"Ha . . . ha," Caroline mocked.
"At Cape Town, I barely saw her," Lewrie pressed on, going over old news of his innocence. "She stayed in Cape Town when others from the circus went inland t'hunt new beasts for their menagerie, and we were down at Simon's Town, salvagin' a new rudder. She rode out the mornin' we set off, for target practice with her bow and her guns, and met us on the road . . . in front of a dozen sailors, and a dozen more drovers . . . and we talked for a bit as we rode along . . . Pennsylvania rifles and Fergusons, the Red Indian moccasin boots she got in Savannah, Georgia . . . a shootin' contest, perhaps, then she galloped off to exercise that white trick stallion o' hers, and that was all, dear."
"Uhm-hm." One brow was up, high, and her eyes were squinted. "Your own brother met her," Lewrie stanchly soldiered on with his protestation of innocence. "The mornin' we were loadin' the new rudder into a barge, she came down to the docks t'sight-see, Burgess came ashore off one o' the home-bound Indiamen, and I had t'introduce her, or give her the 'cut-direct.' And, when I named him as my brother-in-law, she called me a slew o' names, like I'd led her on false . . . tarakan . . . sikkim siyn . . . peesa . . . cockroach, son of a bitch, and well, ah . . . prick, if ye must know . . . pardons."
"How discerning of her," Caroline said quite brightly, faintly amused; though not that much. "My estimation of her, foreign or no, rises. Peesa, hmm. And, sikkim . . . siyn, is it? How apt."
"One o' my Black hands had run away with the circus hunters," Lewrie con-tined, wondering if Caroline would go buy herself a stack of foreign lexicons, to find new ways to say what she couldn't in public. "Mauled by a lion. Some of her fellow circus people had been killed, too, she'd come t'ask of her father, and she helped t'get my sailor to their own surgeon, who knew more of animal wounds than ours, and that was the absolute last time I saw or spoke to her 'til that parade here in Portsmouth back in the spring, Caroline, and haven't since."
"Aplausible tale, Alan," she coolly replied, after finishing her tea and pacing back to the settee, where she arranged herself most primly, her back erect, her gaze level and unrevealing, and her hands in her lap. "Even if nothing did pass 'twixt you and that barely clad . . . creature, even if she was then, and still is, a naive and feckless young virgin in deluded 'cream-pot love' with you, I suspect it wasn't for want of trying on your part. 'Twas lack of opportunity."
Knows me too damned well, she does! he sorrowfully thought.
"Caroline, we'd begun writing each other again," Lewrie said in a soft and pleading tone. "God's my witness, I'll admit I was tempted sore, but . . . I . . . didn't." And, not for lack of opportunity, for I'd hopes we might, you and me . . . all this about Sophie, or Eudoxia, are vicious, sordid lies. And that's the truth."
She looked down at her hands and considered that for a long bit. She then looked up, the simmering of anger back in her amber eyes, and with a most odd expression, as if she wished to believe him, but found past betrayals just too massive.
"Perhaps that is so, Alan," she said, "and my nameless torturer has overreached, at last, but. . . there are still so many others to explain. Do you deny your taking that Phoebe Aretino as a mistress?"
"Ah . . . ," Lewrie dithered, feeling like wincing, if he could get away with it and not doom himself and all his recent pleadings. "Six, eight months, and thousands of miles away from home, Caroline, and . . . a man has . . . well, I ain't a saint, nor a tonsured monk."
"Oh, how well I know that of you," Caroline said with a bitter little chuckle. "Your Italian mort in Genoa?" she asked, nigh-gayly.
"Twigg . . . he ordered me to, and it was just the once," Lewrie told her, chin tucked into his collars, and realising how lame that sounded, even as he said it. "S'truth! Claudia was a French spy, and go-between 'twixt the Frogs and the cabal that wanted France to seize power! She got set on me, thinkin' I was gullible enough t'blab just what they needed t'know, and Twigg used that. . . used me . . . t'feed her what he wanted 'em to know, so we could lay a trap for their best . . . ye recall what I told ye of Guillaume Choundas?"
"Why, for King and Country, Alan?" Caroline sweetly said with a very false smile. "How patriotic of you! I may still be but a North Carolina country girl, but do not imagine that I am a total fool!"
"But it's true, I swear it!" Lewrie protested. "Ask Twigg!"
