“Didn’t notice when I came in,” Lewrie lied, “I was too eager to warm my bones in front of a good fire, and find out what’s happening in the world,” he said, gesturing to the papers and books on the settee.
Jessica handed him his letters, then opened one addressed to her and laughed aloud. “Oh, Lord, my sister-in-law up at Windsor is enceinte with her third child, ehm … hoping for another boy, and we’re invited to come up some time after Midsummer Day.”
“To make goo-goo eyes over the sprout’s spit-up, I suppose?” Lewrie teased.
“You’re awful,” Jessica said back, chuckling, turning to another of her letters.
“Mine arse on … ahem,” Lewrie cried, censoring himself, “old Geoffrey Westcott’s captured himself a brace of Yankee Doodles, filled to the gunn’ls with grain, tryin’ t’sneak into L’Orient! There’s your pretty penny or two, aha! Two full-rigged ships, too, sure t’be worth a lot after the Prize Courts get through with ’em.”
“American ships, dear?” Jessica asked.
“Their loss for tryin’ to smuggle goods into France without clearing their cargoes with England,” Lewrie explained. “They sell to us, or else.”
“You miss it, don’t you, Alan?” Jessica asked him, looking pensive. “The excitement, and the prize-money.”
“Hmm, I can’t pretend that I don’t, love,” Lewrie confessed. “I made my pile, though, enough so that if I came home from Indian service they’d call me a ‘chicken nabob’. But, as shy of battle as the French have become, there’s little excitement of the chase, or the fight, available any longer. It’s all gruelling blockade work for the most part, standin’ off-and-on the coast in dirty weather, and a boresome routine, weeks and months on end. Like my eldest, Sewallis, endures, much to his dis-appointment.”
“So, you’re not tempted to…?” Jessica pressed.
“I may be like an old, worn-out fox hound, my dear,” Lewrie said with a wry laugh. “When he hears the master’s horn, he may bark and pace the pen, but…,” he ended with a wistful shrug.
“Oh, you’re not anywhere close to old, my love!” Jessica said with a teasing laugh. “And thank God for it,” she added with a glance that was nigh lascivious.
Christ, explainin’ that letter to her tonight’s goin’ t’be a bit harder than I thought! Lewrie told himself.
* * *
Three mornings later, though, and Lewrie was at Admiralty, in his best dress uniform, For the first time in his memory, he didn’t have to bide in the Waiting Room very long, no more than ten minutes, before being summoned upstairs, and not to the offices of the First Secretary as he usually would be received, but down the hall into the Board Room.
They must be considerin’ this damned seriously! he told himself, awed by the oaken grandeur of the large room, its huge maps of the world on one inner wall, the ornateness of the carved fireplace surround, and the wind vane indicator dial connected to the instrument on the roof. On the long, highly polished board room table a silver coffee service awaited, and a brace of men, one in uniform, sat together at the far end, who rose as he was shown in.
“Aha, Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, welcome, sir,” the man in civilian suitings said, “allow me to name myself to you … John Croker, the new First Secretary, and of course you know Captain Robert Middleton, from your time together at Gibraltar. Captain Middleton is now the Commissioner Without Special Functions. Sit you down, Sir Alan. Will you take coffee?”
“Indeed I would, Mister Croker,” Lewrie replied, taking a seat near them. “Hallo, Captain Middleton. Good to see you, again.”
“Most fortuitously, Captain Middleton was in charge of His Majesty’s Dockyards at Gibraltar when you first outfitted a transport and staged your first raids along the Andalusian coast of Spain,” Croker said as he “played mother” with the coffee pot and a china cup.
“On the smallest scale allowed, that,” Lewrie told Croker, “but Captain Middleton was most helpful at obtaining all I requred, and then some. I take it, sir, that Mistress Middleton is having more luck with her gardens here in England than she did at Gibraltar?”
“We are both amazed at what a sufficient supply of fertiliser will do, Sir Alan,” Middleton said with a laugh. “I doubt that there were less than fifty horses, cattle, or sheep at Gibraltar, and the only manure available came with the livestock imported from Tétuan. Oh, aye, her garden and vegetable crops now thrive.”
