Troubled Waters Page 8

  "Ah, no, thankee," Lewrie demurred. "Not before the ceremony's done'd be best. They're in a pet? At logger-heads, or . . . ?"

  At one time, Caroline had been all Christian sympathy and welcoming, doting "step-mother" to Sophie, when she'd first arrived from Gibraltar. But, once those anonymous "you must know of your husband's doings" letters had come, and kept coming, and had suggested that he and Sophie had been lovers, Caroline had turned spiteful on the girl, which was why Sophie had fled Anglesgreen in tears of betrayed trust, and ended up with Lewrie's father, the most unimaginable "port in the storm," for Sir Hugo was known far and wide as an infamous lecher and . "beard-splitting" rakehell. It was Caroline's duty to stand in lieu of her real mother at such a time as Sophie's wedding, and to every outward sign, she was fulfilling that role, but. . . what she actually thought was anyone's guess.

  Lewrie took a dithering step closer to the bedrooms.

  "Suit yourself," Sir Hugo said with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair and crossed one knee-booted leg over the other. " 'Tis not a shrieking pet, thankee Jesus. Last-minute 'where's me pearl drops?'—I gather—a general bout of the 'fantods.' Women's nerves," he scoffed. "So . . . now you've met the Langlies, what was your impression?"

  "Not the 'Chaw-Bacon Country-Puts' I expected," Lewrie said as he made the wise decision to seat himself at the table with his father. "So gracious and straight-forward, the French'd call 'em suave. I do imagine, do we dine 'em in back home, they'll even eat with knives and forks, as mannerly as kiss my hand."

  "And, did they goggle when they clapped eyes on you?" Sir Hugo asked with a snicker.

  "Like greetin' a crocodile, aye," Lewrie told him, chuckling in spite of his own twangy nerves. He'd not had that much experience at getting people married off, could barely recall his own, and getting Anthony Langlie and Sophie de Maubeuge "long-spliced" was as demanding a proposition as arming, rigging, and commissioning a warship. And, as pleasing an occasion as it was, it took time away from seeing to that proper commissioning of HMS Savage; kept him pent ashore whilst awaiting the Beaumans' arrival, was a day stolen from possible escape on the King's Business once Savage was able to sail. . . !

  "Well, won't be a patch on what the Langlies think, when they clap eyes on me, haw haw," Sir Hugo said with an evil little smile.

  "You'll do nothing to spoil the . . . ?" Lewrie fretted. He'd seen his father in action before; his eyes glittered something Satanic!

  "I will simply be my usual self," Sir Hugo archly replied. "God help us, then," Lewrie muttered under his breath, for his Corinthian sire, despite his sterling success in the field in Indian Army service, the nabob's pile of plunder he'd fetched home, and his long-ago knighthood for bravery during the Seven Years' War to scrub the smuts off his repute among the "better sorts," had been a member of Lord Sandwich's Hell-Fire Club in his early days, and had whored and rantipoled with the strumpets and "bare-back riders" in the undercroft cells of Medmenham Abbey, before the club had been exposed and broken up. Indeed, so eager a member was he that, after a night or two of swilling, gorging, and "putting the leg over," Sir Hugo had been one of the few orgyasts who rose Sunday morning to attend the "Divine Services" that Lord Sandwich, in "dominee ditto" attire, preached against fornication and other deadly sins. . . mostly to the hundreds of farm cats that his labourers would herd into the church to improve their own amoral natures!

  And, despite the good service Sir Hugo had rendered the Crown in the field during the Nore Mutiny at Sheerness, people would gossip and goggle him, women gasp behind their fans (whether in disgust or carnal curiosity, it was sometimes hard to tell), men cut him "direct" or displayed taut grins of envy, to this very day, for once a rogue, always a rogue; an unsavable sinner bound to Hell on the fast coach, or the man one might like to spend an evening with, just to pick up some pointers!

  Least he's turned out proper, Lewrie told himself as he turned a leery eye on his father; damme if he ain't sober, too! Mostly.

  To match the uniformed naval members of the wedding, Sir Hugo had donned his very best Army uniform; a smartly tailored red coat all adrip with gilt lace and gilded chain gimp, lace and gilt buttons up the sleeves above the blue cuffs; blue facings and collar with gilt-outlined button holes, atop a scarlet waist-sash, and breeches, shirt and waist-coat as white as snow. There was also the star of the Order of the Garter, and the cross-chest sash that went with it. Sitting on the table between them was a cocked hat the size of a watermelon, just as laced with gold trim and gilt cords as his coat, and a gold-bound black silk cockade on its left-hand forward face.