"Hah!" was her opinion of that. Calming, she continued, as if she were the cat, and he the cornered mouse. "And what of the mother of your bastard, Alan? Theoni. . . Kavares . . . Connor," she intoned as if savouring each scornful syllable. "After you rescued her, and her natural child, from those Serbian pirates, was she so enthralled, was she so grateful that she simply had to fling herself upon your manliness, and your sterling and heroic character?"
"It was, it . . . ," Lewrie stammered, totally dis-armed. This had simmered like an acrid pot between them, and finally, finally, there it was, served up like manure soup. "It happened, aye, no denyin' it. In the Adriatic, after. I was wounded and groggy with laudanum, there wasn't enough room aboard for all our British refugees 'fore the Frogs took Venice, so . . ."
"And, in Sheerness, too, Alan?" Caroline remorselessly reminded him, as if he had need of reminding. "Before you sailed for the West Indies, the last time . . . a whole week with her, you spent. Sharing a lodging for all the world to see."
"Aye," he had to confess, sitting down in his wing-back chair again, too limp with guilt to protest. "After you'd stormed off home."
To Hell with more tea, for by now he was starkly sober, more in need of brandy, or Yankee corn whisky, could he find any. "After you threw me away, and wrote t'tell me I would never be welcome under the same roof with you, again, well . . ."
There; it was said, at long last. Out in the open.
"Port in a storm . . . ," he lamely tried to expound.
"Damn you!" his wife blurted. "Damn you to Hell, Alan!"
"Caroline . . . what d'ye expect a man to be? How much time have we had together since the war began? Two months, three, out o' seven bloody years! Even before then, . . . swaddles and spit-ups . . . pantries and still-rooms, flower gardens . . . 'not this time o' month,' you said. 'Three children were enough,' you said . . . 'Perhaps,' you said, if I'd employ protections, and Charlotte an accident, and nigh six months for nursin' and celibacy after, and you blamin' me for riskin' your life t'child-bed fever one more time, and . . . !"
She flounced off the settee halfway through that, stamping the bounds of their lodgings, arms stiff at her sides and her small fists balled.
"Me, more like a burden than a loved husband," Lewrie went on, spilling all his pent-up recriminations on how such a loving marriage, with so much spectacularly exciting intimacy, had become so drab and lacklustre. "Right, I'll never be a farmer or a herdsman, we know it, but. . . you're so complete to yourself and the children, and I—"
"Go!" she snapped at last, pausing by the one window, her arms across her chest once more, looking out, not at him. "Go up to London, to your damned ship, to your loversl Go to the Devil, why don't you?"
"Look, Caroline, Twigg'll discover who's been bedevilling you with these letters, and . . ."
"What bedevils me is you, you faithless, amoral bastard!" she shouted, turning about to face him. "I shall make your excuses to your poor children. God knows I've gained practice at doing so, these many years with you never at home . . . and day-dreaming about all your doxies when you were!"
"That's not true, Caroline!" Lewrie insisted. "When I was home, and you were there for me, with me, I never . . . !"
"Do not try to beguile me, Alan," she spat, fighting the tears that blinded her, striving not to lose her voice as her breath caught in hitches in her chest. "Just go! Go be your Navy's hero, a hero to the anti-slavery people, preen all you wish . . . but you will do all of that without me! Go be tried without me . . . or hung without me!"
"Dearest. . . !"
"Hah!"
She picked up the first thing that came to hand, a cheap Toby Jug in honour o
f some ancient sea-victory of some kind, and hurled it blindly. It came within a bare inch of breaking his nose, and making his "bung sport claret," had he not shied at the last moment.
Caroline darted for her bedroom door, flung it open, then shut it with a titanic bang. Bed-ropes creaked as she flung herself cross the coverlet and mattress.
Lewrie shut his eyes in pain, and utter defeat. He felt pain, because he'd caused her pain, but. . . oddly {perversely, more-like, he chid himself) he felt nothing much beyond that, at that moment; just a. faint twinge of conscience. A touch of shame that he had brought it upon himself? Of a certainty, a tad of that. There was nothing more he could do; the woes in Pandora's Box had already fluttered away, and there was no point in shutting it. Putrid old wine had been spilled, and there was no re-bottling it.
