Night had found their little convoy, forcing a halt overnight at a cozy posting house short of Guildford, near the juncture of the Petersfield road. An early dawn rising and departure, unfortunately, coincided with the early market traffic into London, so it was an hour short of Noon before the coach and dray rattled up to Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby’s front doors in Upper Grosvenor Street. Lewrie jumped out of the hired coach and went up the entry steps to rap on the door, and to be answered by the frostily stand-offish butler, who at least recognised him this time.
“Ah, Sir Alan,” the butler intoned, “you are arrived. I shall announce you to Sir Hugo.”
“Thankee, Harwell,” Lewrie said, motioning over his shoulder at the laden waggon. “Is there a back entrance, a coach house, where my goods can be stored for a few days?”
Harwell coolly looked him up and down in seeming dis-belief that he’d even ask such a question, gave it a long, hard thought, and only then said, “Goods, Sir Alan?” as he might to an un-wanted pedlar.
“My great-cabins furnishings and such,” Lewrie said.
“There is a coach house, but Sir Hugo’s equipage occupies it at the moment, Sir Alan,” Harwell said, frowning. “You would be stabling the horses and storing the waggon as well, would you, sir?”
“No, they’re hired. I just need a place to unload,” Lewrie told him, growing a bit irked. Though it was a fine summer day for London, standing outside without immediate admittance was mildly insulting.
“I will have a footman direct your waggoner, sir,” Mr. Harwell decided. “Come in, if you will, sir.”
Lewrie turned and whistled to his fellow passengers in the coach, and Desmond, Pettus, and Yeovill emerged, along with several sea-chests, travelling luggage from the boot, Bisquit on a leash, and Chalky in his wicker cage, along with their personal sea bags and belongings. Up the steps they came, to mill about in the entrance foyer.
“An entourage, is it, Sir Alan?” Harwell asked with one eyebrow most accusingly up. “One would suppose we will be able to sort it all out. I will annouce you to Sir Hugo, who is abovestairs.”
“Grand place, it is,” Desmond muttered to Yeovill and Pettus.
“Yes, it is,” Pettus agreed in a similar hushed tone. “I forget that you two didn’t come up to London with the Captain the last time.”
“Good kitchens?” Yeovill wondered. “Be a treat, someone else doing the cooking for a day or two.”
A footman lad dashed past, dressed in black “ditto” suitings, white shirt and neck-stock, and a red waist-coat, a miniature version of the butler, out to direct Deavers and Dasher and the waggoner to an alley entrance round the corner. His passage excited the dog, who began whining and yelping, straining at his leash.
Lewrie’s father, Sir Hugo, appeared at the top of the stairs and began his descent with his butler in tow, and both of them looking perturbed.
“Well!” Sir Hugo said in a chary bark of a welcome. “You’ve come at last, have you? And brought a circus?”
“Good to see you, too, Father,” Lewrie said in greeting, used to Sir Hugo’s thin hospitality by then.
“How many of you are there, then?” Sir Hugo asked as he reached the foyer, and offered a brief handshake to his son. “And how long are you expecting to stay?”
“Myself and five others, Father,” Lewrie told him, “and I hope to find other lodgings right after I settle things at Admiralty.”
“You’ve brought your bloody cat?” Sir Hugo scoffed, peering at the cage. “I see you’re sensible enough to get yourself a proper pet. But, I’ll not have your dog piddling or scatting on my good carpets.
“Five others, is it?” Sir Hugo said with a scowl. “I see only three.”
“My cabin steward, Pettus, I believe you know from earlier, but allow me to name to you my Cox’n, Liam Desmond, and my cook, James Yeovill,” Lewrie said. “Men, my Father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby. There are two more with my dray waggon, unloading its content into your coach house, temporarily, a man from my boat crew, Michael Deavers, and my cabin servant, Tom Dasher.”
“Unloading…?” Sir Hugo said with a start. “Did ye loot some prize and fetch it all here? Anything the Customs men or the Police will come asking about?”
“My cabin furnishings, wine store, things like that,” Lewrie shrugged off. “Some of it might have to come inside for safekeeping, but…”
“If it’s only, as you say, for a few days, I’d suppose,” Sir Hugo harrumphed. “Might you be able to deal with it, Harwell?”
“After training Guards recruits, I am used to chaos, Sir Hugo,” the butler said with a smug expression on his stern phyz. “Though, perhaps for the few days Sir Alan’s entourage might assist the running of the house, to ease the burden on the staff?”
“But of course, Mister Harwell,” Lewrie offered.
