Prologue

In retrospect, perhaps, getting into his half sister’s mutton was not the brightest idea that Alan Lewrie had ever had. Not, he told himself later, that it had been his idea at all; Belinda had been the initiator and he merely the recipient of her favors, which were ample. That she had been the object of desire for half the blades in London, both old and young, made it imperative that he try her at least once, just for the sake of comparison, much like a book critic would sample some Gothick fright and flummery so he could say he had read it. That half those blades had already preceded him really didn’t bother Alan.

After all, Belinda never dallied with anyone less than aristocratic (unless one counted the odd stable boy, ostler, shopclerk, tinker or tradesman who happened to be in the immediate vicinity when her blood was up), and since Lewrie knew half of them anyway, he could be fairly sure she wasn’t poxed.

Admittedly, he had suffered some pangs of concern that they were related, but since he was a Willoughby by blood if not by name, they had submerged wherever guilt pangs go when faced directly against Willoughby nature. Run shrieking for the nearest window, he surmised to himself, if they have any sense at all.

Belinda was a fetching girl right enough, an auburn beauty with creamy skin, breasts that threatened to spill over her bodice, and bold eyes for any man of comely proportions. And, being a Willoughby, hot as a pagan Hindoo with the morals of a monkey.

Alan was seventeen, two years younger than she, but already sure of his abilities to please at what he thought was the Prime Sport of Kings, a well-knit young man of middling height who could turn heads at a ball or on the Strand even without his “Macaroni” clothing. With the Christmas season over, and the City Season pace dying down, he had little to look forward to until spring and invitations to country houses, and had wearied of maids and mop-squeezers. It was looking to be a damned dull year, 1780, until the last explosion of parties in spring, so what could be more delightful than a dalliance at home, where one did not have to brave the elements, the Mob, mud, dead cats and streets full of garbage, or a shower of night soil from some window? This will cut down on my gambling debts, and my clothing bills, so everyone should be grateful.

He had been surprised that Belinda would show interest in him at all, since he was the younger adopted but natural son born out of wedlock, usually referred to as “that filthy little bastard” by everyone, including his father, and Belinda herself. But suddenly, instead of irritable toleration, there had been a week or two of sultry looks, some covert fondling, seductive conversation and deep breathing that led up to this night when all the servants were out of the way. Gerald was off chasing fellow sodomites so he could scratch his particular form of Willoughby itch; Sir Hugo and his manservant Morton were both away, most likely drinking and wenching themselves into the gout again, and no one to interfere. Alan had pinched a silk condom from Sir Hugo’s travelling kit (half sister or not, he was only fairly sure of her latest amours) and had finally succumbed eagerly.

They were gloriously engaged, and Belinda was trying to emulate the sound of a pack of hounds after the fox had gone to earth, when he thought he heard a scuffling noise in the hall, which he thought damned odd, odd enough to put him off stride, which didn’t seem to affect Belinda’s squirmings and View Halloo much. He knew servants never came upstairs after dinner, not if they knew what was good for them, and everyone else would be away ’til dawn at the earliest.

Then he heard the door latch snap open.

“Suffering Christ,” he breathed, his passion cooling precipitously. “Belinda, leave off, quick!”

She grappled him even tighter to her, yelping aloud now, her transports of joy turning into full-fledged yells which he took for dumb lust. “Not now, you silly mort, someone’s here.”

“Merciful Father in Heaven,” a voice quavered as the bed curtains parted with a jerk, spilling candlelight on the scene.

Alan gulped at the sight of their parish vicar. Now what’s the “amen-curler” doing here? God, is he up next with her?

Belinda pitched into a screaming frenzy as Alan disengaged and crawled away from the scene of the crime. Then, he saw the others; his brother Gerald, grinning wickedly; his father’s catch-fart Morton, who had a pistol in his fist; his father, even redder in the face than his usual brandy-induced hue, exercising his thick fingers on a walking stick; God help him, even their family solicitor Pilchard was there, bringing up the rear and trying to peek over their shoulders for a better view of Belinda’s charms as she screeched her way up a full octave.

“Your own sister!” The vicar appropriately shuddered. “You godless … animal!”

“Half sister,” Alan corrected as coolly as he could, clad only in a silk sheath condom and kneeling about as close to flagrante delicto as one could.

“He raped me! Help!” Belinda screamed.

“I’ll see you hang for this,” Sir Hugo said, advancing with the walking stick swishing the air.

“Rape, hell,” Alan shouted in defense, thinking it a poor one even as he said it. “The jade was the one invited me!”

“Lying hound!” Sir Hugo took a swing at Alan’s head that barely missed the vicar, and, if Alan had not gone flat on his back, would have half beheaded him. “I’ll kill you for this, you little bastard.”