Perhaps there never had been a hope of reconciliation; the whole thing had felt forced and sham-ful anyway, a stiff and un-natural show for friends, family, and children, for Navy and Society. But there had been no warmth in it, not even a hint of the old intimacy, or the trust or the forgiveness, or . . .
Lewrie heaved a deep, resigned, and shrugging sigh. It was over, sure as Fate. He redressed in uniform, cocked hat, and sword, trying to compose his face as neatly as he could his clothes, looking round the set of rooms as if to discover a single thing that held even a jot of warmth, of comfortable familiarity . . . of Lewrie-hood, either his, or hers, and found nothing, for it was as empty and impartial as the yawning, gun-less gun-deck of a hulked warship.
Nothin for it, he grimly decided, snatching up those damning letters and cramming them into a side pocket. Perhaps Twigg could do him proud. The identity of the mysterious writer would never bring his wife round, but. . . there was always his own vengeance to wreak. That might prove satisfying.
He'd coach to London to try to save his life and honour. She would coach to Anglesgreen, and erase him from her life, and there was likely an end to it.
"Give ye joy o' the day," Lewrie sadly whispered as he stepped out into the hall and softly shut the door. "For ev'ry weddin' day is a time for good cheer."
Book II
It is hard to say, whether the Doctors of Law or Divinity have made the greater Advances in the lucrative Business of Mystery.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797),
A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)
Chapter Fourteen
When Zachariah Twigg had said "my coach," Lewrie had pictured a typical six-passenger equipage, drawn by four horses, the sensible sort of carriage that most people of means owned. Come dawn, however, there before the Black Spread Eagle stood the twin to the commercial "dilly," the diligence, or balloon coach, big enough for nigh a dozen, if they were fairly intimate dwarves, and with even more seating atop.
Twigg was there already, in top-boots, old tricorne hat, and the voluminous double-caped greatcoat that Lewrie remembered from the harum-scarum ride that Twigg had given him the year before in his "sporting" two-horse chariot from his Hampstead retreat, Spyglass Bungalow, to London at a terrifying rate of knots, with Twigg cracking his whip and howling maniacally, with the wind blowing back into their faces with a breath-stopping force!
"You'll, ah . . . not be takin' the reins, will you?" Lewrie asked in trepidation as an assistant coachee took his valise and carpet bag to stow in the boot.
"Oh, I thought at least one stage," Twigg said, eyes twinkling in evil glee and anticipation, "once on the flat."
"Oh, Christ," Lewrie muttered.
"And, your father, Sir Hugo, may take a leg, as well."
"Oh, no!" Lewrie gawped.
I'd known this, I'd've hunted out a priest for last rites! he grimly told himself, feeling like he should cross himself.
"Ah, there's me slug-a-bed." Sir Hugo chuckled as he came round the lead pair of the six-horse team, after checking harness, admiring the quality of the beasts, as well. "Breakfasted? Been t'the jakes?"
"Aye. But, hearing that you and Mister Twigg'll be driving, I feel a sudden, new need," Lewrie chaffered.
"And, well-armed, too, I see. Good lad," his father haw-hawed.
Sir Hugo looked positively piratical, sporting a pair of double-barreled pistols in his waist-sash, and the pockets of his ornate general's coat sagging with another pair of lighter single-shot "barkers." He'd traded his rajah's tulwar for the plainer small-sword that Lewrie recalled from earlier days.
Come to think on it, Twigg's greatcoat showed similar bulges and lumpiness, and the drag of a sword scabbard could be seen under its hem . . . knowing Twigg, Lewrie strongly suspected that there were even more blades in hidden places—slim poignards, krees daggers from the Far East jammed into his boots, and God knew what else.
Might have grenadoes up his rectum, Lewrie decided.
Ajit Roy and Trilochan Singh came out of the inn carrying final articles of luggage, and both of them positively clanked with weaponry, chattering away in Hindi or Urdu as gay as magpies. Compared to them, Lewrie thought his hands, Cox'n Desmond, Landsman Furfy, and Landsman Jones Nelson, looked fairly naked, outfitted with but a cutlass each, clumsy Sea Pattern single-shot pistols, and their personal knives, which served for everything from work to dining.
"Like it?" Twigg asked, gesturing towards his coach. "Hired it on from a fellow who refurbishes 'dillys.' Usually damned comfortable when travelling with only four or so," he went on, whether Lewrie made a good or bad opinion, or none, as was his wont. "Time is precious . . . the sun will soon rise, and we must be off. Board, sirs, board if you please."