  At his hip, the sly old rogue sported not the usual hundred-guinea straight small-sword like everyone else, but a Moghul tulwar, reputedly one he had taken off the corpse of a Rajput rajah whom he'd chopped to chautney sauce. It was a short sabre with a shiny Damascene blade, but so studded with pearls, emeralds, and rubies that it was worth a rajah's ransom in its own right, and Lewrie hadn't seen a gaudier one in Zachariah Twigg's vast collection at Spyglass Bungalow when he'd been forced to ride up to consult the old cut-throat a year before. Gilt hilt and hand-guard, an engraved and gold-inlaid blade, sheathed in a bright-steel scabbard with gold (not gilt) throat and drag, with even more inlays, engravings, and inset gems. Pretty as it was, it was no toy, and was as keen-edged and dangerous as a barber's razor.

  And, of course, Sir Hugo also sported a tight-curled white peruke with short queue, for his own hair was mostly a thing of the past, and his nigh-bare pate was now age-spotted. All in all, did one meet him on a daytime street, and be unaware of his scurrilous nature, one might be mightily impressed . . . almost to the point of gambling with him, or loaning him money!

  There came the thuds of travelling chests being shut, a light patter of soft-soled shoes, then the bedroom door was flung open, and Caroline emerged, followed not a tick later by the bride, and a brace of maid-servants, one a stout and red-faced country girl from Anglesgreen who did for his wife, and a slimmer, darker, but just as shiny-faced and beaming maid-servant whom Sophie had engaged in London, all cooing and twittering at the joy of the occasion, and how splendidly the bride had been arrayed, how radiant she was at that instant. "Sophie, Sophie, Sophie," Lewrie commented as he and Sir Hugo got to their feet, "give ye joy of the day, my dear! And, allow me to say how absolutely lovely ye are!"

  "Merci. . . thank you, Captain Lewrie," Sophie replied, shiny-eyed, as if about to burst out in tears of sheer delight, or tears of last-minute qualms.

  "Breathtakin', ye are, dear girl," Sir Hugo added. "Pretty as a picture. This Langlie fellow's a fortunate dog, damned if he ain't."

  "Merci, grand-pere . . . merci beaucoup," she said to him, for she had always been closest to the old roue, depending on him to learn how to adjust to being British. She gave him a twinkling smile and bowed a graceful curtsy to punctuate her gratitude for the compliment, along with his years of amusing aid.

  "And, Caroline . . . ," Lewrie dared venture, for despite the giddy air coming from the bride-to-be and the maids, his wife sported that worrisome furrow 'twixt her brows. "How utterly splendid and lovely you look this day, as well. Smashin'!"

  "Why, thankee, husband," Caroline replied, dipping him a curtsy as fine as Sophie's, and sounding pleased, with a sketch of a smile on her face. Does she still suspect Sophie . . . and glad t'be shot ofher? Indeed, both of them were a "picture."

  Sophie, with her reddish auburn hair and bright green eyes, had chosen a bridal gown of aquamarine satin with the puffy upper sleeves and skin-tight lower sleeves that were now in fashion; high-waisted and square-cut at the bodice, all ruched and awash in white lace. Her hair was done up under a fetching, matching bonnet with fake flowers, fruit, and ribbons, bound under her chin by more ribbon. In Sophie's travelling chest lay more gowns; for the coach trip to where they'd honeymoon, for their first supper together as a couple, dainties for morning-after lounging, more gowns for enlightening tours of whatever was famous where they were going, and, surely some even da
intier bed gowns to entice her new husband into starting a naval dynasty.

  No wonder Caroline's "fashed," Lewrie understood; she's spent a month slave-drivin' seamstresses an' milliners, and payin' out a year's farm rent on the girl!

  Caroline had chosen a soberer gown of dark blue satin with matching bonnet, trimmed in gilt lace. Hers was in much the same high-waisted and low-cut style, but with wide, shawl-like pleats over both of her shoulders, more's the pity.

  Damn trepidation! Lewrie told himself, going to take hands with both of them, bestowing a chaste kiss on Sophie's cheek, then another upon his wife's.

