit on the beach, twiddlin’ your thumbs, instead of being allowed a chance to stop their frightful business wherever it emerges.”

Alan stifled a yawn, covering it with another sip of brandy. He paid court to the Matthewses at least twice a fortnight when they were in London, to keep his low rent on his set of rooms, and to lay his ear to the ground for any hint of great affairs that could help him prosper. He’d heard this screed, chapter and verse, too many times before to rise to it this time. He nodded sagely, though, which Sir Onsley took for much the same hearty approval as earlier.

“Lewrie there’s a nacky one, the sort of young feller who knows I speak the truth,” Sir Onsley pointed out to Burgess. “By God, Mister Chiswick, sir, if Alan’ll speak for you, that’s good enough for me. I can’t promise you an easy place. I’ll not say more now. Too many plans afoot at the moment. But a place, I can promise you, and there’s my word on’t for sure!”

“That’s marvelous, Sir Onsley!” Burgess gasped. This interview had seemed the last slim thread of hope to save him from bringing in the sheaves for his uncle Phineas, and Alan had privately assured him it was bound to be disappointing at the end, but suddenly here was this word of assured employment. “As a serving officer, sir? Pardon me if I inquire at least a little.”

“With the East India Company,” Sir Onsley nodded. “I’m on the board. I’m privy to certain ... nay, it’ll be discovered to you later. I should think at least as a lieutenant, Mister Chiswick. Tell me now, and tell me true if you’re a mind for it. And a heart for it. It’ll be damned hot and dusty duty, halfway round the world and like as not it’ll be sickness, bugs and flies, and God knows when you’ll lay eyes on your dear family again in this life. But ‘tis a duty like as not’ll confound our foes better than anything you’d accomplish in a lifetime of regular soldierin’. Are you game for it?”

“I am indeed, Sir Onsley!” Burgess piped up. “Lead me to it!”

“ToppinM” Sir Onsley shouted back, wincing a little at the end as he moved his gouty foot and suffered a spasm of agony. “I’ll speak to the Board tomorrow. Leave me your bona fides and all that to show them. Irregular ... skirmisher ... Indian fighter. Just the sort of lad we need. Mister Lewrie, I do believe Fate sent you to me with young Mister Chiswick’s plaint at exactly the right time.”

“And grateful I am you could do my friend a service, Sir Onsley,” Alan replied, flat aback at this energetic development. He had not seen the old twit that bombastic, or awake, in years. And Alan could hardly wait until they could get back to St. Clement Street to tell the rest of the Chiswick family. Most especially Caroline. She would be impressed to no end that it was Alan’s influence and connections that had turned the winning trick for her brother.

It would disappoint her, though, that he would have to sail around the world, into that land of pagan Hindoos she had feared so much, where Burgess would be exposed to so many cruel diseases and chances to die a young, untimely death. Matter of fact, Alan wondered if he’d done Burgess much of a favor at all. Sir Onsley was sober enough to not let slip what sort of devilish danger this new duty was, but it didn’t sound like anything Alan would want a part of, not if he had at least five minutes’ warning, and a head start. Some new wrinkle on what Lieutenant Lilycrop of Shrike had termed “war on the cheap,” dreamed up by some crystal-ball gazer, map reader and quill-pusher who had no idea about what life was like outside his own doorway, much less how deadly it could be for the men on the shitten end of the stick a world away.

“Mum’s the word, my lads, until you hear from me by letter,” Sir Onsley cautioned. “But stand ready to shift yourselves at a moment’s notice. No man is to hear word of this appointment.”

“You have my solemn oath, Sir Onsley,” Burgess promised proudly, which oath Alan had to chorus as well.

* * * *

“Damme, but Caroline is going to kill me,” Alan sighed once they were in a hired coach on their way home. “I had no idea things would turn out like this, Burgess.”

“I shall be forever in your debt, Alan,” Burgess assured him, taking his hand and giving it a hearty squeeze of gratitude. He was all but piping his eyes in joy at his sudden salvation from civilian dullness. “Don’t fear what Caroline thinks.”

