The King's Privateer Read online

  “Devil I am, young sir, devil I am,” Sir Onsley maundered. “I say no more’n the plain truth. I’m a plain old tarpaulin hand meself, not given to pissin’ down some young’un’s back for no cause.”

  Oh, spare us, Alan almost groaned! Sir Onsley’s flagship Glatton hadn’t stirred from her moorings once in a full three years’ commission, and had been rumored to be hard aground on a reef of beef bones. It had been his small ships and tenders to the flag that had done the dirty work against the French, Spanish and Dutch and had reaped Sir Onsley a princely one-eighth of their prize money, which had sent him home rich as Croesus to a place on the Board of Admiralty, where he’d drowsed the last three years of his career away.

  Still, he was a useful old stick, Alan thought, and kept his expression respectful and admiring. Who knows, Alan might actually have need of his good offices in future, slim as that chance might be now there was peace, and nine-tenths of the Navy laid up to rot.

  “Been to Sam Hood about this yet, Mister Lewrie?”

  “Not yet, Sir Onsley,” Alan replied. “I did write to him, just a short note. No reply so far. I doubt he recalls me, fond as he might have seemed after Turk’s Island. I’m sure he passed it off as one more half-pay officer looking for employment for himself.”

  “There’s devilment afoot still in this world, young sirs,” the old admiral warned them, laying a thick, be-ringed finger to the side of his rather large and drink-veined nose. “Losin’ this war’s encouraged the Frogs no end. Their Navy showed rather well in the East. I know not why the nation feels so secure. All I hear up in the House of Lords is deficits and bankruptcy, hand-wringin’ and budget-cuttin’. Meantimes, they’re over there on the Continent just diggin’ like the furtive rats they are, looking for an openin’ to throw us over for good and all, damme their blood. And heroes such as you pair sit on the beach, twiddlin’ your thumbs, instead of being allowed a chance to stop their frightful business wherever it emerges.”

  Alan stifled a yawn, covering it with another sip of brandy. He paid court to the Matthewses at least twice a fortnight when they were in London, to keep his low rent on his set of rooms, and to lay his ear to the ground for any hint of great affairs that could help him prosper. He’d heard this screed, chapter and verse, too many times before to rise to it this time. He nodded sagely, though, which Sir Onsley took for much the same hearty approval as earlier.

  “Lewrie there’s a nacky one, the sort of young feller who knows I speak the truth,” Sir Onsley pointed out to Burgess. “By God, Mister Chiswick, sir, if Alan’ll speak for you, that’s good enough for me. I can’t promise you an easy place. I’ll not say more now. Too many plans afoot at the moment. But a place, I can promise you, and there’s my word on’t for sure!”

  “That’s marvelous, Sir Onsley!” Burgess gasped. This interview had seemed the last slim thread of hope to save him from bringing in the sheaves for his uncle Phineas, and Alan had privately assured him it was bound to be disappointing at the end, but suddenly here was this word of assured employment. “As a serving officer, sir? Pardon me if I inquire at least a little.”

  “With the East India Company,” Sir Onsley nodded. “I’m on the board. I’m privy to certain … nay, it’ll be discovered to you later. I should think at least as a lieutenant, Mister Chiswick. Tell me now, and tell me true if you’re a mind for it. And a heart for it. It’ll be damned hot and dusty duty, halfway round the world and like as not it’ll be sickness, bugs and flies, and God knows when you’ll lay eyes on your dear family again in this life. But ’tis a duty like as not’ll confound our foes better than anything you’d accomplish in a lifetime of regular soldierin’. Are you game for it?”

  “I am indeed, Sir Onsley!” Burgess piped up. “Lead me to it!”

  “Toppin’!” Sir Onsley shouted back, wincing a little at the end as he moved his gouty foot and suffered a spasm of agony. “I’ll speak to the Board tomorrow. Leave me your bona fides and all that to show them. Irregular … skirmisher … Indian fighter. Just the sort of lad we need. Mister Lewrie, I do believe Fate sent you to me with young Mister Chiswick’s plaint at exactly the right time.”