Alan did the sensible thing at that point; he ran. He leaped from the bed and made for his clothes. Morton came for him, but he was a well-fed slowcoach, and Alan had retrieved his breeches and was well on his way to freedom past Morton’s outstretched arms when Sir Hugo’s cane came down like a thunderbolt from on high and struck him on the shoulder, which caused him to draw his length on the parquet.

“There, there, girl.” The vicar pawed Belinda’s bare arms and back and reluctantly allowed her to draw a sheet up over her magnificent young breasts. “You’re safe from him now!”

Sir Hugo got the toe of his shoe in, spinning Alan about on the bare boards like a top before he fetched up against a table which came down with a crash, but allowed him space to rise. Belinda went into another paroxysm of wailing as the vicar slobbered over her.

“Vicar, I swear before God this was not totally my doing,” Alan shouted, dodging about the room from Morton and his father. Gerald and Pilchard huddled in the doorway, unwilling to get too involved, but ready to form a blocking force. “I don’t know you well, and I doubt if you know this family well, either, but if you did…”

“Take him, Morton,” his father said. “Take him now!”

The one safe road was not another lap of the room. Alan vaulted a table and dove back into the bed, rolling to his feet by the vicar.

“If you would only listen to me, sir…” he begged.

Belinda’s feet flew into action, pummeling him around the groin and up against the quavering old churchman. “You … you … Absalom!” the vicar finally managed to say, just before hitting him inexpertly in the chin with a lean and birdlike fist. It was enough, however, to put stars in his vision and brought with it the odd urge to sneeze. As the others rounded the bed to lay hands on him, he sank to the floor once more, feeling the thump of the vicar’s foot slamming his ribs.

“Here, that’s not quite … cricket,” he protested.

As he was jerked to his feet and hustled out of the room, he got a chance to lay eyes on Belinda once more, and she was staring at him with a curious smile on her lips and a crinkle to her eyes, the sort of smile he had seen her deliver to a particularly tasty stuffed goose at remove, after she had had her fill and was quite satisfied.

Damme, what’s this all about, Alan wondered groggily, still smarting from the kick in the ribs from the otherwise saintly seeming reverend. With his arms full of clothing, he was hustled upstairs in Morton’s steely grasp.

*   *   *

“I must beg your forgiveness for striking him, Sir Hugo,” the vicar said, gratefully accepting a brandy in the first-floor study. “I’ve not raised a fist in anger since I was twelve, but the utter audacity and cock-a-whoop gall of him quite overcame me.”

“I understand totally,” Sir Hugo said without humor. “Perhaps if I had allowed my temper to break on him more often when he was young, we would not be engaged as we are tonight.”

“You did not strap him as a child?” the vicar asked.

“Very rarely. He’s a thoroughly spoiled young man,” Sir Hugo said, pouring himself a glass. “You are new to the parish, so I must explain. In my youth, before I settled down from serving the King as a soldier, I was more forward than most with the young ladies. His mother was beautiful, my first love, a proper girl from a good family.”

The vicar made agreeable cooing noises, which Sir Hugo ignored.

“Before I went overseas, she and I consummated our love for each other, and then I lost touch with her, my letters returned or never answered. I was heartbroken,” Sir Hugo muttered, looking only stern, but not in the least heartbroken. “By the time I had returned, and married someone else, I discovered that she had borne me a son. She had been turned out by her own family, and had died, little better than a prostitute, and that boy a pitiful parish waif. I could not refuse to own up to my sin, could I, Father?”

“Well…”

“To atone for all, I took him in, you see.”

“A heavy burden brought about by the lust of the flesh, sir,” the vicar said, now on familiar ground. “But a common one, I am sad to say. In these evil times in which we suffer before our admission to the higher reward…”

“Yes,” Sir Hugo said. “As I was saying, I took him in, fed him, clothed him, sent him to the best schools, and never could find the sternness in my heart necessary for his proper upbringing, because of my guilt and shame of abandoning her, even though she was too proud to tell me. My second wife died, leaving me the sole parent of three poor babes. Even then, I could not raise a hand to him, not after ruining his poor mother, for being the one who caused her untimely death.”

“Er, which mother are we talking of?” the vicar dithered.

“His mother … Father!” Sir Hugo snapped. “Alan was the very image of her when he was a boy. How could I strike him? How could I deny him anything his heart desired?” He sank his face into his hands.

“You poor fellow,” the vicar said, patting him on the back.

“God most assuredly is aware you tried, Sir Hugo,” the vicar went on. “For we have all sinned not only by commission but by omission as well, and come short of the glory of God. Any small act of contrition and amends is—”

“He is a rakehell,” Sir Hugo said, shooting to his feet and going for the brandy decanter, away from the vicar’s petting.

