Chapter 4

They repaired back to the upper level, to another room that was screened off from the dining area by a carved wood purdah screen that ran the whole width of the huge main salon. Sir Hugo shucked out of his regimentals, doffing red coat, waist-coat, rank gorget and neck-cloth. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his clothes willy-nilly, but there was a bearer there to catch them before they even hit the floor. The white powdered wig with the tight side-curls and short false queue went next as Sir Hugo unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.

“Make yourself comfortable, lad,” he offered. There were no real chairs or couches in this room, so Alan wondered where he could indeed make himself comfortable. Sit on the floor, on the piles of richly brocaded pillows? On the intricate carpets?

Yes, that was where Sir Hugo was seating himself, on a Bengali dhuree rug that held a dozen huge pillows, while one of the younger khitmatgars came trotting in with a folding table support about eight inches high made of ebony wood, and a second servitor fetched a huge brass table or tray (maybe it did duty as both, Alan thought) to sit atop it.

“Oh, for God’s sake, take your ease!” Sir Hugo snapped. There, that tone in his voice was more like the scheming, petulant bastard that Lewrie had grown to know and despise. “You must be stifling in that neck-cloth.”

The khitmatgars were back with another load of goodies to set upon the tray table. Wine and spirits, clay pipes and tobacco humidor, a bowl of fruit and some candied dates. Even some Persian muck they called halvah. Gauzy, diaphanous insect curtains were lowered over the wide windows to the balcony, whilst from outside ... 

i

“For God’s sake, a band?” Alan grimaced as a set of native musicians hit their stride with something plaintively twanging, ululating, throbbing and thumping on sitars, flutes and madals. “You do live well, I’ll allow you that ... Sir Hugo.”

“Say ‘father,’ do, Alan,” Sir Hugo grunted.

“Mine arse on a bandbox!” Alan snapped back.

“Have it your own way, but sit the hell down and have some wine, at least,” Sir Hugo pressed in a reasonable tone.

Alan heaved a heavy sigh and untied his neck-cloth, sank down to sit cross-legged on the cushions and took a glass of claret.

There were a couple of tall candelabras made of brass between them, elaborate things fashioned from the arms and bodies of Hindoo gods and goddesses—thank the Lord most of ‘em had eight or ten arms to hold that many candles. Off to either side, there were shallow charcoal braziers, now fuming with sandalwood incense amid some other aromas.

“Keeps the mosquitos away,” Sir Hugo yawned. “Sandalwood, citron and patchouli. Christ knows what else. Better not to ask.”

“If I’m delaying your retiring . . .” Alan offered, impatient to go.

“Not at all. I can still keep up with the young bucks of the first head.” Sir Hugo smiled lazily, puffing on his pipe once more.

“You always could, I grant you,” Alan agreed. “But then, you were damn near a charter-member of the Hell-Fire Club back in your early days, weren’t you?” he concluded with a suitably arch sneer.

“And when did you become a regular churchgoer, my boy?” Sir Hugo replied. “God, if I only had penny to the pound of all the blunt I spent bailing you out of trouble, I’d still be a rich man!”

“Wasn’t my caterwauling got you in debtor’s prison,” Alan sulked. “Wasn’t me damn near press-ganged me into the Navy so you could lay your hooks on the Lewrie fortune.”

“And how is Grandmother Lewrie these days? Mistress Nuttbush now?”

“Alive and kicking, spry as a pup.”

“Her kind always was harder to kill than breadroom rats.”

“Sounds like you considered it.”

“Now you do me too much injustice, Alan m’dear.” “Oh, please!” Alan said, starting to rise, but Sir Hugo reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm.

“Bide awhile, son,” he said, and for once, he sounded as if he was begging. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby never begged. Alan made up his mind to stay for a while longer, if only to see him beg again.

“How can you call me son?” Alan shot out, sure of his superior position over the older man for the first time in his life. “Aye, you sired me, that’s true, but when it came to being a father to me, you had your chance, and all I ever got from you was a cold shoulder, a snarl now and then. I wasn’t a son, I was an investment! Your hole-card to take the Lewrie trick once 1 was of an age to inherit and granny passed over. And soon as it looked like happening, you packed me off with that crimp Captain Bevan and had me off at sea, so I’d never even know there was a Lewrie family to inherit from! You told me my mother Elisabeth was a whore, dead at my birthing, that I had no family other than you, God pity me! You and Pilchard forging documents left, right and center to get what you wanted ...”

“Needed’s more like it,” Sir Hugo confessed with a deprecating shrug and a sip of his brandy.