“Well, he didn’t make it sound like Canterbury Fair, you know. God, what have I gotten you into? If anything happens to you, and it sounds hellish like it might, I’ll never forgive myself. And neither would your dear sister,” Alan objected.

“You’ve given me the world, Alan!” Burgess said with a catch in his voice, his face aglow like a martyr promised crucifixion before sunup. “Oh, ‘tis fine for Governour to farm and pore over the accounts. He’s set up with a vicar’s daughter in the county. But for me, Alan ... you remember when you took me aboard your frigate during the siege as a guest of the wardroom?- Just the smell of a ship ...”

“Foul as they smell,” Alan drolly pointed out.

“The smell of distance,” Burgess waxed lyrical. “Of adventure in faraway places. Hemp and tar, salt and spices ...”

“Pea-soup farts and rotting cheese,” Alan said, scowling.

‘To lay eyes on the East Indies, to live a life of new things to taste and smell, my God, how wondrous it’s going to be!” Burgess went on in his rapture. “Oh, it’ll be hard, I know. And it’ll like as not be dangerous. But the chance for glory! More’n most people’d ever suspect! You must know, I’m not cut out to be a farmer. Before the Revolution, I’d half a mind to run off and trade with the Cherokee over the Appalachians. To see what there was to see, cross mountains and rivers, all the way to the other ocean. And now you’ve given me my chance, Alan. I’ll break free. Now I’ll know what you felt as a sailor. You do not know how much I’ve sometimes envied you your life as a Sea Officer.”

“Just as long as you do come back a chicken-nabob,” Alan said, realizing there was nothing he could say to dissuade Burgess from making a total fool of himself. “And when you do fetch home all those diamonds and rubies, better tote along a small sack for me as well. I mean, damme, who’d have thought old Sir Onsley would have a place for you? I warned you going in, it was a slim hope, a clerking position at best. This, though ... well, maybe you should think about it ...”

“I’d have never forgiven you, for certain, if that was all I could aspire to,” Burgess cracked, thumping him on the knee. “Damme, you should be glad for me, Alan. Glad as I am.”

“Well, if it pleases you, Burge, there’s nothing more I can say,” Alan surrendered. How could he tell him he thought the lad was not cut out for desperate doings, any more than he was cut out for farming? How do you tell a friend you think him too starry-eyed to prosper?

* * * *

“Alan Lewrie, I should despise you!” Caroline hissed at him harshly, once the celebration had begun. She took him by the hand and led him to sit with her on a ratty older sofa away from the others, who were singing and mixing a large bowl of lemons, sugar, hot water and gin for a gala punch.

“Caroline, I swear I had no idea ...” he began. It was the first time he’d ever seen her angry at anything or anyone, and it was most disconcerting to be the target of her anger.

“This . . . this hush-hush adventure you’ve gotten poor Burge into,” she whispered. “No word of what it was? No inkling of how much danger there’ll be?”

“None. Only that he’s to keep mum and be ready to be received in a few days, one way or another,” Alan told her sadly, feeling just a trifle sheepish under her hot glare. “I was all amort that the old fool’d offer anything at all, much less something like this, I tell you truly. And Burgess didn’t have to accept it so quickly, either. He could have asked for a few days to think it over, but no, he had to just leap up and go all shiny-eyed over it. Don’t take it out on me, I beg you, Caroline. I did what Governour and your mother bade me. I used what influence I could. How was I to know it’d turn out like this?”

“But so far away from us,” Caroline insisted. “With the chance we’ll never see him again in this life! Oh, I know it isn’t your fault, Alan, but ... you must see how frightened I am for him. He’s always been so ...”

“Unprepared for how cruel life can be?” Alan whispered back.

“You recognized it, too?” she gasped, taking his hand and wringing it like a washcloth, pressing his hand to her troubled breast, surely unaware in her bereavement of what she was doing.

God Almighty, Alan thought, feeling his innards lurch at the touch of her. I could spend the rest of the day like this!

“He’ll go under, sure as Fate, I know it,” she said, weeping softly.

