The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  The restaurant a few doors down was almost empty, thank God, but not a bad sort of place, screened from the street by a high brick wall and an iron gate, with a second false wall behind the gate for discretion. The small front garden was sheltered from the sun by thin slats of wood in an overhead screen supported by trellises, all adrip with vines or hung with flowers in hanging baskets. There was another fountain to cool the air. A series of French doors at the back of the garden terrace led into the main dining room and kitchens, and more doors and windows overlooked the harbor from a back terrace with the same sort of screen overhead. Except for a small brass plaque on the iron gate, Alan would have never known it was there; he had walked by it before and thought it a residence.

  They were seated at a small table near the back terrace where the shadows were deepest, and the thick walls of the building, the stone floor and the light harbor wind gave the impression of coolness.

  The proprietor, a Frog dandy-prat who appeared lighter in his pumps than most, tripped over and bowed deeply and elegantly, making the usual gilt and be-shit flowery words of salutation to what were probably the only new customers he had seen in a long afternoon. And he was disappointed that they did not wish to sample his solid fare, but only wanted drinks. He did, however, serve them a treat he told them was known in the Spanish Indies as sangria, a fruit juice and hock concoction, made to a recipe he had received in Havana during his service to the court of the Captain-General himself.

  “It’s quite delicious,” Anne said after taking a sip. “And most refreshing. I have been told that too much acid fruit is bad in a hot climate, but I never saw the sense of it.”

  “Hmm, not bad,” Alan had to agree. “Must keep it on ice. It’s almost cold.”

  “Or in a hanging ceramic jar,” Anne told him. “Everyone in the islands learns that if what the Spanish call an olla is hung in shade where there is a chance of wind, water or whatever it seems to cool on its own. One may see beads of water on the outside, and it feels cold to the touch. Quite remarkable, really.”

  “Hmm, one could do that aboard ship, below decks, and God knows out at sea, we’d have bags of wind.”

  “Your shipmates would think you quite ingenious, Alan,” Anne promised. “Well, I hope you were not bored by the sights of our poor city today, or by having to escort me to the dress-maker’s.”

  “Oh, not at all,” he assured her.

  “You looked as if you would strangle back there,” she teased.

  “Well, they did make me feel dawkish,” Alan had to admit, easing back in his chair. “All those ladies eyeing me like I had the King’s Evil. And at you. I hope my presence gave them nothing to talk about.”

  He almost bit his cheek in alarm when he realized he wasn’t to know about her alleged past dalliance, and his comment made it sound as if he did. “I mean,” he qualified, “they looked like an idle lot. People like that usually misconstrue the most innocent event and turn it into a subject for gossip. Bored to tears with their own miserable lives, I expect.”

  “Yes, I suppose they could.” Anne looked at him directly over the rim of her glass. “But since there is nothing between us but the hope of you becoming a member of our family, what harm?”

  “Well, none, I suppose.” He shrugged and hunched back forward over the rim of the table, trying to look innocent once more.

  “Are you as worldly as you sound, then? Does our Lucy have cause to worry?” she asked softly, with a grin at his discomfort.

  “Now you are teasing me,” he said. “I’ve seen gossip-mongers in action before, though. And I would hate to do anything that would jeopardize the Beauman family name. Or do anything to hurt my chances, either.”

  “Then you shall be making a formal proposal for Lucy’s hand? Perhaps I should tell her I saw you after all. And how you poured out your heart to me about your fondest desires.” Anne smiled.

  “Now you really are teasing me,” he protested.

  “I’ll own to that.” She laughed. “Are you that eager for her?”

