And God knows, I did … gladly! Alan told himself; not that anyone in charge of me ever took the time to give me fair warnings.
Yet just yesterday, amid all the pomp and pageantry that little Angles-green could produce, the stamp and slap of musket drill and marching, the clatter of cavalry hooves, the tootles of “The Bowld Soldier Boy” that his father, as the senior officer hereabouts had chosen from his Indian army days as one of his very favourites … there Sophie had been, making sheep’s eyes and hooded glances, mostly at Harry.
Oh, she’d bantered prettily with Richard Oakes too; and if Alan had his druthers, of all the rakehellish local lads, Richard Oakes was his choice, should she deign to swoon over anyone! Nowhere near rich, but his family owned their own land; he was handsome, well-knit, rode well, sang well … the best of a bad lot, frankly, for being a member of Harry’s roistering, hell-for-leather coterie. Educated, was known to not move his lips when he read … didn’t look like a sack of cast-off clothes in his finery … and, most especially, did not resemble an otter with dysentery!
Perhaps I should at least try to solve this one small problem, Lewrie thought with a fresh frown; there’s damn-all I can do about the rest. If I’m fated to stay “beached” ’til the mutiny ends, pray God it does … soon! or …
There came a clatter from the East, the sight of a coach rising over the hill by the old ruins, threading the overhanging, road-spanning boughs of centuries-old oaks. Shopkeepers emerged from the doors of their establishments, housewives popped from their homes. The mail coach brought them out to see something new, hear something new, see a strange face in their staid village life.
Lewrie rose too, ignoring his mug of ale, to stand by the kerb in front of the pub where the coach usually stopped. The wee “daisy-kicker” sprang to seize the reins. A mail sack was flung down. There were no passengers alighting this morning; then the coachee whipped up and clattered the swaying “dilly” on its way to Petersfield.
“Why, ’tis a good thing you waited, Squire Lewrie, for there’s a whole packet for ya,” Miss Beakman tittered. “Oh, and by-the-by, the milliner, Mistress Clowes, left this note here for you, but it clean fled my mind with all the scrubbin’ we …”
“Ah, thankee, Mistress,” Lewrie replied, adding that letter to the pile bound with a hank of twine. “Bills, bills, bills … ah, ha!”
A larger letter, of much finer paper, watermarked with the GR for Georgius Rex for King George III … sealed with a dark-blue wax, stamped with crown and anchors … Admiralty!
It appeared that domesticity, any worries anent young Sophie de Maubeuge, the spring planting … it could all go hang of a sudden.
And feeling the perversity of being delighted, Lewrie was delighted! But not guilty enough to stifle a broad grin of relief!
Flinging coins on the table, he drained his mug and called out, “Boy, my horse!”
CHAPTER TEN
“Oh, m’sieur, you are back so early!” Sophie de Maubeuge said in surprise as he practically burst through the front door. She might have been the belle of yesterday’s Militia parade and drills, but Caroline—sprung from more frugal, practical Colonial stock—had engrained real work into her. Sophie was dressed in one of her oldest sack gowns, and a maid’s apron and mob-cap. With a cloth-wrapped broom, she had been sweeping for cobwebs in the entry hall. Not very energetically, Lewrie suspected; she had been raised as a French aristocrat since birth.
“The tavern was not amusant?” Sophie enquired, obviously eager for an excuse to leave off servants’ work and twinkling with wit.
“Informative, but not amusing, no, Sophie,” Lewrie answered, in a rush still. “Where is Caroline?”
“In ’er boudoir, up …”
“Excuse me then,” he said, bounding for the staircase.
“Ze post ’ave arriv-ed? You wish zat I, uhm … classer, non … sort it for vous, m’sieur?” she offered, stepping forward and eyeing that loose bundle with what Lewrie could only feel was … alarm.
“Thank you, no, Sophie, it’s only bloody bills!” Lewrie shouted down from the landing on his way up the second pair-of-stairs. “I’ll sort ’em later. Caroline?”
Helpful little chuck, he thought, but no wonder if she wishes a way out with Harry—or anyone—to avoid Caroline’s housewifery work!