“It’s what he wants, Caroline,” Alan told her. “Better one chance at an adventurous life than drudging on a farm and feeling trapped. He told me as much. God pity him, he envies me all the shit... sorry ... I’ve been through. All the exciting and exotic places I’ve sailed. And he may prosper. I’ve seen others do so, in the Navy. God help me, I prospered, and I didn’t know a futtock shroud from a horse’s fetlock when I first began.”

“But you’re the sort of man who does prosper, Alan,” she told him, lowering her hand, and his, to her lap before her mother noticed. “If only I knew there was someone as courageous and steady as you to look after him out there in India, or wherever he’s going to be.”

“Me?” Alan tried a smile. “Mine arse on a bandbox! I’m not as steady as you think. No one is, outside their memoirs.”

“Well, I think you are,” she whispered. “So sure and capable. As you were when I first met you. When you organized us into your ship to escape Wilmington. Momma in her vapors and poor Daddy half out of his mind with grief, and poor me so weak and helpless.”

“I never thought you weak and helpless,” Alan assured her. “I have always considered you the most resourceful and clever of females, Caroline.”

That softened her up right smartly.

“Say you forgive me. Please,” he beseeched.

“Oh, Alan, I do forgive you,” she relented, and gave him a wee smile, sad and wan though it was. “He’ll not have to purchase this commission. Which shall please Uncle Phineas. If it comes to fruition. There is a possibility it may not, isn’t there? There’s many a slip t’wixt the cup and the lip. Pray God they may choose a more experienced officer in his stead!”

“Which would crush poor Burgess, though,” Alan sighed. “And he’d be right back where he started. I know you can’t stay in London hoping much longer. He’d be back to counting sheep. It would kill him.”

“No, we can’t,” she agreed. “I must own to you, Alan, that I hoped you would be here. That we might regain our acquaintance. Your letters meant so much to me. Your ... memory. Oh, pray do come to see us down in Surrey! Now that we have had a chance to speak almost daily, and to be together like this, I remember all over again how much I have delighted in your companionship. I would so enjoy you being our guest in the country. When the weather is better. And we could write each other in the meantimes. Could we not, Alan?” she suggested sweetly.

“Nothing would give me greater delight as well, Caroline,” he told her. “I’ve never known anyone I like talking to more than you.”

“Come take a cup of cheer, you two!” Governour ordered from the far end of the room. There was no more privacy for them. Caroline wiped her face quickly with a handkerchief from her sleeve and put on a happy expression for her family.

“We must dine together tonight,” Mrs. Chiswick insisted, half gone on a large glass of gin punch already. “It’ll be sad even so, knowing my little Burge will be going off among the heathens, but we’ll know he’s doing something for King and Country. As he did so nobly during the Rebellion.” She stifled her fears—almost.

With your shield or on it, like the Spartans, Alan thought grimly. Why don’t they all fall down bawling instead of acting so proud, he wondered? God knows, I’d be into the sackcloth and ashes by now.

“And our benefactor, Alan Lewrie,” Governour proposed. “He must be guest of honor tonight!”

They raised their glasses and toasted him, making him feel even more a total fool than he had a moment before.

“Make no fuss over me,” Alan suggested. “And I wouldn’t feel right, anyway. Spend your time with Burgess. Sir Onsley didn’t say when the summons would come. Besides, I cannot.”

“Alan!” Caroline cried in sudden disappointment.

“I have a dinner invitation already that I cannot break,” he told them, setting his glass down. “But I hope you shall let me treat you to supper another night, once we’ve learned what Burgess is down for. Would you allow that?”

Caroline saw him down to the first floor, and dismissed the house’s servant to help him on with his watchcoat herself, tugging his collar snug about him and smoothing the fabric to lie flat.

“I wish you could have stayed, Alan. I begrudge every minute you are away from ... from our family, now we’re reunited,” she said, with a hitch in her voice. “I ... we feel so much gratitude, and admiration for you, for so many things you’ve done for us.”

“I could not, not tonight, Caroline. I fear for him, too, and I couldn’t have sat there with him.”

“I understand,” she replied softly. “I shall do my weeping in private, too.”