“Yes, you always needed money,” Alan pressed on harder, trying to get a rise out of him, to puncture that slightly sad, but maddeningly calm demeanor. Damme, he thought, does the old bastard truly not have a sense of honor to shame? “And there was Belinda and Gerald, their inheritance you squandered before they came of age, too. How was your marriage to the Cockspur widow, your second wife?”

“Bloody depressing most of the time. She was a termagant twit.” Sir Hugo chuckled slightly, and gave Alan a rueful grimace and a shake of his head in less than fond remembrance. “And how are Belinda and Gerald faring?”

“What the ...” Alan was rendered incapable of cogent speech by the man’s sang-froid. “As if you care!”

“You’re right, I don’t, but I thought it would satisfy my curiosity about them,” Sir Hugo replied, tippling another sip of brandy. “Bloody awful children, right from the start.”

“Yet . .. yet, you treated them as the rightful heirs, and me as the barely tolerated ... bastard!” Alan barked. “Well, Goddamn you!”

“Of course I did. Agnes’ bloody sisters were still alive to plague me, and to all intents and purposes, you were the little bastard, the by-blow of a youthful indiscretion. You wanted for nothing. What else did you desire? A damned pony and cart?”

“Yes, yes I bloody well did!” Alan howled with rage. “I wanted”—Alan was so full of rage, of tears, that he had to get out of the place before he killed the man!—“I wanted a father! I wanted a mother!” He shot to his feet to flee.

“You had a mother!” Sir Hugo roared, getting to his feet and seizing Alan, who struggled to get away. “She died. And, God help you, you had me for a father, such as I was.” “You told me she was a whore!” Alan screamed. “She was!” Sir Hugo screamed back. “Know why I ran off with her jewelry in Holland? Because I caught her in bed with another officer of my regiment who’d made the crossing with us after we eloped!”

“You lying hound!”

“You’ve only heard your granny’s side, boy!” Sir Hugo ranted. “How sweet and innocent she was. How I seduced her for her money and left her without a penny. Well, let me tell you, if she’d lived, I’d have lost count of how many times she’d have put cuckold’s horns on me. God help me, I’d be here in India after all, ‘cause it’d be cheaper’n trying to get a bill of divorce through Parliament! I might have ended up on the gallows for killing her and her latest! Do ... you ... under

stand ... me ... you little . .. jingle-brains?”

The last was punctuated with some massive shaking that almost loosened Alan’s teeth in his head each time his jaw snapped shut.

“Elisabeth could be the sweetest, liveliest, most alluring damn woman ever I did see, Alan,” Sir Hugo relented at last, easing his tone and his grip. “But I found out I couldn’t trust her out of my sight! Oh, we went to Holland, yes. Her daddy Dudley Lewrie cut her off without a farthing. So we lived on my Army pay and what little was left of my family estate after my elder brother got through with it. Mortgaged to the bloody hilt! And do you really think I wanted to enter the Army when I was sixteen? Like bloody Hell, I did! I didn’t get much of a choice, either.”

“But that doesn’t excuse ...” Alan almost sobbed.

“I know, son, nothing excuses it,” Sir Hugo shuddered. “I’ve treated you like dirt your whole life. Thought I was doing well by you, by my own lights. And nothing’s going to make up for it. But I’d like you to at least understand me. If you’re going to despise me to the end of time, then at least do it for the right reasons, if nothing else.”

“You miserable bastard!” Alan hissed, on the verge of weeping, of falling on his father’s shoulder and crying his eyes out. Either that or fetching a curved tulwar, a Persian sword, off the wall and hacking his head off. Sir Hugo put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a soft pat—perhaps as close as he would ever get to empathy or comforting.

“Thomas de Crecy,” Sir Hugo muttered heavily, turning away. “Good, honest, cheerful, unfailing Tommy. My fellow officer in the 4^th. ‘Twas him arranged the minister and all for us to wed.”

“Aye, I remember,” Alan said with a snort and a hiccup. “But it was a false justice married you. I guess he didn’t know you needed real clergy. Just a sham to get her into your bed!”

“No need of that, Alan,” Sir Hugo replied, grinning. “Elisabeth had the shortest pair of heels of any girl I’d ever seen. We’d already been bedded. And I want you to know this, laddy. I loved her so dearly I was totally besotted. Money be damned, I really did want her to be my wife! Ah, but Tommy de Crecy knew what he was doing. Came over to Holland with us, brought my last installment of Army pay. Stayed with us in the same town, to see us through until Elisabeth’s family came ‘round and accepted the marriage. Do you see what he had in mind?”