There were two additional bodies up in the box, the driver and an assistant, wearing subdued burgundy livery under their greatcoats. Two more held open the doors and lowered the folding metal steps, wearing the same livery, and, as Lewrie got aboard, he took note that the fellow who held the door with a blank-faced servant's expression for him, but, with darting, sly eyes for everything beyond, wore the most cunning set of holsters sewn inside his greatcoat. The briefest look at the fellow's overall appearance, and his taut and wary face, before he was seated inside, convinced Lewrie that the man had been a soldier at one time, and not a timid rear-ranker, either.
The coach swayed on its leather suspension straps as Desmond and his party clambered up onto the roof seats, poor Patrick Furfy awkward and heavy, as usual; it'd be a rare day that anyone sent Furfy aloft!
There came a clatter of hooves as four mounted men, all dressed in the same greatcoats, hats, and livery, paced up from a stable down the street. The leader leaned close to Twigg's lowered window, muttering a reply to Twigg's whispered instructions, and touched the brim of his hat before touching spurs and cantering away. Lewrie got a glimpse of a brass-hiked Heavy Cavalry Pattern sabre in a scabbard mounted on the saddle, a saddle-holstered pistol forward of his right knee, and a scabbarded musketoon's wooden butt peeking above the horse's rump.
"Out-riders, just in case," Mr. Twigg confided with a hiss, and the look of a scrapper just spoiling for a battle; the way hungry men might look forward to toast and jam. "Four, altogether. Once it gets warm enough, they'll doff the greatcoats . . . just so anyone contemplating ambush will be daunted, or . . . eliminated," he added, with savage relish.
"The coachees and the footmen just as well armed?" Lewrie asked.
"Oh, yes!" Twigg said, smiling broadly as the coach lurched, and began to roll forward. "A most useful party of men, altogether. Not always so overt in their purpose, but, in this instance, not only our showy appearance, but a show of force, I thought them necessary."
"Rode down before us," Sir Hugo casually imparted, yawning like an hippopotamus. "Zachariah whistled 'em up, soon as he discovered the Beaumans' arrival. Lurked 'bout the piers, the church, and the wedding breakfast, and I'll wager ye never even noticed."
"Didn't think t'look for such at a wedding," Lewrie said with a snort. "Disguised as ushers and acolytes, were they?"
"Most useful men, indeed," Twigg told them all. "Disguises do, now and again, play a part in their line of work.
Hard as it is to believe in time of war, there are some nefarious sorts who will play spy for our foes . . . Britons, in the pay of the French or Spanish, who are in need of . . . convincing," he said with a leer. "Foreign agents who covert themselves in our nation, and operate traitorous bands of native-born informers, who must be 'smoaked out,' exposed, and hung, or simply drop off the face of the earth, to the utter confoundment of their spymasters in Paris or Madrid, or . . . certain other foreign capitals," he said with a sage tap aside his nose.
"Skulkers for the Foreign Office, ye mean," Lewrie said. "Who work for you. I thought you were retired, Mister Twigg."
"Years of service overseas has made my face and name much too well known to our opposition," Twigg told him. "I now merely keep my hand in with consultations, and . . . some few tasks closer to home. My fellows here, well. . ." He leaned over the top of his walking-stick towards Lewrie, on the rear-facing bench. "My in-town residence, on Baker Street, among other locations, is the
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most convenient place for discreet comings and goings, so . . . I call my fellows the 'Baker Street Irregulars,' though private armies are no longer allowed in Britain."
He had himself a little simper of amusement.
"You forget, Zachariah," Sir Hugo reminded his odd choice for a friend, "that some Scottish lairds still maintain private regiments . . . 'Lord Thing-gummy's Own Highland Foot,' or 'Lord Sheep-Thief's Border Reivers,' haw haw!"
"Fortunately, all on temporary loan to His Majesty, though, old son," Twigg quickly rejoined in like good humour, "and part of Great Britain's army . . . 'til they feel an urge for rebellion and independence once more, God save us. In point of fact, a fair number of my fellows come from such private regiments . . . easier to second from any regular British unit, whose soldiers took the 'King's Shilling' for long enlistments. Though there are ways . . . should a fellow be promising, ha!"
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