The Invasion Year

CHAPTER TWENTY

Now, how does a baronet conduct himself? Lewrie asked himself as he made a slow circuit of the hall with a fresh champagne in his hand, and an eye out for the nearest refills. And for the comely young women present… so long as it wasn’t the Blandings’ mort. Sir Hugo had strayed away in pursuit of the auburn-haired woman they’d spotted early on; he wished him joy of it, though he smugly thought that she’d not had eyes for that old rogue. It must be admitted that, now that he was knight and baronet, even a back-door variety, he began to enjoy the rare chance to preen. It wouldn’t last, of course; within a few days he would be back in dreary Sheerness, back aboard Reliant, and in the minutiae of ship-board life, and his sash and star stowed away at the bottom of a sea-chest. The hall was not so crowded with people, nor was it as candle-lit as it might be for an evening event, that it had grown oppressively warm, and someone must have thrown up the many sash-windows and opened some glassed double-doors to let in the cool day’s wind.

“Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, sir!” someone called out in a braying voice, forcing him to turn and peer about. A tall fellow with a full head of long dark blond hair was beaming at him, a fellow garbed in a uniform of some cavalry regiment, and epaulets of a Lieutenant-Colonel.

“Sir?” Lewrie said, smiling back. “You have the better of me.”

“Percy Stangbourne, Sir Alan,” the dashing fellow said, coming to shake hands vigourously. “Viscount Stangbourne, but everyone calls me Percy. Congratulations on your knighthood, Sir Alan, and gaining a baronetcy.”

“Thank you kindly, my lord,” Lewrie responded, an idea nagging at him that he’d heard that name before, but…

“I bring felicitations from a mutual acquaintance of ours, too, Sir Alan,” Stangbourne teased. “Mistress Eudoxia Durschenko, of equestrian fame?”

Oh, he’s the chap Father wrote me of! Lewrie realised, wondering if he would be called out for a duel by a jealous lover.

“You are acquainted with her, my lord? Percy?” Lewrie asked as innocently as he could (he was rather good at shamming “innocent,” just as he was at portraying false modesty) yet thinking, Honest t’God, your honour, sir, I never laid a finger on yer daughter… sister… wife… mistress! And why the Devil ain’t he wearin’ a powdered wig, too?

“Mistress Eudoxia and I were fortunate enough to make our acquaintance during the last Winter interval, whilst riding in the park, and I have had the further great fortune to have obtained her father’s permission to call upon her, Sir Alan,” Lord Stangbourne blathered enthusiastically, like a teen in “cream-pot” love.

“He did?” Lewrie exclaimed, stunned. “If Arslan Artimovitch did, I’d have t’declare ye the luckiest man in all England!”

Probably showed him all his daggers, pistols, and his lions, to give him good warnin’, Lewrie thought.

“So I consider myself, sir!” Stangbourne boasted.

“Seen them lately?” Lewrie asked.

“Off on their Summer touring,” Lord Stangbourne said with an impatient shrug, “up to the reeky towns of Scotland and back.” He had to swipe at the romantic mop of hair that fell over his forehead. “We do write, twice weekly. Mistress Eudoxia had spoken so admiringly of you, sir, and of your splendid defence of their ship when they were returning from Africa some years back, so… when I heard your name called, I simply had to meet the man who saved my intended, express my thanks, and take the measure of so bold a fellow, ha ha!”

See if I’m a rival? Lewrie cynically thought; What? She’s his “intended”? Is he daft? Young lords sport with actresses and circus girls, they don’t bloody marry ’em!

Lewrie recalled, though, how zealously Eudoxia’s father guarded her innocence. Stangbourne would’ve had to propose just to get close enough to shake her hand or smell her perfume!

“Intended? Why, that’s marvellous for you, my lord!” Lewrie pretended to be delighted. “Percy, rather. When next you write her, please extend my best wishes… even to her father. You’ll wish her to leave the circus, o’ course. Is her father amenable to that, too?”

“They see the sense of it,” Percy Stangbourne said with another shrug, that one much iffier, as if he’d not dared broach the subject yet. “Ah, and here’s my sister!” He brightened, waving to someone. “I say, Lydia, come meet the hero of the hour, that Captain Lewrie that Eudoxia told us about… the one who saved their bacon in the South Atlantic several years ago!”

