“Uhm, no … only when they were pups.” Sewallis brightened. “We leave them part of the old coach-house. Do you want to see them? Now?”
“Aye, I do. You give your brother, Hugh, one too?” Lewrie joshed, leading them out through the kitchens.
“We share,” Sewallis replied most primly.
“No, we don’t. They’re all his. Don’t want a dog anyway. Want a fox kit. Or an otter!” Hugh grumped.
“No you don’t, Hugh, not ’round my dogs. Why, they’d tear an otter or a fox to pieces,” Sewallis harshly countered as they emerged in the sunshine to walk the old brick path between the kitchen garden and the flower garden. Bustling, careless of where they put their feet, three “men” striving to walk side-by-side … or lead and dominate.
“You’d sic them on ’em,” Hugh groused.
“They’re beastly … pests and nuisances,” Sewallis snapped back. “Would not, but … they’re ratty … ugly!”
“They’re not; they’re not!” Hugh shouted, in full cry by then. “They’re pretty! So red and fluffy … or so sleek. An otter could be a playmate, slide into the creek with me …”
“Oh, wager yer mother’d love you slidin’ down mud into creeks,” Lewrie scoffed, ruffling Hugh’s hair.
“He does already, and Mummy doesn’t like it. He knows, but …”
“Boys,” Lewrie cautioned. Away so long, he hadn’t known they could be at each other’s throats. And within a quarter-hour of his return too! And where’d prim little Sewallis, within a quim-hair of being dour as a parson, find bottom enough to boss Hugh about? Or try to anyway. Though Hugh was only eight, he was more than ready for a scrap to the knife-hilt! “Lookee here, lads … let’s not you quarrel … my first day home, at any rate. Christ, you two go at each other like this all the time?”
“I’m sorry, Father,” Sewallis muttered, much abashed.
“Well, he started it …”
“Ahem?” Lewrie barked, glaring.
“I know where there’s an earth, where there’s a mother fox, Daddy,” Hugh wheedled. “And I’ve seen otters in the creek, up on Grandfather’s new land. By the old tower? We could ride up … oh, once I show you them, you’d let me have a …”
There came a clatter of hooves from the farm lane which straggled off between the new brick barn and the old wattle-and-daub one they had turned into a coach-house. Coming into the stableyard, past their whiterailed paddock where the children’s pony trotted in excitement …
“Grandfather said I could have one, so …” Hugh prattled on.
Lewrie sighed. Rather heavily, it must be noted.
For here came two riders, back from a morning canter over their modest acreage, drawing the pony to extend his head over the railings and whicker at them, drawing a pack of spotted setters from the older barn, jog-trotting and yipping, with their tails lashing most gaily.
In the lead was a female … his ward since Toulon fell in ’93, the Vicomtesse Sophie de Maubeuge, last of her noble line. No longer a frail, tremulous waif, he noted. She rode with an easy confidence, beaming a smile at him … at the world in general … and over her back to the second rider. No longer a delicate little fifteen-year-old, new-come from a convent, Sophie had turned into a spritely eighteen-year-old beauty, with rich redauburn hair glowing in the spring sunshine, her green eyes alight with an impatient, girlish delight.
Astern, though … in the full fig of his regimentals from the old 19th Native Infantry of the East India Company army, was his own father, … Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby. Brigadier Sir Hugo!
“Haw, the house! Haw, the new-come!” his father cried, waving his egret-feathered, heavily gold-laced cocked hat in the air. “Alan, my boy! Home at last! Give ye joy!”
“Mademeoiselle Sophie … enchanté!” Lewrie called out as she rode up to him.
“Commander Lewrie, enchanté, aussi.” She laughed, as he offered to take her reins and a hand to steady her. She swung off of her side-saddle, slipped her stirrup-foot, to jump-slide to the ground as graceful as a landing dove, almost squealing with glee. “You are home at last, m’sieur. La, the house has been on the pins and needles for the first sign of your coming. Welcome home, good sir! Welcome home!”
He embraced her, accepted a chaste peck on his cheek.
Three years has done her wonders, he thought. When he’d left, there’d been a girl bereft of fortune, title, family, her intended, and his own family, so sunk in grief that she could barely raise her voice above a mournful whisper, and possessed of the most fractured English. Now, though … but for a lilt, a turn of phrase, there was a girl who had the confidence, the poise and grace, and the easy, unaffected joy of any country-raised young English lady of the squirearchy who never had known any other style of living, or country.