  “And grateful I am you could do my friend a service, Sir Onsley,” Alan replied, flat aback at this energetic development. He had not seen the old twit that bombastic, or awake, in years. And Alan could hardly wait until they could get back to St. Clement Street to tell the rest of the Chiswick family. Most especially Caroline. She would be impressed to no end that it was Alan’s influence and connections that had turned the winning trick for her brother.

  It would disappoint her, though, that he would have to sail around the world, into that land of pagan Hindoos she had feared so much, where Burgess would be exposed to so many cruel diseases and chances to die a young, untimely death. Matter of fact, Alan wondered if he’d done Burgess much of a favor at all. Sir Onsley was sober enough to not let slip what sort of devilish danger this new duty was, but it didn’t sound like anything Alan would want a part of, not if he had at least five minutes’ warning, and a head start. Some new wrinkle on what Lieutenant Lilycrop of Shrike had termed “war on the cheap,” dreamed up by some crystal-ball gazer, map reader and quill-pusher who had no idea about what life was like outside his own doorway, much less how deadly it could be for the men on the shitten end of the stick a world away.

  “Mum’s the word, my lads, until you hear from me by letter,” Sir Onsley cautioned. “But stand ready to shift yourselves at a moment’s notice. No man is to hear word of this appointment.”

  “You have my solemn oath, Sir Onsley,” Burgess promised proudly, which oath Alan had to chorus as well.

  “Damme, but Caroline is going to kill me,” Alan sighed once they were in a hired coach on their way home. “I had no idea things would turn out like this, Burgess.”

  “I shall be forever in your debt, Alan,” Burgess assured him, taking his hand and giving it a hearty squeeze of gratitude. He was all but piping his eyes in joy at his sudden salvation from civilian dullness. “Don’t fear what Caroline thinks.”

  “Well, he didn’t make it sound like Canterbury Fair, you know. God, what have I gotten you into? If anything happens to you, and it sounds hellish like it might, I’ll never forgive myself. And neither would your dear sister,” Alan objected.

  “You’ve given me the world, Alan!” Burgess said with a catch in his voice, his face aglow like a martyr promised crucifixion before sunup. “Oh, ’tis fine for Governour to farm and pore over the accounts. He’s set up with a vicar’s daughter in the county. But for me, Alan … you remember when you took me aboard your frigate during the siege as a guest of the wardroom? Just the smell of a ship …”

  “Foul as they smell,” Alan drolly pointed out.

  “The smell of distance,” Burgess waxed lyrical. “Of adventure in faraway places. Hemp and tar, salt and spices …”

  “Pea-soup farts and rotting cheese,” Alan said, scowling.

  “To lay eyes on the East Indies, to live a life of new things to taste and smell, my God, how wondrous it’s going to be!” Burgess went on in his rapture. “Oh, it’ll be hard, I know. And it’ll like as not be dangerous. But the chance for glory! More’n most people’d ever suspect! You must know, I’m not cut out to be a farmer. Before the Revolution, I’d half a mind to run off and trade with the Cherokee over the Appalachians. To see what there was to see, cross mountains and rivers, all the way to the other ocean. And now you’ve given me my chance, Alan. I’ll break free. Now I’ll know what you felt as a sailor. You do not know how much I’ve sometimes envied you your life as a Sea Officer.”

  “Just as long as you do come back a chicken-nabob,” Alan said, realizing there was nothing he could say to dissuade Burgess from making a total fool of himself. “And when you do fetch home all those diamonds and rubies, better tote along a small sack for me as well. I mean, damme, who’d have thought old Sir Onsley would have a place for you? I warned you going in, it was a slim hope, a clerking po
sition at best. This, though … well, maybe you should think about it …”

  “I’d have never forgiven you, for certain, if that was all I could aspire to,” Burgess cracked, thumping him on the knee. “Damme, you should be glad for me, Alan. Glad as I am.”

  “Well, if it pleases you, Burge, there’s nothing more I can say,” Alan surrendered. How could he tell him he thought the lad was not cut out for desperate doings, any more than he was cut out for farming? How do you tell a friend you think him too starry-eyed to prosper?