“Indeed.”

“A gambler, a Corinthian, a brothel dandy and the bane of any pretty maid in London,” Sir Hugo went on with some heat. “He fought a duel, so please you, for his alleged honor, brought comment on this family by his shocking conduct, wasted my money to clothe him in that ridiculous Macaroni fashion … he was expelled from Harrow, sir.”

“Merciful God,” the vicar gasped at this last revelation.

“Something about emulating the Gunpowder Plot and the Governor’s privy. I do not see him mending his way in future, either.”

“God forgives all, Sir Hugo. Even the most practiced sinner,” the vicar reminded him with a beatific smile, and a brandy glass that was dry as dust on the bottom.

“Even the attempted rape of his own sister? The rest I could live down, but this! Belinda will be ruined! What good man would have her, even with her dowry and prospects? How shall I face the world as the father of a boy doomed to be hanged like one of the filthy Mob?” Sir Hugo filled the vicar’s glass and then threw himself into a face-down sulk behind his desk. He waited for an answer but heard only the sound of sloshing and a moan of contentment from the vicar. “I mean to say, how may I retain the good name of Willoughby?” he prompted.

“Ah, yes, the poor young lady,” the vicar finally said, not without a gleam coming to his watery eyes.

“Yes?” Sir Hugo prompted, trying not to seem impatient.

“Transport him. Or send him to the country,” the vicar decided.

“But the courts involved…”

“Ah, yes, well…” The vicar shrugged and made free with the decanter on his own.

“I shall, of course, disinherit him,” Sir Hugo announced. “I’ll not have him spend another moment under this roof as one of mine. Then it shall be up to him to succeed or fail under his own name.”

“He is not known by Willoughby?”

“Lewrie, his mother’s maiden name, sir.”

“Let me see … some form of punishment, or banishment, that will not reflect on your own kith and kin, remove him from the scene and make a man of him,” the vicar said. “I have it!”

“Yes?”

“I know a captain in the Royal Navy, Sir Hugo. With this dreadful little rebellion going on in the American colonies, one more young volunteer for service would not be looked on amiss.” The vicar fairly beamed.

“And ship him out as a seaman?” Sir Hugo grinned in return.

“Heavens, Sir Hugo, be merciful at the last, I beg you. To be a midshipman is punishment enough, but to be pent with the common rabble, an educated young man raised as a gentleman … besides, there would be unfavorable comment if he stood out from his surroundings too well.”

“I suppose so,” Sir Hugo said unhappily. “So I shall have to buy him his kit. And his commission as well, I suppose.”

“Not at all, Sir Hugo,” the vicar assured him. “Well, he must have his kit, but a commission in even a poor regiment is four times the cost of a willing captain. I am sure my friend Captain Bevan can find your son a commander desperately in need of hands and midshipmen. Like much else in our times, the zeal of the populace for naval service is akin to the lack of zeal for the true sense of Christ’s teachings.”

“Desperate enough to take even young Alan?”

“Fifty pounds in the right pocket in Portsmouth could put him on any ship of the line.”

“Preferably one going to foreign climes, the farther the better. And your friend can do this?”

“Most assuredly, Sir Hugo. Why, I recall in my last parish there was a young widow with a son who was—” the vicar reddened at the memory that Sir Hugo thought touched a bit too close to home “—at any rate, the Fleet is full of young lads who are not exactly welcome at home.”

“Shameful,” Sir Hugo said. “Well, please be so good as to have your nautical friend … Bevan, did you say? … attend me as soon as he can. And, just to clear this up as a legal matter, I wonder if I could prevail upon you to attest to what you witnessed this evening with my solicitor, Mister Pilchard? He is gathering statements in case we have to call the watch and have Alan imprisoned, should he prove to be intractable.”

“Mosht happy to oblige you, Shir Hugo,” the vicar said, barely able to bring glass to lip any longer. “I shall not keep you longer, Shir Hugo. I believe we have all shuf … suffered enough tonight.”

“Indeed we have, sir.” Sir Hugo nodded somberly.

Sir Hugo rose and bowed a courteous goodnight to the stumbling sermonizer as Morton held the door for him and took him in charge to the parlor, where Pilchard waited. Sir Hugo sat down and mused happily over his brandy. It seemed an age before the wizened solicitor stuck his head around the door, waving a sheet of vellum to dry the ink, much like a flag of surrender to his master’s temper.

“Is that sodden hedge-priest gone?”

“Just this minute, Sir Hugo. I saw him to the door myself.” Pilchard grinned, entering the room fully as Sir Hugo waved him forward. He laid the document before his employer like a great trophy. “Here it is, Sir Hugo. And considering his vulnerable state and the witnesses against him, I anticipate no problem there…”

“Excellent, Pilchard, excellent! Everything is in order, then.”