  “I’d not come traipsing by two or three times a week if I was merely entertaining myself, Anne. Let me try to explain.” He began, trying to form the words carefully so he would not be misunderstood. “At first, on Antigua, I thought Lucy was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and the sweetest. But at the time, she was only a girl, my admiral’s niece. I had no idea if I had a future in the Navy, much less what would happen to me when the war ended. I had a small annuity from my father, but no hopes for anything else. Lately though, there is a larger annuity from my grandmother, and an inheritance. Mostly her personal goods and paraphernalia. And I’ve prize-money coming due when I go on half-pay, so I can now offer something other than ‘cream-pot love.’ Never even thought I could really court Lucy and be taken seriously before, though we were allowed to correspond. I don’t know what will satisfy the Beaumans, but I am willing to try my hand, even if the war isn’t over yet. Maybe my timing is bad, but we may sail soon, and God knows when Shrike puts back into Kingston.”

  “Allow me to play the Devil’s Advocate for you,” Anne offered. “If you do not mind me prying, what is your estate?”

  “Near on twenty-five hundred pounds in prize-money,” he said, adding in his hoard of stolen guineas. “Twice that in inheritance, and two hundred pounds a year. Not a stick of land or rents, though, but …”

  “Godamercy!” Anne laughed, throwing back her head. “Even if a girl brought nothing but her linens, you’re a prime catch, Alan. For half a tick, I’d be interested myself, were I not already settled.”

  Don’t say tempting things like that, he thought quickly.

  “So I do stand a chance?” Alan asked. “I’ve not been too abrupt so far, have I? Do they doubt my feelings for her, or think me too poor to pay serious court to her?”

  “Well, I would say you stand as good a chance as any, more so than most of the local lads,” Anne told him. “I know they were concerned when they brought Lucy back from Antigua that you had no lands or inheritance. Yet you had fought a duel for her honor, and Uncle Onsley and Auntie Maude spoke well of you, both professionally and for your personal qualities.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Compared to some of the island boys of good family, though, her prospects would be better with one of them,” Anne cautioned. “You must know there are many who’ve squired her. You compare more polished, more refined a gentleman to them. Educations and manners in the Indies can’t match a Home-raised young man. But.”

  “Yes?” Alan almost groaned at that qualifying “but.”

  In sympathy for his cause, perhaps, or to calm his fears, she laid a cool hand on his wrist and let it linger. “You must know that her parents are just as interested in a suitor who brings profitable connections. Plantations, new opportunities for trade. Money to put into ships and cargoes, or places to raise new capital. ’Tis a curse of our Society that even now, after years of seeing the wretched results of marriage formed on pecuniary interests instead of worry about a young woman’s eventual happiness, parents still follow their own desires. They may say they are looking out for Lucy’s happiness and security, and certainly I am sure they shall, when the time comes, but you must know the Beaumans,” she pressed, a slight sadness coming to her voice and her huge dark eyes. “It is just as easy to find contentment and a good life with a man more endowed with the means to security. To them, that may mean someone of their own station, even someone older and more settled in his affairs, as you should well know.”

  “I see.” Alan nodded. Betty Hillwood had not put him in the most jovial mood he had ever experienced, and he wasn’t exactly cherry-merry at this new information, either. “It’s changing back in England, you know. As long as the suitor has stability, they seem to let the daughters have more free will.”

  “Would that was always so!” Anne exclaimed, sharp enough to make the nodding Frog proprietor glance up briefly, and she took hold of his wrist instead of merely resting her hand
on it. “Wedding for love, all other things being equal, surely causes no more distress than marriages without it, and gives more reasons for sweet contentment later.”

  She seemed to speak from painful personal experience, but Alan was cautious enough to keep his rebellious trap shut.

  “And finally,” she said, seeming to wilt back into her chair and removing her hand to toy with the stem of her wine-glass, “there is your age, and Lucy’s. They believe neither of you is old enough to know your own minds yet.”

  “Bloody hell!” Alan spat softly, too crestfallen to guard his choice of words. Was he truly wasting his time courting Lucy, and would be denied the joy of her company forever? Potential wealth be damned, he suddenly felt the need of someone sweet and young and unspoiled, someone even naive and in love with the world, instead of trulls like Betty Hillwood and their weary cynicism.

  “And when, pray, do they think we should be old enough to know our own minds?” Alan asked sourly. “And please them into the bargain?”