“No, frankly,” Alan replied, blowing his nose.

“Well, there we were, rapidly running out of money, ‘cause your grandfather Dudley Lewrie was tighter with a shilling than a Maltese pimp, and he’d never admit the match. But there was always good old Tommy. Tommy, with his little loans. Tommy with his lord’s purse. Tommy with his kind-hearted generosity!” Sir Hugo turned somber, and just a trifle angry, even after all these years as he related this. Or, as Alan suspected, he was a consummate actor and was putting on a sublime theatric.

“You mean he was the one caught in bed with her?” Alan asked, dubious still.

“He’d wanted her all along, aye,” Sir Hugo grumbled, and bent over the tray table to pour them another stiff refill of brandy. His face was older, heavier, lined; the skin mottled by years of too much drink, too much tropic sun in the last few. The fine shock of light brown hair was receded, and there were liver spots on the exposed scalp. And, Alan noticed as hepoured the spirit, so were the backs of his hands. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby was no longer the fashionable buck of St James’ Place, White’s, Almack’s. He was a slack old man, or near enough to it not to matter, gone ropey and croupey.

“He was waiting for the moment when Elisabeth was at her weakest, I suppose,” Sir Hugo maundered on. “When we both realized the enormity of what we’d done, and that things were most definitely not going to turn aright. Knighthood or not, she was married to a penniless captain of foot, currently unemployed. Trading down from good lodgings to the cheapest we could find, and still wondering where the next meal was coming from. I’m sure she wished she could repent and go back to her family. And she always was an impulsive girl. What I loved about her most, really. What better moment for good old Captain The Honourable Thomas de Crecy to inform her that the whole thing was a sham I’d dreamed up to get hold of her family’s money, and don’t ye know . .. he’d ‘just learned of it’ from another officer in our regiment, and he simply had to rescue her from me!”

“But .. .” Alan started to say, then shut his trap. He’d never thought of his father as anything but inhuman. Never allowed that he could be hurt, or feel pain (especially since he’d been so good at handing pain out to others so liberally). This brutal bastard should be incapable of sorrow, shouldn’t he, he asked himself?

“Elisabeth was carrying you by then, making the whole thing worse. And Tommy swore he’d always loved her more than life, couldn’t stand to see her in my brutal, callous clutches. All the Sturm und Drang so popular in women’s novels these days, all that Gothick fright and flummery! Well, don’t ye know, she spooned it up like cream. The brainless little baggage!” Sir Hugo related, sinking down onto his pile of pillows and stretching out on his side. “Probably told her he’d do right by her and the child. Maybe he really meant to; I’ll never know. But he came back from Holland without her, after a few more months. After she began to show, and he couldn’t trot her out to anything elegant.”

“Hold on, though,” Alan objected. “You still ended up stealing her jewels and abandoning her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” Sir Hugo nodded with not a twinge of shame. “ ‘Twas the only way I knew how to get back at her after I caught them. Well, I didn’t exactly catch them bareback riding.”

“Like I was with Belinda when you arranged to ‘catch’ me.”

“Hmm, no, nothing that flagrant,” Sir Hugo snickered. “She was in her bedgown. Untied, mind, and nary a sight of stockings, stays or corset to be found. Tommy’d dressed so fast he’d buttoned his waist-coat to his breeches flap! Oh, ‘twas a devil of a row we had. After I’d horse-whipped him down the stairs, she lit into me. Mind you also, this was the first I knew that we really weren’t married! So all I could do was rant and swear Tommy was lying, but she wasn’t having a bit of it. And d’you know, lad? But termagant as she was at that moment, I had a sudden premonition of just how ghastly life was going to be with her from that moment on. No trusting her with other men ‘thout a leash on. Tears, sulks and screaming fits for the rest of our natural lives. Ah, but suddenly it struck me! If we’re not married ... if Tommy diddled the both of us, then I was free as larks! All I could think of was ‘Thank bloody Christ this is over with,’ and hit the road that night. Singing with relief, as I remember.”

“But you took her last money!”

“She had Tommy’s money,” Sir Hugo sneered, then rose up on his elbow to look Alan square in the face. “God knows I loved her more than anything or anyone else since, Alan. But I really did need the money devilish bad! And with Tommy lusting after her, he’d replace what I’d taken, and be damned to both of them—they deserved each other when you come right down to it.”

“Jesus, you really don’t have any shame!” Alan snapped, getting righteous again.

“Too damn poor to have any shame. You want to see shameless, you should have been in my shoes with Agnes Cockspur.”

“Belinda and Gerald’s mother,” Alan supplied.

