“Our reckoning, I should think,” his father quickly suggested as he spotted his son’s wavering. “We should be gettin’ home, son, gettin’ some part of a good night’s rest. Do you gentlemen excuse us? I keep at Willis’s Rooms when in town. Do call upon me, and we could pursue the matter of a gentleman’s club further, perhaps discover some backers who might also find the notion intriguing …?”
They said their good-nights, gathered their hats and cloaks from the tiler, then stood chilled at the kerb outside whilst a young “daisy kicker” servant of The Cocoa Tree whistled them up a hired carriage to bear them home.
CHAPTER THREE
It was “fashionably” well past midnight before they entered the lodging house, with but a yawning servant to unlock the door for them and offer candles so they could light their way abovestairs. Willis’s was otherwise dark and broodingly silent, the cheery fires in the common and public rooms banked, the equally cheery bar now shuttered. Sir Hugo assured his son that, failing the publican’s commerce, he had a bottle of good Frog brandy in his room.
Lewrie by then was exhausted, and not much in need of a drink; he’d had half-enough for a lifetime, thankee very much!
The spirit’s willin’, but the body’s weak, he thought, in awe of the other diners’ capacity, of his father’s ability to put it away with nary even a slurred word. Navy’s ruined me, damn ’em, he decided, as he fumbled out his key, peering about owlishly.
Lewrie hesitated before the door to his set of rooms, key finally in hand, wondering should he knock or scratch first. With a sorry curse, softly muttered, he rued again fleeing the park with his father, of coming back so late and so “in the barrel” and bedraggled, instead of rushing back to Willis’s after merely an hour’s pause to argue things out with Caroline, and defend himself, once she’d cooled down.
“Devil with it,” he grumbled, inserting the large key; well, he tried to, but there was but one wee candle in the passageway, the key was perversely upside-down, then backwards, and the slot, though large, seemed to be queerly mobile!
At last he managed to unlock the door and enter the rooms, glad to see a fire in the hearth, low and orange, flickering scant light off the brass reflector plate. Only a single candle guttered on the tiny wine-table near the settee, upon which a form huddled.
“Bless me!” the form groaned, sitting up, half-scaring Lewrie out of a year’s growth! “Oh, ‘tis you, sir,” his manservant Aspinall said, rubbing sleep from his eyes like a toddler. “Meant t’sit up an’ wait for ya, Cap’um Lewrie, but …”
“No matter, me lad, no matter,” Lewrie replied, waving overly wide, and unsteady on his “pins.” “The wife’s asleep, I trust?”
“Erm, uhh … no sir,” Aspinall said with a wince. “She’s gone, sir … her and the children, all. Packed up an’ took the coach back to Anglesgreen, Lord … hours ago, sir. Not long after she come back by herself. Long ’fore dark, for certain.”
Aspinall had tricked himself out in snowy white slop trousers, a clean new shirt, a red neckerchief, and a short sailor’s jacket with a set of shiny brass buttons. He sloughed off a dark blue grogram greatcoat under which he had been napping, and felt about with his toes for his new shiny-blacked shoes, those with the real silver buckles that Lewrie had bought for him after coming ashore.
“Ah,” Lewrie replied, after a long, deep sigh. “I see.”
“Can I get ya anything, sir? Didn’t know as how you’d dine, so I sent down for some …”
“No thankee, Aspinall,” Lewrie said, removing his cocked hat and boat-cloak, which Aspinall rushed to gather in.
“Still some cold roast pork an’ bread, sir. Make a good snack. There’s some wine, and …”
“I dined, not so long ago, no,” Lewrie replied, trying not to snap at his manservant; it wasn’t his bloody fault. Though, from the half-empty carafe of wine, the skimpiness of the remaining slices of pork, and the half-loaf, Aspinall had dined well, he thought. And why not? Stuck in the middle of a domestic battle-royal, not knowing the details, and loath to step out to visit his ailing mother here in London, to go much beyond the public rooms belowstairs ’til his master returned … . Lewrie could picture poor Aspinall standing well out of the way, wringing his hands, unsure whether he should help them pack, or scurry off and hide ’til the thunder had subsided.
“Go get some rest, Aspinall. Turn in. I can mangage. I might even discover my own bed, if my luck’s in,” Lewrie throatily said.