“All but young Alan’s signature, Sir Hugo.”

“I wish you to make an addition to this, Pilchard.”

“Sir?”

“Have a brandy and sit down, for God’s sake,” Sir Hugo ordered, irritated at the outré deference his solicitor always showed him but secretly still pleased that he could engender that sort of deference. Pilchard obeyed the instructions and took a seat on a settee, perched on the edge of the cushion with knees close together.

“The vicar came up with a most interesting suggestion, Pilchard. And a perfect excuse for Alan not to be present when this matter comes to its fruition.”

“And that is, Sir Hugo, if I may inquire?”

“Naval service, Pilchard, naval service!” Sir Hugo boomed it with a hearty chuckle. “The boy is not come to his majority, and is overseas, preferably far overseas, on the King’s business, when we enter the court. Write it up so that I am his guardian or whatever, so that his signature, which you assure me of, gives me total control over everything he is due, in the first instance, and hang the rest of what you had planned.”

“But if he survives to return to England, Sir Hugo, he is then heir, and can take you to court for all of it. I believe he should sign away all claims, as we initially laid out.”

“Now what are the odds of a midshipman returning?” Sir Hugo stood to refill his glass. “Off to the Americas, the Fever Islands, or the East Indies among all those pagan Hindoos?”

“Not good, sir, but not certain, I’m afraid.”

“But no problem until the war is over, at any rate. He knows nothing now, and can learn nothing thousands of miles away. It strengthens our appearance, does it not, safeguarding the interests of my … son, as he fights for England, his King? Oh, shout Harroo for England and St. George! And should he survive and return, it will be much too late to do anything.”

“He is a clever little devil, Sir Hugo. God help me, but I think he may tumble to it … eventually, that is.”

“Then the second part, the part you first suggested to me, shall be a secret agreement between him and me, obtainable for reasons you make clear, and only the first part of the document, concerning guardianship, shall be presented in court. Surely that shall suffice.”

“I believe that would suit, Sir Hugo. Though I still worry that asking him to put his name to so many documents will bring his suspicions up—”

“To the devil with his suspicions! The means of removal has to come up from Portsmouth, so we shall let that little damme-boy stew in his own skin for a few days. By that time I am sure he shall be most agreeable.”

There was a soft knock on the door, and Belinda entered the room, now dressed in high fashion and bearing a cloak, hat and muff for an evening out. She crossed to her father and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek. He put an arm around her.

“Off, are you?”

“Lady Margaret is giving a drum,” Belinda said calmly. “Now I shall be fashionably late for it. Did I do well, Father?”

“Excellently well, my girl. And you shall share in my gratitude and munificence once this is behind us.”

“I never doubted it, Father.” She beamed, then bade them both goodnight, leaving Sir Hugo humming to himself, and Pilchard fidgeting as he thought upon his new document’s form and content.

*   *   *

“Where’s the chamber pot, then?” Alan demanded as he was shoved into a dark and cheerless garret servant’s room at the back of the house.

“Criminals don’t deserve none.” Morton smirked.

“I’m sure you know about criminals, Morton, you were born one! Candles, too, and a bed.”

“An’ why not a bottle an’ some bird, an’ a servant girl while you’re askin’, young sir,” Morton jibed back. “Scandalous goin’s on, I swear to heaven. Rapin’ your own sister!”

“And you the innocent babe just down from the country. Goddamn you, fetch me light and some sort of bedding—”

“I’ll fetch ya a ticket to your own hangin’, and that’s all, you little bastard,” Morton said, shoving him back into the dark room with a horny fist and slamming the door. “Ye’r not the high an’ mighty little buck o’ the first head now, are you, young sir?” he crowed through the wood, then laughed his way down to the landing and out of hearing.

There was a thin slit of light under the door, which did little to banish the gloom of that tiny garret cell, and Alan sat down next to it, arranging his coat over his knees and chest as a makeshift blanket.

Now what the hell is this all about? he pondered again, now a bit more levelheaded than when the posse had broken in on him. Why should they all show up at the same time, as if it were arranged…?

There had, though, never been much sense in the household, from the way Sir Hugo ran his own affairs to the way he allowed Belinda and Gerald to run riot with their own pleasures and interests. Sir Hugo had never shown much discipline toward them, or much affection, either, too far gone in his own cares ever to notice his children. Alan had come into the house a three-year-old waif in rags, to a paradise of food and good clothing and the life of a moneyed scion of a great man, or so it seemed. Quite a change from the parish poorhouse he had known since birth and the death of his mother (at least they’d told him she’d been poor and was dead). He had been prepared to be grateful and loving, but there had been a vast gulf that he could never bridge, made of his father’s icy indifference. By the time he was breeched and off to the first in a long succession of schools he had stopped trying to bridge the gulf and only took advantage of the man’s largesse. He had wanted for nothing, had been allowed to run riot like the son of a titled lord with few warnings to correct his behavior. And now, suddenly, this…?

