"Oh, for God's sake, take your ease!" Sir Hugo snapped. There, that tone in his voice was more like the scheming, petulant bastard that Lewrie had grown to know and despise. "You must be stifling in that neck-cloth."
The khitmatgars were back with another load of goodies to set upon the tray table. Wine and spirits, clay pipes and tobacco humidor, a bowl of fruit and some candied dates. Even some Persian muck they called halvah. Gauzy, diaphanous insect curtains were lowered over the wide windows to the balcony, whilst from outside…
i
"For God's sake, a band?" Alan grimaced as a set of native musicians hit their stride with something plaintively twanging, ululating, throbbing and thumping on sitars, flutes and madals. "You do live well, I'll allow you that… Sir Hugo."
"Say 'father,' do, Alan," Sir Hugo grunted.
"Mine arse on a bandbox!" Alan snapped back.
"Have it your own way, but sit the hell down and have some wine, at least," Sir Hugo pressed in a reasonable tone.
Alan heaved a heavy sigh and untied his neck-cloth, sank down to sit cross-legged on the cushions and took a glass of claret.
There were a couple of tall candelabras made of brass between them, elaborate things fashioned from the arms and bodies of Hindoo gods and goddesses-thank the Lord most of 'em had eight or ten arms to hold that many candles. Off to either side, there were shallow charcoal braziers, now fuming with sandalwood incense amid some other aromas.
"Keeps the mosquitos away," Sir Hugo yawned. "Sandalwood, citron and patchouli. Christ knows what else. Better not to ask."
"If I'm delaying your retiring…" Alan offered, impatient to go.
"Not at all. I can still keep up with the young bucks of the first head." Sir Hugo smiled lazily, puffing on his pipe once more.
"You always could, I grant you," Alan agreed. "But then, you were damn near a charter-member of the Hell-Fire Club back in your early days, weren't you?" he concluded with a suitably arch sneer.
"And when did you become a regular churchgoer, my boy?" Sir Hugo replied. "God, if I only had penny to the pound of all the blunt I spent bailing you out of trouble, I'd still be a rich man!"
"Wasn't my caterwauling got you in debtor's prison," Alan sulked. "Wasn't me damn near press-ganged me into the Navy so you could lay your hooks on the Lewrie fortune."
"And how is Grandmother Lewrie these days? Mistress Nuttbush now?"
"Alive and kicking, spry as a pup."
"Her kind always was harder to kill than breadroom rats."
"Sounds like you considered it."
"Now you do me too much injustice, Alan m'dear." "Oh, please!" Alan said, starting to rise, but Sir Hugo reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm.
"Bide awhile, son," he said, and for once, he sounded as if he was begging. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby never begged. Alan made up his mind to stay for a while longer, if only to see him beg again.
"How can you call me son?" Alan shot out, sure of his superior position over the older man for the first time in his life. "Aye, you sired me, that's true, but when it came to being a father to me, you had your chance, and all I ever got from you was a cold shoulder, a snarl now and then. I wasn't a son, I was an investment! Your hole-card to take the Lewrie trick once 1 was of an age to inherit and granny passed over. And soon as it looked like happening, you packed me off with that crimp Captain Bevan and had me off at sea, so I'd never even know there was a Lewrie family to inherit from! You told me my mother Elisabeth was a whore, dead at my birthing, that I had no family other than you, God pity me! You and Pilchard forging documents left, right and center to get what you wanted…"
"Needed's more like it," Sir Hugo confessed with a deprecating shrug and a sip of his brandy.
"Yes, you always needed money," Alan pressed on harder, trying to get a rise out of him, to puncture that slightly sad, but maddeningly calm demeanor. Damme, he thought, does the old bastard truly not have a sense of honor to shame? "And there was Belinda and Gerald, their inheritance you squandered before they came of age, too. How was your marriage to the Cockspur widow, your second wife?"
"Bloody depressing most of the time. She was a termagant twit." Sir Hugo chuckled slightly, and gave Alan a rueful grimace and a shake of his head in less than fond remembrance. "And how are Belinda and Gerald faring?"
"What the…" Alan was rendered incapable of cogent speech by the man's sang-froid. "As if you care!"
"You're right, I don't, but I thought it would satisfy my curiosity about them," Sir Hugo replied, tippling another sip of brandy. "Bloody awful children, right from the start."
"Yet… yet, you treated them as the rightful heirs, and me as the barely tolerated… bastard!" Alan barked. "Well, Goddamn you!"
"Of course I did. Agnes' bloody sisters were still alive to plague me, and to all intents and purposes, you were the little bastard, the by-blow of a youthful indiscretion. You wanted for nothing. What else did you desire? A damned pony and cart?"
"Yes, yes I bloody well did!" Alan howled with rage. "I wanted"-Alan was so full of rage, of tears, that he had to get out of the place before he killed the man!-"I wanted a father! I wanted a mother!" He shot to his feet to flee.
"You had a mother!" Sir Hugo roared, getting to his feet and seizing Alan, who struggled to get away. "She died. And, God help you, you had me for a father, such as I was." "You told me she was a whore!" Alan screamed. "She was!" Sir Hugo screamed back. "Know why I ran off with her jewelry in Holland? Because I caught her in bed with another officer of my regiment who'd made the crossing with us after we eloped!"
"You lying hound!"
"You've only heard your granny's side, boy!" Sir Hugo ranted. "How sweet and innocent she was. How I seduced her for her money and left her without a penny. Well, let me tell you, if she'd lived, I'd have lost count of how many times she'd have put cuckold's horns on me. God help me, I'd be here in India after all, 'cause it'd be cheaper'n trying to get a bill of divorce through Parliament! I might have ended up on the gallows for killing her and her latest! Do… you… under
stand… me… you little… jingle-brains?"
The last was punctuated with some massive shaking that almost loosened Alan's teeth in his head each time his jaw snapped shut.
"Elisabeth could be the sweetest, liveliest, most alluring damn woman ever I did see, Alan," Sir Hugo relented at last, easing his tone and his grip. "But I found out I couldn't trust her out of my sight! Oh, we went to Holland, yes. Her daddy Dudley Lewrie cut her off without a farthing. So we lived on my Army pay and what little was left of my family estate after my elder brother got through with it. Mortgaged to the bloody hilt! And do you really think I wanted to enter the Army when I was sixteen? Like bloody Hell, I did! I didn't get much of a choice, either."
"But that doesn't excuse…" Alan almost sobbed.
"I know, son, nothing excuses it," Sir Hugo shuddered. "I've treated you like dirt your whole life. Thought I was doing well by you, by my own lights. And nothing's going to make up for it. But I'd like you to at least understand me. If you're going to despise me to the end of time, then at least do it for the right reasons, if nothing else."
"You miserable bastard!" Alan hissed, on the verge of weeping, of falling on his father's shoulder and crying his eyes out. Either that or fetching a curved tulwar, a Persian sword, off the wall and hacking his head off. Sir Hugo put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a soft pat-perhaps as close as he would ever get to empathy or comforting.