Lydia Stangbourne looked a tad less than enthused at the mention of her brother’s outre “intended,” all but rolling her eyes. During the naming to each other, Lydia Stangbourne wore a placid, bland, and almost bored-with-the-world expression, her mouth a bit pouty. That was a bit off-putting to Lewrie, though she had an odd sort of attractiveness.

Instead of dropping him a graceful, languid curtsy in answer to his how, though, she extended her hand, man-fashion.

Do I kiss it like a Frenchman, shake, or just stare at it? he wondered, compromising quickly by grasping her fingers. She found his response slightly amusing; one brow went up, her dark green eyes sparkled, and one corner of her lips curled up in what he took as a smirk.

“Sir Alan,” she purred, looking him directly in the eyes.

“Miss Stangbourne, your servant, ma’am,” Lewrie replied. There was no wedding ring to give him a clue, and if she had a lesser title than her brother the Viscount, he hadn’t heard it mentioned. “Honoured to make your acquaintance,” he added.

“Don’t be too sure, Sir Alan,” she responded with a toss of her head and a brief laugh, “we’re both hellish-unconventional.” A smirk and a rueful moue followed. “Just Lydia will suit, as just Percy does for my brother. At one time, ‘the Honourable Miss Lydia’ would serve, but that was a while ago.”

“And hellish-informal to boot, haw!” Percy happily seconded.

“ ‘Prinny’ finds us amusing,” Lydia said, inclining her head at the dais, and the Prince of Wales, which reminded Lewrie that Sir Hugo had written that Percy Stangbourne was an intimate of the Prince. His declared informality, and that acquaintance, might explain why neither of them was wigged or powdered!

Lydia Stangbourne was not a ravishing beauty in the contemporary sense, but Lewrie found her rather attractive. Her face was oval, with faintly prominent cheekbones, tapering to a firm but narrow chin and an average-width mouth, one with delicate, almost vulnerable, and kissable full lips… when they weren’t haughtily pursed. Lewrie thought her a tad elfin-looking, though her nose, full-on, was too wide and large at first glance; but, when she turned her head towards a servant offering glasses of champagne, it then appeared almost Irish and wee. Lydia’s eyes were dark emerald green, the brows above them thick and brown, and her hair was darker than her brother’s, as dark blond as old honey, and faintly shot through with lighter gold strands.

In fashionable soft leather slippers, she stood too tall for Society’s taste, three inches shy of Lewrie’s five feet nine, almost as tall as his late wife. And she wasn’t what Society wished in its womenfolk’s form, either, for she was not pale, wee, round, and squeezeable. Her stylish light green gown clung to a sylph-like, willow-slim frame, her complexion hinted at “outdoorsy” pursuits, and her bare upper arms displayed a hint of muscle; her handshake had been more than firm, making Lewrie think that Miss Lydia did things more strenuous than pouring tea, embroidering, or punishing a piano.

“Shall we stroll?” Percy suggested, and with glasses in hand, they started a slow circuit of the grand hall, with Percy pressing for details of the sea-fight that had saved the Durschenkos, where were the Chandeleur Islands anyway, and what had happened there, as eager as a toddler to hear a scary ghost story.

“Percy, must Sir Alan recite all his battles?” Lydia chid him after a time, reverting to her earlier thin-lipped coolness. “You two could save that for another time. I am more interested in how Captain Lewrie gained his somewhat infamous repute…”

What the Hell’s she heard? Lewrie wondered, ready to flinch.

“… as a champion of William Wilberforce and the Abolitionist Society,” Lydia went on, turning her head to bestow another of those direct-in-the-eyes looks with a brow up, and her lips curled in sly humour. “You were put on trial for stealing slaves, but acquitted?”

Is she twittin’ me for fun? Lewrie asked himself, a bit irked.

“The tracts and the newspapers called you ‘Black Alan,’ did they not?” Lydia asked with what looked like a smirk.

“I wasn’t fond o’ that’un,” Lewrie said, grimacing, “nor when they named me ‘Saint Alan the Liberator,’ either. I do despise chattel slavery, but I must confess that the whole thing began as a lark.” He told them the bald truth of how he and Christopher Cashman had duelled the Beaumans on Jamaica, and why, and how they’d arranged the “theft” of his dozen Black “volunteers,” including the bizarre appearance of the seals that night as if in blessing, and what splendid sailors those rescued Blacks had become.

