“So, who hates me that much?” Lewrie asked James Peel after a rather good meal at a chop-house conveniently near the Foreign Office.
“Good Lord, Lewrie, who doesn’t?” Peel wryly rejoined as he had a last forkful of his figgy-dowdy pudding. “You could write your own list, I’d imagine. The people who’ve blighted your career most-like are the people you despise already.”
“Well, hmm,” Lewrie grunted, mulling that over. “The first to spring to mind’d be Francis Forrester, the fubsy shit. A horrible mess-mate when we were Mids together in the old Ariadne, and a pompous ass, but he’s been ‘Yellow-Squadroned’ for years after he hared off to look for the French fleet, left his command at Nassau, then grounded his ship at English Harbour, Antigua.”
“But still possessed of influential patrons,” Peel, the old spy, told him, “and all sure that he was done wrong. Go on.”
Lewrie ticked off people he suspected; Captain Grierson, also from a spell in Bahamian waters, whom he’d embarrassed, and spoiled the man’s poor joke of sailing up to Nassau showing no colours, to be deliberately mistaken for the French. There had been a “grass widow” involved, too, that Lewrie was topping, and Grierson wanted.
There was his son Hugh’s present Captain Richard Chalmers, a man who took his religion almost as seriously as the unfortunate Admiral “Dismal Jemmy” Gambier, who thought that Lewrie was such a sinner that he’d piss in the holy water font, and try to put the leg over the Virgin Mary.
William Fillebrowne came to mind at once. He was from a very wealthy family, and had tried to emulate their Grand Tours of the Continent by using his ship as a store house for treasures bought off needy French émigrés for a shilling to the pound, a clench-jawed Oxonian “Mumbletonian” more interested in quim than duty, and with a curious penchant for pursuing Lewrie’s cast-off women; first his mistress Phoebe Aretino, then even one of his “cream pot” loves from his Midshipman days, Lucy Shockley née Beauman, the young wife of older Sir Malcolm Shockley, in Venice. Their last rencontre at Gibraltar had been so testy and insulting that it could have been a reason for a duel!
There were a few other fellow officers that sprang to mind, but Lewrie could easily dismiss them for lack of rank and seniority, and he hadn’t thought that they had powerful patrons during the times he had worked with them. He tossed off a hopeless shrug, at last.
“You forgot Admiral Tobias Treghues,” Peel said with that air of “I know something you don’t!” common to everyone Lewrie had ever met in the skulking-spying trade.
“Christ, is he even still alive?” Lewrie gawped. “Last I heard, he was somewhere in the Far East, achievin’ very little, and makin’ everyone else miserable, Got his wits scrambled by a French gunner’s rammer during the American Revolution, and hasn’t been in his right mind, since, and you never knew whether he’d praise ye one day, then have ye mast-headed the next! He was a Bible-thumper, too, now that I recall. And he’s made Rear-Admiral? Gawd!”
“Being out of one’s wits just might be a prerequisite for flag rank,” Peel said with a hearty chuckle. “Yes, he’s still alive, with his shrew of a wife carried aboard his flagship, and between them, they have lots of influence. Believe it or not, he prefers the East Indies, while most people will throw up their commissions to avoid it, so Admiralty lets him be.”
“Anybody else to surprise me with, Jemmy?” Lewrie asked.
“Your former Commodore, Blanding, who’s also a Rear-Admiral, now,” Peel said.
“Blanding?” Lewrie exclaimed. “I pestered him half to death with suggestions when we were chasin’ that French squadron bound for New Orleans when Bonaparte got it back from Spain, but that’s of little reason t’hate me!”
“I gather it’s more to do with your knighthood and being made baronet,” Peel told him.
“But, that was King George havin’ a bad day!” Lewrie exclaimed. “And I still suspect that my knighthood wasn’t for beatin’ the French at the Chandeleur Islands, but some cruel reward for Caroline, my late wife, bein’ murdered by Napoleon’s police, and them tryin’ t’kill me … t’drum up patriotic rage to justify goin’ back to war with ’em.
“Blanding wants to blame anyone, he’d best lay it at the feet of King George, and William Pitt,” Lewrie went on, “and the King getting ‘knight and baronet’ stuck in his head from the people in line before me. He almost took my ear off, swingin’ that sword about!”
“He commanded your victory, and he was made Knight of the Bath, but you received what he imagines was his due, and he’s never forgiven you for it,” Peel said with a sad shake of his head.