She raised her arms and he took her in his arms, holding her snug and safe, stroking her back as she almost gave way to her emotions, whispering “there, there” to comfort her if he was able and secretly enjoying the closeness, and the feel of her slimness against him. How tiny her waist was, how neat her breasts felt. How sweet and clean she smelt: her hair and her slight hint of Hungary Water scent.

Caroline peeked over her shoulder to see if any of the servants of the lodging house were about, then turned her face up to his and closed her eyes. With an offer like that, Alan could not turn it down.

He kissed her. As gently and as shyly as he had just that once years before. Her lips parted just a little and her clean breath mingled with his. Then her eyes flew open and her arms locked behind his neck, pulling him down to her and there was nothing shy about it.

“I must ask your forgiveness once more,” Alan muttered, shaken to his core by this entrancing creature all over again as she fell away slightly, dropped back from tiptoe and leaned back to regard him with such a smile of wonder and delight.

“Mine arse on a bandbox, Alan Lewrie,” she said, grinning, and then whispered with secret glee, “Between us, I pray there shall never be anything to forgive.”

“My God!” he gasped.

“All the English ladies tell me it’s most improper to be quite as forward as I am,” she added, laughing. “I’m but a crude rustic from America, don’t you know. Do sup with us tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Spend your every waking moment with us. With me. I would enjoy it so awfully much, before we’re parted again.”

“You’d be scandalized,” Alan gawped. “Governour would run me through!”

“I trust to your gentlemanly nature, Alan. And to your sense of decency. What harm to my good name could you ever do me?”

God help the poor mort, Alan thought. If you only knew I had no sense of decency, you’d run screaming behind your momma’s skirts!

“Lord knows, I’d think of something. Sooner or later,” he admitted at last. He tried to pass it off as a jape.

“I would trust to the affection you already show for me,” she said with such a solemn little face it almost made his ears ring. “As I trust how admirable I hold you in mine.”

One more quick kiss, and then he had to go, out into another freezing cold afternoon, but warmed right through by her regard and the feel of her lingering upon him.

“Damme, she’s the sweetest, dearest young thing!” he said to himself as he trudged along the street, dodging darting youngsters, mongers and traders. “Oh, if only . . . what? Christ on a cross, Lewrie, you’re cunt-struck! Next thing you know, you’ll be thinking of asking for her hand! And haven’t I done enough to her family already?”

* * * *

“Dear Alan,” Lady Delia cooed as he entered her morning room and took the preferred hand to kiss. She stroked his face with a hot-house rose she’d been toying with.

“Delighted to see you again, milady,” he told her soberly.

“Do be seated and break your fast with me, sir,” she said. She turned to her servants and told them they could depart on their errands. Once the door was shut, she was out of her chair in a twinkling, into his arms and raining kisses and endearments upon him. Devil a bite of roll or sip of tea he got until they had fallen into a swoon across her soft bed in the other room, strewn their clothing to the winds and slaked their lusts with the frenzy of rutting stoats.

Lewrie lay back on her soft pillows, panting and grinning, so pleased with the world in general, and his lot in it in particular. A young girl in love with him he’d half a mind— merely half a mind so far—to pursue with fantasies of wedded bliss, tender and succulent young Abigail to roger all over his suite whenever he wanted her, and Lady Delia Cantner to top the bargain off. For as long as his luck was in, he’d not shed a tear.

Of course, if he went down to Surrey and pursued Caroline, he would have to give up all this, he pondered as he got his breath back. Well, Abigail was merely a convenience, nothing more, and her delight was in her obvious hero-worship and her talented young body. She’d play the game with another lodger, get her couple of shillings for her troubles from another man. Lady Delia, though. That was fun, he had to admit. Part of it was the covert glee of covering old Lord Cantner’s lawful blanket, sneaking and taking their pleasure as they just had, with the servants out of the way, and playing the “Merry Andrew” the next moment, a devoted family protege when the stupid old colt’s-tooth was around. Nothing lasting there, either, ecstatic as it was. He knew if he begged off, Lady Delia would have another admirer gnawing on her magnificent breasts as quick as she could change her dress. There were legions of them waiting in line for a chance at her. Affectionate as their relationship was, it was not love, not the sort of Jove that Caroline’s eyes promised. And he was getting a little jaded with simple sex, Alan thought. Once his grandmother died, and he inherited, he’d have enough to care for the lovely Caroline in the manner she deserved.