The groomsman, a new face to Lewrie after the old one, Bodkins, was taking the reins from him, reaching out for the reins of the other horse. Then down sprang his father.
Shorter than he’d remembered from the Far East. How odd, Lewrie thought. White-haired now, thinner on top. Liver-spotted, by a dissolute youth. Damme, a dissolute bloody life! Yet still erect as a gun’s ramrod, with the Damme-Boy twinkle of old in his eyes.
“My boy! My dearest boy!” Sir Hugo crowded, offering his arms for a paternal hug. “Ten damn’ years it’s been! Come ye here!”
And a very merry hello t’you too, Lewrie thought, with a weary sigh; you wicked old fart! He plastered a glad grin on his countenance and suffered to be embraced. Embraced his father in return, wondering all the while if Sir Hugo’s elation to see him was a ruse … that he secretly was poor as a church-mouse, and this was the last port of refuge for a scoundrel.
Damme, never knew him t’be gladsome … ’cept when he was needy o’ something! Lewrie thought, as he was pounded on the back most heartily.
“Good to see you too, Father. Damn’ glad,” he lied, rather well, he thought. But he’d had a lifetime of practice by then.
CHAPTER FIVE
The next few days were heaven, Lewrie thought. For starters, he got introduced to the dogs so they would not think of him as an entree whenever he wished to walk outside about his own lands. He re-met the pony (without getting nipped), remade acquaintance with his favourite horse, Anson, which whickered in glee to see him once again. They ate in the new, large dining room that night, in the light of those dolphin-and-trident, silvery-brass candelabras he’d bought in Venice before the hurried evacuation of the Adriatic, then spent a lively evening in the salon, opening the latest gifts for the children, for Caroline and Sophie, from Lisbon. Sipping on a fruity, nutty sherry he’d found in-cask from Oporto too. They’d played some tunes, Caroline to her flute, Sophie to the harpsichord, and he on his “tin-whistle” flageolet, and finally getting a compliment or two on how much he’d improved—though anything better than bird-squawks could be considered an improvement after all those years of practice.
After a tad too much wine, they’d at last retired, were lit up to bed, to a real, soft, and welcoming—unswaying—bedstead crisp and sweet-smelling of scrupulously clean linens, still redolent of a faint floral sachet and the soap in which they’d been boiled. Toulon had found a refuge at last, in their bedchamber, and had crept out of hiding for a frantic quarter-hour of reassuring “wubbies,” much to Caroline’s amusement.
“So much like the early days, my love,” she whispered fondly, slid into bed with him and lying close at last, after brushing out her hair. Toulon was fair-taken with her too. “You … me, so completely alone and private.” She chuckled, scrubbing Toulon under his chin and chops. “And old William Pitt to pat and purr us to our rest. Or …” she added in a huskier voice, “sull up on the fireplace bench whilst …”
“Sull up, Toulon, there’s a good puss,” Lewrie growled.
And once the last bed-side candle had been snuffed dark, it was much like their first, nervous “honeymoon” night at the coaching inn on the way to Portsmouth, as Caroline could finally welcome him home, i
n her own, inimitable fashion, which fashion left him damned near purring—drained and dreamless.
The next day, they’d coached to St. George’s Church for Easter Sunday services, turned out almost regal in their springtime best; and most dignified, Lewrie had thought. Caroline had worn her new gown and bonnet, which had been most fetching; Sophie de Maubeuge too, looking ethereally lovely and being ogled by the young men of the parish; the children adorable, clean and unruffled (for a rare hour or three), and Lewrie and his father tricked out in their best uniforms—Lewrie with that gold St. Vincent medal clapping on his waistcoat buttons and a spanking-new goldbullion epaulet on his left shoulder, his dark-blue coat stiff with gold lace which hadn’t gone verdigris-green from salt air, yet. The whole family, primly a-row in the same rented pew box.
It had been a joy afterwards to greet his brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, and his lovely dark-haired wife, Millicent. They’d had an heir at last, and Millicent bade fair to present him with a second by late summer. Serene, settled country squire was Brother Governour by then—stout and getting stouter, halfway towards resembling the satirical artist Cruikshank’s depictions of John Bull. And where had the panther-lean, rope-muscled side of North Carolina colonist beef Lewrie had known at Yorktown gone, he wondered?