  “It’s a rare girl who weds before her mid-twenties, even here,” Anne told him gently. “With enough wealth, that may not answer, but I’d think even the most ardent swain from the best family’d have to content himself with a wait of at least three more years, till Lucy’s twenty-one.”

  “Whew.”

  “And father Beauman has been talking of retirement lately,” Anne went on. “Of going back to England and leaving the family business to Hugh, with Floss’ husband to help him. They’re thinking that Lucy and Ledyard would benefit from a couple of years in London society to put some ton on their manners, and give them a better future.”

  “Oh bloody—” Alan sighed.

  “Could you wait that long, Alan?”

  “I’d hoped not to,” he growled. “I mean, God knows what could happen in the meantime, half a world away, even if the war ends and I pay off at home.”

  “You might meet someone more pleasing to your nature in that time, Alan,” Anne said. “Lucy could meet someone else, and I know how much the thought of that causes you pain. But, perhaps it is not meant to be. No matter how fond we desire something or someone, there is always a just reason that we do not attain our wishes. We must trust that things may turn out for the best, though the pangs of our heart blind us to admitting the truth of it.”

  “You know, Anne,” Alan scoffed, “every time I’ve ever heard that line of reasoning, it’s been from someone who already had what they wanted. Like telling the poor that eating regular’s a bother, when you get right down to it.”

  He was surprised that Anne chuckled with amusement at his statement, and after a moment, he had to smile in spite of his feelings of doom and gloom.

  “It was presumptuous of me to preach at you, I’ll own,” Anne said with a smile. “It was the way you said it that tickled me. You must know I meant no cruelty at your disappointment.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, patting the back of her hand without thinking, and was surprised for a second time when she did not draw back from his touch. “At least I can still laugh. I think. I’m sure we’ve both heard what other people think’s best for us. Off in some future we’ll find something or someone better than what we wish now. But Lord, it’s a wrench! T’will make a better man of ya, me lad!”

  She laughed once more at the pompous tone, which he had meant to mock his father’s pronouncements.

  “You sound like my own father,” Anne confessed, still not trying to disengage his touch. “You not so much younger than I, and I can assure you it wasn’t so long ago I suffered these self-same pangs, in the name of love, and heard the same platitudes.”

  “That is comfort, coming from you, anyway, Anne.”

  “Thought I must admit that what I yearned for, and what I have now, are close to the same sort of pleasurable contentment,” she finally said, and slowly drew her hand back to her lap.

  “It’s just that I don’t believe I’ve ever been in love like this before, Anne,” Alan went on, fiddling with his own glass and topping up their drinks from the sweaty pitcher of wine. “Come to think on it, I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love at all.”

  “So jaded, so young.” She shook her head in mock sadness.

  “I ran with a rather woolly crowd back in London. Love was just a game one played to learn how to do it at parties. We were more interested in the baser aspects, and if we fell in love, then it happened two or three times a week. And then, the Navy’s terribly down on it.”

  “Dear me, perhaps I should warn the family after all. I wish it was women who could treat love so casually and prosper.”

  “I’ve become a much more responsible person since joining the Navy, mind,” Alan pointed out, with a grin.

  “Oh, sailors always do turn saintly, do they not. Then tell me, pray, if you are so reformed, why would you associate with Betty Hillwood?”

  “Ah. Eh?”

  “Those were her lodgings I saw you leaving. Or do you know another party in that building?” Anne asked, not quite sternly, but not exactly amused, either. “That would not endear you to the Beaumans, should they learn of it. Not from me, Alan, surely. But perhaps you should consider reform, if you wish Lucy’s hand.”

  Good Christ, she’s got me by the short and curlies! he thought wildly. Had she led him on with all the hand-holding, to see if he was going to rise to her bait? Had the Beaumans put her on him to smoke him out, and had he blown the gaff to the bloody horizon?

  When in doubt, lie like blazes, he decided.