  “Alan Lewrie, I should despise you!” Caroline hissed at him harshly, once the celebration had begun. She took him by the hand and led him to sit with her on a ratty older sofa away from the others, who were singing and mixing a large bowl of lemons, sugar, hot water and gin for a gala punch.

  “Caroline, I swear I had no idea …” he began. It was the first time he’d ever seen her angry at anything or anyone, and it was most disconcerting to be the target of her anger.

  “This … this hush-hush adventure you’ve gotten poor Burge into,” she whispered. “No word of what it was? No inkling of how much danger there’ll be?”

  “None. Only that he’s to keep mum and be ready to be received in a few days, one way or another,” Alan told her sadly, feeling just a trifle sheepish under her hot glare. “I was all amort that the old fool’d offer anything at all, much less something like this, I tell you truly. And Burgess didn’t have to accept it so quickly, either. He could have asked for a few days to think it over, but no, he had to just leap up and go all shiny-eyed over it. Don’t take it out on me, I beg you, Caroline. I did what Governour and your mother bade me. I used what influence I could. How was I to know it’d turn out like this?”

  “But so far away from us,” Caroline insisted. “With the chance we’ll never see him again in this life! Oh, I know it isn’t your fault, Alan, but … you must see how frightened I am for him. He’s always been so …”

  “Unprepared for how cruel life can be?” Alan whispered back.

  “You recognized it, too?” she gasped, taking his hand and wringing it like a washcloth, pressing his hand to her troubled breast, surely unaware in her bereavement of what she was doing.

  God Almighty, Alan thought, feeling his innards lurch at the touch of her. I could spend the rest of the day like this!

  “He’ll go under, sure as Fate, I know it,” she said, weeping softly.

  “It’s what he wants, Caroline,” Alan told her. “Better one chance at an adventurous life than drudging on a farm and feeling trapped. He told me as much. God pity him, he envies me all the shit … sorry … I’ve been through. All the exciting and exotic places I’ve sailed. And he may prosper. I’ve seen others do so, in the Navy. God help me, I prospered, and I didn’t know a futtock shroud from a horse’s fetlock when I first began.”

  “But you’re the sort of man who does prosper, Alan,” she told him, lowering her hand, and his, to her lap before her mother noticed. “If only I knew there was someone as courageous and steady as you to look after him out there in India, or wherever he’s going to be.”

  “Me?” Alan tried a smile. “Mine arse on a bandbox! I’m not as steady as you think. No one is, outside their memoirs.”

  “Well, I think you are,” she whispered. “So sure and capable. As you were when I first met you. When you organized us into your ship to escape Wilmington. Momma in her vapors and poor Daddy half out of his mind with grief, and poor me so weak and helpless.”

  “I never thought you weak and helpless,” Alan assured her. “I have always considered you the most resourceful and clever of females, Caroline.”

  That softened her up right smartly.

  “Say you forgive me. Please,” he beseeched.

  “Oh, Alan, I do forgive you,” she relented, and gave him a wee smile, sad and wan though it was. “He’ll not have to purchase this commission. Which shall please Uncle Phineas. If it comes to fruition. There is a possibility it may not, isn’t there? There’s many a slip t’wixt the cup and the lip. Pray God they may choose a more experienced officer in his stead!”

  “Which would crush poor Burgess, though,” Alan sighed. “And he’d be right back where he started. I know you can’t stay in London hoping much longer. He’d be back to counting sheep. It would kill him.”

  “No, we can’t,” she agreed. “I must own to you, Alan, that I hoped you would be here. That we might regain our acquaintance. Your letters meant so much to me. Your … memory. Oh, pray do come to see us down in Surrey! Now that we have had a chance to speak almost daily, and to be together like this, I remember all over again how much I have delighted in your companionship. I would so enjoy you being our guest in the country. When the weather is better. And we could write each other in the meantimes. Could we not, Alan?” she suggested sweetly.

  “Nothing would give me greater delight as well, Caroline,” he told her. “I’ve never known anyone I like talking to more than you.”

  “Come take a cup of cheer, you two!” Governour ordered from the far end of the room. There was no more privacy for them. Caroline wiped her face quickly with a handkerchief from her sleeve and put on a happy expression for her family.