“Why, what is it, Alan?” his wife asked, with an amused chuckle in her throat as he stepped into their bedroom. She had been sorting out bed-linens, stowing away home-sewn winter quilts and blankets.
Slaying the triumphant smile he had worn since first breaking the seal on his Admiralty letter, he held it up in mute statement, now unfolded to the full, with its official seals of office in view.
Caroline wrapped one arm about a bedpost to support herself, while her other hand flew to cover her stricken mouth with trembling fingers. “Oh, no … oh, God, no!” she quavered. “You’re barely home two weeks; they promised you it could be weeks more before … !”
“I’m to have a frigate, dearest,” he told her, “that means I’ll be made ‘post’! With this mutiny still on, they simply must get ships to sea, untainted ships, otherwise …”
She positively glowered at him, despite her shock and grief!
Damme, wrong tack, Alan thought, got things out of order!
“Caroline, I truly am sorry; I thought we’d have more time too … peaceful weeks with you and the children, but …” he attempted saying to cosset her, tossing the bundle of unopened letters and bills to the foot of the bed so that he could go and embrace her. “But as long as this war lasts—’growl ye may, but go ye must.’ I can’t …”
“I know, Alan!” she gravelled back, arms crossed over her bosom; tears and betrayal-glints in her eyes. “Dear Lord, how well I know by now. I wish you’d never even seen a warship all your born days!”
“Well …” he stammered, surprised and spurned by her vehemence, “there’ve been times I’d wish the same, my love, believe me. Cockerel. My first ship, Ariadne … loony Treghues’s Desperate …”
“But you’re a Navy man,” she jeered back, refusing his offered embraces, back-pedaling towards her cedar chests, “off like a flash at their first … their every beck and call. Eager to dash away for your glory and honour … while those who love you must remain, abandoned … worrying and fretting, a-and … !”
“Caroline,” he whispered, taking a tentative step forward, but she would have none of it, retreating towards the windows with a swish of her skirts. “Dear?” he lamely begged to her turned back.
“How little time we’ve really had, Alan,” she accused. “Those three years in the Bahamas … a mere four more here, in our own home. Making a life so sweet and filled with every delight a man could imagine. Heirs, and land, friends and community, family, and … !”
“And then a war came, which threatens them all,” Lewrie reminded her, more sternly than he meant to. “You know I had to respond to our country’s call, dear. I don’t know what else I could’ve …”
“You could have stayed, Alan!” she accused, whirling to face him again, that vertical furrow in her brows. “If I, if we, meant anything at all to you …”
They’d had arguments before, but Lewrie felt that this one would be memorable. So surprised was he, so betrayed by his usually supportive and admiring wife, he felt that he could only blush with shame; for she was right on the nail-head with her accusations!
“Four years on the land, you could have at least made an effort to learn the farm’s ways … to uphold and aid me,” she fumed, now looking bleak and haggard in her quiet rage. She stomped past him to shut the door so the servants or children couldn’t hear. “But you didn’t. You played at it! And as soon as Admiralty sounds their bosun’s pipes, why off you scuttle to wear King’s Coat, again, so you can stalk about your quarterdeck, relishing it!”
He would have told her that they were rightly termed the bosun’s “calls,” but thought better of it immediately.
“It’s what I am, Carolin
e,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “It’s who you married, mind … a Sea Officer of the King and …”
“Yes, you are,” she sighed in turn, leaning on the door as if exhausted past all contemplation of future improvement. “And a glad one … you know you are. Glad to sail away to who knows where; glad to be free of your familial responsibilities. Glad to wallow in gore and shot, expose yourself to danger, ’til it catches up with you some day … so long as you can chase after … glory! Gone so long, so far, thinking a letter every rare now and then, a pack of ‘pretties’ from a foreign port, atones for your absence!” she hissed.
“Dearest …”
“No thought for the ones you leave behind,” she continued, hands to her face to daub her tears. “Now your war isn’t the short one you thought when last you left us … is it, Alan?” Caroline jeered. “God knows, another year or two perhaps. God save us, another five, ten? Another three-year commission, before we see you for a bare month, or less, before the next one, and the next one … and … ! Damn you, and damn the Royal Navy, just … !”