“I’ll build up the fire, sir, an’ heat a warmin’ pan. Won’t be a tick,” Aspinall uneasily offered, overly anxious to please. Simply plain anxious, Lewrie could imagine. ‘What shall become of us?’ as Sophie had fretted earlier today … was it yesterday, by now?
“Well, then …” Lewrie demurred, tearing at his neck-stock and collapsing upright on the settee.
“Uhm, Missus Lewrie left that note, sir …”
How could he have missed it, leant against the carafe of wine. Was that a not-so-subtle slur about his “beastly” nature?
Aspinall became even more cringingly unobtrusive as Lewrie took up the note, broke the seal, and unfolded it. For being penned in the heat of the moment, Lewrie decided, it was as forebodingly chilly as a hunk of Arctic ice! Though claiming she’d never suspected a blessed thing at the time, Caroline’s worst suspicions had been confirmed, in the blink of an eye. The gist of that accusing, anonymous letter she had gotten, enumerating her husband’s sins, was proved true! Back in their rooms after the row, she’d dredged confirmation from poor Sophie de Maubeuge, their ward; yes, he’d had a mistress in the Mediterranean, Phoebe Aretino, kept at Gibraltar ‘til his return in ’94, kept as well on her home island of Corsica … the dread secret that Sophie had held all these years, spilled at last! Phoebe Aretino, a conniving, mercenary Corsican whore he’d met at Toulon, the damning letter had described her, Lewrie’s longterm mistress, so any dalliance could not be excused as a lone moment of weakness, and even much worse than any passing idea Caroline had had about Theoni Connor, whose appearance in the park had set all this off! Though confirmed in Caroline’s mind was his adultery with Theoni, now, for the anonymous letter had spelled it all out for her … both the first back in the spring, and the latest!
How he had cossetted Theoni Connor, perhaps the first night he’d taken her aboard HMS Jester after rescuing her from Serbian pirates in the Adriatic, how he’d schemed and finagled to have her and her actual son Michael sail to Lisbon as his guests in his great-cabins, how he’d paid court to her in that port before she’d taken the packet to Liverpool and the in-laws of her late husband! God above, but Caroline had an inkling of an attractive, busty Italian courtesan in Genoa, and in Leghorn, and …!
She’d be shootin’ lava ‘bout that’un! Lewrie told himself, with a sick and swoony feeling of doom as he dashed a hand cross his brows; Theoni’s more blessed in that department, too, and Caroline’s more … petite! Damme, don’t she know men don’t marry teats … they just want t’sup on ’em a tad, now and then?
Though how in Blazes anyone, much less the anonymous scribbler, knew that much was beyond him; Phoebe, for certain; Theoni, well maybe. But Claudia Mastandrea, too? No, who could’ve known that much, and who could despise him enough to write his wife and tell all?
He had suspected Commander William Fillebrowne, who had openly boasted of taking Phoebe’s “saddle” after she and Lewrie had thrown in the towel with each other; he’d been in Venice, in their squadron, in the Adriatic when Theoni Connor turned up, but Claudia was long before his time, an actual, official “mission” handed him by that old Foreign Office spook, Zachariah Twigg … damn his blood! That was supposed to be very secret!
He’d also suspected Lucy Beauman, his first and frustratingly unrequited lust way back in the “early-earlies” of 1780. Now Lady Lucy Shockley, she’d been in Venice, too, also taken with that Fillebrowne; his lover, in point of fact, behind her decent (huge and filthy rich) husband’s back not six months after they
were wed, the filthy baggage! Lucy and Fillebrowne together, for mutual revenge?
He’d spurned her offer of a tumble or an affair, should handsome Fillebrowne go stale, or fail to clear all his “jumps”; perhaps at the same time, for all he knew or cared. So rich, spoiled, and pampered … Lucy was not a woman to cross, and Fillebrowne … !
His old schoolmates from his short term at Harrow—Lord Peter Rushton and Clotworthy Chute, ever the “Captain Sharp” without a pence to his own name—had been in Venice, too, and Clotworthy had diddled Fillebrowne over some “ancient” Roman bronze statues recently “dug” in the Balkans … about as old as the half-loaf of bread standing by the wine carafe!
The one letter his father’d seen had been written on fine paper, and done in an elegant copperplate hand, he’d said. Oh, but it was a bootless enterprise, to speculate who’d ruined him. The thing was done, and the fat was truly in the fire!