Mother Charlotte Chiswick was there, now living with Governour and Millicent as a doting granny, a bit stooped and myopic, with hair gone white as lamb’s wool. And Uncle Phineas Chiswick himself, got up in his best—though he looked as if he’d shopped for clothing in William Pitt the Elder’s last term in office. Lewrie had been struck dumb to see the miserly old bastard chortle and whinny with bonhomie, clap Brigadier Sir Hugo on the back, and he almost pleasant for once!
Emily, the vicar’s spinster-daughter—traipsing hopefully in a new ensemble of her own, in her father’s wake, still single and becoming just the slightest bit long-in-tooth.
And the Embletons and their coterie were there of course. It was damn’ near their church, their vicar, their village, their parish, maybe even their half of the county. Dignified old Sir Romney Embleton, now master of the hunt; his slack-jawed, half-wit son, Harry, sporting his Yeoman Cavalry uniform, spurs ajingling, and preening amidst the same pack of rogues and rousters who had always surrounded him—looking a bit put out that no one made notice of his lieutenant-colonelcy of militia—this Sunday, at least.
“Master of hounds now … Harry,” Sir Hugo had muttered to his son. “Think he’s given up on civilian suitings for the duration of the war, hey? An M.P … oh, very patriotic is Harry Embleton.”
“God … pity the poor dogs then,” Lewrie had whispered back, which had made his father snigger.
“The sort of man born t’be … cavalry,” Sir Hugo sneered, and turned to translate that comment to his valet, a thoroughly ugly, one-eyed, old havildar, Trilochan Singh, of uncertain caste, from Sir Hugo’s regiment in India. Had Lewrie run into him in a Calcutta bazaar back in the ’80s, he’d have run for his life, for Trilochan Singh was raffish, bearded, and mustachioed, and looked the part of a swaggering badmash, a hill bandit who’d cut a man’s heart out just ’cause it was a slow afternoon!
And no wonder Caroline doesn’t know what to do with Father or his “man,” Lewrie wondered to himself; aren’t Sikhs supposed to carry five knives all the time, or is it one? No matter … God, I’ll wager there’re more’n one of our maids sportin’ more than pinch marks!
“Sir Hugo …” Sir Romney said in passing, doffing his hat, cool but politely punctilious. “Vicomtess Sophie, enchanté … Mister and Mistress Lewrie …”
“Your servant, Sir Romney. And a lovely Easter Day it is, sir,” Sir Hugo replied just as formally as they made their way to their waiting coach.
Galling as it was, Lewrie was forced by courtesy to doff a hat and make a “leg” to Sir Romney as well, as Caroline and Sophie dipped the baronet their own polite curtsies. Hugh and Sewallis emulated them, doffing hats, with Sewallis well on his way to a clumsy boy’s “leg,” as his mother had schooled him.
“Brigadier,” Harry Embleton said, trailing his father.
“Ah, Colonel Embleton, sir.” Sir Hugo fair-beamed.
“Leftenant Lewrie,” Harry added, barely audible and stiff.
“Commander, actually,” Lewrie gleefully corrected, turning on the “smarm,” “and a good day to you, Colonel Embleton.”
“Uhm, ah … yayss,” Harry drawled, his gaze riveted upon that gold medal for a startled (or envious!) second or two before gaining his aplomb once more and greeting Caroline and Sophie.
Still cool with Caroline, Lewrie noted; and for good reason, if he knows what’s good for him—so she don’t take her horsewhip to him a second time! Pleasingly, Caroline gave as good as she got, as coolly pleasant yet formal—for the neighbours’ sakes. Hello, though … !
He’s practically slobberin’! Lewrie thought, as poor Harry had a word with Sophie; poor chit, she can’t know any better, surely, to simper back at him! Surely, Caroline’s filled her in by now, if the servants hadn’t, the new neighbours’ daughters her age hadn’t. Polite is one thing, but, for God’s sake … she don’t have to play coy at him!
A glance over his shoulder at his impatient sire, already at the coach door, stirred Harry to motion; and he doffed and bowed a parting before making all the haste that “genteel” and “aristocratic languid” would allow to catch his daddy up.
“Well, at last he spoke to you, Alan,” Caroline had breathed in wonder, once the Embletons had departed. “The beginning of a thaw, do you not think?”