“I have seen so little of you these past few days, my chuck,” Delia crooned, sliding a thigh over him. “Those beastly friends of yours have kept you from me.”

“I believe you just made up for it, m’dear,” Alan chuckled.

“Not a jot of it,” she promised. “And did you secure your friend a place at last?”

“That I did,” Alan replied, expressing his doubts he’d done Burgess any favors. Lady Delia had put out some feelers for him as well, though with his lordship out of the country, there was little direct she could do without his presence.

“So the task is ended.” She beamed. “And you may begin to pay attention to me again. How delightful. It’s rare enough to have Roger out of the house, much less over in Holland, so I may be with my darling lad. I thought I would die of happiness to know that we’d have so much time free of interferences. Then the weather, and those Chiswick people ... Did you miss me, Alan? Tell me you did. Tell me how much you did,” she teased lazily.

Her long raven hair spilled over his chest and his face. Her large, firm breasts mashed down onto his chest as she rolled astride of him and held herself on knees and palms, breathing on his neck and into his ear, rocking back and forth, from side to side maddeningly.

“Better I show you instead,” Alan laughed deep in his throat, taking hold of her bouncers and squeezing them, kissing her neck in return, eliciting her deep groans of impending bliss.

“Ummm, yess,” she muttered, shaking with husky amusement as well. “Devour me, Alan. Ooooh, yess! Ummmm!”

Tumescent as a belaying pin, he slid back into her for the second time in half an hour, and she leaned back and flung her arms to the ceiling to ride St. George on his member, grinding her hips down against his, clasping him with her thighs and moaning with heartfelt abandon as his hands kept possession of her heavy breasts, leaning forward into his grasp with her hands clawed into his shoulders and grinning and crying out, wincing with each thrust and movement. Panting and grunting as their pace quickened.

She looked magnificent, perspiration sheened on her body, her nipples hard and rasping on his hungry palms, her soft thighs clasping and slipping with sweat and her heels under his buttocks to drive him deeper. Her hair was matted and a stray lock clung to the corner of her crumpled mouth as it hung open. Hot, burning dark eyes glowed down at him, urging him on, begging him for more ...

“Well, damme!” a petulant voice interposed.

“Sufferin’ shit!” Alan gasped, looking toward the door to espy a very thin, reedy Lord Roger Cantner standing in the doorway.

I think I’ve been here before, Alan thought sadly. Christ, this time I’m going to get my young arse killed!

“My dear,” Lady Delia said, looking back over her shoulder, calm as you’d like, “you’re back early.”

“How ... how dare ...” Lord Cantner sputtered. “That young swine, behind me back, you whore!”

“Surely you must have known, Roger dear,” Delia replied, still astride and making no moves to break away. “If not about Alan, then about any of the others.” She did pull up a sheet to cover herself, Alan included, for which he felt only slightly grateful.

Get the fuck off, you cow! he screamed mentally. Let me get on my feet and out of here! I need clothing, and a head start!

“Me own wife!” Lord Cantner tried to howl in outrage. But it came out little more than a petulant screech.

“In name only, Roger, as we both are well aware. A wife may expect conjugal relations now and again,” Delia said, smiling wickedly. “Of a successful, and pleasing, nature, n’est-ce pas?”

Lord Cantner put a hand to the hilt of his smallsword, and Alan gulped in total fear, his suntanned complexion aiming white as Delia’s flesh.

But Lady Cantner only chuckled deep in her throat at that threat. “Would you run me through, dear Roger? Or Alan? That’s murder, you know. Too public a thing to share with the Mob. And you might swing for it at Tyburn, even so.”

Alan couldn’t credit it. Under the secrecy of the sheet, she was stirring her hips once more, as if she wanted to torment the old cuckold into mayhem! And, God help him, what should have shriveled up like a deflated haggis was now hard as a marlinspike inside her!