“What in hell did I do?” he asked the darkness. “Hopped onto my half sister. Well, that’s almost fashionable these days, isn’t it? All the good families do it, and without witnesses, too. Now I’m on my way out because of it. Why?”

He tried to think that he had crossed Sir Hugo’s interests in some way but could not think of any woman he had had that Sir Hugo wanted. He wasn’t exactly champion wasteful with money; in fact, he had a fair amount of his allowance hidden away, since he had gotten his fingers burned gambling the year before and had lost his taste for the tables. He had not purchased anything extravagant, or at least nothing so extravagant that would make his father bite furniture over it.

God’s Balls, he thought suddenly; the old fart’s gone smash over some investment and I’m now expendable. He can’t afford to keep all of us and I’m only half a son, not like Gerald. If I’m not careful I’ll end up some drudging clerk. Maybe someplace brutal and nasty, like Liverpool. But why not just call me in and tell me I’m chucked…?

He shivered with the cold, and with his misery, clamping his knees together to control his aching bladder, and waited for the dawn, soon too foxed by wine to keep his eyes open, dreaming of revenge and triumph.

*   *   *

It was four days before Alan was freed from his cold and gloomy garret prison to be brought down to the study. He did not make a very pretty picture by then. His light brown hair was lank about his face and his queue was loose. He wore no neckstock, and his fashionable white silk waistcoat all sprigged with red and blue flowers was crumpled from service as a pillow. His silk stockings had ladders in them, and his tightly cut grey blue satin suit looked more like a stained and bedraggled bad bargain from a ragpicker’s barrow.

On the way down he had seen Gerald entertaining a strange man in the parlor by the fire, the man swathed in a voluminous dark blue cape held open for warmth from the grate.

Court official? Alan wondered. Or one of Gerald’s lovers getting his equipment to room temperature? But there’s no sign of the Charlies about. No one seeming to be a member of the watch, usually spavined oldsters with cudgels, was in evidence, and he considered that a reason for cheer. God knew he needed some badly at that point. He had fretted and pondered feverishly all the time of his confinement as to what last straw he had broken, if any, and what was to be his fate.

He was led to face his father, who glowered at him from the study fireplace. Pilchard stood behind the writing desk with his most serious legal face on.

“You know Mister Pilchard,” Sir Hugo began. “He has paid you out of trouble often enough in the past for you two to be good friends by now, hasn’t he? Well, hasn’t he?”

“I suppose so, sir,” Alan meekly responded.

“What could have possessed you?” Sir Hugo demanded. “You realize this isn’t some country girl to be fobbed off with twenty pounds. This is your own sister you tried to rape. You are finished, boy.”

“What rape?” Alan shot back, but shuddering cold inside. “Not until that Bible Thumper stuck his beak in, it wasn’t rape.”

“You’re facing a hanging offense,” Sir Hugo intoned.

“But it wasn’t rape! She was the one that wanted to do it and I went along with it. You know her nature, surely—”

“What’s worse, I know yours,” Sir Hugo shot back.

“Then you know I wouldn’t have to depend on rape. The town’s full of quim to be had, without a bit of struggle.”

“That nature of yours could get you hanged, Alan,” Sir Hugo said. “You were caught in the act, and we have witnesses.”

“And I can provide a platoon of witnesses for myself, and for my dear sister’s character as well, if it comes to that.”

“Only if it comes to trial, boy.”

“What is this? Just what do you want from me? Since when have you gotten so holy?”

“Sir Hugo and I … that is, we … have come to what we believe to be a most salutary solution to the contretemps which you brought about by your unnatural act of forcible rape upon your sister,” Pilchard said from behind the desk. “For the sake of your family we—”

“Oh, don’t prose like a front bencher in Parliament, Pilchard,” Sir Hugo said crossly, going to the sideboard for an early morning brandy. “Get to the meat of it.”

“You are to be banished,” Pilchard summed up. “You may never more lay claim to the Willoughby name—”

“I never did, you miserable ass.”

“Pray allow me to continue, young sir,” Pilchard said, wagging a finger at him. “You must go away, for the family’s best interests. You can no longer reside under this roof, in London or in England. And it would be most inadvisable for you to return, for obvious reasons.”

“You’re raving—” Alan blanched.