“D’ye think it’d made any difference if I wrote him and apologised?” Lewrie speculated.
“I rather doubt it, at this point,” Peel brusquely said. “He’s festered on it far too long. Ehm, there’s another name that arose in my queries.”
“Who?” Lewrie demanded.
“Rear-Admiral Keith Ashburn,” Peel told him.
“Keith Ashburn?” Lewrie almost yelped in shock. “But … he and I were friends, about the only friend I had in the Midshipmen’s mess back in 1780. In old Ariadne, he was practically my ‘sea daddy’ who taught me just about everything I didn’t know! Why, for God’s sake?”
“I gather that he remembers how much you disliked the Navy in the beginning, how idle and arrogant you were, or seemed to be, about being completely ignorant, as a defence,” Peel said with a shrug. “I think the gist of what one of my listeners heard was that he thought you’ve been damned lucky, so far, too idle and … insouciant was the word … to be trusted with command of a rowboat, much less a warship, or a squadron, and that sooner or later you’d come a cropper and take a lot of good men with you when you fail. Sorry, but that’s what he said of you.”
“Everybody else just envies me, or thinks me a sinful heretic?” Lewrie said with a dis-believing scowl.
“Envy, yes, for certain,” Peel said with a faint grin. “You’re too damned lucky at prize-money, being in the right place at the right time, when they go years without firing a shot in anger, and winning your battles, winning fame and glory that should have been theirs, if God was truly just. It don’t look good. With so many pitted against you, getting a new active commission will be nigh impossible.”
“Oh, my God,” Lewrie slowly breathed out, visibly sagging as he slouched deeper against his dining chair. “My father suggested that I enjoy my temporary retirement, rest on my laurels, but … dammit! I suppose I’ll have to, now.”
“Oh, and there’s that fellow you relieved for illness just before the Battle of Copenhagen, Captain Speakes?” Peel added.
“Dammit, I paid him for those Franklin stoves!” Lewrie growled. “Just ’cause his Purser sold ’em off when Thermopylae was laid up in-ordinary wasn’t my fault.”
“And, his grand scheme to recoup his own career with those torpedoes failed,” Peel reminded him. “Daft idea to begin with, depending on tides and currents to float explosives with shoddy timers and detonators into enemy harbours. Speakes is a Second Class Commodore with a small squadron off Scotland, and the weather doesn’t suit his damned parrot. You let him down, didn’t believe in the project, and didn’t carry it through. He’s still a true believer.”
“Bugger him,” Lewrie spat. “The damned things’d never work.”
Oh, but that had been a dangerous Summer of 1805, experimenting with cask torpedoes and the later catamaran torpedoes jam-packed with black powder in vast quantities, with clock timers that wound trigger lines to flintlock pistol strikers that might work, if the powder did not get soaked from shoddy workmanship, if wind and tide wafted them in the right direction, if the damned devices went off at all, and if the enemy didn’t spot them. For all the work spent on developing them, only one wee French guard ship at Boulogne had been destroyed out of all the hundreds of invasion vessels, and only because her crew got curious and hauled it alongside for a looking-over.
“So, are you enjoying your forced retirement?” Peel asked as he leaned back in his chair, and waved to their waiter for more coffee.
“Most of the time, aye,” Lewrie had to admit.
“And how is married life?” Peel enquired with a brow up.
That erased the scowl from Lewrie’s face, and put him in better takings. “Utterly delightful,” he said with a pleased smile. “I am a completely happy man … even if some of my kin think me daft for re-marrying.”
“Then you’re a bloody wonder among men, and still a very lucky one,” Peel said with a wry laugh. “I understand that Dame Lewrie still paints?”
“She did my portrait in my front parlour, and the morning light there is so good that it’s become her studio,” Lewrie told him. “What is the expression, ‘happy wife, happy life’? My old cabin steward, Aspinall, is in publishing, and he’s offered her a book to be illustrated. A novel, written by a woman, of all things! We’ve a rough galley of it, but it’s all rather lurid … West Country moors, ghosts, ruined manors, earnest hearts beating as one, and I don’t know what-all. I’ve not been able to make much sense of it, except that there’s love and a rich marriage at the end. Jessica intends to continue under her maiden name, for now … J. A. Chenery.”
“‘Happy wife, happy life’,” Peel sniggered.
“But, does she ever submit anything to the Royal Academy, it’ll be under J. A. Lewrie,” Lewrie told his old compatriot. “How’s the spy game?”