God, I promise you, let me get out of this with a whole skin and I’ll be good, I swear! he prayed silently. I’ll marry Caroline Chiswick, I’ll be monogamous as a bloody swan forever-more!

“Or would you rather go to Pickering Place and duel for your honor, my dear,” Delia almost snickered. “Come slap him if you wish. I’ll hold him down for you.”

“For God’s sake!” Alan finally gave voice.

“You little bastard!” Lord Cantner rasped, his sour little mouth working around what was left of his teeth. “Should have known when I come in on ye an’ this bitch aboard that schooner, you all snivelin’ on her tits, oh, I knew then ye were spoonin” her yer cream-pot love even then! One o’ me own I praised t’ the skies!”

The hand had, however, dropped away from the sword hilt and both were wringing themselves in quandary. Alan felt a moment of hope.

“Murder, then, Roger dear?” Delia sniffed at her husband’s indecisiveness. “A challenge to a duel? No? Then please be good enough, after me fruitless years we have spent together, to go away and make up your mind and leave me to my pleasures.”

Lord Cantner stamped one of his little feet and gave out with another feeble bleat of displeasure. “Bedamned to ye, ye bitch! And Goddamn yer traitorous blood, Mister Lewrie! I’ll see the both of ye in hell, I swear I shall. You’ll pay. Oh, my yes, you’ll pay. I’ll have both yer heart’s blood, ye see if I don’t!”

But, amazingly, the old man quavered out another unintelligible warning, and doddered out the door, slamming it behind him!

“Well, I’m damned!” Alan gasped, going limp as Italian pasta against the pillows. “Christ, that’s torn it! He’ll have me dead!”

“He won’t, dearest,” Delia cooed, stirring her hips to revive him as coolly as if one of the servants had dropped off clean towels and departed.

“Easy for you to say!” Alan raved, after drawing a deep breath.

“Alan, don’t flatter yourself; you’re not the first,” Delia said, giggling. “We’ve slept in separate rooms almost from the wedding night, and he knows his limitations at his age. Would he take the risk of dueling my darling lad? He shakes too much to hold a pistol, and the weight of a sword is quite beyond him for more than a minute. He’s too stubborn to die and leave me everything. And too proud to ask Parliament for a bill of divorce. He’s known about you.”

“Then how could he play cards with me if he did? How could he stand to have me eat his fare?”

“What he knows is one thing,” Delia grinned, leaning down to him once more. “What he wants others of his circle to know is quite another. They believe him capable in bed, and I give no sign he’s not. I brought enough money to this miserable marriage to walk out anytime I cared to. So far, I have not. My family was rich Trade. He was respectable aristocracy. So we have no heir as of yet. Before he dies, I shall present him with what he wants most. Had he his wits about him, he’d have sent word on ahead from Dover he was returning. I expect the sea voyage upset him, poor thing.”

“By God, you’re a cool ‘un!” Alan marveled. He’d thought he’d met some crafty, scheming women in his time, and had suffered at their hands more than once. But he’d never seen the like before. Even Mrs. Betty Hillwood back on Jamaica hadn’t been this icy.

“If he hadn’t been addled by mal de men I’d have known when to receive him back, and you would not have been in this predicament. We’d have been sitting around the card table, or truly having breakfast, when he arrived,” she went on. “He’d have known what we’d been up to in his absence, but he’d have been spared the actuality.”

“Well, he wasn’t,” Alan said, trying to lever her off him so he could get dressed and obey his instincts to take a long vacation in Scotland. Perhaps change his name and herd sheep with the Chiswicks down in Surrey until Lord Cantner had the good grace to die. “And he’s seen the actuality. You said he has his pride. That means he’ll get even, no matter what you think he’ll do. You heard what he said. He’ll hire himself some dockyard toughs to stop my business!”

“I give you my best assurances, dearest, sweetest, Alan, that he shall do no such thing,” she said, laughing, hugely amused. “You don’t know what a relief it is to end this pitiful charade at last. Just like that night he retired early, remember? Oh, I surely do. And we sat up playing backgammon until he was fast asleep?”

