Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  There’d been a clutch of fashionable onlookers, tittering and hooting Caroline encouragement, guffawing at him; Royal Navy officers, midshipmen, and tars watching, too, ashore to share the day of celebration. Gawkin’ at me? he’d quailed. But, what could he have done, in those circumstances … draw his sword in defence? Slug her senseless?

  “Caroline, for God’s sake!” he’d pled, instead. “I’ve not done anything, honest! Tongue-lash me in private if you like, but … !”

  “Liar!” Caroline shrilled, loud enough to startle even the fat park pigeons to flight, slashing at him some more. “Liar, liar, liar!” she had howled, pleasant, familiar features pinched pale, but oddly dry-eyed, Lewrie had taken ominous note. That had been the very worst sign. Had she wept tears of rage, sadness, or betrayal, he might have held out hope.

  “Madam!” he’d huffed, dredging up what shreds were left of his courage, and his husbandly dignity and authority—safely beyond her reach, it must here be noted!—“This is nought for the Mob’s amusement. Your uncalled for rage is unseemly, and common!”

  That’d stopped her in her tracks. Caroline had always put the greatest stock in their Public Image, her determination to appear as good as anyone of the squirearchy, no matter she and her kin had turned up as poor as church mice after fleeing the Lower Cape Fear settlements of the North Carolina colony after the Revolution, living on charity grudgingly given by her miserly Uncle Phineas Chiswick—thin as that was! ‘And just you wait ’til I get you home!’ Hadn’t she regularly frozen the children stock-still, arrested in mid-stride, with that’un?

  Caroline had hitched a deep breath, and had at last relented, lowering her “weapon” from High Third to rest the point on the ground, giving Lewrie space in which to look towards his family to see how the dispute was going down with them.

  His eldest son, Sewallis, a lanky-lean eleven, looked as pale as death, hands pawed at midchest, ever the miniature parson, the one to shy like a whipped puppy at every start and alarum. His second, Hugh “the fearless,” had gawped wide-eyed, glancing from mother to father, halfhidden and clinging to their ward Sophie, Vicomtesse de Maubeuge, and her skirts. Daughter Charlotte, now a brisk toddler and Caroline’s duplicate, had glared at him as fiercely as his wife, face screwed up in tears, but mortal-certain it was his, a man’s fault!

  Sophie, who moments before had been lavishing in the grins and tipped hats, the admiring glances of single young gentlemen, now hid her face behind an ivory-and-lace fan that vibrated against her lips in rapid little wing-beats, standing close to his father Sir Hugo, as she always did, eyes full of more sadness than shock.

  And his father … ! The fashionable old stick looked as if he had bitten into a tart lemon; e’en so, there was the tiniest glint of “told you so” in his eyes.

  So much for sympathy from him! Lewrie had sadly sighed; Oh, it ain’t fair! None of ’em meant a fig t’me. Not now, when I’ve gotten a touch o’ real fame!

  “Damn you, Alan … damn you!” Caroline had spat, voice lower at last. “All the years you were at sea, me thinking so trustingly, and now … !” She’d hiccoughed, on the edge of breaking—mellowing at last? No, for she’d hitched a breath, one hand on a hip, one hand on the handle of her parasol as if it was a walking stick. “You’re right, sir!” she’d snapped, the cynicism dripping. “This is not a public … affair, nor shall it be a private one ’twixt us, either. I know you now for a lying, cheating, dissembling, adulterous hound … sir, and I tell you now that I have no more desire to speak with you, nor see your earnest fool’s face … nor even hear your name, ever again!”

  She’d been choking, but she’d managed to say all that.

  “Caroline …” Lewrie had attempted to say, opening his arms to her and taking a tentative step forward.

  “Back, Devil!” she’d cried, bringing her parasol up to Guard and freezing him in place; she was too bloody good with it, as good as a French grenadier with a bayonet-tipped musket! “You will consider yourself dead to me, sir … to us. For so I, and we, consider you!”

  “Uhm, Caroline, m’dear, surely …” his father had at last attempted to placate, but she’d whipped about to glare him to silence, and aimed her parasol at his crutch, too!

  “Blood does tell, does it not … Sir Hugo?” she’d purred, all scornful. Which threat and cutting comment forced a quick retreat on that worthy’s part, Sir Hugo’s drink-wizened “phyz” suffused as red as his tunic, as he coughed “courtly” into his fist.

