“Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, sir!” someone called out in a braying voice, forcing him to turn and peer about. A tall fellow with a full head of long dark blond hair was beaming at him, a fellow garbed in a uniform of some cavalry regiment, and epaulets of a Lieutenant-Colonel.
“Sir?” Lewrie said, smiling back. “You have the better of me.”
“Percy Stangbourne, Sir Alan,” the dashing fellow said, coming to shake hands vigourously. “Viscount Stangbourne, but everyone calls me Percy. Congratulations on your knighthood, Sir Alan, and gaining a baronetcy.”
“Thank you kindly, my lord,” Lewrie responded, an idea nagging at him that he’d heard that name before, but…
“I bring felicitations from a mutual acquaintance of ours, too, Sir Alan,” Stangbourne teased. “Mistress Eudoxia Durschenko, of equestrian fame?”
Oh, he’s the chap Father wrote me of! Lewrie realised, wondering if he would be called out for a duel by a jealous lover.
“You are acquainted with her, my lord? Percy?” Lewrie asked as innocently as he could (he was rather good at shamming “innocent,” just as he was at portraying false modesty) yet thinking, Honest t’God, your honour, sir, I never laid a finger on yer daughter… sister… wife… mistress! And why the Devil ain’t he wearin’ a powdered wig, too?
“Mistress Eudoxia and I were fortunate enough to make our acquaintance during the last Winter interval, whilst riding in the park, and I have had the further great fortune to have obtained her father’s permission to call upon her, Sir Alan,” Lord Stangbourne blathered enthusiastically, like a teen in “cream-pot” love.
“He did?” Lewrie exclaimed, stunned. “If Arslan Artimovitch did, I’d have t’declare ye the luckiest man in all England!”
Probably showed him all his daggers, pistols, and his lions, to give him good warnin’, Lewrie thought.
“So I consider myself, sir!” Stangbourne boasted.
“Seen them lately?” Lewrie asked.
“Off on their Summer touring,” Lord Stangbourne said with an impatient shrug, “up to the reeky towns of Scotland and back.” He had to swipe at the romantic mop of hair that fell over his forehead. “We do write, twice weekly. Mistress Eudoxia had spoken so admiringly of you, sir, and of your splendid defence of their ship when they were returning from Africa some years back, so… when I heard your name called, I simply had to meet the man who saved my intended, express my thanks, and take the measure of so bold a fellow, ha ha!”
See if I’m a rival? Lewrie cynically thought; What? She’s his “intended”? Is he daft? Young lords sport with actresses and circus girls, they don’t bloody marry ’em!
Lewrie recalled, though, how zealously Eudoxia’s father guarded her innocence. Stangbourne would’ve had to propose just to get close enough to shake her hand or smell her perfume!
“Intended? Why, that’s marvellous for you, my lord!” Lewrie pretended to be delighted. “Percy, rather. When next you write her, please extend my best wishes… even to her father. You’ll wish her to leave the circus, o’ course. Is her father amenable to that, too?”
“They see the sense of it,” Percy Stangbourne said with another shrug, that one much iffier, as if he’d not dared broach the subject yet. “Ah, and here’s my sister!” He brightened, waving to someone. “I say, Lydia, come meet the hero of the hour, that Captain Lewrie that Eudoxia told us about… the one who saved their bacon in the South Atlantic several years ago!”
Lydia Stangbourne looked a tad less than enthused at the mention of her brother’s outre “intended,” all but rolling her eyes. During the naming to each other, Lydia Stangbourne wore a placid, bland, and almost bored-with-the-world expression, her mouth a bit pouty. That was a bit off-putting to Lewrie, though she had an odd sort of attractiveness.
Instead of dropping him a graceful, languid curtsy in answer to his how, though, she extended her hand, man-fashion.
Do I kiss it like a Frenchman, shake, or just stare at it? he wondered, compromising quickly by grasping her fingers. She found his response slightly amusing; one brow went up, her dark green eyes sparkled, and one corner of her lips curled up in what he took as a smirk.
“Sir Alan,” she purred, looking him directly in the eyes.
“Miss Stangbourne, your servant, ma’am,” Lewrie replied. There was no wedding ring to give him a clue, and if she had a lesser title than her brother the Viscount, he hadn’t heard it mentioned. “Honoured to make your acquaintance,” he added.
“Don’t be too sure, Sir Alan,” she responded with a toss of her head and a brief laugh, “we’re both hellish-unconventional.” A smirk and a rueful moue followed. “Just Lydia will suit, as just Percy does for my brother. At one time, ‘the Honourable Miss Lydia’ would serve, but that was a while ago.”
“And hellish-informal to boot, haw!” Percy happily seconded.
“ ‘Prinny’ finds us amusing,” Lydia said, inclining her head at the dais, and the Prince of Wales, which reminded Lewrie that Sir Hugo had written that Percy Stangbourne was an intimate of the Prince. His declared informality, and that acquaintance, might explain why neither of them was wigged or powdered!
Lydia Stangbourne was not a ravishing beauty in the contemporary sense, but Lewrie found her rather attractive. Her face was oval, with faintly prominent cheekbones, tapering to a firm but narrow chin and an average-width mouth, one with delicate, almost vulnerable, and kissable full lips… when they weren’t haughtily pursed. Lewrie thought her a tad elfin-looking, though her nose, full-on, was too wide and large at first glance; but, when she turned her head towards a servant offering glasses of champagne, it then appeared almost Irish and wee. Lydia’s eyes were dark emerald green, the brows above them thick and brown, and her hair was darker than her brother’s, as dark blond as old honey, and faintly shot through with lighter gold strands.
In fashionable soft leather slippers, she stood too tall for Society’s taste, three inches shy of Lewrie’s five feet nine, almost as tall as his late wife. And she wasn’t what Society wished in its womenfolk’s form, either, for she was not pale, wee, round, and squeezeable. Her stylish light green gown clung to a sylph-like, willow-slim frame, her complexion hinted at “outdoorsy” pursuits, and her bare upper arms displayed a hint of muscle; her handshake had been more than firm, making Lewrie think that Miss Lydia did things more strenuous than pouring tea, embroidering, or punishing a piano.
“Shall we stroll?” Percy suggested, and with glasses in hand, they started a slow circuit of the grand hall, with Percy pressing for details of the sea-fight that had saved the Durschenkos, where were the Chandeleur Islands anyway, and what had happened there, as eager as a toddler to hear a scary ghost story.
“Percy, must Sir Alan recite all his battles?” Lydia chid him after a time, reverting to her earlier thin-lipped coolness. “You two could save that for another time. I am more interested in how Captain Lewrie gained his somewhat infamous repute…”
What the Hell’s she heard? Lewrie wondered, ready to flinch.