“Yes.” It had been one hell of a night, sneaking into her chambers trying not to make a sound, tumbling onto the carpet before a ruddy fire, all the while the old man had snored in the room next door, and all night long, they had lurched fearful between strokes each time he’d coughed, muttered or turned over, only to begin again.

She pressed back down on him, trying to revive his flagging interest in the proceedings.

“I shall most like have to get out of town for a while,” Alan told her. “I mean, I can’t just trail my colors in his face, can I?”

“Oh, do spend some time in Bath! Warm spa waters, gambling in the Long Rooms. Beau Nash is dead and it’s getting more lively, now he isn’t there to demand decorum,” Delia enthused. “I could join you there for a couple of weeks if you wish.”

“Let’s not press our luck, hmm?” Alan snapped. “Don’t rub salt in the wound. I’ll be an old hound, too, one of these days, and I’d surely kill the first young pup that sniffed around my wife!”

“How possessive you suddenly are!” she pouted. “Darling, if we must indeed be parted ... give me something to remember you by.”

“In for the penny, in for the pound?” he scowled.

“Something like that,” she teased.

“Sorry, m’dear, I’m off like a bloody hare!”

“Cony, pack a bag for me,” Alan said, back in the safety of his lodgings. “I feel the urge to take the waters somewhere.”

“We goin’ t’ Bath’r Brighton, sir? Ahn’t never been!”

“Somewhere. Anywhere. No, I’ll need you to take this note to Courts’ for me. I’ll pack myself. Post some letters for me after. And get us a couple of horses,” he added. “And make sure they’re the fastest ones alive.”

“Fer in the mornin’, sir?” Cony asked in all innocence.

“Ah ... hmm,” Alan replied. “I should think tonight would be devilish fine.”

“T’night, sir? If’n ya want, sir. ‘Course, hit’d be ‘ard t’ find a decent inn that late on the road. An’ the country a’swarmin’ with ‘ighwaymen now the vet’rins is outa work.”

“We’ll go well-armed,” Alan told him. Count on being well-armed, he thought. He had a Ferguson rifle from his time with the Chiswicks, a saddle musketoon, his brace of naval pistols and another brace of dragoon pistols, his hanger, and there was a cutlass around somewhere for Cony to wear as well. Damned right, he’d go armed! He wouldn’t put it past Lord Cantner to raise a battalion of pursuers, no matter what Delia thought, with a hundred guineas for the man who harvested his liver?

Cony went off with a note for the bankers, and Alan wrested a traveling valise from his armoire and began cramming things into it any-old-how. But he was interrupted by a scratch at the door.

“Ah, Abigail, my little chuck,” he said, not pausing in his haste.

“I gotta talk to you, sir?” she said, tremulous as the first time he’d clapped eyes on her. “You packin’ t’ go some’r’s?”

“Just for a couple of weeks.” Alan shrugged it off.

“Alan,” she drawled out, and he stopped packing long enough to take her in his arms, give her a fond kiss, and set her down out of the way.

“Be back sooner or later. We’ll have more fun, hey?’ “Don’t know as I’ll be here when you gets back, Alan me love.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Well, the housekeeper’ll prob’ly turn me out without no ref’rence,” she intoned with a hard gulp.

“Did she discover about our little arrangement?” Alan asked, abandoning his packing once more. “How’d it happen?”

“I think I’m gonna have a baby, Alan,” she managed to say, her lower lip quivering, and tears starting to flow from her eyes. “Yours.”

“Well, shit, what next?” he sighed, and sat down at the table with her as her face screwed up and copious tears bubbled out.

“Alan!” she wailed. “Wha’s gonna happen t’ me? I can’t care for a baby! I’ll be out in the streets, an’ no house’U take me on, not with a littl’un comin’. Alan, you gotta do somethin’!”

I knew it was too good to last, I knew it, I knew it! God, he thought miserably, remember that promise about swans? I think I meant it this time!

“Umm, are you sure, Abigail? Absolutely sure, I mean ...”