“Rather boring,” Peel confessed as their fresh coffee came to the table. “Hush-hush, but lots of paperwork and reports submitted by people still out on the sharp end. The most I risk now is paper cuts, but at least I can go home to my wife and children each evening without having my throat cut. I must allow that I rather miss my active, old days out upon a hostile world under old Zachariah Twigg, working with you in the West Indies, or dodging round the Germanies before the French gobbled them all up. I just may be too stout and short of wind for such activities, but, at least I’m senior enough to have a say on what government, or military policies might be. Thomas Mountjoy down at Lisbon is in the same pickle. His pack of agents has expanded, but all he does is read reports and write summaries. And complain about the Spanish and their slack-wit generals. Not so much going on now that General Sir Arthur Wellesley is in winter Quarters at Elvas just over the Portuguese border, but he’ll be back into Spain come Spring. He’s initiated a corps of Exploring Officers to scout out the French, the roads, the terrain, and liaise with the Spanish partisan bands … in full British uniform, so they can’t be shot as spies. Wellesley will not be caught without information.”
“It was grand how he beat the French at Talavera,” Lewrie said. “About the same way he won at Vimeiro, which I was fortunate enough to witness. Hide most of his troops on the back slope ’til the French come stumbling up in their tight column blocks, then surprise them at close range before they can deploy into line. Talavera was a slaughter.”
“Yes, and then the Spanish looted his baggage trains and ate all his soldiers’ food,” Peel gravelled. “God, what a country! Only Romney Marsh seems to enjoy it, galloping from one partisan force to the next, relishing the ambushes and massacres. What a blood-thirsty sod!”
“He’s more than welcome to it,” Lewrie heartily agreed, for he had been forced to endure that lunatick who played at war and skull-duggery as if it was a grand costume party, with the opportunity to cut throats, emasculate and torture French prisoners, skin them alive and nail them to trees or barn doors. And he was a Cambridge man, and Etonian!
“My treat, I believe?” James Peel said as the waiter brought the tab. They rose, reclaimed their hats, top coats, gloves, and walking-sticks. Once outside the frowsty warmth of the chop-house, Lewrie whistled for a hackney, whilst Peel prepared to trudge back to his offices through the new-fallen snow. “It’s not all gloom and doom, old fellow. You still have allies in the Navy, most now of flag rank like Benjamin Rodgers, Thomas Charlton, and your wily old Scot swashbuckler, Andrew Ayscough. If one of them asks for you, and justifies the why, Admiralty mayn’t be able to refuse him.”
“I count on that, Mister Peel,” Lewrie told him. “Though I won’t hold my breath waitin’ for that to happen.”
“Well, good luck anyway, and give my regards to your lady wife.”
A hackney slithered to a stop by the kerb at Lewrie’s waving, wheels and hooves skidding on slush and ice. Lewrie climbed aboard and gave his address.
“Have you a lap-robe handy?” he asked the cabman.
“No, sir, sorry, but ya kin put th’ winders up,” the driver shouted down.
Should’ve worn my boat-cloak, Lewrie glumly thought as he tried to wrap his heavy overcoat over his knees and booted shins. Once comfortable, he mused upon “retirement” and marriage being delightful.
Well, the retirement part still irked, but the joys of marriage to Jessica almost made up for it, despite the reactions from his kin. His father had groaned, “Oh, Gawd, you’re really going to do it? Well, on your head be it, ye damned fool!” and even meeting Jessica had not mollified Sir Hugo’s opinion all that much.
The banns had been posted and the wedding celebrated before he heard from his far-off sons. Hugh had been bemused but supportive, but he had already been of the opinion that his father could not be expected to live a monk’s life, and had seemed appreciative of Lewrie’s mistress at Gibraltar and Lisbon. Sewallis’s letter in reply was not as congratulatory, but he’d always been a prim young sod. His older son even cautioned him about taking a much younger lady to wife, as if he was so much wiser!
Lewrie’s former brothers-in-law were split on it, Burgess now in Spain with Wellesley’s army sounded delighted, and his wife, Theodora, and her parents had actually attended. Governour, who could have come to London, had pled bad roads and bad weather at the last moment, and came just a quim-hair short of denouncing a re-marriage that did not honour the memory of his dead sister and how vexed Lewrie’s daughter, Charlotte, had taken the news. From Charlotte herself had come her own letter, a tearful accusation of his foolishness and heartlessness, and “how dare you sully the sainted memory of my mother, or imagine that anyone could replace her!”