Some more pleasantries were exchanged before they got down to the root of the matter. Folios were spread out, and copies of Lewrie’s proposal were gone over, point by point for several hours, requiring food to be sent for, cold sliced beef, mustard, bread and pickles, and some chicken broth, along with a bottle of claret, and more coffee.
There were objections, of course; where would a man-starved Navy get the large crews for the transports’ management and the hands needed to row the barges ashore? From a ship of the Third or Fourth Rate just paying off? The Lieutenants from that ship could be appointed as the transports’ commanding officers, and senior Midshipmen could be given the temporary rank of Sub-Lieutenant to aid them, with Master’s Mates promoted as Sailing Masters, and less-experienced Midshipmen put aboard in their usual subordinate roles.
“And, of course, is a Third Rate sixty-four made the flagship of the force,” Lewrie threw in, “she would have a Marine complement that could re-enforce the landings. Seventy private Marines, plus officers, Sergeants, and Corporals, and the flagship given twenty-nine-foot Admiralty pattern barges and cutters, instead of gigs and jolly-boats?”
Two companies of infantry in each transport, about one hundred to one hundred and fifty troops in all, in three-masted ships of over three hundred and fifty tons burthen, their hulls coppered, even if the rate paid per ton for such ships was dearer than that for un-coppered hulls.
“Five of them, sirs, for a full regiment, if such is available,” Lewrie told them. “Ten companies. Has anyone asked Horse Guards yet?”
“The ah, proposal has been presented to them,” Croker replied with a shrug, “but as of yet we have not heard anything back. They’ve not given us a flat ‘no’, so we must assume that your scheme is still being studied. Where did you get the troops the first time round?”
“General Dalrymple offered two companies sent out to fill the gaps in a regiment on Sicily,” Lewrie said. “And none too keen on it they were, in the beginning. Their officers, all young’uns fresh from their tailors, had to leave all their luxury goods behind, and subsist on ship’s rations … though the twice-daily rum issue was welcomed by their troops.”
“I doubt you’d get a crack regiment,” Captain Middleton said with a sour expression. “One would suppose that our Army regards this as a rather iffy experiment that may come to nothing, or fail outright, so … Horse Guards may suggest that we fill the transports with Royal Marines, instead.”
“Now that would be a delightful result!” Lewrie enthused. “A Marine has twice the wits of a soldier, and they’re used to life at sea to begin with. Do we use Marines, we could place only one hundred aboard each transport, since they come in much smaller complements of fourty, fifty aboard frigates, and give everyone more elbow room, less men per ton.”
“Ahem,” Croker said, moistening a finger to turn a page. “You included a section about intelligence, Sir Alan. Spies, do you mean?”
“Aye, Mister Croker … spies,” Lewrie said with a wide smile of delight, thinking that proper English gentlemen shied like frightened horses when anything covert or cloak-and-dagger arose. “At Gibraltar, I had the able assistance of Foreign Office’s Secret Branch. A Mister Thomas Mountjoy had cultivated a whole coven of informers among the dis-affected Spanish along the whole coast, from Gibraltar to the French border, with disguised British agents posing as humble fishermen and coastal traders to collect their intelligence, and determine what my targets were.”
“Thomas Mountjoy?” Captain Middleton exclaimed in surprise. “I knew the fellow, just in pass
ing, mind, but … I thought he was just a tradesman with some import and export company! Grew magnificent flowers on his balcony, God only knew how. My wife envied him his ‘green thumb’!”
“The very fellow, sir,” Lewrie said with a laugh, “and living a public persona so mild and in-offensive that everyone was fooled, especially the French and Spanish spies on Gibraltar … the ones that old General Dalrymple imagined were under every bed, ha ha! His brief was to swing Spain from their allegiance to France, and become our allies, and a grand job he did of that.
“There must be an intelligence network of spies, informers, and informal scouts,” Lewrie insisted, “who can keep track of what the foe is up to, where their troops are garrisoned, what sort of troops, and how well armed they are … what sort of things can we raid and burn that’ll hurt them the most, with us running the least risk of meeting too much opposition for the few hours we’re ashore. We need someone like Mountjoy and his agents to guide us, or we’re just thrashing about blind.”