  "Both of you are as lovely as the occasion merits," he reiterated, and Sophie squeezed his hand in shy thanks. There was, though, a slight shying away from his kiss on Caroline's part, a faint stiffening of her spine, and limpness to her hand. She all but uttered a resigned sigh! Sure sign of a whole gale to come when she and Lewrie were alone, but over what? he tried to puzzle; some reconciliation^.

  "And, there's my children!" Lewrie exclaimed, taking the arrival of his sons and his daughter as a convenient excuse to break free, and shove what dread he had of his wife's iciness down to his "orlop" for later . . . much later, could he manage it.

  Sewallis, his first-born, was now thirteen, a lean and primmish lad just entering that awkward time 'twixt childhood and maturity . . . though he had always been too sober-sided for Lewrie to fathom exactly why. His suitings were dark grey "ditto," as stark as a parson.

  Hugh, his middle child and ever-rambunctious imp, was now ten, and more flambouyant, dressed in a blue coat and buff waist-coat and new-fangled trousers, booted not shod, and though Caroline had spent a fair amount of time getting them spruced up, and warning them both to behave, Hugh already looked mussed, with his blonder hair in his eyes and his neck-stock come halfway undone.

  Little Charlotte, well . . . at seven, she was definitely made in her mother's spitting image, her long light brown hair controlled by a pale blue bonnet and ribbons, dressed adult-like in a pale blue gown very much like Caroline's. Her amber eyes glowed as her gaze devoured every detail of Sophie's ensemble, mesmerised by a real-life bride.

  Lewrie shook hands with the boys, knelt to give Charlotte a hug, and gave them all a congratulating jape or compliment. Naval service had spaced their births so far apart. . . that, and the use of cundums.

  After Sewallis's birth in the Bahamas in '87, he'd been off on patrol duties for the most part, as far south as the Turks & Caicos, for months on end, so Hugh had not been quickened 'til the early months of '89 (in Alacrity's great-cabins and hanging-cot, to be truthful) and born just after he'd paid off, taken half-pay, and rented their house and lands from Caroline's uncle, Phineas Chiswick, in Anglesgreen. Where he had spent the most miserable years of his life as a know-nothing gentleman-farmer, of whom it was said that he knew how to "raise his hat, but little else," a useless drone and hanger-on to his much cleverer wife, who had grown up with a bountiful knowledge of agriculture from her childhood in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.

  It was a wonder to Lewrie, so bored had he been in those days, that, for want of anything better to do, there weren't more children, but. . . after Charlotte's birth, and Caroline had survived the perils of childbed fever, she had suggested that three was enough, and wished him to obtain cundums; so much to do on the farm, in the still-room and truck gardens, the flower beds and decorative plantings, care for the children already born, their mutual joy of horseback riding . . .

  The annual Bills of Mortality listed most deaths for young women as childbed fever, which usually took the infant, too. They had already birthed Sewallis as heir, Hugh to go Army, Navy, or take Holy Orders, and a lovely daughter, and they seemed to thrive, thank God, and might live to adulthood and have children of their own someday, so, why take the risk? And, Lewrie had been so much in love with Caroline in those days and so loath to risk her life, so selfish to keep him with her for all the years the Lord gave them (and, selfish to keep her the slim, tempting lass who'd come to their marriage bed, too) that he had been more than willing to go along with her wishes . . . his only worry had been how he could portray ignorance of what cundums did, and where they might be obtained!

  Charlotte, Lewrie supposed, was a happy accident, the result of an unguarded night as the stormclouds of the French Revolution and the Terror loomed. The Nootka Sound Incident 'twixt Spain and England in far-off northwestern North America in 1790, his temporary recall to the colours, then the sureness of war coming with France, too, after the revolutionaries had beheaded King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette. After the war did erupt in February of '93, Lewrie doubted if he had been home with Caroline more than five months, altogether, in the past seven years!

  He could step back and admire his well-groomed (well, there was Hugh!) and well-behaved, properly educated children (well, there also was Hugh's boisterousness, and Charlotte's penchant for blurting out whatever thought crossed her wee mind, usually at the worst possible moment!) and call himself fortunate.

  He could take pride and visual pleasure in Caroline, too, for she had not battened or thickened into the typical country housewife and matron. Were the lines on her face more noticeable, they were not as prominent as those of women her age, and they were, mostly, laugh lines and crow's-feet 'round her usually merry eyes. Her hair was yet glossy, her amber brown eyes bright, her form straight and slim . . .