“If you do not, then we shall summon the watch and have you taken before the magistrate. We have no choice,” Sir Hugo warned, making happy sounds from the brandy decanter with his back to the show.

“Your sister is the one who wishes to prefer charges,” Pilchard informed him. “While we wish to spare her reputation, and the family reputation, she has decided otherwise. If this does go to court you would throw undying shame on your own family, and it would most likely cost you your life. At best, commitment to Bedlam as an uncontrollable lunatic. Do you understand the seriousness of what you have done?”

Alan was stunned into silence, beginning to doubt his memories of the incident. Belinda wants to prosecute me? She’s a brainless whore. No, there’s something here that isn’t right.

The whole thing was astonishing, too astonishing to be credited. Part of the shock to his system, admittedly, was the realization that he would have to give up his whole life, even if he, by acquiesence, saved his mere existence. There went the girls, the money, the parties, his circle of friends and fellow roisterers, all the pleasures of the world’s greatest city. Not to mention the perquisites of the moderate wealth of even a second son.

“We have here an agreement which Sir Hugo hopes you have the wit to sign, which will spare your family any further loss of reputation.”

“What reputation did you have in mind? The good name of Sir Hell-Fire Club over there, my sister the open beard, or my brother the butt-fucking Molly?” Alan scoffed.

Morton must have been in the room behind him all that time, for Alan’s arms were seized at the elbows and forced high behind his back, bringing a yelp of pain and surprise from him as he was forced into a half-crouch to the floor.

“I hope you’re enjoying this, you butcher’s dog,” Alan managed to get out between clenched teeth.

“I am, sir,” Morton whispered into his ear. “An’ about time, too, let me tell ya!”

“Now listen to me, you little bastard,” Sir Hugo said, leaning over the edge of the desk so he could stare into Alan’s face. “What we want from you is for you to be gone. And we don’t want any public trial, so there won’t be one. You’ll have to leave the city and the country, but you’ll be alive. And with some money in hand to spend on your beastly habits.”

“My beastly habits? What about yours…? Oww!” Alan went to his knees as Morton applied more pressure. “I suppose you want me to admit to a rape I didn’t commit, too.”

“Not at all,” Pilchard said. “You merely have to sign this and go.”

I’m as good as knackered right now, he told himself sadly; I haven’t a hope in hell of fighting this, whatever it is.

“Father,” Alan asked as sweetly as he could under the circumstances, “just why is this necessary? Was I any bigger a sinner than the rest of us? Have I cost you more money than Belinda does? She spends more on the Strand in a day than I do in a month. And half of London knows all about Gerald. Last time he went to Bath he was lucky to escape alive. I’m not going to inherit anyway, so why are you doing this?”

Let’s put our contrite face on now, laddy, he told himself; maybe I can wheedle free yet.

“I beg you, Father,” he said with emotion. “Don’t disown me like this. Don’t turn me out. From the moment you pulled me out of that parish orphanage and claimed me as yours, I have been full of gratitude and love for you.”

“Don’t abuse my wit, boy,” Sir Hugo said. “You love your purse and your gut and your prick, but I doubt this sudden affection for me. We cannot keep you around after this, and you know it.”

Well, it was worth a try. Alan sighed heavily; old bastard knows me too well. I’ve had it.

“Um, you mentioned money?” Alan asked. At this, Sir Hugo smiled and waved a signal to Morton to relent his hold so Alan could rise to his feet. “Just how much did you have in mind?”

“Fifty pounds per annum,” Pilchard said.

That’s four pounds … three shillings a month. Alan quickly figured in his head. This is ludicrous. I spend more than that in a week, and that’s with food and lodging all found! Even in some hog’s-wallow of a village in the North, I’d starve to death. Not to mention being bored absolutely shitless.

“I want a hundred,” Alan stated, testing the waters.

“You’re mad … raving!” His father sneered.

“For whatever reasons you have, you want me gone,” Alan told him, resigned to his fate but anxious to get some of his own back. “If you’re broke and have to sell up, say so, but why go to this ridiculous charade? You don’t want this to go to trial, so there must be some blunt in it for you somewhere. I want some of it, if there’s any to be had. I don’t know anywhere a gentleman can live for less than three hundred pounds a year, so consider this a bargain price.”

“Gone smash, have I?” Sir Hugo laughed. “Is that what you think?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“You’re going because you are despicable, and I’ll not have the Willoughby name tied to anything scandalous.”

“As if it isn’t already?” Alan muttered.

“Gentlemen’s vices, discreetly handled, as befits a gentleman. Not like the git of a twopenny tart who shows the dirt of the gutter every time he opens his lips. And you want to go as a gentleman. Damn what you want.”

“Damned right I do.”