  “I made her acquaintance a year ago,” Alan replied, trying to toss it off lightly. “And she was at your father-in-law’s party. She invited me to tea, with the hint that some shore lodgings could be obtained cheaply between voyages. But she really is the most vindictive person I ever did see. And damme, but I was the only guest at what I thought was to be a tea. Frankly, she more than hinted at some fondness she said she’d developed for me. Not my sort, really. I heard more scandal in half an hour than I’d heard in London in a month.”

  “It sounds innocent enough,” Anne commented with a skeptical cast to her features.

  “I have already admitted to you that I’m no calf’s-head in relations with the ladies, but I doubt a bosun’s mate’d be that desperate,” he told her with what he hoped was a disarming grin of rough honesty. “If I would have consort to answer brute nature, I’d do better than Mrs. Hillwood, surely. Excuse me if I distress you with my choice of words, Anne, but I’d like you to understand me plain.”

  “I am not shocked, Alan,” she said finally, shaking her head. “You would have to speak much plainer to rival anything I’ve heard in what passes for genteel conversation in the Indies. I must tell you, I was pained to recognize you leaving her gate. I would not like to think that your talk of true love and your eagerness to pay court to Lucy was a fraud, based on mercenary designs on the Beauman guineas.”

  This mort reads me like an open book! he thought.

  “As you said yourself, one must always consider the family as well as the young lady,” Alan said, scooting his chair up closer to the table for more intimacy for his confession. “I have no lands, no rents, and I’d be a fool to think Lucy and I could live on moonbeams. But with Lucy’s portion, and my inheritance, the land could come, and I can’t deny that the thought of what is necessary to keep her in her proper station hasn’t crossed my mind. I don’t want to sound harsh, but reality has a way of being harsh. I’d not even persist if I had no hopes of providing for her. And you mustn’t doubt the depth of feeling I hold for Lucy!”

  “I love her dearly as well,” Anne relented. “So you must see my concern that she isn’t fooled and her heart broken by someone who cares more for her dowry than her feelings. No, I don’t doubt your affection for her, and I’m sure she has high regard for you as well, though it will be years before she may realize … I just don’t want to see her hurt, that’s all, Alan. Nor would I wish to see you hurt.”

  “So you are saying I should not aspire to too mu
ch too soon?” Alan asked, frankly puzzled by her statement, and her sad look. “Or is there something else I should know? A serious rival?”

  “Just that you should learn to be patient,” Anne said with an expression that was close to misery, and their hands found each other again in unspoken sympathy, and this time her fingers wrapped around his firmly. “And don’t close yourself off from all the other young ladies you may encounter in the time you have to wait. I don’t say you should behave without license, but you have time to be sure of your feelings and your desires before committing yourself. Once wed, it’s not a thing one may change. If one makes a mistake, one has to make the best of it, even if it’s sometimes unpleasant.”

  He gave her fingers a squeeze in commiseration, and she responded with a firm grip on his. “I’m sorry you didn’t get what you wanted, or what you thought you’d have, Anne.”

  “What?” she snapped, almost jerking free of him. “Certainly not!”

  “You sounded so bitter before. I thought you spoke from experience,” he told her softly. She was trying to tell him something, and he didn’t know quite what she meant; a warning that he was wasting his time with Lucy for some unknown reason, and telling him to spare himself some future pain? That he would never be truly considered for Lucy’s hand? Whatever it was, he was grateful to her for trying to express herself. And he felt a flash of sympathy for her, married to Hugh Beauman, who had not been her true choice, it seemed, if he read her hints correctly. And then she had found comfort with that Captain McIntyre, or so Mrs. Hillwood said. Had she been ready to run off and leave Hugh Beauman for him before he died? She was a proper lady, not given to aimless amours for the sake of amusement or quick gratification, a woman with two children to think about, and a place in society she would lose. She must have been deeply in love, he decided.

  “Not bitter, Alan,” she finally said after a long silence. “I am content. I’m sorry if I gave you a wrong impression. I thank you for your kind intentions, but they aren’t necessary, though I think more of you now for saying what you did. There’s more to you than I first thought. The girl who gets you shall be lucky, if she knows how to keep you interested.”