Her anger broke in a flood of weeping, wrenching sobs that shook her frame, made her shoulders shudder. She lifted her apron’s hem to swab her inflamed face, and Lewrie at last could step forward to scoop her into his arms, offer mute comfort and sympathy. He rocked her, as if dancing from one foot to the other, laid her head on his shoulder, and stroked her long, lean back—afraid to say a word more for now.
At last she made a sniffle, drew a deep breath, and sighed in resignation. “How soon then?” she asked, in a wee girlish voice into his shirt collar.
“My reply off by afternoon post,” Lewrie speculated—gently. “Depart by first light tomorrow, I fear. I really am sorry, dear’un. You don’t know how sorry. Our joys together … us and the children … you’re not the only one who misses peace and normalcy. Tranquility.”
“Do they say where you’re to go?” she asked, clenching back at him, her face cooler against his at last.
“I rather doubt Portsmouth or Plymouth are in any mood for new ships to commission at the moment,” he dared to scoff. “First, up to London … then perhaps the Nore or Great Yarmouth. Some port close to home, I’d suspect, with the French and Dutch fleets threatening us. I doubt it’s to be a foreign station, not for a year or better most-like,” he told her, leaning back a bit, emboldened by her resignation to meet her eyes once more.
“So … not too far, or long, a separation?” Caroline softened, leaning back herself, for a tiny crumb of promise.
“Perhaps even close enough to get home every month or so,” he said with a shrug. “Can’t count on it, but … when winter comes down, if I’m still home-ported, the weather’ll bind me in harbour for weeks at a time. We could have you and the children down to visit. School can go hang for a bit, or fetch their tutor along …”
Aye, that’s the way, m’girl, he thought; perk up game, as you always do! Put the best face on it.
“Care to lay a wager with me, dearest?” he joshed, feeling he was now on safer ground. “Lay odds with me, hmm? I win, and I get you … with no tykes underfoot … just the two of us, for hotel weekends.”
“And what do I win if you’re wrong, Alan?” she queried, still dubious, but much closer to an amused grin than she had been.
“Why, you get me, m’dear!” he promised, “a joyous romp, so you may do what you will with me, have your beastly way with me!”
“Oh, you’re incorrigible,” she sighed. But, Lewrie noted, this time it was a teasing sigh. “I s’pose we should begin packing you.”
“Let’s both pack … Hell’s Bells, let’s all pack, Caroline,” he insisted, all come over with inspiration. “The overseer can deal with the farm for a few days. We’ll all go up to London, perhaps beyond to my new ship, ’til I’m settled aboard.”
“Alan, I can’t abandon the farm work, not now, not …” Caroline balked, but with a pensive, almost eager sound, as if considering it.
“’Course you can!” he rejoined quickly. “Extend the times we have together by a fortnight at least! The boys are out of school; you’ll be free of my pesky father for a while … and when was the last time Sophie saw London? Do her good to see more of the world. Other likely young lads, hmm? Turn her head? Gawd, that’d be four birds or more with one stone, hah? Let’s do, love! I’m to be made ‘post,’ so we deserve to celebrate!”
“Well …” She hesitated, head cocked to one side, and swishing her long tail of hair under her mob-cap. A sly smile sprang to life. “Whyever not, then? Yes, let’s!” And she sprang to her wardrobe to open it for likely gowns suitable to impress.
And thank bloody Christ that mellowed her! Lewrie thought.
He sat on the foot of the bed to sort the rest of the mail, as she measured a dress against her. Bills, mostly tiny sums, he noted; and thank God for that, else they’d not be able to afford a diverting jaunt to the city. More prize-money deposited in his Coutts’s account by his solicitor, Mr. Mountjoy, aha! But a tithe of what he’d really reaped so far, but more than enough to offset their sudden lunatick excursion and tide the farm over for the rest of the year’s needs.
“Bloody Hell!” he barked, of a sudden.
