“No, I want us all to drink to Lucy Beauman,” Wyndham insisted, swaying to his feet. “I’ll play the upright man and break that little dell, though she wouldn’t be fit company at home without half a crown for socket-money. Unless Mister Lewrie here has already strummed with her, then I won’t go over a shilling.”
Alan tipped his wineglass and spilled it on the table. Keith did the same and they both rose together. “I shall speak for both of us, sir,” Keith said, almost grinding his teeth. “Such billingsgate about a fine young lady we would never drink to, even if she were unknown to us. That you slander a lady of our acquaintance is a shameful example of your lack of wit and manners. I trust your regiment is not known for it.” Keith kept a firm hand on Lewrie’s wrist as he spoke after seeing the flush of anger on his face.
“Good night, sirs,” Keith finished, almost dragging Lewrie off for the door. “Come on, damn you! I am ordering you, lieutenant to midshipman, not as your friend, you little idiot!” he whispered.
“I should have known the Navy would go all pious on us,” Wyndham sneered, flinging his wineglass at them. “Tawdry lot of Bartholomew Babies! Aye, drag his cowardly cooler out of this place before he might have to blaze with me. What he says he did, and what he really did, are two different things. Just like the Navy—” Wyndham guffawed.
“Warren, I am ordering you to sit down and shut up!” the captain said, grabbing Wyndham’s arm while the other lieutenants and ensigns looked on.
“Are you calling me a coward, sir?” Alan turned abruptly and shook off Ashburn’s hand.
“Talk of the wine table is no reason for meeting,” the little ensign said. “I am sure Warren does not really mean—”
“Don’t tell me anything, Ames!” Wyndham snarled.
“Being ill-received by the young lady in question is no reason to provoke a duel, either,” Ashburn said. “Perhaps his pride is pinching him. Let’s allow him to sleep it off, shall we?”
“Fuck you, you cod’s-head!” Wyndham said. “Yes, I think that Mister Lewrie is a coward! A coward and a liar and a man-fucking Molly, just like everybody else in the Navy is a bugger in disguise—”
“Warren!” from the ensign named Ames.
“And I think his precious Lucy Beauman is a poxy whore…”
“We need to meet, sir,” Alan replied icily in the shocked silence that followed Wyndham’s accusations. The onlookers gave a groan, whether of pain or delight it was hard to tell.
“Alan!” Ashburn barked in his best quarterdeck voice.
“No, Keith. There’s been enough,” Alan said, stepping back up to the table. “I, sir, consider you a piss-proud cully. You’re a butcher’s dog with no nutmegs for a real fighting regiment. You’re a bastardly gullion with a Cambridge fortune, and a great damme-boy with your fellow bucks, but you’re the pig-ignorant git of a threepenny upright…”
Alan had always been able to wound with the choice word, and he must have stung something in Wyndham’s background. The young man blazed up and, without thinking, slapped him hard across the face.
“Excellent,” Lewrie said. “A slur on my character, a slur on the innocence of a young lady, and striking a gentleman. The sooner the better, as far as I am concerned, sirs.”
“You will witness that he scoured me beyond all temperance,” Lieutenant Wyndham declared. “Captain O’Boyle, I request that you arrange this for me.”
“I must talk to the major, Warren,” O’Boyle muttered. “But I’ll tell you you’re a God-cursed fool for doing this.”
“Lieutenant Ashburn, would you negotiate for me?” Alan said.
“Aye, and what weapons would you prefer, Mister Lewrie?”
“Naval cutlasses,” Lewrie decided after a long moment.
“That’s no weapon for a gentleman to use. Why don’t we blaze?” Wyndham sneered.
“A man who would strike another can have no objections, can he?” Ashburn said. “Captain O’Boyle, your party has issued a mortal and grievous series of slanders, sir. The choice of weapons, and the place, is ours, is it not?”
“Aye, even by the Irish Code,” O’Boyle admitted.
“I shall communicate with you further, sir, after my principal and I have informed our commanding officers,” Ashburn promised.
“I shall await you, sir,” O’Boyle said with a bow.
* * *
There are 365 beaches on Antigua, one for every day of the year for a sybarite intent on enjoying the gifts of sun and wind and water. Lewrie’s coach rolled up to the low overlook at one of them on the north end of the island two days later, just at low tide, when the sand would be firm underfoot. He had with him Keith Ashburn, a naval surgeon, and Captain Osmonde of the Marines, formerly of Ariadne and now captain of Marines in the eighty-gun Telemachus. Osmonde had drilled Lewrie hard for those two days to get him in shape.
Wyndham and his party were already waiting; O’Boyle his second, a regimental surgeon and his friend Ames. There was also an Army officer from the garrison, a Major Overstreet, who would referee. There was a small fire burning, and the regimental surgeon’s tools and instruments were already boiling to lessen the shock of cold steel to the flesh of the loser.
“Admiral Matthews gave me a message, Mister Lewrie,” Osmonde said as he flicked some invisible dirt from his uniform after they had stepped down.
“Aye?” Alan asked, ice-cold and already very thirsty.
“While he deplores the idea of dueling, he deplores the insult to his niece even more. I doubt if your feelings matter to him … but he told me to tell you that his hopes are with you.”
“That was kind of him, sir,” Alan said, disappointed. “For a while I thought he would not allow us to meet.”
“I think their commander tipped the scales, smug little bastard. Thought Miss Beauman was a common dell, no matter who her uncle was.” Osmonde laughed without humor. “The lad’s built like a young bull.”
He indicated the enemy below on the beach—Lieutenant Wyndham was a thick and stocky fellow, bluff and hard-looking.
“Somewhat of a duellist. Fought two with pistols, killed his man both times. Only once with a blade, won it but no fatality.”
“You do little to reassure me, sir,” Alan said. A servant offered him a mug of small beer, which he drank at greedily.
“Keep nothing on your stomach,” Osmonde advised. “It will sour on you soon enough and turn heavy as lead.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Wet your lips and tongue but don’t swallow much. I know that thirst, boy, but you can have all you want to drink once this is over,” Osmonde cautioned. “Hopefully…”
“Aye, sir,” nodding, hoping and praying that was so.
“One thing in your favor I have learned,” Osmonde said as they descended the overlook to the beach. “Your foe is very fond of the bottle. Puts it down like small beer, and he’s spent the last five weeks aboard ship doing nothing but getting cup-shot and lying about. He’s been ashore less than a week, and the heat is affecting him. Now you’re recovered from the Yellow Jack, you’ve been riding hard, fencing hard, kept yourself fitter than him. I’d wear him down. Fend him off, ’til he begins to drag. Were you fencing with the usual choice of weapon, he might still have the stronger and quicker wrist, but a navy cutlass will wear him down fast enough.”
“Yes,” Alan intoned, barely hearing Osmonde for the rush of blood in his head and the sound of his breath rushing in and out so full of life. Why did I want to defend the silly mort, he thought queasily. I’ve no honor, and everybody seems to know it.