  “We must dine together tonight,” Mrs. Chiswick insisted, half gone on a large glass of gin punch already. “It’ll be sad even so, knowing my little Burge will be going off among the heathens, but we’ll know he’s doing something for King and Country. As he did so nobly during the Rebellion.” She stifled her fears—almost.

  With your shield or on it, like the Spartans, Alan thought grimly. Why don’t they all fall down bawling instead of acting so proud, he wondered? God knows, I’d be into the sackcloth and ashes by now.

  “And our benefactor, Alan Lewrie,” Governour proposed. “He must be guest of honor tonight!”

  They raised their glasses and toasted him, making him feel even more a total fool than he had a moment before.

  “Make no fuss over me,” Alan suggested. “And I wouldn’t feel right, anyway. Spend your time with Burgess. Sir Onsley didn’t say when the summons would come. Besides, I cannot.”

  “Alan!” Caroline cried in sudden disappointment.

  “I have a dinner invitation already that I cannot break,” he told them, setting his glass down. “But I hope you shall let me treat you to supper another night, once we’ve learned what Burgess is down for. Would you allow that?”

  Caroline saw him down to the first floor, and dismissed the house’s servant to help him on with his watchcoat herself, tugging his collar snug about him and smoothing the fabric to lie flat.

  “I wish you could have stayed, Alan. I begrudge every minute you are away from … from our family, now we’re reunited,” she said, with a hitch in her voice. “I … we feel so much gratitude, and admiration for you, for so many things you’ve done for us.”

  “I could not, not tonight, Caroline. I fear for him, too, and I couldn’t have sat there with him.”

  “I understand,” she replied softly. “I shall do my weeping in private, too.”

  She raised her arms and he took her in his arms, holding her snug and safe, stroking her back as she almost gave way to her emotions, whispering “there, there” to comfort her if he was able and secretly enjoying the closeness, and the feel of her slimness against him. How tiny her waist was, how neat her breasts felt. How sweet and clean she smelt: her hair and her slight hint of Hungary Water scent.

  Caroline peeked over her shoulder to see if any of the servants of the lodging house were about, then turned her face up to his and closed her eyes. With an offer like that, Alan could not turn it down.

  He kissed her. As gently and as shyly as he had just that once years before. Her lips parted just a little and her clean breath mingled with his. Then her eyes flew open and her arms locked behind his neck, pulling him down to her and there was nothing shy about it.

  “I must ask your forgiveness once more,” Alan muttered, shaken to his core by this entrancing creature a
ll over again as she fell away slightly, dropped back from tiptoe and leaned back to regard him with such a smile of wonder and delight.

  “Mine arse on a bandbox, Alan Lewrie,” she said, grinning, and then whispered with secret glee, “Between us, I pray there shall never be anything to forgive.”

  “My God!” he gasped.

  “All the English ladies tell me it’s most improper to be quite as forward as I am,” she added, laughing. “I’m but a crude rustic from America, don’t you know. Do sup with us tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Spend your every waking moment with us. With me. I would enjoy it so awfully much, before we’re parted again.”

  “You’d be scandalized,” Alan gawped. “Governour would run me through!”

  “I trust to your gentlemanly nature, Alan. And to your sense of decency. What harm to my good name could you ever do me?”

  God help the poor mort, Alan thought. If you only knew I had no sense of decency, you’d run screaming behind your momma’s skirts!

  “Lord knows, I’d think of something. Sooner or later,” he admitted at last. He tried to pass it off as a jape.

  “I would trust to the affection you already show for me,” she said with such a solemn little face it almost made his ears ring. “As I trust how admirable I hold you in mine.”

  One more quick kiss, and then he had to go, out into another freezing cold afternoon, but warmed right through by her regard and the feel of her lingering upon him.

  “Damme, she’s the sweetest, dearest young thing!” he said to himself as he trudged along the street, dodging darting youngsters, mongers and traders. “Oh, if only … what? Christ on a cross, Lewrie, you’re cunt-struck! Next thing you know, you’ll be thinking of asking for her hand! And haven’t I done enough to her family already?”

  “Dear Alan,” Lady Delia cooed as he entered her morning room and took the proferred hand to kiss. She stroked his face with a hot-house rose she’d been toying with.