Caroline had borrowed sixty pounds from his sea chest, she wrote, to sustain their farm ’til his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, could make new arrangements for her and the children’s upkeep … which she firmly intended to extract from him, no matter their estrangement. Income from their 160-acre rented farm should be hers alone, she wrote, since he’d never been a bit of help in that regard, and had never done a thing to learn it during his idle years ashore on half pay, between the wars! He had to admit that that accusation was true.
Lewrie had been a city-raised London lad, only going down to the country on spring or summer jaunts, as a weekend house guest, and knew nothing of crops or livestock, didn’t know one flower from another and could really only identify oak trees. Well, he knew good horseflesh if he saw it, and he could ride well … but Hell’s Bells, was there any true English gentleman who couldn’t, he’d eat his cocked hat!
Caroline then demanded that half his inheritance from his grandmother Lewrie’s plate and paraphernalia be turned over to her; that he could live on his damned Navy pay, and the £150 per annum that Granny Lewrie had granted him long ago as an annual living, once she had rediscovered his existence during the Revolution.
Sewallis and Hugh must be schooled, she continued; their daughter Charlotte would soon require schooling and “finishing” in the arts,.music, dance, and deportment necessary to a young lady to-be of her due station, then “dotted” when finally espoused.
The children, she accused, were already inured to his years-long absences on the King’s Business, so they would treat his estrangement as just another extremely long active commission. And be the better for’t!
“Damme, she’s dotted all her I’s, crossed all her T’s,” Lewrie sadly marvelled. “Minds her P’s and Q’s … pints an’ quarts, pence’n shillings. Worse’n a publican … pick yer pockets for the reckonin’, ’fore he tosses ye in the gutter.”
Her note was, except for the occasional spiteful slur, of course, remarkably icy, as if she’d written a dry commercial contract to a complete stranger!
“Warmin’ pan’s in yer bed, sir, and yer covers turned down,” his servant announced, padding stocking-footed back into the sitting room.
“Night, Aspinall,” Lewrie said, slumped in defeat.
“Aye, sir,” Aspinall said with a jerky bow, then departed for a bed of his own in what amounted to a large closet, though the children’s beds in a proper, separate room were empty, and better-made.
Of a sudden, the carafe of wine was more than tempting. Lewrie poured himself a goodly measure, a brimming glass.
“Oof!” he was forced to exclaim, spilling a few drops on his new snow-white kerseymere breeches as his ram-cat Toulon jumped up into his lap. “Hallo, Toulon. ’Least you ain’t abandoned me, pusslin’.”
The black and white tom, now grown to nigh a stone-and-a-half in weight, and as firmly muscled as a well-fed basset hound—tike petting a log with legs—made mouth-shut trills and grunts in welcome as he kneaded Lewrie’s lap, rubbed his head against his chest, and slung his bulk against him, his thick, white-tipped ebony tail a brush that lazily twirled and tickled under Alan’s nose.
Lewrie managed one sip, then set aside his glass to pet him and stroke him, else he’d be a pluperfect pest for a full half-hour. “Aye, I know, big baby, been gone too damn’ long. Left you behind, did she? Been just you and Aspinall, hours and hours? Well, I’m back now, just you an’ me, yyess … .”
An’ by God, ain’t it just! he sadly told himself; me and a damn’ cat, the rest o’ my days, if Caroline don’t come round … somehow.
And how his wife could ever reconcile herself with such a faithless hound as he, he couldn’t quite fathom … yet, anyway. She wasn’t the sort to pine away; she’d proved that by running their farm as well as any man during his other commissions. Rearing the children, becoming such an astute woman of commerce, never given to the vapours, just coping deuced well, with her stillroom, jams, and jellies, the domestics they employed, neighbours, skin-flint horse-copers, homemade vinegars, wines, and spring ales, her sewing, knitting, and economies … .
She didn’t need him, he realised with a start of revelation; he was a sometime amusement, like a visiting troupe of jugglers and acrobats! Caroline was complete unto herself, and had been for years; what ties of affection and custom there had been were now severed!
Caroline had kith and kin, the house, the village, and the church, and the long, predictable roll of the seasons in peaceful and settled country life, home and hearth, whilst he had the sea, and …
“Murff,” Toulon muttered in his lap, strewing hair over the new breeches that he had bought for the celebration ball that they should have attended this evening, done up in their best finery, dancing with the great and near-great in glittering triumph and praise.