  I'm judgin' her like a fox hound! Lewrie chid himself; ready to see how even she trots! Thirty-seven's not that old, after all; me or her. Why can't we . . . ?

  "I pray one of you gentlemen has confirmed that the coaches we contracted are arrived?" she rather vexedly enquired, more than ready to believe that her husband or father-in-law had forgotten that detail.

  "Waiting at the kerb as I came up, dear," Lewrie was glad to be able to tell her.

  "Saw to it," Sir Hugo drawled as he tossed back the last dregs of his fortifying brandy and tucked his ornate cocked hat under his arm. That worthy looked as if he needed fortifying, for with Lewrie slaving away like a Trojan to fit out his new frigate, it had fallen to him to be the go-between, the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to supply what the women needed from London, the fetcher and carrier, and guide to the better shops when Caroline and Sophie came up to the city.

  And, there'd been little love lost 'twixt Caroline and Sir Hugo since he'd come back from India, and just popped up as a land owner and immediate neighbour to their rented lands. To Caroline, Sir Hugo was, if not Satan himself, then one of his unsavoury minions, and ever the slightly shameful burden to be borne!

  "Grand-pere?" Sophie prompted, with a twinkle."

  "Of course, ma cherie," Sir Hugo replied with a wide smile, and offered his free arm to her to escort her downstairs to the coaches.

  "Children, next," Lewrie ordered. "Sewallis, see to your sister. Caroline and me, last. We'll debark at the church in the reverse order. First in, last out, like an Admiral, hey? You're to give her away, father?" He got a firm nod from both Sophie and Sir Hugo.

  He could understand that; his father had ever been charming and delightfully droll, erudite and surprisingly patient with Sophie as she made her adjustments to English country living. Besides, his father's French was infinitely better than Caroline's. He'd played the "Dutch Uncle" to the girl ever since his arrival, and had kept her chastely amused. Of all Lewrie's household, Sophie, surprisingly, had adored the old rogue the very fondest.

  Lewrie offered his own arm to Caroline, and she laid hers atop it . . . lightly, so very lightly, as if averse. Buggery, buggery, and buggery! Lewrie thought, irked; what's the bloody trouble now?

  "You did not ask of Mother, nor Uncle Phineas," Caroline said in a whisper as they trooped in rough order towards the door. "Nor did you ask why Governour and Millicent are not here."

  "Well, in the excitement of the occasion, I s'pose I didn't," he whispered back. "Governour, I may assume, thinks me a traitor for spiriting away my Black sailors, undermining slav
ery worldwide . . ."

  "Mother Charlotte will not see Midsummer's Day," Caroline told him, her whisper turning harsher, "and cannot travel. Yes, Governour will not attend any event where you are also present, and forbade Millicent to come, as well. I know you have no love for Uncle Phineas, nor he for you. Burgess . . ."

  "In London, last I heard," Lewrie responded. Carefully.

  "Beguiled by you to purchase Colours in a British regiment, and risk his life all over again, no matter the perils he faced in India," she accused. "He's done enough, God save us, he's done his duty . . ."

  "Entirely his desire, Caroline, I did not . . . beguile him. He also wishes to wed. I'd think you'd be happy for him," Lewrie said.

  "Wed some trull of your acquaintance, pah!" Caroline spat as vehemently as she could get away with as they descended the stairs to the entry hall, to the smiles and bows of the servitors and innkeeper. For them, at least, his wife plastered on a serene and happy smile.

  Family! Lewrie scoffed to himself; ain't they so much fun?

  Chapter Ten

  Very few people stopped to ogle as the parade of coaches drew up to the entry of Saint Thomas A'Becket's, for in these wartime days, one more naval wedding was two-a-penny. Perhaps a few wives whose husbands were away overseas paused, and smiled in reverie or bitterness. Maybe a bachelor officer or sailor, perhaps an idle civilian lecher or two, stopped just long enough to leer at the bride as she emerged and was handed down, grinning to themselves, and wishing to be in the groom's boots that night.

  Langlie's Second Officer (his name escaped Lewrie entirely) put out his Spanish cigaro beneath his shoe, then came to hold the doors to the church for them, and doff his hat in salute.

  Inside, one of Langlie's Midshipmen ushered them down the aisle to the left-hand pew boxes in the front, whilst Sir Hugo spoke with a curate, then led Sophie to a private room outside the nave where she'd wait 'til the music began.