“Seals, Sir Alan?” Lydia posed, looking dubious, as if he was a superstitious fool, and Lewrie explained why people in the Fleet thought him blessed with a lucky cess; the “selkies” who’d appeared as seals at a sea-burial of a boy Midshipman from the West Country in 1794, and the seals that turned up in warning in the Adriatic, then those who had swum out to his frigate in a snow storm to guide the Thermopylae frigate into the Baltic in 1801.

“I know it’s more co-incidence than fact, but stranger things than that’ve happened at sea,” he concluded, with a disparaging grin.

“You seem to be a man of more parts than one would at first suspect, Sir Alan,” Lydia commented, this time with a wider grin.

“Not a simple ‘scaly-fish’ stumpin’ round his quarterdeck yellin’ ‘luff’?” Lewrie said with a laugh.

“We must have you to supper, if only to hear a tenth of it all!” Percy Stangbourne eagerly proposed.

“Indeed we must, Percy,” Lydia quickly agreed, giving Lewrie another uncanny direct look, this time smiling promisingly and slowly fanning her lashes. “You will be staying in London for long?” She sidled an inch or two closer, her head slightly over to one side, and sounded as if his answer was vitally important to her.

“Only a couple of days, unfortunately,” Lewrie had to tell her. “Admiralty, some other business, before I have to return to Sheerness. They tell me there’s a war on, and the French are bein’ a bother!”

“Dinner, today, perhaps?” Lord Percy proposed.

“I’m down for dinner with Captain Blanding and my father,” he said, and damned unhappy he was to say it, too.

“Do I gather that that sounds as dreadful as supper parties with Wilberforce and Hannah More and their crowd?” Lydia japed, tossing her head back for a good laugh; on a very slim, graceful neck, Lewrie noted! “As much as one admires their good works, and their intentions… they are such a tedious lot!”

“Aye, I’ve been bored t’tears a time or two, myself,” Lewrie happily agreed, laughing too. “Before my trial, it was almost once a week. And it’s not just slavery they’ll do away with. Fox-huntin’ and steeplechasin’, bear-baitin’n dog-fightin’… it’ll be tasty food and beer to be done away with, next, I expect. Sling every child into what they’re callin’ a Sunday School, and wallop all glee from ’em?”

“Spiritous drink, music, and dancing, too, do you imagine?” she said with an intriguingly impish cast to her eyes. “What about supper this evening, Sir Alan? You’re free, aren’t you, Percy?”

“I would be delighted!” Lewrie quickly told her.

“We must show you off to London,” Lydia said, tapping the star on his chest, next to his medals for Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown. “At White’s, the Cocoa Tree, or Boodle’s?”

“Almack’s, too,” Lord Percy boyishly hooted. “Make the rounds. And, I’ve a yen to try my luck again in the Long Rooms.”

“Not too deep this time, Percy?” Lydia said, her face losing all animation, with a fretful expression.

“Last time, I garnered seventy thousand,” Percy boasted. “Now, had I been gambling deep, it might have been a million, by dawn. Do say you will join us, Sir Alan, as our guest for the evening. My word, I still wish to hear at least some of your past battles, even though they may bore poor Lydia to tears, all that sailing stuff, and manly doings.”

“Pooh, Percy, in Captain Lewrie’s case, I very much doubt if I could be bored,” Lydia rejoined; and there was yet another of her odd and encouraging looks, and a warm smile of amusement.

“Then I shall,” Lewrie swore. He gave his address at the Madeira Club, got theirs in Grosvenor Street (hellish-fashionable, that!) and a promise that they would coach round and collect him at 8 in the evening. A handshake with Lord Percy, a bow to Lydia, then once more a clasping of hands with her, and this time her fingers trailed slowly cross his palm as they let go, and her enigmatic smile.

Well, well, well! Lewrie thought, damned pleased with himself; Comin’ up in Society, am I? He had skirted round the fringes of the aristocracy in his childhood when they’d still had the house in St. James’s Square, and at his various public schools, then encountered a few more of the peerage in the Navy; in the main, he’d never been all that impressed or in awe of Lord Thing-Gummy types. They were either competent, or lacklustre bores, either likable dunces or rogues, or vicious little tyrants with no time to spare on “the lower orders.”

Lord Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, seemed to be a decent sort so far, and his sister…! How does one go about seducin’ her kind? he puzzled; Or would that be too aspirin’ for a lackey like me? Hmmm, he pondered further; bound t’be bony, and not much by way o’ tits, but.…