But of course, Charlotte would have no qualms over her increased dowry, and use her father’s wealth to prepare herself for her London Season, most-like cursing his name in the process. But then, what else had Lewrie come to expect from her?
At least no one in either parish had leaped to their feet to deny the match when the banns were read the required three times. Weddings by banns, Lewrie learned, were going out of fashion, with most couples obtaining an ecclesiastical license, but Jessica was traditional in that regard, something she’d looked forward to all her life, and Lewrie was not fool enough to object. Lawyers, and her father, the Reverend Chenery, got involved to settle the marriage contract, to determine how much “pin money” he would allow her each month to manage his household, agreeing that her father would settle £60 on Jessica for her dowry, and startling the fellow when Lewrie stipulated that he would not demand that she give up her art career, and that whatever she earned would be hers, not under his coverture!
The next thing that got up Reverend Chenery’s nose was Jessica’s wish that their wedding would be a double-ring ceremony, and that Lewrie wear a matching wedding band! Lewrie had never heard of such, either; even the happiest of married men in England, or anywhere else, for that matter, did not wear a ring to announce their status. He went along with it, though, if only to please her, and it created quite a stir in church, especially among the ladies present, who sighed and went for their handkerchiefs, thinking it most romantic, whilst the married men shifted uneasily in their seats, wondering what the Hell that was all about!
Of course, Lewrie had worn his best-dress uniform with star and sash and both his medals, again at Jessica’s insistence, though there were no other Navy officers present to form the arch of swords that she had read about (bad luck, that!) to see them out the doors. Only her brother, Charley, showed up in his Midshipman uniform.
Charley had come to Lewrie at the last moment with yet another of Jessica’s innovations, pinning a sprig of rosemary on his coat lapel.
“Whatever’s this for?” Lewrie had asked, He had heard of grooms wearing a flower that matched the bride’s bouquet, but rosemary?
“It’s to represent Fidelity, sir,” Midshipman Chenery had said.
Fidelity? Lewrie had thought at that moment, rolling the word round in his head like a sharp-edged rock; Really? Gawd, I love her dear, but…! Well, I s’pose, if I must!
So far, though, it was early days, and Lewrie had no trouble with the concept, for Jessica was deliriously happy, which made him equally happy, and when it came to their physical expressions of that happiness …
He felt a tightness in his crutch as he recalled the evenings after the wedding, and the wedding breakfast. They had coached to Anglesgreen and his father’s country house for a week or so of “honeymoon” togetherness … well, as alone as they could get with Pettus along to do for him, and a rather pretty young girl named Lucy to see to Jessica’s needs, and with Mr. and Mrs. Furlough in charge of the house, with grooms, stablemen, and chamber maids of the house staff there.
The wedding breakfast had stretched into a wedding brunch before they had hit the road, and the roads had been winter-bad, making the going so slow that they had not gotten to the village before full dark.
Through a fine country supper, Lewrie could sense Jessica’s mounting nervousness, despite the good cheer of the Furloughs, and the tour of the house to show off Sir Hugo’s relics brought back from the Far East, tiger-skin rug and all, and Lewrie’s amusing banter did not ease that nervousness. His new wife was about to be introduced to the mystery of the utmost intimacy, about which no “good girl” was told a mere iota, even by her mother or sisters!
Had Jessica and her long-time girlhood friends, most now married and already mothers, ever dare share “war stories” about sexual love and pleasure, or the lack of it? Lewrie rather doubted it! And he did not wish to be dreaded as a brute!
As the house staff prepared to retire, yawning and wishing them good night, Lewrie led her to their bed-chamber where their nightgowns and nightshirts were laid out, the bed heated with a pair of warming pans and turned down. Lewrie shammed a yawn, complained of all the drink they’d “taken aboard” at the wedding breakfast, the journey, and his lack of sleep the night before, and had suggested that their first night, they just go to sleep!
They had un-dressed separately, then slid into bed, leaving one candle burning for a while, now chastely garbed in flannel bed clothes. During their brief courtship, there had been kisses, first virginally shy, then more passionate, tentative embraces that had turned to close, suggestive hugs of longer duration. That night, they had kissed, had giggled, had pressed close together, and Lewrie’s hands had stroked, but he had not groped, ’til they had snuffed the candle, spooned close on their sides, and had actually slumbered.