“Perhaps, my dear,” Lewrie allowed, “but he still fair gives me the shivers. Or the ‘collywobbles,’” he added, with a sarcastic grin.
“Alan, on church grounds … before the children!” Caroline admonished, all but poking him in the ribs. “May you not moderate your … saltiness?”
“My pardon, my dear.”
“Well then, let us be on our way,” Caroline decided, “shooing” the children towards their own coach. “Easter dinner will be at … Uncle Phineas’s in his role as paterfamilias”—she sighed at the necessity—“where we may break our fast with the bounty of the season and celebrate our Lord’s ascension.”
“Oh, joy,” Lewrie had snickered, “fresh-grown bounty … all those ground nuts, tree bark, and mud. Nothing but the best for his kin, hey?”
That set the children to tittering wildly.
“Bark and mud!” Hugh contemplated rather loudly. “Ugghh!”
“Mud pies, with caramel sauce,” Lewrie abetted.
“Pig slop soup!” Hugh dreamt up. “With cracklings!”
“Mud pie an’ caramel!” Charlotte all but shrieked. “Yahahaha!”
“Children!” Caroline snapped, “do consider where you are, making such a row on God’s ground! And of who you are … and comport yourselves according. Alan, really … !” she cautioned, swiveling her gaze upon him, nostrils pinched and like to breathe fire.
“Slip o’ th’ tongue, mizzuz,” he replied, a’ grovel, tugging at his forelock like a day labourer and crouching from the waist. “’Twas drink an’ bad companions, ma’am … won’t ’appen agin, ma’am, beggin’ yer pardon. Oh, don’t flog me, ma’am … !”
“Hhmmph!” was her nose-high comment for that, on public view … though there was a forgiving, amused sparkle to her eyes; and her vertical exclamation point of vexation between her brows wasn’t that deep, now was it?
CHAPTER SIX
It was a splendid morning for a ride. The faint mists had gone away, the sun was well up, and the dew was barely dried. Birds chirped and fluttered over their newly hatched, young rabbits bounded ahead of them as they flushed them out, not so much a fearful scurrying as it was a playful, cat-like clearing of the ground in exaggerated and exuberant highheeled hops. The aromas of new shoots, budding fruit-tree blossoms, of virginal, fresh-washed tree leaves commingled with the loamy scents of recently turned, slightly damp earth from planted fields … and the greensap swee
tness of hay, barley, wheat, hops, and rye sprouting in them; turned earth and a faint hint of manure turned in with it, came from the fallow fields which had been left for live-stock to graze over the past autumn, now broken for spring planting.
Skies of pale blue, brush-stroked and wisped with clouds, vivid greens of leaves, and even weeds, the paler greens of acres where crops had begun to venture forth, like a thin water-colour wash over a deep umber. Shinhigh grasses waved as breezes took them on every cut-over hill, and the valleys between the woodlots, stark-stippled white with new lambs; and the darker, almost smoky blue-green of forests, copses, and woodlots, with here and there the faint skein of blue-white haze from brush-fires burning off piles of winter deadfall on such a safe, cool, moist day. And, as they topped one of the tumbling, sea-wave hills for a wider miles-long vista, even the faint sour reek from the fires seemed more the shades of living things than the spirits of the greyed, dessicated dead of winter.
Hugh, ever the adventurer, was further on ahead, urging his pony up another swelling hillock. Sewallis, now mounted on a proper horse (though a gentle runt of a twelve-hander), stayed closer to them, with his ears as a’cock as his mount’s to an adult conversation, listening with sober interest. Or perhaps rueing that they hadn’t taken any of his dogs along this morning—for fear of spooking Hugh’s quest.
Or, Lewrie thought, giving him a glance; sulking that it’s Hugh we’re indulging, not him. Thought, bein’ so priggish, Sewallis would be more tolerant of Hugh, his watchdog, not his rival. When did this rivalry start? he wondered, regretting being gone as they grew up.
“Won’t you have the Devil’s own time constructing yer lane?” Lewrie asked. “Up an’ down, up an’ down, all the way from our place to yours.”
“Not if you come up Governour’s lane first, Alan, me dear.” His father smiled softly.
“Whatever possessed Uncle Phineas to sell you one square yard, I still have yet to fathom,” Lewrie confessed, getting used to swaying and adjusting to Anson’s gait over the hills.
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