“I thought you were immoderately proud of Modeste, sir,” Lewrie commented, “and her turn of speed for a sixty-four.”
“Oh, I am, Lewrie!” Blanding responded, laughing out loud. “But one aspires to greater responsibilities, a larger command, perhaps the charge of a squadron of Third Rates.”
“I s’pose I’m too used to frigates, and their freedom,” Lewrie confessed as a servant came round with a fresh pot of tea. “If Admiralty thinks me worthy of squadron command, I’d prefer it to be a frigate squadron, with me in Reliant, or another Fifth Rate thirty-eight.”
“Well, I dare say you’re a dashed good frigate captain now, sir,” Blanding allowed, “and you’ve done very well by me, but… promotion and greater responsibility comes to us all, sooner or later, should we live long enough… and not come a cropper sometime in one’s career. Reliant’s your third frigate?”
“Fourth, actually, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Though I had Savage only a year or so… before the trial, and my being relieved, and got Thermopylae as a last minute replacement for her captain when he fell ill. I’ve a year and a half left in Reliant before she’ll need to be put in the graving docks for a refit.”
“Make the most of it, then, Lewrie, for there’s most-like some Third Rate in your future,” Blanding said with a shrug. “Your family will be joining you at Court?”
“Only my father, sir,” Lewrie said. “He’s the only one in the vicinity, given the short notice we got. Yours, sir?”
“Oh, there’s the wife, and my eldest son… he’s just taken Holy Orders, and is still angling for a good parish. I’m assured he will find a post as a vicar, not a rector.”
Why’s that not a s’rprise? Lewrie cynically thought. Church of England politics and “interest” was as fierce as any, and one’s posting could be as profitable as a government office. Rectors were much like Lieutenants when it came to prize-money in the Navy; their share of the tithes, their salary, the size and profitability of the manse and the farm that came with it, the glebe, would keep a man in comfort, but it was the vicar who got the “captain’s” larger share of the tithe, and a share of the tithes from the rectors under him. The Blandings were ferociously well-connected and well-churched… look at Reverend Brundish, for instance, Captain Blanding’s personal Chaplain, who must be very well paid to come away from a profitable vicarage with all the huntin’, shootin’, dancin’, fishin’, and steeplechasin’ in which he revelled! God knows the Navy didn’t pay Chaplains pittance!
“My daughter will be there… she and the wife will take advantage of their time in London to expose her to Society,” Blanding went on, winking and grinning as he added, “And find her a suitable husband if the market’s good. Brundish’ll accompany us, o’ course… coached up to London two days ago, to prepare the ground, and see to the missus and my girl,” Blanding added when he saw Lewrie raise a brow in question. “Care t’dine with us beforehand?”
God, that sounds tedious! Lewrie thought.
“Perhaps after, sir. I’ve people to see. Solicitor, my bank, Admiralty, and some old school friends,” Lewrie begged off, hoping for a long delay before he would have to socialise with the Blanding clan. “And, there’s the mystery of what Sir Harper meant by ‘best uniform and Court dress.’ One hopes his promised letter sent t’my lodgings will be explanatory… and not too costly.”
“Where will you lodge, sir?” Blanding asked.
“The Madeira Club, sir,” Lewrie told him, explaining that the place was a bachelor’s refuge, respectable and clean, for the middling sort of gentleman. “Wonderful wine cellar and grand victuals, but not open to gambling. They retire early at the Madeira. You, sir?”
“Brundish’s brother Charles is a bishop at Hampstead, and has graciously offered us the use of his London house,” Blanding told him, “in Bruton Street.”
Lewrie tried to place Bruton Street, and thought it was south of Oxford Street, safely distant from his lodgings, unless Blanding was intrigued by the name of his favourite coffee house, the Admiral Benbow, at the corner of Baker and Oxford streets, and blundered in.
And why am I not s’prised that Brundish is kin to a bishop? he asked himself.
“Aye, after might be best, after all, Lewrie,” Blanding allowed with a sage nod. “Family to see, what? Doings to catch up on in my long absence? But! Once it’s done, I’d much admire could you and your father join us for a celebration supper… after we go to Westminster Abbey or Saint Paul’s to give thanks to the Good Lord.”
They let my sort in church? Lewrie wondered, but agreed to his superior officer’s suggestions, whether he cared for them or not.
“Thought we’d take a cabriolet this morning,” his father said as Lewrie descended the steps at the Madeira Club to the kerb, where a light, two-horse carriage awaited with its weather-proofed convertible top folded down above the boot. “And ain’t you a picture, what? Like a belle goin’ to a ball, haw haw!”
One more reason I don’t much like the old bastard, Lewrie told himself as a liveried footman opened the kerb-side door and let down the metal steps.
“Oh, stop yer gob,” Lewrie growled.
“Get up on the wrong side o’ the bed, this morning, did ye?” Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby gravelled as Lewrie got in. “Or are the breeches too tight in the crutch?”
Lewrie spread a clean-looking lap blanket on the leather bench seat before sitting down, just to be safe.
“At such short notice, they are a bit snug,” Lewrie admitted as the footman closed the door and folded up the steps. “Daft, too dear, and if God’s just, I’ll only wear them this once. Silk breeches, mine arse!”
“Just like a belle’s ball gown… daft, too dear, and good for only one appearance in a London Season,” Sir Hugo remarked.
After landing in the Pool of London, taking a hack to the Madeira Club, and un-packing, Lewrie had found the ornate formal letter that Sir Harper Strachan had promised. Immediately upon reading it, he had begun to curse blue blazes. He would need a new pair of shoes in that idiotic slipper style, new white silk stockings, these damned silk breeches, and all the help the valet staff of the Madeira Club could offer alongside Pettus’s best efforts. His best formal uniform coat, too long kept in a sea-chest, had to be aired out to rid it of ship-stink, but nothing could restore the gloss of its gold lace trim that had gone a sickly green at sea. A tailor who specialised in military and naval uniforms had to remove the old and sew on new, damned near overnight. Brushing it down, Pettus had gotten a whole handful of cat fur off it! He’d had to purchase two new epaulets to adorn his shoulders, too. A new silk shirt, a new black neck-stock, his best white waist-coat sponged down and pressed… the neck-stock, too, that very morning, after a wetting, a starching, and a time for drying before it was pressed with a hot iron.
“The latest thing, sir,” the borrowed valet told him, winking. “And all the crack about town, these days. All the dandies are trying to emulate some fellow name of Brummell when it comes to stocks, whose own’re marvels. Flat and sharp-edged, ’stead of ropy-looking after a bit. I’ll bind it on last, if you don’t mind, sir?”