  “Come, children … . Sophie. We are going back to our lodgings, now!” Caroline had ordered.

  “But, Mummy!” Hugh had objected, whilst Sewallis dithered as was his timid wont, and Charlotte had glared daggers at father and her brother both.

  “Madame, I …” Sophie had squeaked, lowering her fan, turning to Sir Hugo, whom she adored as her racy, stand-in grand-père. “Oh … what shall become of us, if … ?”

  “Go along and obey your mistress, Sophie, there’s a good girl,” Sir Hugo had said. “Worst comes t’worst, we’ll arrange something. Is that not so, Alan?”

  “Hey?” he’d contributed, in his usually “sharp” manner.

  “Gawd!” Sir Hugo had muttered under his breath, despairing.

  “I am so sorry, M’sieur Alain, I …” Sophie had whispered, patting his good shoulder with a lace-gloved hand. Looking scared … enough to blab what she knew of Phoebe Aretino, at long last, did his wife browbeat her long enough?

  All the years since the dying Baron Charles Auguste de Crillart had forced him to swear to see his family cared for after their escape from Toulon as the city fell, not knowing that his brother and mother had died in the same fight that’d killed him, that Sophie his younger cousin was all that was left. Since Sophie had become their ward, he had feared what she might reveal about his nubile young concubine … yet all that time, he was safe as houses on that score …’til now!

  A vicomtesse or not, Sophie would have nowhere to go, and with all of her family’s wealth and lands lost—along with their heads to the guillotine!—would be as “skint” as a day labourer without the Lewrie roof over her head. She was young, pretty, vivacious, “missish,” and coy; Caroline might even suspect that he and she … !

  “I will write, somehow,” Sophie promised, before turning away, joining Caroline, who had taken hold of Charlotte’s hand and laid one on Hugh’s shoulders to steer him; Sewallis would always be dutifully obedient. Caroline marched away, head held high, nostrils pinched and eyes afire for anyone who might gainsay her; briskly and huffily. His sons did turn and look back, now and then, whilst being frog-marched, with Sophie half trotting to catch up, one hand holding up her skirts, the other plying a handkerchief to her nose or eyes, and the elegant egret feathers of her saucy bonnet a’dance.

  “What shall become of us, indeed,” Sir Hugo had intoned. “Or of poor Sophie, should Caroline turn on her?”

  “Christ on a crutch, but I’m fucked!” Lewrie had groaned aloud, shuddery and awestruck, nigh to tears as he saw Hugh looking back and trying to dig in his heels.

  “Fair-accurate assessment, yes,” Sir Hugo had replied, and his cynical little chuckle had snapped Lewrie’s head round to gawp at him.

  “Think she’d divorce me?”

  “Damned expensive, a Bill of Divorcement,” his father had speculated, flicking stray lint from his tunic. “Years o’ litigation in Parliament. More trouble than they’re worth, ’less there’s a mountain o’ money ridin’ on the outcome. The cost … money and the notoriety, too. That’ll most-like daunt her. I’ll see she sees the consequence … assumin’ she lets me on the property ’fore next Christmas! Worst might be total estrangement … more common than ye know, even considerin’ the kiddies.”

  “Oh, God,” Lewrie had gloomed, dashing a hand over his brow.

  “She’d have t’hire a solicitor, lay a case with her own Member of Parliament,” Sir Hugo had sensibly pointed out, not without one of his sly leers and almost a nudge in the ribs. �
��And that’s Harry-bloody-Embleton. She just may despise him worse than she despises you, me lad! Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, after all these years!”

  “That otter-faced whoreson hears of it, he’ll offer, to get even with me!” Lewrie had fretted. “Get back in her good books. He always had his cap set for her, and now …”

  “Sir Romney, the baronet, won’t let him,” Sir Hugo had scoffed. “What, his son, down for the baronetcy, wed to a tainted wife? With a brood o’ children not his own, sir? A grass-widow ’thout a dot o’ free hold land or anything beyond her paraphernalia? Embletons don’t wed … tenants! No, Caroline’s the sort to groan in her martyrdom, take solace in family sympathy, perhaps, but never that. Too righteous.”