“Fetching enough in the beginning, ‘fore she turned into this drab pudding.” Sir Hugo sighed. “Chicken-chested, thick as a farrier sergeant. Rather wrestled a publican than put the leg over her. Like climbing into bliss on the belly of a bear. And her two children were rotten from the start. Still, she was absolutely stiff with ‘chink,’ and there I was in Bath, trying to parley what little I had left into something to live on. Had to resign my commission, don’t ye know! An officer in the King’s Own, Knight of the Garter or not, can’t abscond with young heiresses. Not unless one’s successful, mind, then they make you colonel of the regiment and dine you in once a year. I made three thousand pounds selling up my commission, but it was going fast. No, I may be a bit harsh on poor Agnes. Drab she may have been, dull as ditch-water and graceful as a three legged dray-horse, but she was a kindly stick. Meant well. And then she died having our child, and the child died, too. And Elisabeth had died having you. And I got to brooding on what had happened to you.”

“That was after you and your solicitor, Mister Pilchard, had forged that letter of permanent coverture over Agnes Cock-spur’s estate,” Alan accused.

“Aye, soon after that. Talented bugger, that Pilchard. What else was I to do? With Agnes in her grave, her even more ghastly sisters’d have gotten the estate and the money, and I’d be out on my bare arse again, stuck with two brats I’d never have wanted if they came with the crown of Prussia attached.”

“So you heard I was still alive,” Alan pressed. “And you were, as you put it ... brooding on me.”

“The only real child I ever had, Alan. I found you and took you in because I swore I’d never marry again,” Sir Hugo told him. “Of course, I was just disreputable enough that the idea of me marrying into a really good family couldn’t be mentioned in polite Society. Pretty much the same thing, really.”

“But you didn’t act like I was your only son.”

“Like I said, I had to pretend to be caring for Agnes’ brood. For Society. To keep the sisters shut up. After all, if I didn’t have them to care for, a court would find it easier to take them away and award them to the sisters, and the money’d go with ‘em. What did you want beyond what any other lad of your station got? My parents saw me at tea, perhaps at supper, once in the evening just before the governess tucked me in, and after that, it was a good public school somewhere far enough away so they wouldn’t be bothered, except when term ended.”

 

“Why did you arrange for me to get caught in bed with Belinda? Why did you exile me into the Navy?” Alan demanded, though in a soft voice as he sat down cross-legged on his pillows once more.

 

“The Lewrie money,” Sir Hugo muttered, barely inaudible.

“And you were almost broke again, weren’t you. And you needed the money, so devilish bad!”

After much hemming and hawwing, Sir Hugo could only nod his assent.

“Goddamn you.” Alan slumped.

“Alan ... I am truly sorry,” Sir Hugo whispered. “Your father is a miserable bastard. I thought I was doing right by you, not letting you end up dead in that parish orphanage. Feeding you, clothing you, getting you a good education. You don’t know how many times I was proud of you. Of how many times you reminded me of me, even when you were up to your ears in pranks that backfired to my cost.”

“Fine way of showing it,” Alan muttered back, staring down in his brandy and watching the candle flames dance in amber to the trembling of his fingers. “I thought you hated me.”

“Alan, no! Never hated you!” Sir Hugo insisted, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe I didn’t show you. Or tell you. But I took you in out of guilt about Elisabeth. And about Agnes. I loved you, Alan. I love you still.”

“Ah, right,” Alan tossed off.

“If I seem too selfish, then that’s my curse. If I treated you standoff-ish, then that’s my loss,” Sir Hugo insisted. “And I’m still proud of you. You’ve made lieutenant in half the time most people could expect. Commanded a ship of your own for a while. Made a name for yourself by being brave and clever. I read every issue of the Marine Chronicle and the London papers, looking for news of you. ‘Came into The Downs this Sunday last, the Shrike brig, Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, commanding, to pay off at Deptford Hard, with a sum in excess of thirty thousand pounds prize money owing officers and men, from service with the Leeward Islands Squadron, most recently off Cape Francois under Admiral Sir Samuel Hood and Commodore Affleck.’ I memorized it. I cut it out and saved it. I can show you.”

“Maybe you could; it don’t signify,” Alan replied bitterly. “Your idea of affection is hellish like indifference to me. Your idea of love I could trade for two dozen lashes and stand the better, sir.”

“For better or worse, I am your father, Alan. I don’t expect you to ever love me. Or respect me, either. I’d admire if you could at least not despise me. Take what’s past like the fine young man you are and put it behind you. Behind us,” Sir Hugo implored. “I imagine that you’re the best of Elisabeth Lewrie, and the best of me, with all the rotten parts cut out, like an apple only half gone-over. Lot of pith left, even so. I’ll not ever expect us to be reconciled.”

