"Well, there was the war, ma'am. They were pretty desperate, you know." Alan chuckled in mock deprecation.
"Yes, tell us what you did after we lost track of you, Alan," Caroline urged, totally ignoring her portion of Dover sole and wine.
"Urn, Battle of St. Kitts under Hood. And then our ship Desperate fought a French twenty-eight-gunned frigate and took her as prize the same day," Alan said, sounding as if it was nothing much to take note of, but secretly glad to have a chance to boast. He'd had few enough in the last months-half of London had tales of battle and bravery and the populace was heartily sick of hearing them by then. "Passed the examination board right after, and was made first lieutenant into the Shrike brig. Made a nuisance of ourselves along the Cuban coasts… took a fair amount of prizes. Ran guns to the Creek and Seminolee Indians. Ended up anhissi to the White Clan…"
"The devil you say!" Governour burst out. "Of their fire, ey?"
'Took a Foreign Office party up the Ochlockonee and the Chatahootchee to get the Indians to side with us against Spain if we landed troops, but nothing came of it," Alan said, frowning between sips of wine. "Got ambushed by the coastal Apa-lachee. Had an exciting hour or so, 'til the Seminolee showed up and rescued us. Then we got stuck in at Turk's Island in the Bahamas to retake it from the French. That didn't work, either. My captain was wounded pretty sore, and Hood gave me command temporarily, really. The war ended two weeks later, and we brought her home to pay off with the first batch of ships."
"You actually commanded a ship!" Caroline exclaimed. "Alan, I cannot imagine! You remember, mother, how masterful he was, how nautical, the morning we sailed down the Cape Fear? 'Quartermaster, half a point to'-to what-you-may-call-it-'helm up and hands to the braces'? Lord, Alan, I knew you were a competent sailor even then, as a master's mate. But to run a ship of your own, well!"
"For the shortest commission in naval history, I expect," he replied, almost glowing inside on the warmth of their regard. "But I also expect Governour and Burgess have more interesting adventures, and I'm dying to hear them. Allow me to sport us all to another brace of this rather good wine, and tell it all to me."
He stayed long past his intended departure time, partly because the Chiswick brothers indeed had exciting tales to relate. Of how they had used the remnants of their North Carolina Loyalist Rifle battalion alongside depot troops and recovered sick from Simcoe's Queen's Rangers around New York for a few months as scouts and raiders to keep the Rebels on the hop, then had been trans-shipped to Charleston to defend the approaches to the city from Rebel probes. Partly because he was with Caroline Chiswick, who had been beautiful before, but was now so incredibly, deliriously handsome.
"And you stay in London how long?" Alan asked as they stood on the icy street once more, whistling up another coach to take them back to their lodgings.
"We may spend two weeks at the outside," Governour informed him. There probably wasn't money enough to allow them to rent rooms and buy food for longer. Burgess would have to be settled in that time, or he would have to return to Guildford and take what little the countryside had to offer.
"We must see each other again, sir," Caroline insisted, from the frame of the same dark red velvet, hooded traveling coat; she'd worn in Wilmington in 1781. It was a little shiny in places from too much wear, but still presentable enough, and it made Alan feel an urge to buy her a new one, a cloak fine enough to suit her, and what he felt she deserved from life.
"Call on us, do, Mister Lewrie," Mrs. Chiswick agreed. "We lodge in St. Clements Street. Oh dear, I forget the house number, but it's a decent enough house, I'm told. Governour knows it."
" Panton Street for me," Alan said. "I'd never be able to afford it but for Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews and his wife. You remember I wrote of them, Caroline."
He and Governour exchanged addresses while Burgess managed to flag down a coach, one of the few that would still risk horses on the streets that were now icing over under the constant drizzle of sleet. Caroline and her mother huddled for warmth to one side by the door.
"Goodnight, and thank you for the wine, Alan. Do call on us!"
"Aye, I shall," Alan told Mrs. Chiswick again, then turning to Caroline, said, "We have so much to catch up on."
Which sentiment Caroline agreed with heartily, and gave him a last smile of invitation, and a firm nod of her head as they said their goodnights as well. Then the coach trundled off, leaving Lewrie to trot home on his own, swaddled up in the voluminous dark blue watchcoat he'd never thought he'd find a use for back in the West Indies.
His lodgings were one pair-of-stairs up from the main floor in the front of the house. Once a substantial mansion, Lady Maude Matthews had turned it into sets of rooms to let. For a very decent fifty guineas a year, about half what Lewrie suspected it was really worth, he got a sitting room with fireplace and mantel, and two whole windows-the Window Tax be damned-that overlooked Panton Street, a fashionable address for foreigners, secretaries and under-ministers to overseas embassies, well-heeled younger blades such as himself; home, too, to a regiment of mistresses. The set of rooms bent in an L, with a bed-chamber to the rear along the outer wall, and from a tiny window, in that room, he could look down upon Oxenden Street, and farther down to the Haymarket and St. James' Market. It was inclined to be a trifle noisy in the mornings, but he'd learned by then to sleep through almost any din, as long as he wasn't at sea. Civilian noises and alarums meant nothing to a weary sailor who'd developed the habit of trotting (or crawling) up his own stairs at "first sparrow-fart" every morning and caulking like a sodden log until noon.
He stepped into the sitting room, where a small sea-coal fire burned in the grate, and the embers and flames were reflected into the room by a brass back-plate. It was the only light in the room until his manservant Cony woke up at his entrance and used a paper spill to light him a candle or two.
"Mistress Fenton still here, Cony?" Alan asked as he shrugged off his watchcoat and went to thaw out before the fire.
"No, she ain't, sir," Cony was forced to admit. "She did come, but when the church bells went ten o' the clock, she went on 'ome, sir."
Cony shyly handed Alan a folded and wax-sealed letter that had been waiting on the silver tray by the door.
"She lef ya this, sir," Cony told him. "I 'spect you'd be wantin' a brandy'r somethin' warmin', sir?"
"Aye, thankee, Cony. I'd admire that," Alan said, drawing a well-preserved William and Mary chair he'd found at a second-hand shop closer to the fire to read it. Alan Lewrie had gotten too many notes or letters from women to imagine that it was good news. Which explained his waiting until he had a brandy in hand and one sip in his belly for fortification before he broke the seal and unfolded it.
"Ah," he said after a first, quick, perusal. Cony was thankfully busy in the other room, putting a warming pan into his bed and building up the fire in the second fireplace so Lewrie could retire and undress without turning blue from exposure.
If it had tears splashed on it, it couldn't be more plaintive. This wasn't the first time Alan had so shamefully ignored her, he read, and he had to admit Dolly was right. There were so many other things to do in a city as great as London. So many interesting people to hear speak, edifying exhibits to visit. Theatres, dramas and comedies to gawk at. Oranges to be bought and hurled at poor players. So many young women to bull.
She is getting a little long in tooth, Alan told himself. His putative mistress was getting on for thirty. There were the first hints of wrinkles around her mouth, kissable as it was. The first crow's feet around her peculiarly dark green eyes, bright as they were still. Or perhaps, it was because she was available for his pleasure so little of the time.