“Aha, hmm,” Croker mused. “Well.”
“And,” Lewrie enquired in the sudden silence, “just where would we be using this proposed raiding force, sirs? One would assume that we’d be hitting the French somewhere in Spain, to draw troops away from General Wellesley’s army, or … the French coasts, either in the Mediterranean or along the Bay of Biscay? In the Baltic? Somewhere in the bloody Balkans?”
“We are not absolutely sure where such a force might be used, at the moment, Sir Alan,” Croker admitted with spread hands as if to encompass a world map on the table top. “We are met today to discuss the plausibility of forming such a force, only. Where it will go and how big an endeavour it turns out to be … and how much it will cost … is still to be determined.”
Shit! Lewrie thought; At least they laid on dinner!
“I for one think it most feasible,” Middleton declared. “We’ve seen the havoc that Sir Alan caused with only one transport, and the upset he gave the Spanish before they changed sides.”
“Havoc, chaos, and mayhem,” Lewrie japed. “I’m your man for that!”
“I, too, am of a mind to recommend it to the First Lord, Henry Lord Mulgrave,” Croker announced with a firm nod. “It’s novel, it is daring…”
Oh, don’t say that! Lewrie thought with a wince; Those are bad words, sure t’get the plan strangled in its cradle!
“… and promises to achieve results far beyond the modest investment made to try it out,” Croker concluded.
“Ain’t Mulgrave on his way out, though, sir?” Middleton pointed out. “I heard a vague rumour that his health was failing, and that the front-runner for the office might be the Right Honourable Charles Yorke.”
“Hmm, that would be bad,” Croker opined. “Lord Mulgrave’s done good things as First Lord, and he’ll be missed if he goes. Yorke may do just as well, but … there’s nothing official, yet.”
“And if Lord Mulgrave steps down, any plan he approves might be shelved ’til the new First Lord finds his feet,” Middleton said with a grunt of impatience.
“So it might be months, if ever?” Lewrie wearily asked. “I must confess that I had hopes that my proposal would gain approval sometime soon, and that I might be allowed to put it into motion. But, if I must wait … well.”
“As the author of the plan, and the one officer most familiar with its implementation, you would, of course, be the first choice … if the experiment is approved, Sir Alan,” Croker assured him, a bit too quickly to be taken at face value, or a firm promise.
There’s that other bad word, Lewrie gloomed; “experiment”! Mine arse on a band-box!
“Are there any other details we need to thrash out today, sirs?” Lewrie asked, forcing himself to keep a good face on. “If not, then I suppose I should run along home.” After a glance out the windows that faced the courtyard and the curtain wall, he added, “Before the evening fog gets so thick a cabman can’t find his arse with a lanthorn.”
They all rose and shook hands in parting, chuckling mildly over Lewrie’s wee witticism, and making vague promises of future meetings as soon as someone in authority gave the plan the go-ahead.
* * *
The evening fog was indeed thickening by the time he got home, swirling lazily round the few streetlights along Dover Street, and the lanthorns by the doorways of the houses either side of the street. He was joyously greeted by the dogs, up on their hind legs and pawing at his breeches for pets, and by Chalky, who stood on the entry hall side-board, arching his back, yawning and stretching, and mewing for attention, too. Oddly, there was only one candle lit in the front parlour, and a low fire in need of stoking in the hearth, with Jessica nowhere to be seen.
“Dame Lewrie?” he asked after handing over his hat, boat cloak, and sword.
“She’s in the drawing room, sir,” Pettus told him.
“Ah, good,” Lewrie said, rubbing his chilled hands.
“How did things go at Admiralty, pardon for asking, sir?” Pettus simply had to enquire.
“Still early days, Pettus,” Lewrie told him before heading for the stairs. “We’re bound ashore awhile longer, it seems.”
“Oh, well, sir,” Pettus shrugged, though he sounded oddly glad of the news, and Lewrie took note that his wife’s pretty young maid, Lucy, and Pettus shared a secret smile as she passed by.
Damme, has he topped her, yet? Lewrie wondered; They sure look like they’re both in cream-pot love! Have t’keep an eye on that.