“Hadn’t had me courses this month. An’ I get sick as anythin’ o’ the mornin’s, I do! My stomach feels a little hard, too. Here, feel of it. Don’t it feel diff’runt to you? I can’t have no baby, an’ me a spinster girl, Alan. Parish’ll turn me out an’ tell me t’ move along t’ the next. Same with that’un, too, I reckon. I seen it before, I have, back in Evesham. Girls havin’ t’ run off t’ Birmingham, an’ nothin’ good at the end of it. But if I was t’ be married, I could cry widow, blame it on a farmboy ...”

“What? Married?” Alan exclaimed in shock.

“Yes,” she bawled, putting her face down on the table and blubbering fit to bust. “Say you will, jus’ t’ let me have the record for the parish! I’m sorry! I thought we was bein’ so careful, you with your cundum an’ all. Don’ let me be rooned, Alan, if you love me ...”

In the middle of this, while Alan was trying to think of some way to escape being bound to the little mort for all eternity, there was another scratching at the door.

“Wait your bloody turn, damn yer eyes!” Alan barked with his best quarterdeck rasp, which startled Abigail into a fit of hiccups. “What?” he demanded, flinging the door open.

“Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy?” The messenger from the Admiralty sniffed at his unexpected greeting. He took in the bawling girl at the table, and gave another audible sniff.

“I am.”

“Then this is for you, sir. If you will be so good as to sign here to shew I have delivered it to you? I have a stub of pencil, sir. No need for a pen,” the old pensioner intoned with all the hauteur of a flag officer. “I was instructed to await your reply, sir.”

Alan scribbled off his name and slammed the door in the man’s face. He broke the blue wax wafer on the parchment and opened it to read it.

“Bloody, bloody, flaming Hell!” he muttered.

 

Sir;

Our Lords Commissioners of The Admiralty have seen fit to offer you an active commission, the exact nature of which we shall be glad to discover to you should you deem yourself able to accept immediate Employment. You shall be appointed 4^th Lt. into a Ship of the Line, the 80-gun 3^rd Rate Telesto, now lying in-ordinary in the port of Plymouth, for three years’ Commission in foreign waters.

Please communicate to us your Availability, or state reasons why you cannot fulfill a term of active service, pursuant to the customary usages such as loss of half-pay, reduction in seniority from the roll of commission Sea Officers, etc.

Yr obdt srvnt,

Phillip Stephens,

Sec. to Admlty”

 

“God, I meant that bit about the swans, but this is a trifle extreme, don’t you think?” he said to the ceiling.

“Wot?” Abigail hiccuped.

“Not you. Look, my girl. Marriage just ain’t in the cards, see?” Alan told her matter-of-factly. “Yes, I’m going away. I’ve been ordered to go to sea. I’ll give you some money to take care of you, and to see to your lying in. That’s the best I can do.”

“Oh, my God, you heartless bastard,” she wailed.

“Twenty pounds to see you through, Abigail. And another twenty pounds so the baby’s looked after. Tell people whatever you like. I can’t marry you, and you know it. I’d make you bloody miserable.”

“Miserable’s I am now?” she spat, changing emotions quickly.

“Worse, most likely,” he replied, trying to gentle her. He knelt down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders, and held her even as she tried to shrug him off. “Look, girl, I’m fond enough of you. You’re a sweet little chit, that you really are. There’s plenty of homes would like a healthy baby, if you don’t want to keep him, or her. You’ll have about six years’ wages for food and lodging, if you don’t squander it on foolishness. And there are houses that’ll have you. I’ll write you a letter of reference if you want. I’ll say you worked for me. Blame it ... blame it on some sailor who took advantage of you on your day off. Tell the parish you were raped by some sailor you never saw before or since. Long’s you have money to keep yourself, and you’re not on their Poor’s Rate, they won’t care a whit.”

“But you won’t marry me,” she sobbed, quieter now, and put her arms around him sadly.

“I’m going to foreign waters, Abigail. Three years and more. Dry your eyes, now. Call me a bastard if you like, but I’ll try to do right by you, as much as I’m able. But marry you ... I’m sorry.”

He shooed her out, scribbled a quick acceptance letter for the Admiralty messenger, who fled before his old soul was corrupted any more than it most probably was, and sat down to relish a huge glass of brandy. God knew, he needed it about then.