Then, after an active day about the property, the next evening did not find Jessica quite so fearful, and Lewrie patiently took his time to stoke her passion, casting off his nightshirt and coaxing her out of hers, working his way with gentle kisses from her neck and ears to her navel and hips and back, worshipping sensitive wee breasts ’til she was moaning and whimpering with want, and her cry of momentary pain from losing her maidenhead was lost in gasps of wonder.
The third night, Jessica had even rolled close to him after a half-hour of afterglow, endearments, and silliness, and had coyly asked if they could do that a second time! And when they woke to the wintry sun streaming through a window, the morning of the fourth day, she had not been shy when tossing back the bed covers and rising to fetch her discarded nightgown, allowing him his first full look at how lovely she was, laughing deep in her throat as he told her how beautiful she was. He meant every word of it, declaring, “Do ye think it sacrilegious, if I say that I worship you?”
Slim arms and shoulders, a lean, straight back, a slim waist, wee bottom, and long, slender legs, with small but deliciously firm breasts, wide and close-set together with her long, un-pinned hair tumbling down to half-cover them; that image of her would stick in his head forever! Elfin, willowy, lithe…! He thought that he’d need an entire dictionary of words to describe how flawless she was, and how Jessica fulfilled every fantasy of his ideal image of female beauty!
They had mostly had a grand time at Anglesgreen, riding down to the village to dine at the Old Ploughman, where Will Cony, Lewrie’s old cabin servant and Cox’n, his wife, Maggie, who had worked for the Lewries when they’d rented their farm, and their brood of sons and daughters made Jessica as welcome as a visiting royal. She’d ridden side-saddle for that jaunt, but about the farm she’d borrowed a pair of Lewrie’s corduroy breeches to wear under her gown, and Sir Hugo’s saddle, to ride, feeling so much more secure of her seat, and declaring that she just might do the same back in London, no matter what anyone said of it!
Of course, they had had to call upon Governour Chiswick, his wife, Millicent, their children, and Lewrie’s daughter, Charlotte, and that had been a stiff affair, a dinner and afternoon of rather formal, icy civility, and, despite Lewrie’s fears, Charlotte did not make a scene or catty comments, remaining aloof and stand-offish no matter how Jessica tried to warm to her. Lewrie had explained before they’d coached over how Caroline’s murder had affected her, and how most had laid the blame on him.
“Step-mothers,” Jessica had moodily mused once home, “in all of the children’s books, all the folk tales, they are always the ogres, are they not, Alan? I fear that Charlotte and I will never become close, even does she find a husband and form a household of her own. A pity, really, for I feel she could be a sweet girl.”
“She was … once,” Lewrie had told her.
“Well, I shall pray for her future happiness, and try to make the best of it,” Jessica concluded. “Oh, the winter cattle, huddled up so! I must sketch that!”
* * *
“’Ere ye goes, sir,” the cabman called down at last. “Twenny-two Dover Street,” and Lewrie alit, paid the fare, and, frozen to the bone, but aflame inside, dashed through the door of his house.
“Oh, there you are, darling, home at last!” Jessica called out with delight as Deavers took Lewrie’s things. “How did your meeting with your friend at the Foreign Office go?”
“Not very promising, I’m afraid,” he told her as he entered the front parlour, where Jessica was standing before two paintings on easels, side-by-side, with a palette board in one hand and a brush in the other, dressed in winter woolens and shawl, with a mob-cap on her head, and her hair down and long, pulled to the nape of her neck, at perfect “at home” ease. She set her tools aside and came to embrace him.
“Hallo to you, my love,” Lewrie said, beaming as he gave her a strong hug and a lingering kiss.
“Why, you’re half-frozen!” she exclaimed.
“Aye, but you’re so warm,” Lewrie purred as he nuzzled her neck.
“Go sit by the fire and warm yourself,” she instructed. “Shall I ring for tea, or brandy?”
“Both!” Lewrie declared as he went to the fireplace to lift the skirts of his coat to thaw his backside. “Still working on those?”
“Trying to,” Jessica said, taking a moment to regard her paintings. “Dim and gloomy as it is this morning, I haven’t accomplished much, and the light’s gone for the day, so I suppose I should quit. They’ll be finished, eventually,” she said, dipping her brush in turpentine to clean it.
“Thought you’d catch your death when you did the sketches,” he said, sitting in one of the wing-back chairs with his hands extended to warm them.