“Alright, Alan.” His father relented suddenly, turning so mild Alan was immediately put on his guard for some high-handed move. “One hundred pounds a year. On certain conditions.”

“In that case, make it guineas.” Alan scowled, leery.

His father tried to stare him down. Alan didn’t back down. Sir Hugo finally nodded his assent.

Pilchard began to scribble on the document on the desk, muttering to himself as he found room to add the amount, which gave Alan satisfaction. Pilchard presented his amended work to Sir Hugo, who nodded his approval.

“Now sign the damned thing and get your guineas.”

Alan was released from Morton’s grasp to free his arms, and took the excuse of massaging feeling back into his arms to take the time to read the document, looking for traps and pitfalls.

No more claim to being a Willoughby … that’s no loss, is it? Out on my bare arse with one hundred guineas a year remittance. I still think he’s gone smash! I was down for five hundred per annum, last time I snuck a look at the will. Leave the City, leave England. I wasn’t expecting much more if the old bastard had dropped to hell, anyway. Second sons can’t expect much, and God knows Gerald wouldn’t give me a dilberry off his fundament, much less a rouleau of guineas once the old boy croaked. What? Hull-oh!

“Here, what’s this bit about mother’s estate?” he asked. “She didn’t have one, did she? She died penniless, you said.”

“That is a legal form only.” Pilchard said primly.

“Now I see … you never told me anything about her except she was pretty and dead. Her people have money, do they?”

“And just what estate do you think a bawd could leave her bastard when she was doing it upright in doorways just before she died?” Sir Hugo sneered, which was something he was right good at. “Explain it to him, Pilchard.”

“Yes, explain it to me, Mister Pilchard.”

“Miss Elizabeth’s parents are still alive,” Pilchard began. If Alan had had eyes for his father at that point, he would have been amazed to see eyebrows climb for heaven. “They are desperately poor wretches but still with us. They have, for many years, tried to find someone to take them to court to sue Sir Hugo for support, knowing that he had taken you in. We sent them fifty pounds per annum to keep them satisfied. We do not wish to have them known as part of the family. Or you.” He did not add that Alan could be considered an heir through his mother’s side. “To spare Gerald and Belinda any legal difficulties upon their inheritance, we included this clause. You shall receive your hundred guineas, as they get their money, as long as you live, for much the same reasons.”

“Better I had left you in your squalor than claim you as mine in the parish register.” Sir Hugo busied himself pouring another morning brandy. “It’s all a formality to spare us your presence in future. That’s it. Now sign the damned thing and be quick about it before I lose my patience and summon the watch and to hell with the Willoughby name…”

Alan quickly read to the bottom of the long page, noting that his father was still to be his guardian, though he was banished. Much like what some of Alan’s wilder friends had faced: exile and frigid relations. Much like living under the old fart’s roof!

“And what do I do after I sign? Have you arranged that, too?”

“Overseas would be best.”

“Who pays my way? And what do I do once I get there?”

“Pilchard?” Sir Hugo snapped, turning his back on things.

“To make your disappearance from society credible, and without throwing any light on this despicable incident, we could not have you transported, or ’prenticed, without comment being made.”

“Thank bloody Christ for that, anyway. And I’m to go as a gentleman?” Alan pressed, uneasy still.

“Yes, but as a Lewrie, not a Willoughby,” the solicitor told him.

Right, it’s the army for me. This is going to cost him dear. An ensign’s commission must go for at least four hundred pounds nowadays, even in a poor regiment. To buy my colors and my kit will have to cost nigh a thousand pounds …

That meant most likely that he would soon be in the American colonies, facing constant danger from Red Indians and lawless Rebels. But there was a chance he could prosper; he could ride well, he could fence (he’d already dueled once and won handily) and he was a crack shot at game. With one hundred guineas in addition to his army pay he could get by, barely. Certainly, they would not choose a fashionable regiment for him, so he would not have to worry about high mess bills. Besides, there were damned few fashionable regiments fighting the war; they were still parading and wenching at home. As a soldier, a gentleman ensign, he could still carouse with a pack of young bucks as much as he pleased.

“Very well,” he said carefully. “If you foot the bill for my kit and my commission.” He was delighted to see the involuntary responses from both his father and Pilchard. What a discovering little slyboots I am to see to the heart of it, he told himself.

“Oh, we shall indeed,” his father agreed.

Alan leaned over the desk and took the proferred quill from Pilchard’s outstretched hand. He signed his name to the document and stood back up, waiting while Pilchard sanded the wet ink and glared at him in a prissy, satisfied way. When Sir Hugo smiled broadly, Alan was filled with a sudden foreboding.

“Well, I wish to express my gratitude for all you’ve done for me, Father. Up ’til now, mind.”