“That would take a power of doing. And longer than either of us have on this earth, I expect,” Alan answered.

“Well, that’s the way of it, then,” Sir Hugo harrumphed, and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye. “Just do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“Don’t end up like me, will you, lad?”

“I don’t know; I have a fair start on it.” Alan grimaced and found himself amused in spite of himself.

“You take after me when it comes to the ladies, hey?” Sir Hugo teased.

“In frequency, perhaps. Not ... well, I haven’t cheated anyone. Not yet, anyway,” Alan allowed.

“That Captain Bevan dropped me a line now and then about you. I know about the ladies in Jamaica,” Sir Hugo chuckled.

“That’s not the half of it.”

“1 thought I’d offer you a treat,” Sir Hugo said, getting to his feet rather awkwardly. Part age and stiffness, Alan thought, and part being half-seas-over with drink. Sir Hugo clapped his hands and the narrow door in the purdah screen opened. Three girls entered the room, one dressed in a translucent saree, the other two in the bright gauzy skirts and tight satin jackets that left so little to the imagination, like the nautch-giils he’d seen in the bazaar earlier.

“My word!” he breathed. They were unutterably lovely, every one of ‘em! Kohl outlined eyes, shy smiles and bright teeth, complexions clear and smooth, and as brown as pecan shells or as golden as wheat.

“This is Padmini,” Sir Hugo said, indicating the one in the saree, who stood no higher than Alan’s chin.

“Namaste, sahib,” the girl whispered, though grinning with an impish expression.

“A Bengali, she is, Alan. Once you’ve had a Bengali woman, you’re spoiled for anything else.” Sir Hugo chuckled. “Draupadi. She’s Rajput. And Apsara. Aptly named, too, for the playthings of Hindoo gods. Though I doubt she’s Hindoo. From up north in the Oudh, I think. Maybe from the foothills. A little tigress. All can do a dance that’ll set your blood to boiling. Like to see?”

“I don’t know ...” Alan sighed, feeling anything but lusty for once. All passion had been shouted or cried out of him. “Maybe some other time, sir.”

Good Christ, is it me saying that?

“Too late to be wandering the streets, even in the English cantonments, Alan. If nothing else, accept my offer of bed and breakfast.”

Draupadi was stirring slowly to the beat of the madals from the courtyard, smiling with heavy-lidded eyes full of promise, her extremely long, straight dark hair swishing maddeningly as far down as her fingertips, and Alan watched it sway. He transferred his gaze to Apsara, she of the dark, frizzy-curly hair and the golden wheat skin, who gazed at him with such a welcoming, open-mouthed smile.

“Er ... hmmm,” he pondered.

“Come, Alan,” Sir Hugo demanded. “I know you of old, my dear son. What’s worse, you know me. I’d never cut my nose off to spite my face. Nor would I turn down such exquisite quim just because I bore a grudge against my host. And I doubt if you would, either.”

“Ah ...” Alan tried to reply.

“I have a lot to make up to you for, Alan,” his father said, coming close to his side to speak privately. “Maybe I never can, like you suspect. I’d buy you that bloody trap and pony, if I thought you still wanted it. But right now, this is the best I have to offer. And it may be your last chance before you sail off out of my life again. Safer than some bazaari-randi* too, and won’t cost you tuppence.”

*market-whores

“Hmmm,” Alan speculated at last, “don’t suppose your band knows ‘When First I Gazed in Chloe’s Eyes,’ would they?”

“Hardly!” Sir Hugo barked out a short laugh.

“Ah, well,” Alan finally allowed, sinking back to the carpet and reclining against one of those impossibly thick and round barrel-shaped pillows.

With a crook of his finger, Sir Hugo summoned Padmini to join him. Alan crooked his own finger at Apsara, who beamed even wider, and seemed to slink to his side with the lithe grace of a panther, her patchouli and sandalwood scent enveloping him like her gauze chudder as she drew the headcloth about their faces to share a brief nuzzle before pouring him another full bumper of wine.

“Apsara?” he said. “Alan.”

“Ahk-lahn,” she breathed, taking a sip of his wine.

“My God in Heaven.” He laughed with an anticipatory shudder of raw lust. “Mind you, Father,” he said over Apsara’s smooth young shoulder, “you have one bloody Hell of a lot to make up for, y’know.”

“The evening’s young,” Sir Hugo replied softly. “My son.” And Draupadi began her dance, her ankle bangles jangling.