“… as a champion of William Wilberforce and the Abolitionist Society,” Lydia went on, turning her head to bestow another of those direct-in-the-eyes looks with a brow up, and her lips curled in sly humour. “You were put on trial for stealing slaves, but acquitted?”
Is she twittin’ me for fun? Lewrie asked himself, a bit irked.
“The tracts and the newspapers called you ‘Black Alan,’ did they not?” Lydia asked with what looked like a smirk.
“I wasn’t fond o’ that’un,” Lewrie said, grimacing, “nor when they named me ‘Saint Alan the Liberator,’ either. I do despise chattel slavery, but I must confess that the whole thing began as a lark.” He told them the bald truth of how he and Christopher Cashman had duelled the Beaumans on Jamaica, and why, and how they’d arranged the “theft” of his dozen Black “volunteers,” including the bizarre appearance of the seals that night as if in blessing, and what splendid sailors those rescued Blacks had become.
“Seals, Sir Alan?” Lydia posed, looking dubious, as if he was a superstitious fool, and Lewrie explained why people in the Fleet thought him blessed with a lucky cess; the “selkies” who’d appeared as seals at a sea-burial of a boy Midshipman from the West Country in 1794, and the seals that turned up in warning in the Adriatic, then those who had swum out to his frigate in a snow storm to guide the Thermopylae frigate into the Baltic in 1801.
“I know it’s more co-incidence than fact, but stranger things than that’ve happened at sea,” he concluded, with a disparaging grin.
“You seem to be a man of more parts than one would at first suspect, Sir Alan,” Lydia commented, this time with a wider grin.
“Not a simple ‘scaly-fish’ stumpin’ round his quarterdeck yellin’ ‘luff’?” Lewrie said with a laugh.
“We must have you to supper, if only to hear a tenth of it all!” Percy Stangbourne eagerly proposed.
“Indeed we must, Percy,” Lydia quickly agreed, giving Lewrie another uncanny direct look, this time smiling promisingly and slowly fanning her lashes. “You will be staying in London for long?” She sidled an inch or two closer, her head slightly over to one side, and sounded as if his answer was vitally important to her.
“Only a couple of days, unfortunately,” Lewrie had to tell her. “Admiralty, some other business, before I have to return to Sheerness. They tell me there’s a war on, and the French are bein’ a bother!”
“Dinner, today, perhaps?” Lord Percy proposed.
“I’m down for dinner with Captain Blanding and my father,” he said, and damned unhappy he was to say it, too.
“Do I gather that that sounds as dreadful as supper parties with Wilberforce and Hannah More and their crowd?” Lydia japed, tossing her head back for a good laugh; on a very slim, graceful neck, Lewrie noted! “As much as one admires their good works, and their intentions… they are such a tedious lot!”
“Aye, I’ve been bored t’tears a time or two, myself,” Lewrie happily agreed, laughing too. “Before my trial, it was almost once a week. And it’s not just slavery they’ll do away with. Fox-huntin’ and steeplechasin’, bear-baitin’n dog-fightin’… it’ll be tasty food and beer to be done away with, next, I expect. Sling every child into what they’re callin’ a Sunday School, and wallop all glee from ’em?”
“Spiritous drink, music, and dancing, too, do you imagine?” she said with an intriguingly impish cast to her eyes. “What about supper this evening, Sir Alan? You’re free, aren’t you, Percy?”
“I would be delighted!” Lewrie quickly told her.
“We must show you off to London,” Lydia said, tapping the star on his chest, next to his medals for Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown. “At White’s, the Cocoa Tree, or Boodle’s?”
“Almack’s, too,” Lord Percy boyishly hooted. “Make the rounds. And, I’ve a yen to try my luck again in the Long Rooms.”
“Not too deep this time, Percy?” Lydia said, her face losing all animation, with a fretful expression.
“Last time, I garnered seventy thousand,” Percy boasted. “Now, had I been gambling deep, it might have been a million, by dawn. Do say you will join us, Sir Alan, as our guest for the evening. My word, I still wish to hear at least some of your past battles, even though they may bore poor Lydia to tears, all that sailing stuff, and manly doings.”
“Pooh, Percy, in Captain Lewrie’s case, I very much doubt if I could be bored,” Lydia rejoined; and there was yet another of her odd and encouraging looks, and a warm smile of amusement.
“Then I shall,” Lewrie swore. He gave his address at the Madeira Club, got theirs in Grosvenor Street (hellish-fashionable, that!) and a promise that they would coach round and collect him at 8 in the evening. A handshake with Lord Percy, a bow to Lydia, then once more a clasping of hands with her, and this time her fingers trailed slowly cross his palm as they let go, and her enigmatic smile.
Well, well, well! Lewrie thought, damned pleased with himself; Comin’ up in Society, am I? He had skirted round the fringes of the aristocracy in his childhood when they’d still had the house in St. James’s Square, and at his various public schools, then encountered a few more of the peerage in the Navy; in the main, he’d never been all that impressed or in awe of Lord Thing-Gummy types. They were either competent, or lacklustre bores, either likable dunces or rogues, or vicious little tyrants with no time to spare on “the lower orders.”
Lord Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, seemed to be a decent sort so far, and his sister…! How does one go about seducin’ her kind? he puzzled; Or would that be too aspirin’ for a lackey like me? Hmmm, he pondered further; bound t’be bony, and not much by way o’ tits, but.…
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Gad, yes, but Viscount Stangbourne gambles deep, and has a most uncanny knack o’ winnin’ most of the time,” Sir Hugo informed him once they set off in their cabriolet from the palace. “He can afford to… they’re swimmin’ in ‘tin.’ I’d advise ye t’stick to Shove-Ha’penny or bowls, for neither of us ever had a head for serious gaming.”
“A pound or two at Loo, perhaps,” Lewrie assured him, marvelling at how the cheery sunlight winked off his star.
“That’s what ye always promised, and how much o’ yer debts did I end up coverin’, what?”
“Then I’ll toady and cheer him on,” Lewrie replied. “His sister is rather interesting,” he added, striving for mild interest.
“The infamous Lydia? A scandalous baggage,” Sir Hugo snickered. “Fetchin’, I’ll allow, but… ye didn’t read about it? She was in all the papers, about three years ago.”
“What was it about?” Lewrie asked, a bit more intrigued.
“Her parents settled two thousand pounds a year on her when she came to her majority… the brother twice that ’til he inherited everything when they passed. The fortune hunters lined up by the battalion,” his father began to explain. That sum made Lewrie grunt in amazement; one could have a fine, gentlemanly life, in some style, too, on about three hundred a year… before the war, and the taxes, at least!
“She was hellish-hard to please, but finally wed at last, four years ago,” Sir Hugo continued. “The fellow, Lord Tidwell, was only a baron, below the Stangbournes in the peerage, but his title was an old one, and Percy’s only the third Viscount, d’ye see, though the groom’s people were nigh as well off.” Like any Englishman, Sir Hugo delighted in the doings of “The Quality” and was snobbish about the order of precedence in the peerage; there was some juicy gossip there for sure. Divorcement charges and counter-charges and testimony of adultery were printed, bound, and sold as mild pornography!