“Piss on your thanks, boy.”

“Need me anymore? No? Well, I shall go pack then.”

“That has been done for you.” Sir Hugo told him. “You’ll not spend another hour under my roof.”

“You will surely give time to gather a few keepsakes—”

“That has been done as well. Including your hidden money. I am sure there won’t be a dry eye in Drury Lane when word gets out you’ve gone. Your wastrel friends will think you all brave and noble. Quite unlike you, but we have to maintain appearances. You were born a low bastard in a knocking shop, but thankfully you’re no longer my bastard to worry about. Once you leave here, you’re welcome to go to hell in your own way.”

“As are you, Father. And what regiment am I due for?”

“Regiment? Oh, yes. Morton, have that Captain Bevan come up, would you?”

The mysterious guest that Alan had seen by the parlor fireplace entered the room a moment later, no longer tented by his dark blue cape.

The stranger wore white breeches and waistcoat, a dark blue coat with white turnbacks at cuff and collar, trimmed heavily in gold, with gold buttons that bore fouled anchors.

“The Navy.” Alan was suddenly aware of what waited for him. “Sweet Jesus, no! Not the bloody Navy. I’d … I’d sooner go to Ireland. Even Bedlam—”

“I am so pleased by your reaction. Captain Bevan shall take you to Portsmouth, where you shall enter the King’s service as a midshipman, a gentleman volunteer. He shall supervise the purchase of your kit, and see you into a suitable vessel.”

“You are now under King’s Regulations and the Articles of War, boy,” Captain Bevan told him. “Desertion from my custody is a hanging offense. To prevent that I have brought my coxswain with me.”

That petty officer stood in the doorway, a solid block of lowbrowed elephantine muscle with a devilish black expression on his face. He wore a brace of imposing pistols in the waistband of his loose striped sailor’s trousers, and a heavy cutlass hung on a baldric over his shoulder. His hands dangled loose, near enough to draw his personal choice at a moment’s notice, and while he might appear slow to make up his mind just which instrument he preferred under a particular circumstance, once committed he appeared altogether competent.

“And you call me a bastard?” Alan shook his head. Damn ’em all to hell, they’ll sit on me all the way to Portsmouth. Probably some chink in it for them, too. I am so well and truly … fucked. Ah, well, nothing for it but to go game …

“Father, it’s farewell, then.” Alan said manfully. “And you have my most sincere wish that you rot in hell as soon as possible.”

Morton took him by the arms again, and began to hustle him into the tender custody of the Navy.

“Give my regards to Belinda, too,” Alan called out. “Have you not tried her already, you’ll find her a right short-heeled wench, and a most obliging sort of girl.”

Alan saw a look cross his father’s face and had to laugh in spite of the circumstances. “By God, I believe you already have.”

“Shameless. Come on, you,” Captain Bevan ordered.

“I’ll pay you all back, you know,” Alan threatened as the coxswain took charge of him at the door with huge hard hands. “You, and Belinda, and Gerald, and that pettifogger Pilchard, and your brainless helpmeet Morton.”

Gerald was waiting at the base of the stairs, pleased with the world. “Do us all proud at sea, won’t you, Alan dear? Don’t bother to write, though.”

“My brother, Captain Bevan,” Alan said by way of a hasty introduction. “Sews his own dresses and, what’s the naval term … he goes in for the windward passage? God rot you too, Gerald. I hope to see you in the stocks for buggery one day, you poxy sodomite.”

There was no servant present in the front hall, just a valise and his cloak and hat awaiting him, a much too small tricorne trimmed in white lace and adorned with a long feather. It was jammed onto his head, but without his usual tall, oversize wig it came off once they were in the street.

“Have you no shame?” Bevan demanded. “Comport yourself quietly into the coach, for your own sake, if not for your poor family’s.”

“Then have your trained bear let go of me.”

He shrugged himself into his coat and cloak, picked up his fallen hat and entered the coach. The coxswain got in and sat across from him.

“My name’s Bell,” the man announced in a deep rumble.

“Do you really believe I give a damn what your name is?”

“Give me an excuse ta cut yer nutmegs awrf, boy. Ya sing small wi’ me an’ sit quiet er ya won’t live ta sign aboard a ship.”

“Take your choice, young ’un,” Captain Bevan said, seating himself next to his coxswain and sweeping back his cloak to reveal a pair of small pistols in his waistcoat. “Go a gentleman, or suffer the consequences.”

“I shall keep that in mind, thank you, Captain Bevan,” Alan replied archly, wrapping his cloak closer about him. Even a windy and wet January morning could not explain the sudden coldness he felt as their coach rattled off to rendezvous with the “Dilly” for Portsmouth.