  His father had shivered and made a “brrr!” sound at the idea of Righteousness. “Doubt she’d put cuckold’s horn on ye, either, takin’ any lover. Be tempted, p’raps, but that’d be too common, too much of your nature t’suit her primness.”

  “Damme!” Lewrie had fussed of a sudden. “Can’t you say something, I don’t know … charitable, or comforting, or … ? My entire life’s just turned t’dung, and …”

  “Ye know it’s rainin’, so why ’piss down yer back’?” Sir Hugo had snickered, relentlessly sarcastic. “Oh my, you’d prefer … ?”

  He’d laid a hand on his heart, cocked back his head, one palm to his “fevered” forehead, and “emoted” like an overly dramatic thespian. “You poor misunderstood fellow, how horrid for you! It is just so unfair!” he’d declaimed. “None o’ your doin’, I’d vow! There,” he said, leaving character. “Was that better?” he asked, reverting to a sardonic squint.

  “Damme, you know it’s not!” Lewrie had snapped.

  “Why’d ye ask, then?” his father chirped back, with a shrug.

  “Fair, I mean,” Lewrie had stammered. “Mean t’say, a man in his prime, so long away from home … bloody years at sea! What must a woman expect, now the heirs are born, and healthy? The fashionable sort, they spare their wives the risk of more childbirth, it’s what people do, for God’s sake, and …”

  “Oh aye … either of us become the fashionable sort, you just run come tell me,” Sir Hugo had sneered. “Caroline ain’t the fashionable sort, though, son. Farm-raised, Colonial pious. Not the sort to be thankful for you … sparin’ her the terrors o’ childbed fever.”

  “Damn!” Lewrie had sadly groaned, seeing a glum future ahead.

  “Women simply won’t see things in their proper perspective,” the old fellow grumbled peevishly. “Still … a few months’ absence might mellow her, once she thinks on her new situation.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Lewrie had said with a scowl, realising that his wife was not the sort to knuckle under merely for the sake of her financial security, nor her children’s sake, either.

  “No … but you were castin’ for straws.”

  “Gawd, they never meant a thing to me!” Lewrie had carped. “A night or two o’ comfort and pleasure, that’s all. Not even Theoni, or Phoebe Aretino. Well, months in her case. Claudia, Lady Emma Hamilton—”

  “Name me no names!” his father had cautioned. “Does Caroline know of ’em, I’d best appear clueless. Damme, our Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies’s wife? Umm-hmmm! Impressive!”

  “Whatever shall I do?” Lewrie had beseeched.

  “Soldier on, buck up! The both of us. I just may’ve ridden a last time with the local hunt, too. Well, London’s nice this time o’ year … top o’ the Season, and all. Stock in John Company’s doing main-well. May run up a town house, after all. Though I will miss my new bungalow, and the stud …”

  “Sorry I ruined your retirement years!” Lewrie had shot back.

  An urchin came up with Lewrie’s hat, hand out for reward, and Lewrie fumbled a copper from his coin-purse.

  “A bluddy pence?” the urchin scowled. “Yer a cheap bashtid … an’ a hen-peck!”

  “Bugger off!” father and son chorused.

  The very day of glory, Lewrie had groused as they’d begun a slow walk down the gravelled pathway; a prize frigate sure t’be bought in, a king’s ransom for her as my share, real financial security at last, ’stead o’ dribs and drabs from corrupt overseas Prize Courts paid out years in arrears! What’ll this cost me? All, most-like, with kiddies to rear, Sophie to dowry, Charlotte … . It’d like to made him weep!

  The onlookers had departed, bored with a lame show. His good name might survive the confrontation!

  Lewrie had grown up not far from the Park in St. James’s Square. He’d learned well the cynical lesson of Society, with all its charade and humbuggery. The world accepted what a man showed, believed an outward, public face. Did one saunter away from such a shaming, languid and unaffected, shrug it off as a minor domestic annoyance, even jape about it, well …! People would even admire his blithe persona!

  What Men thought—and when you got down to the nub, it was what Men thought that mattered, not women—would depend on his play-acting. Now, did he blub and boo-hoo, act cutty-eyed and overcome, he’d become known as a sentimental cully, one unable to rule his own house or wife, who confessed his affairs, and that would invite sneers and guffawings.