“Your room is prepared, Sir Alan,” Harwell said, “and your man can see to you. Spare rooms belowstairs are available for your men, though they may have to share two, or three, to a room.”
“Let’s be about it, then,” Sir Hugo declared, as if that particular burden on his household was solved. “Come up to the drawing room, my boy, and take your ease.”
“After I’ve paid my coachman and waggoner,” Lewrie said, pulling out his coin-purse. “Be up in a moment.”
* * *
Finally shed of his hat and sword belt, Lewrie trotted up the stairs to the parlour and joined his father, who was seated on a settee near the book cases on the far end of the spacious and richly appointed room. Someone had let Bisquit off his leash (after a judicious allowance outside to void his bowels and bladder) and Sir Hugo was making a fuss over him, making Bisquit’s tail whip. Chalky was hunkered up on a deep windowsill cushion, tail wrapped round his forelegs. Like all cats, he did not deal well with new and strange surroundings.
“Anything good in your wine store?” Sir Hugo asked. Perhaps he was mellowed by Bisquit’s presence and affectionate response to being petted, but the old man almost seemed pleasant for a rare once.
“There’s two ankers of good port, some Spanish or Portuguese sparkling wines,” Lewrie ticked off as he took a seat in a wing-back chair across from his father, “but the bulk of it’s un-distinguished … drinkable and pleasant, but nothing grand. I’ve a crock or two of American corn whisky, some ‘liberated’ French brandy, quite decent…”
“What sort of corn?” Sir Hugo asked, looking up from the dog.
“Indian corn, what we’d call maize,” Lewrie told him. “Aged in oak barrels several years. They call it bourbon whisky.”
“Like Scottish whisky, or Irish?” Sir Hugo frowned.
“Different grains, different flavour,” Lewrie said. “You ought try it.”
“I’ll stick to brandy, thankee,” Sir Hugo dismissively scoffed. “The whiskys I’ve tasted leave me in mind of sucking on wood chips. So … you’ve lost your ship, have you?”
Lewrie explained how and why, and how much he regretted the loss, even though Sapphire had less than a year, at best, left in her active commission before he would have had to leave her, anyway.
“The thing that irks the most, though,” Lewrie said, sounding wistful, “is seeing all my skilled gunners scattered to the wide like so much chaff. God, they were good, and accurate, too! We took that big French frigate we faced to pieces with aimed fire … her quarterdeck and helm, her carronades, lower masts, and roundshot and grape right into her gun-ports, at long musket shot, double long musket shot, not hull-to-hull.” Lewrie explained his experiments with crude sights cut into muzzles and breeching rings.
Perhaps the reassuring sound of Lewrie’s voice at last calmed Chalky, for he slunk off the cushioned window seat and came to Lewrie’s knee to mew for a snug place in his lap, and some comforting pets.
“What? Using cannons like those Baker rifles they’re issuing to the Rifle regiments?” Sir Hugo said with a dubious snort. “Never heard the like. And they didn’t charge you with defacing the King’s artillery?”
“It can be done, we proved it,” Lewrie declared. “Oh, not at any great range, or with a high sea runnin’, but it can work.”
“Well, if you say so,” Sir Hugo finally allowed. “That … cat of yours, there. Black and white, as I recall?”
“That was Toulon,” Lewrie said, stroking the cat, “this’un is Chalky. Toulon passed away on the way to Cape Town, years ago, and Chalky came off a French prize during the Quasi-War the Yankee Doodles had with the French. He’s of an age, now, too.”
“The dog can be let out into the walled back garden, but what will it do when caught short?” Sir Hugo asked, giving the cat a dubious glance.
“I brought a barrel of sand, and his litter box,” Lewrie said, knowing that his father disliked cats, and secretly enjoying the man’s discomfort. “He’s used to it, ain’t ye, puss’ums?”
“And that will be in your room, hear me?” Sir Hugo snapped. “So you can spare me, and the rest of the house, the smells.”
“Of course,” Lewrie agreed with a chuckle.
“So, Admiralty tomorrow, then … what?” Sir Hugo asked as the dog at last padded away to explore the parlour, giving everything some good sniffs.
“Well, I hear that I’m to be dined in at the Madeira Club, to celebrate,” Lewrie speculated aloud, “and, I expect that I might get about town to look up old friends, do some shopping…”
“Pity about the club,” Sir Hugo said, “we’ve bought up the two houses either side for expansion, but you may have brick dust in your soup. Workmen knocking out walls, connecting hallways, plasterers and painters in from dawn to dusk, carpenters hammering and sawing away to refurbish the new rooms. At least the wine cellar is still good. But, the question is, how long might it be ’twixt your old ship and a new one?”
