He tore it open impatiently, but, once he had it un-folded, he paused and hitched a deep breath, expecting the worst.
“Uhmhmm, ‘directed and required … authorised to make such repairs His Majesty’s Dockyard deems necessary’ … Hell, yes!” he cried, thumping his free left hand on the arm of his chair in triumph.
“Good news, sir?” Pettus asked.
“The best, Pettus, the very best!” Lewrie told him, laughing. “We’ll be off for Portsmouth at first light. See Lucas to arrange a coach for us … not that drunken fool who fetched us up! We have orders for our bottom cleaning, and additional orders for the South Atlantic, soon as we can get the ship back on her own bottom and make sail! Hallelujah!”
“I’ll see to it, directly, sir!” Pettus assured him.
“Something to drink, sir?” a steward asked.
“I think I’ll try the Scottish whisky, this time,” Lewrie said. “That Spanish brandy makes me bilious, haw haw!”
Oh Christ, though, Lewrie had to think a moment later; If I’m off to Portsmouth, I’ll miss Lydia again!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At such short notice, hiring an elegant coach-and-four for the return to Portsmouth was out of the question, so what Pettus managed to turn up was a weather-beaten and drab coach with cracked or stained glass windows, ratty interior fabrics, and leather bench seats so hard that there might not have been any horse-hair padding left. To make things even worse, the team looked more due the knacker’s yard, maybe even overdue. The coachee was rail thin, taciturn, and sour, but swore that he was of the temperance persuasion, and a Methodist Dissenter.
“And here I’ve thought all this time that Methodists were prone t’leapin’ enthusiasm,” Lewrie chuckled after they rattled away from the Madeira Club’s stoop in the “early-earlies” in a light fog. “It must be the temperance part that makes him as dour as Wilberforce’s crowd.”
“Does he stick with cider instead of ale, sir, perhaps he will cost you less,” Pettus suggested. He was cringing in a corner of the coach’s front bench seat, shrunk up in mortification, looking even more abashed than he had when he’d overlooked Lewrie’s presentation sword. “And, twenty-odd miles on, there will surely be a better team.”
“Assumin’ these beasts live long enough t’get to the next posting house,” Lewrie said with a sigh and a roll of his eyes.
“Sorry, sir,” was all that Pettus had to say, in a mutter.
“Oh, worse things happen at sea, I’m told,” Lewrie rejoined in slight mirth. “Do you shuffle over to the starboard side, we can both keep watch for Mistress Lydia’s coach.”
* * *
Out in open country beyond London, on the way to Guildford, the traffic thinned out from the nose-to-tail crush of all the waggons and carts and drays bringing goods and produce to town. Even so, a fresh coach came along at least once every two minutes or so. Some were of local origin, light one-horse or two-horse carriages trotting along to carry country folk from one village or hamlet to the next. Every now and then, with a thunder of hooves, the cracking of whips, and the tara-tara warnings from the assistant coachees, much larger diligence coaches or regularly scheduled flying “balloon” coaches came dashing toward them with six- or eight-horse teams, swaying and pitching fit to throw passengers and luggage from the cheaper seats on the rooves, barrelling “ram you, damn you” and expecting anyone with the least bit of sense to get right out of their way.
There were young, flashing gentlemen, “all the crack and all the go”, driving their two- and three-horse chariots at similar paces as the passenger coaches, dust or mud flying in their wakes, and flashing past their own shabby coach with shouts of glee over how rapidly they could eat the miles, and how daring they were. Lewrie’s coach was passed by a pair bound South from behind them, two chariots racing wheel-to-wheel like ancient Romans in the Colosseum, and damning Lewrie’s equipage for a “slow-coach” as they careened around them!
Now and then, though rarely, a much grander coach-and-four came trotting toward them, with liveried coachmen in the driver’s box and in the bench above the coach’s rear boot. Most of those coaches bore no family crests on their doors, and those that did went by so quickly that it was hard for Lewrie and Pettus to discern even the colours or the shapes of the crests, and it was a rare coach with painted heraldry that bore a crest large enough to be recognised.
Lewrie tried to recall how large the Stangbourne crest had been and the colour of the coach they’d shared to Sheerness, the one she had taken the last time she’d come down to Portsmouth, and began to wonder if he would recognise it if it sat right in front of him, at full stop! As rich as Lydia and her brother Percy were, they might have more than a dozen carriages and coaches for every occasion!
Assuming that Percy hadn’t gambled them into debtors’ prison in the meantime!
They got to Guildford for a change of horses, and a chance to stretch their legs. The four poor prads were led off to rest and feed, heads hanging low, and as the coachman arranged a fresh team, Lewrie and Pettus had a quick breakfast of bacon strips and cheese on thickly sliced bread with smears of spicy, dark mustard, and pint mugs of ale. When offered, their coachman settled for a hard-boiled egg, toast, and hot tea … without sugar or cream.
“Evidently, cream and sugar are too luxurious for ‘temperance’ people,” Lewrie commented in a whispered chuckle. “God only knows what a cinnamon roll’d do … one bite, and he’d be found in a gutter with crumbs on his face, clutchin’ a bottle o’ rum, weepin’ for bein’ a back-slider!”
Once a slightly more promising team was hitched up, they were off once more, at a slightly better pace this time, for more peering at the passing traffic. They passed the turning for Chiddingfold, the narrow road that led to Anglesgreen and Lewrie’s father’s estate. He wished that he could spare the time to see his daughter, Charlotte, but … no, Lewrie sadly reckoned; that could only turn out stiffly, and badly. He had written her. That would have to be good enough.
* * *
A bit North of Liphook, Pettus pulled his head back into the coach to announce, “Here comes another coach-and-four, sir, with liveried coachee and all.”
Lewrie stuck his head out of the lowered door window, peering ahead. What he could see of the approaching coachman’s livery under his opened black great-coat looked like the royal blue and white trim that he remembered, the coach was very much like the dark green with discreet gilt trim one that Lydia had used in London, and had used to come down to Portsmouth before, and its wheel rims and spokes appeared to be the same jaunty canary yellow.
Lewrie leaned further out, half-standing with head and shoulders out the window, looking to see if the passengers were—!
“Lydia!” he bellowed as he espied a woman seated in the middle of the front-facing rear bench seat, a woman with loose and curly hair the colour of old honey. “Lydia Stangbourne! It’s me, Alan!”
“What the Devil?” the female passenger cried back, mouth agape in shock as her coach came level with his and whisked by.
“Driver, draw up!” Lewrie bellowed to their coachman, opening the coach door to hang out and look aft. In his loudest quarterdeck bellow, he shouted, “Lydia, draw up!”
Sure enough, the other coach was being reined in, and he could see Lydia leaning out an opened window. It was she!
“Draw up, did you say, sir?” their dour coachman asked.
“Goddamn right I did! Whoa, stop right now!” Lewrie exclaimed as he kicked the metal folding steps down with a booted foot. Before the coach could come to a full stop, he was jumping down and running back up the road. “Hoy, Lydia, it’s me!” he cried, waving madly.