  No, no matter how he felt, he’d have to play up bold, the merry rogue, rake-hell, and “damme-boy”; un-contrite and only a tad abashed! Cynical as Society was, how eager other men enjoyed to see another in their situation escape with a smile upon his lips (and by association be successful at their own failings!), Lewrie was mortal-certain that, did he stay in London long enough, there’d be more’n a few who’d dine him out on his disaster!

  Hmmm … disaster, Lewrie had thought; cat-as-tro-phe. Wonder why I don’t hurt, bad as yer s’posed to? ’Coz I’m a callous bastard? No, that can’t be it. Knew I’d trip over my own prick, sooner or later, but … two, three years gone, thousands of miles alee, what was I s’posed t’do, live like a hermit monk? This as bad as it gets? Not so bad … yet. Practice my strut? Grin? Put me a bounce on … .

  Making Easterly, they came to the end of the footpath, where it crossed a carriageway, where Lewrie had frozen in midstep, stumbling against his father’s arm as he suddenly realised that Dame Fortune—that fickle whore—wasn’t done with him!

  “God Almighty!” Lewrie had gasped.

  “What the Devil’s come over ye?” his father had griped.

  “Them … in the coach, yonder. Don’t look at ‘em, damn your eyes!” Lewrie had warned, which made Sir Hugo peer and glower, as if ready to yank the coach door open, drag ’em out, and challenge them to a duel, instanter, the truculent old bastard! Lewrie had tried to see how the clouds were shaping, count leaves on trees, take up the hobby of bird-watching, anything, looking anywhere but at the coach; as two pinched, high-nosed, top-lofty men had glared back before the coachee whipped up and rattled them away.

  “What?” his father had demanded, petulant. “Who were they?”

  “One was George John the Earl Spencer,” Lewrie had informed him with a woozy sense of impending doom beyond what Caroline had instilled. “First Lord of The Admiralty. T‘other was Mister Evan Nepean … the First Secretary. Them who tell me where t’go and what t’do. My damned … employers!”

  “Ah!” Sir Hugo had answered, snapping his jaws turtle-like in asperity. “Well damme, that’s a bugger … ain’t it.”

  “Christ, I am fucked, really, really, really fucked!”

  “All’s not lost. There’s always strong drink,” Sir Hugo said. “Have I learned a blessed thing in this shitten world, ‘tis that wine tends t’soften the blows. Brandy’s even better. Aye, brandy’s what’s called for. What I’d prescribe. Shall we? Mind, you go all weepy in it, and I’ll swear I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “Lead on,” Lewrie had numbly demurred. “I’ve seen Disaster in my life. I know how t’bear up.”

  “Topping!” Sir Hugo had chortled. “Forward, then! We’ll need song, mirth, and glee, too. Here’s one for ye. Irish. It’
ll make yer bog-trottin’ sailors happy, d’ye learn it! Ahem!

  “Oh, there’s not a trade that’s goin’,

  wor-rth knowin’ or showin’,

  li-ike that from Glory growin’,

  for a Bowld Soldier Boy!

  Whe-ere right or left we go,

  sure you know, friend or foe,

  we’ll wave a hand or tow

  from the Bowld Soldier Boy!

  There’s ain town that we march through,

  but the ladies look, and arch …

  through the window panes will sarch

  through the ranks to find their Joy!

  While up the street, each girl you meet

  with looks so sly will cry ‘my eyye’!

  Oh, isn’t he a dar-el-in’,

  the Bowld Soldier Boy!”

  It had worked, Lewrie had to admit. They’d gathered prancing children, as a marching band might, the sight of a trim and elegant old general with the pace and spine of a younger man, with a brave captain by his side, voices raised in praise of Glory and Women. Even soberlookin’, too! People clapped their approval as they paraded off for a public house.

  And bedamned—for the nonce—to Dame Fortune!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Willis’s Rooms had seen its share of wastrels and rollickers in its time. While their common rooms began serving hearty breakfasts for the industrious sort ’round 7 A.M. the kitchen staff also was ready for those idle layabouts who rose much later or sent down for chocolate, rusks, or toast, too “headed” from a night of amusements to even leave their bedsteads … sitting upon plumped pillows, swinging to sit on the side of the mattress for a proffered chamber pot; and one breath of fresh air once the bed curtains had been pulled back, was about all they could manage.