“Impossible t’say,” Lewrie said with a confident shrug. “Can’t be too long, after all the folderol the papers made of our fight. They can’t keep a successful Captain ashore more than a month or so.”
“About that,” Sir Hugo said, squirming about to cross his legs. “Soon as I got your letter from Gibraltar, I spoke with my solicitor, and he’s spoken with a reputable land agent about finding you a place t’hang your hat ’til the Navy sends you back to sea. At first I thought a set of rooms would do, but now, with your menagerie and all, perhaps a house might be necessary. Something to let for a time, and not too dear?”
“A house?” Lewrie gawped. The idea of taking an entire house had never occurred to him. Between ships, he’d had his rented house and small farm at Anglesgreen, a set of rooms for himself and one man-servant early on, the Madeira Club, or short stays in public lodging like Willis’s Rooms or some other hotel. But, to let a whole house, and for how long month-to-month, and all the furniture necessary to make it even comfortable for ancient Spartans or Catholic monks would be an expensive undertaking, and a huge commitment. To maintain a house, one needed servants, chamber maids, a scullery maid to assist Yeovill in the kitchens, a maid-of-all-work, a footman or two, even a butler? Good Lord!
“Hadn’t thought of a house,” Lewrie all but croaked in alarm. “Oh, if I eventually retired, or…”
“You can afford it, surely,” Sir Hugo tossed off, rising to go to a side table to pour himself a glass of Rhenish. “I read that the Navy’s bought in the ships your squadron took at prizes.”
“Aye, they did,” Lewrie agreed. “I’ve £3,900 due me, and from our other captures … well, all told, I’m almost £50,000 to the good.”
“Egad!” Sir Hugo barked. “You’ve come home a ‘chicken nabob’! John Company wallahs leave India with that much.”
“Nowhere as well as you, but…” Lewrie said, ready to preen his fingernails on his coat lapels.
I never did learn how much you made away with, he thought with amusement. His father would never reveal what his time with the East India Company army had earned him, but Sir Hugo had cleared all of his debtors once back in England, had dangled so much gold under the late Uncle Phineas Chiswick’s nose to purchase his country estate of three hundred and twenty acres at Anglesgreen (uncomfortably close to his son, wife, and family!), had run up his odd one-level house more like an Indian bungalow than a proper country house, and bought this grand house in one of London’s most fashionable districts, even grander than his old place in St. James’s Square (though that’un had not been on the good side).
“Hah!” his father hooted in wicked mirth. “Not even close! A glass, would you?” he offered with a wave of the cut-glass decanter.
“Aye,” Lewrie said, getting to his feet, still numbed by the thought of taking an actual house. Why, it was almost like admitting that he would never go back to sea!
“You’ll have this place once I’m gone, and you’d have to spend money to maintain it properly, at any rate,” Sir Hugo said as he poured Lewrie a glass. “Can’t spend your whole life like a vagabond or a Gypsy tinker. Oh, you’ll have my money, my sums in the Three Percents, and my investments, to help keep this place, and the farm, up to snuff, but … now you can afford it, you might as well get used to being a homeowner. Or someone’s renter, anyway,”
“Grow up, d’ye mean?” Lewrie sourly asked.
“Something like that, hee hee,” Sir Hugo agreed.
“Seems a shame,” Lewrie told him, “to furnish a place, hire on house staff, for only two months or so.”
“Well, there’s always second-hand goods a’plenty available,” his father brushed off, “half London’s in the process of selling up and moving in or out. Perhaps the land agent can find a place that’s already furnished. As for staff, I use a good agent for that, and with half the better houses closed for the Summer, and so many people laid off, I’m sure that maids and such would be grateful for a few months of employment, with room and board all found.”
“Excuse me, Sir Hugo,” the butler, Harwell, said as he entered the parlour, “but dinner is ready.”
“Ah, excellent!” Sir Hugo said, tossing off his glass of wine. “My son’s people are settled in?”
“Their rooms assigned, and sitting down to dinner with the rest of the staff, this moment, sir,” Harwell assured him.
“There will be roast beef, the ‘Fatted Calf’ as it were, this evening,” Sir Hugo promised as they headed for the dining room, “but for now, I trust that roast chicken will suffice, my boy?”
“Topping!” Lewrie said. One thing could be counted upon; his father’s hospitality might be lacking, but he always set a good table!