Abovestairs, the drawing room was much brighter lit with many candles, and the fire was crackling nicely. Jessica was seated on the settee near a side-table where a four-prong candelabra glowed, reading a novel. She set the book aside as he entered and rose to come embrace him with warmth, and gladly shared a long kiss with him.
“How did it go?” she asked, looking concerned.
“Oh, they loved the plan,” Lewrie told her as they walked to the fire and the pair of wing-back chairs. “It’s novel, it’s daring, and most-like as dead as mutton, ’cause it’s still being mulled over by various and sundry, and probably will be ’til next Epiphany, with no clue where it’d be sent, if it’s approved,” he wryly carped, telling her of meeting the new First Secretary, and his old acquaintance, Captain Middleton, and whether any decision would have to wait ’til a new First Lord of the Admiralty took up his post.
“So I should not fear that you will be torn away from me anytime soon, Alan?” Jessica said with a fond look, and in evident relief.
“I’m here ’til the cows come home, as the Yankee Doodles say,” Lewrie assured her. “If they do approve the plan, there’s no guarantee that they’ll let the likes of me have anything t’do with it, either, so … I suppose you’re stuck with me.”
“Oh, good!” Jessica exclaimed with a laugh. “Exactly what I wanted! Though, I must allow that you do look dashing in your uniform, dear. Forgive me if I say that I hope that you wear it only on special occasions.”
“At least it still fits,” Lewrie replied, and tossing her a kiss, and thinking that the fit was the only good virtue he’d found.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Riding in the park was a welcome break from winter-bound domesticity, for the February skies had cleared, the temperatures had risen a tad, and there had been no rain or snow three days running, making for a brilliant sunshine day, so bright that the remaining piles of snowfall could barely be looked upon. There was just one snag.
“Jess, my Lord! That’s scandalous!” her brother Charley said as her favourite livery stable prad was led out for mounting, saddled with a man’s saddle, and she swung up astride!
“And I thank you for your oldest pair of breeches, Charley,” she said with a delighted giggle as she flicked the deep skirts of her long, wool riding coat over her boots. “They fit me ever so much better than Alan’s. And I won’t even mind the tar stains, since no one will ever see them!”
“Ah, Captain, sir?” Charley Chenery pled, looking for aid from that di
rection. “Can you not do something to spare Jess the embarrassment? The family? Mean to say!”
“Oh, don’t ask me, Mister Chenery,” Lewrie rejoined with a laugh. “We should know by now that Jessica will go her own way.”
“See?” Jessica said, tossing back her head to laugh as well. “One man understands me. Let’s do the Lady’s Mile, and spare all of the prudes on Rotten Row their outrage.”
Off they went, first at a sedate walk, then at an easy trot as Jessica felt more comfortable and sure of herself, her favourite gentle mare tossing her head as if in on the prank. When Jessica urged them to a canter, her younger brother lagged back as if to say that he was definitely not with them, and had no part in it. Yet, even on the Lady’s Mile through Hyde Park, they left many slack-jawed people in their wake, and a chorus of, “Well, I nevers”. Young girls getting used to side-saddles craned their necks to watch, making pleas that they could ride that way, too.
“They say, Alan, that a young lady must have two saddles. One for her right leg, one for her left,” Jessica teased.
“Why? What for?” Lewrie asked, sure he was being twitted.
“So one half of one’s fundament doesn’t grow too muscular!” she said with a straight face, then broke out a wide grin and a laugh. “Do imagine how lop-sided one could look if one didn’t!”
“Catch up, Charley,” Lewrie called back. “Your sister has a joke to tell you!”
“I’d rather not,” her brother replied, rather snippishly. “Hear it, that is.”
“Then you won’t get dinner,” Jessica threatened, “and Yeovill’s prepared all your favourites!”
* * *
“Oh, that was glorious!” Jessica exclaimed as they removed hats, coats, gloves, and mittens in the entry hall. “I cannot wait ’til the Spring, when we can coach to Anglesgreen and go riding like that every morning.”
“Where no one from our parish can see,” Charley glumly carped.
A Fine Retribution Page 19