“Yes, it’s much too plain,” Caroline agreed, misunderstanding his meaning and hanging the last gown she’d tried back in the wardrobe. “Though you needn’t take such a harsh tone as to …”
“No, Caroline, look!” he insisted, bounding from the bed. “The scales are gone from our eyes, as it were. This bill from a milliner, a Mistress Cowles …”
“Quite cunning, dearest, and not really that expensive really,” Caroline continued to apologise. “Sophie, Charlotte, and I only ordered one apiece for spring.”
“Ah, but it’s not a bill, love …’tis a billet-doux!” Lewrie cried, waving it at her. “Wondered why a local bill needed wax seals. It’s really from Harry Embleton … suggesting an actual assignation.”
“Let me see that!” Caroline demanded, fresh fury in her voice; thankfully for Lewrie, none directed at him for a change. “Why, the conniving … hmph! See if she has our trade in future! I know she’s been at her shop quite often lately, but … I hardly expected Sophie to exhibit such back-alley guile. The thoughtless, headstrong chit!”
“Like that Frog novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” Lewrie scoffed, more than glad for Caroline to be on other ground. “Lovers passed letters easier than … gas!”
“And what would you know of such scandalous scribbling … Alan?”
“Well, I heard tell …” he waffled, turtling his neck into his collar once more. “Men talk, don’t ye know … in the gunroom,” Lewrie gruffly, most off-handedly, added.
“I shall speak harshly with her about this,” Caroline promised. “All this time I thought her sweet and naive, but now … ! Warn that young miss I’ll have no lies or dangerous folderol in my household! Surely she must have sense enough to see that he’s so bad for her, or any true Christian young lady! I really must put my foot down in this instance … bring her up short before she …”
Uh-oh! Lewrie thought in sudden panic; and when cornered like a rat, accused of foolishness, she’ll turn and bite back and blab about Phoebe Aretino and me … for jingle-brained spite! There’s an end to Domestic Bliss, by God!
“Caroline, she’s but a child still,” he cooed instead, going to embrace his wife to cosset her out of another pet. “Besides, do we accuse her, act as if we don’t trust her, we will lose all the affection she’s developed with us, and she’ll practically run to Harry. Or the first human-lookin’ substitute. All the way to Gretna Green, hey? The first hedge-priest or false-justice that’d wed her to a charming rogue? No, dear, that’s not the way! I must … insist!”
Beg, would be more like it! he told himself in a fret.
“Use my father. Sophie finds him amusing, calls him Granpere. Some of his rough, uhm … sagacity about men might be of more avail,” he urged. “God knows, he must be good for something! She needs soft, insi
stent, and loving … motherly, paterfamilial … advice. Guidance.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her hands and that damned billet-doux limply hung together on her belly. He felt a need to see to his fly-buttons, his neck-stock, under such close inspection.
“Alan, you continually amaze me,” she said at last, forming her fondest grin, that furrow disappearing, and the riant folds below her eyes acrinkle. “You’re right, of course. Harsh words and accusations … once hurled … can never be recovered—or forgiven.”
“‘Least said, soonest mended,’” Lewrie dared breathe in relief.
“Where do you get your insight, being so much in the company of sailors, my dear?” She actually snickered, coming to give him a grateful hug and a peck on the lips. “I’d feared her head being turned by Harry … he is rich, and she is not … we are not.”
“Un-used to household drudgery, though she tries to accommodate your wishes … from love and gratitude, m’dear,” he tacked on, “with sisterly, dare I even say, uhm … daughter-ly obedience? She’s come to love you … us, after all.”
“That’s true, too, love,” Caroline gently chuckled. “Sophie is never going to be a ‘goodie’ housewife. A magnificent hostess, wife, or housemistress, but … yes. Soft words and sage advice, drop by gentle drop, will be more suitable. And, your father’s cautions given her during their rides and card games. A stiff warning to that colluding Mistress Cowles … a word to Harry. Or should I merely take down my horsewhip, do you think, dearest? Might he get the hint?”
“Perfect, my dear. Well, off to London, all of us?”
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