Troubled Waters

CHAPTER EIGHT

"It was a passing-fair day for a wedding. Rain had poured down in buckets the early evening prior, just about the time that Lewrie had returned to Portsmouth in the diligence coach, slithering down the road from Portdown Hill. Thankfully though, the rain had eased off to misty, light showers round midnight, and had quit in the early hours of the dawn, just afore "first sparrow fart."

By proper sunrise, the skies had mostly cleared, displaying patches of lighter-coloured clouds, through which the sun broke, now and again. The town, and the seaport, smelled fresh-laundered without the usual accumulated reeks. Horse dung and ordure had been flushed away (for a little while, anyway) and the street cobbles and narrow brick sidewalks bore a damp sheen, with here and there puddles, some rather large but shallow, that acted like mirrors to the now-benign sky.

Lt. Urquhart, who had never met Langlie, volunteered to remain aboard, along with the new-come Midshipmen, to keep an eye on the ship, whilst Savage's Commission Sea Officers, Marine Lieutenant Devereux and Mr. Win-wood the Sailing Master, along with Mr. Midshipman Grace, accompanied Lewrie ashore in the ship's boats, buffed up, polished, brushed down, and clad in their best uniforms. For a rather rare once, except for Sunday Divisions, they had even bathed, closely shaved, and gotten their hair trimmed and combed into presentable order.

Caroline had insisted upon the services being held at the church of St. Thomas A'Becket 's, that grand and prominent Portsmouth landmark. If hoary old St. George's in their home village of Anglesgreen was not convenient to Langlie's family, who lived in Kent, and if Langlie could not get free of his new ship long enough during her own fitting-out… and if a London parish church was equally inconvenient, then St. Thomas A'Becket's it would be, and hang the cost! she had determinedly insisted… rather strongly, in point of fact; turned as chilly as a Greenland blizzard, high-nosed and imperious, and playing upon her husband's guilt like a master violinist. Hadn't Lewrie made a "pile of tin" off Creole pirate silver, his prize-money from the Mediterranean as well been freed by the Prize-Courts, at long last, so…? "What is money for, if not to spend on such an occasion… dear?" she had pouted.

Lewrie and his well-groomed party shambled into the appointed inn, the Blue Posts, to meet up with the groom and his party, and there Langlie was, dressed in a spanking-new uniform, with the single bright gold epaulet upon his left shoulder, his shirt, waist-coat, and breeches as white as snow, his Hessian boots new-blacked, and his long and curly dark hair brushed back, with a dab or two of pomade to keep it in good order, and a mere sprig of a queue at the back of his neck and uniform coat collar in the new style.

And looking as fretful and nervous as a treed cat, even if his two Lieutenants and four Midshipmen off the brig-sloop HMS Orpheus were gently joshing him at the moment.

"Captain Lewrie, sir!" Langlie exclaimed, flea-quick to cross the room and offer his hand, 'stead of waiting to receive that honour.

"Commander Langlie!" Lewrie replied in like manner, taking that offered hand and giving it a warm shake. "Ye look well in your new rank, and both well-deserved and about time, too, sir!" Lewrie said in normal tones, then leaned closer to whisper, "but about as nervous as a feagued horse. Marriage'll do that, or so I'm told, though."

"More gladsome anticipation than fret, sir," Langlie admitted in equally guarded voice, beaming fit to bust. "May I make you known to my parents, sir, my sister, and my officers and 'Mids'?"

"Be delighted," Lewrie happily agreed.

It had come as rather a surprise, when Lt. Langlie had spoken to his captain, just days after his commission and orders had come down from Admiralty, hemming and hawing, coughing into his fist and turning as red as rare beef, to formally ask Lewrie for his ward's, Sophie de Maubeuge's, hand in marriage. Oh, Lewrie had long ago given both of them permission to write each other, but then Sophie and Caroline had gone all wroth with each other, and Sophie had fled to London, to live with his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, and had been (for Sir Hugo and his unsavoury repute) introduced into London society, Lewrie had figured that the girl surely had struck upon another, by then; one with richer estate and prospects, perhaps, who would not turn his nose up at a penniless "foreign" girl with but a mediocre paraphernalia to bring to the marriage, and but a miserly "dot" of annual support, no matter how radiantly fetching and lovely, how well-schooled in social graces, but… it seemed that "absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Lewrie could almost understand it; when he'd first met her at Toulon in '93, Sophie and her firebrand brother and woeful mother had been living with an equally impoverished cousin, Baron Charles Auguste de Crillart, one of those "Royalist" French naval officers hounded from the service during the Terror, and ejected from his seat in the People's Assembly for being too damned reasonable and moderate… stances both highly suspect and rare in those bloody days.