Toulon turned about in his own length and slunk inside the sling that bound Lewrie’s left arm, stretching out once inside, feeling like a hairy 18-pounder shot, with but his whiskers, nose, and slitted eyes showing after he’d turned about once more. He gave out a long, happy yawn, stretched out his front paws and legs to dangle either side of his master’s wrist, and began to purr, rattling like signal halliards and light blocks might clatter in a stiff breeze.
Lewrie was too tired to think anymore, too drunk and too numb for self-pity or a good, cleansing admission of guilt. He was certain those’d come, though, as he picked up his abandoned wineglass and took a melancholy sip. Now that he was alone, and still.
And it was goin’ so bloody good this mornin’, he mourned as he recalled how promising the day had started out …’til that encounter in Hyde Park … .
CHAPTER FOUR
Well that came off well, Lewrie thought for a hopeful moment, as Theoni bade them all a gracious goodby, took her sons and her maidservant and new-fangled wheeled perambulator off down the pale gravelled path. Polite and innocent as anything! Whew!
He had turned back to face his wife, after perhaps allowing his gaze to linger just a blink too long on the departing Mrs. Connor.
Ka-whap!
Caroline’s stinging blow made his jaw feel as if it was broken!
“Oow!” he’d yelped in sudden pain and astonishment, face reddening. “What the bloody …!”
“You … beast!” Caroline fumed; her upraised hand—just used to slap him halfway into next week—now fisted, as if she’d contemplated boxing his ear, or making his nose spout claret! Her parasol, a flimsy thing good only for languid strolls, was held low and furled in her left hand, its pointy brass ferrule winking in the wan sunshine, putting Lewrie in mind of a sword-point.
“What was that for?” he’d demanded, though he knew damn’ well.
“You … faithless … lying … bastard!” she’d accused.
“Caroline … dearest!” he’d assayed, hoping to cozen her from her pet. “You’re sadly mistook! It’s not … oww!”
The fragile parasol had swept up high on her right, then slashed downwards and leftwards, catching him on the scalp (proving harder than advertised) and sending his ornate new cocked hat
flying over the dun December grass. He’d lifted his wounded left arm in its sling to ward her off, too late, making him grunt with sudden pain.
Christ, she’d hit a wounded man? he gawped as he’d skittered to the rear in retreat; mean t’say, me … and a wounded bloody hero?
And this was the gentle wife and mother who’d spank the unruly child, then go off and weep into her aprons, the most kindly and … ?
“Bastard!” Caroline had insisted, moving that parasol into her right hand, taking a swordsman’s lunge at his offending groin, making him squeak in alarm and retreat a step or two more.
With a pang of chagrin, he had realized that he’d fired a hulling shot into himself. Caroline might have been chary, and less than sincere with cordiality when presented with the sight of the handsome Widow Theoni Kavares Connor and her youngest drooling “git” in the perambulator. Impossible to avoid on the park’s pathway, since Theoni’s party and their skirts took up so much of it, impossible to snub her when here came the bold captain who’d saved her in the Adriatic, here came his father, General Sir Hugo, who’d called upon her before; glorious in his best uniform, glittering with gold lace and chain gimp.
Caroline hadn’t voiced the slightest cattiness when shown the pudgy little bastard, who, unfortunately, was enough grown a “crawler” for the uncanny resemblance to her loyal husband to begin to be evident, no! The vertical furrow in her brows that sprouted when she was wroth with him hadn’t sprouted ’til Theoni was leaving. She hadn’t accused him of that … yet.
And then he’d blurted out that she was mistaken, before she said a blessed thing, only confirming her deepest suspicion! Idiot! he had chid himself; but if the mort had t’honour me for her salvation, why not call him James Alan Connor, ’stead o’ Alan James, for all the damn’ world t’wonder at?
No time for rational thought or inventive lying, though, for his wife had begun to slash right-and-left like a trained cavalry trooper; forcing him to retreat and duck that gaily coloured parasol! Him of all people, the very picture of a British sea-dog, two medals jouncing on his chest, sporting an honourable wound taken in arduous Service for King and Country, the tasselled epaulet of a Post-Captain of less than three years’ seniority on his right shoulder … retreating from a woman? Just about ready to cut and run?
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