Jessica had been entranced with the vista from his father’s house, and with the house itself, spending a good part of one day sitting out on the front gallery in warm clothing, one of Lewrie’s over-coats and a blanket, to draw the distant village and the farmland and forest between, with lots of hot coffee, tea, or beef broth to sustain her ’til she was satisfied. The next clear day, she had set up her easel in the lane and rendered the house and the stub of the old Roman, or Saxon, or Norman tower that had been incorporated into the house, no one was sure when, or why, it had been erected atop the hillside. Now, she was working on them at the same time, adding details such as sheep, cattle, or farm workers, though keeping a winter aspect. That activity had given her a case of the sniffles that had alarmed everyone.
Lewrie especially liked the painting of the house, for she had it look trimmed for Christmas, with holly and pine wreaths in the windows, and welcoming, glowing amber light spilling from all the windows, reflected on the thin snowfall and the icicles on the cherub fountain in the middle of the gravel coach drive.
“Oh, there are some letters that have come for you,” Jessica said, “none addressed to the both of us, yet,” she added with a mock rueful grin and a cock of her head, and Lewrie went to fetch them off the entry hall side-board, himself.
“Aha! Percy Stangbourne,” he said with glee as he read the sender. “You remember his wife, Eudoxia, who came to our wedding?”
“Oh, yes, what a remarkable woman!” Jessica declared, “And her father, that … how do you say it, Arslan Artomovich?” She giggled. “What a romantic match, a Russian actress, horsewoman, marksman, and circus performer, married to a Viscount, no matter what anyone thinks of it. Her father, though … hmm!”
Arslan Artomovich Durschenko had done what he had done at his daughter’s marriage; gotten “cherry merry” drunk and taught anyone who dared to dance like a Cossack, and Lewrie thought he’d sprained every muscle in his legs and lamed himself trying to compete with him!
“Percy says he’s utterly delighted to hear that I’ve married, and Eudoxia’s written him to describe you, all good of course, and he sends you his very best regards and good wishes,” Lewrie related, and read Percy’s account of his part in the Battle of Talavera, and how much he had come to despise his Spanish allies.
There were other letters from fellow officers, a sarcastic one from Geoffrey Westcott, a perennial bachelor too busy wenching to ever wed; Anthony Langlie, who had married his French ward, Sophie; and one from Rear-Admiral Thomas Charlton.
“Hmm, Thom Charlton says he’s in London, between commissions,” Lewrie related, “and his mail just caught up with him. He’s staying at Nerot’s Hotel in Saint James’s, in Knight’s Street. I should write and invite him to dine with us,” further explaining how they had met in the Adriatic, what they had accomplished, and how Thomas Charlton had given one of his sons his first berth as a Midshipman in 1803.
“But of course, darling,” Jessica agreed. “It would be grand to meet him.”
“Hmm, something about a proposal he wants to discuss with me,” Lewrie read on aloud.
“A proposal?” Jessica asked, swiping a loose lock of hair back under her mob-cap, with a quizzical brow up. “What sort of proposal?”
“Don’t know,” Lewrie replied, “he doesn’t say. Maybe I should call on him at his lodgings, first, find out what he means, then invite him to dine.”
“Something concerning the Navy, Alan? Oh, dear,” Jessica said, hugging her shawl closer round her.
“It may be,” Lewrie said, feeling a frisson of excitement that it might pull him out of his forced retirement, even as he sensed his wife’s alarm, which he tried to calm. “Who knows? He might wish to ask if I know a promising fellow to be his Flag-Lieutenant or his Flag-Captain, if he’s gettin’ a new command. Or, he might ask how I managed t’raise all those rabbits and quail aboard my last ship, and how they fare at sea, ha ha!”
He gave her a dis-arming smile and a shrug to reassure her, then could not help allowing his gaze to stray to where his great-cabin furnishing had stood in the parlour, but saw the new settee, matching chairs, and side-tables that Jessica had bought after they’d returned to London from their honeymoon. His old things, she’d complained, had reeked of salt, tar, gunpowder, and mildew, and hints of the orlop and rotting salt-meats too long in brine casks. All had been relegated to the servants’ flat above the un-used stables.
“So, you might not be called back to sea anytime soon?” she asked, sounding a touch fearful.
“I rather doubt it, my love,” Lewrie shrugged off, but at heart he wondered. If Charlton asked, would he actually leave his sweet wife and this happy life with her? As dear as he adored her, as loath as he was to be apart from her for even a single night, he feared that he might!