He would have to see Tess just one more time, he realised with what the French would call tristesse, a sweet-sad sorrow, flooding him. There really was no future in it, even were he as rich as the fabled Walpoles. Sadly, he also realised that if he could afford for her to be his long-time kept mistress, he'd tire of her someday, too, and abandon her to her uncertain fate. Better he spoke of Lord Peter to her, and hope that Tess struck him the right way.
After all, he did try to plant the seed of the idea in Peter's mind, of buying her out and setting her up under his protection; that would be best, in the long run. And go back to living the life of a "salty, tar-splotched" nautical monk!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Good morning, Captain Lewrie," the day porter greeted him as he entered the club the next morning, giving him a chary, cutty-eyed look as he took his things to hang up. "Breakfast will be served the top of the hour, sir… there's to be pork chops and smoked mullet, fresh up from Sheerness."
"Umph" was Lewrie's sleepy comment. "Thankee."
"Coffee or tea in the Common Room, sir," the porter advised, to a man who looked badly in need of either.
"Morning, all," Lewrie nodded to his fellow lodgers gathered by the table of pots, cups, and saucers. "Mister Giles, Major Baird… Mister Pilkington… Showalter."
Pilkington was the club's Cassandra, sure that Trade would end, and the economy go smash, due to this Baltic business; Showalter was still angling for a seat in Commons, next by-election on his home hustings, and courting monied supporters like a street-walker; Mr. Giles was hellish-devout, and big in the leather-goods trade and tanneries, whilst Major Baird, their "chicken-nabob" come back from India with a fortune of at least Ј50,000, was still searching for a suitably proper wife… or oral sex in the loge boxes at the theatres.
Yet all eyed him as charily as they would a naked drunk at the altar of the local parish church. Know too damned much about my business, Lewrie thought with a wince and a sigh; and where I was, damn 'em. There were some askance glances, some whispers and mutterings, making Lewrie wonder were his breeches buttons done up proper, or was a used cundum dangling from a coat pocket.
Frankly, it had been a damned sad night. Tess had noticed his moodiness and tetchiness, and had tried to jolly him out of it…'til she'd learned the reason for his detachment.
She'd sat up in bed, a quilt and the coverlet wrapped round her, and her arms about her knees, with a pensive look on her pretty face.
"Ye'll not come t'me no longer, Alan me dear?" she'd said with a hitch in her voice, and a swipe at her eyes with a fist. "Sure, am I too expensive? Is that it?"
"No, Tess, it's not the money… though I'm not a rich man, not really," he'd tried to explain, practically curled up around her, with all the pillows under his shoulders and head.
"That dark-haired girl ye were with, then? D'ye wish ya were with her, the more?"
"Not if I wish t'live!" he'd said with a wry laugh, explaining Eudoxia Durschenko… and her fierce father. "There's no one else I wish t'be with… ye know I'm married, no matter how badly that has turned out. She and I…'tis distant, now. Might improve…?"
"Dear man, 'tis rare, the single man who comes here," Tess said with a wry look and a toss of her hair, a stab at a smile before she turned pensive again. "I know how men are… how well I know, and how the world is. I just hoped… '' She broke off and lowered her head to her knees, shielding her face with the spill of her hair.
"That I could take you under my protection?" Lewrie softly asked, reaching out to stroke her head. In answer, she looked up for a second and jerkily nodded yes, before burying her face again.
"There's a fellow, though…," Lewrie had posed. "The slim man with me in the coffee-house? Peter Rushton, Lord Draywick. He's rich as Croesus, and… he asked about you. I don't know." Lewrie sighed and shrugged lamely. "Really rich. Mad t'find where you were. Devil take me, but… I told him. He's very amusing."
"He ain't you!" she'd whispered, her urge to cry out muffled, and a bit sniffly, as if she wept.
"But he could get you out of here, Tess… with grand lodgings of your own. But the one fool t'deal with, not…," Lewrie told her.
"Hmph!" was her comment on that.
"Did I have it in my power… was I free t'do so, I'd get you out of here," he swore. "And… not just t'have you to myself."
"Ye really care that much about me?" she'd asked, lifting her head, brushing back her hair, and swiping her eyes free of tears once again. "Aye, I do wish someone would, sure. 'Tis not the life they promised back in Belfast."
"Some procurer?" Lewrie had asked.
"I got in a speck o' trouble," Tess said, sitting upright, and smoothing the coverlet over her thighs. "We weren't shanty-poor, like most in Ireland… but, poor enough for all th' children t'know they must make their own way, soon as they could." Another wry smile, or a rueful quick twist of her mouth that could pass for one. "Mum an' Da was just scrapin' by, an' without th' rest of us workin' and sendin' 'em sixpence th' month, they'd haveta sell their loom an' go on th' road, beggin'. Got me a place, a good'un, I thought, tattin' lace… I'm clever with me hands, d'ye see, an' quick. And Mum an' Da taught me readin' an' cypherin', so I had me numbers, an' that's why I thought th' feller who run th' shop moved me up. I was makin' ten shillin's a month, an' sixpence sent home was no bother a'tall! An' that with me room an' board all found. 'Til th' feller who run it, well… ye can guess why he paid me so well."
"How old were you, then?" Lewrie had asked, dreading her answer.
"Fifteen," Tess said with a slight sniff and a shrug. "Before, I was workin' th' looms with Mum an' Da, but where we'd get enough to eat, all of us t'gither, was th' problem, so I had t'go out on me own. Like th' poor pig farmer'd say when th' corn runs short… 'root, hog, or die,' d'ye see," she said with a mirthless little laugh.
"How long ago was that?" He had his fingers crossed.
"Two year ago," Tess told him. "Th' feller promised more pay, an' he come through with a bit of it, an'… he wasn't that bad a man. 'Twas his son was th' real devil, him an' his friend, brought in t'manage, who took advantage of th' fetchin' girls in th' shop, an' when his father lost int'rest in me for a new-come, that was when it got bad on me, an' I schemed t'git outta there. That's when I got in th' trouble."
So she's seventeen, round the age when a lot of poorer girls get married, Lewrie thought with a sense of relief. He put an arm out to her, and she gratefully slid into his embrace, cuddled up next to him. "What sort of trouble?" he asked.
"What sorta trouble ya think a girl gets into, with two randy lads takin' turns with her, 'bout ev'ry night?" Tess scoffed, sounding bitter, and a bit amazed by his seeming naпvetй. "I caught a baby an' was gonna be turned out with nothin' but me wages paid 'til the end of the week, so… I dipped into th' cash-box, an' I run t'Belfast where I didn't think they'd find me."
"The babe?" Lewrie pressed, stroking her back.
"No one'd hire a pregnant girl, an' th' parish churches were no help, either," Tess continued, ignoring his question. "Just wanted me t'move along t'th' next'un, so I wouldn't be a burden on their Poor's Rate. Finally…'bout the time all me money's gone, an' I hadn't et in nigh a week, I met this flash feller, who promised he'd take care o' me… did I let him fetch me t'London, where he promised me th' Moon, do I go on doin' what I'd been a'doin' fer tuppence. 'Til I begun to show too much, that is," she frankly admitted, with a wry moue. "Got me a mid-wife, he did, but I never saw it, th' day after. He swore he put it in th' mercy box in th' door of a parish church, but… next thing I know, he's sold me t'Missuz Batson."