Sophie had evinced all the signs of being in teenaged "cream-pot love" with her older cousin. In defending the hundreds of refugees of the fall of Toulon, de Crillart had sacrificed his life, and poor wee Sophie had lost her brother in the final boarding of the lone French corvette that had caught up with their weary old, half-armed frigate, as well. To make things even more grievous, a last broadside from the corvette had smashed in the stern, down low, slaughtering her mother, to boot, and Sophie would have had no one to look after her, if not for Lewrie honouring his pledge to the dying Charles de Crillart to see to his kinfolk. Lewrie and Caroline had been her saviours; Caroline in the beginning with her whole-hearted charity, and Lewrie streaked with their common foes' blood, smudged with spent gunpowder, hatless, and a sword in his hand at the end of that battle… the battle that resulted in the corvette becoming HMS Jester, Lewrie's first wartime command.

Did I seem a replacement for poor Charles? Lewrie took time to maunder; was an officer from someone's navy Sophie's destiny?

He gave himself a mental shake, plastering a smile upon his phyz for the introductions. Mr. Anthony Langlie, Senior, was a squirearchy gentleman-farmer of good appearance, an equal to his son's handsomeness, well dressed and obviously a man of some means, whose lands-640 acres in freehold-lay close by to Horsham. Mrs. Langlie made just as impressive an appearance, not the typical "country dumpling" he expected; still a quite fetching and tastefully dressed lady in her fourties. The Langlies were the sort of educated and polished couple one might meet in a fashionable drawing room in London, yet not so grand and high-nosed. If they were to be in-law kin, Lewrie could contemplate future time _with them might present him with conversation that did not consist solely of sheep husbandry and how the apple crop was doing!

Admittedly, the Langlies did eye him in a fashion that Lewrie could only deem… chary. No matter the good reports they had of him through their son during his service as First Lieutenant aboard Proteus, there were those many articles in the newspapers, some hints of infamy, the taints of the "tar brush,"

and all.

"Well, then… Mister Langlie, sir… Mistress Langlie, ma'am, quite delighted to meet you, at last," Lewrie said after the requisite bows and hand clasps and pledges of "yer servant" and such. "After a three-year commission with your son, I feel deeply honoured for him to become my son-in-law, for there's no finer officer in the Navy, to my lights, nor a finer gentleman. Didn't exactly realise the depths of their feelings for each other… the drudgery of duty, and all that… that they'd sent each other miniature portraits, and such, 'til he asked for Sophie's hand. They'll make a grand couple, let me assure you, and you'll be getting a sweet and honest daughter-in-law, good in the pantry, still-room, at housewifery? My wife, Caroline, has seen to that."

Like shakin'fins with a shark, they're thinkin', Lewrie could conjure as they simpered polite agreement with him; or marryin' into a tribe o' head-huntin' cannibals from the Great South Seas!

Lewrie was introduced to Langlie's officers and Midshipmen, and got a much better, almost hero-worshipping, reception from them, young "Mids" especially, who all but goggled and gulped, as if being presented to Nelson, for all they'd heard of his derring-do. Lewrie made the introductions of his own officers, and the "Mids" off Orpheus looked upon those worthies, heroes in their own right during the fight that had taken the French frigate L 'Uranie after nigh I a two-hour battle in the middle of a raging gale, much the same, Langlie's Midshipmen in awe of the saltiness of Mr. Grace, even though he had come up from the Nore fisheries, and was several grades of "gentility" below their own typical squirearchy or low-order nobility backgrounds.

"Ah, hmm," Langlie quibbled, looking at his pocket-watch.

"Ah, indeed, sir," Lewrie agreed, looking at his own. "I fear that I'm due away to the George to collect the bridal party. You will excuse me, Mister Langlie… Ma'am? And, I will see you all at the church quite soon. Mister Adair?"

"Aye, sir," his Second Officer piped up.

"Coffee or tea only, do you please, or my wife will kill me," Lewrie cautioned.

"Keep 'em somewhat sober, Mister Whitney," Langlie also said in like vein to his First Officer.

"Aye aye, sir."

And, for a brief, shared moment of inner amusement, Lewrie and Langlie looked each other in the eye, taut grins breaking out on both their faces and nodding (winking, on Lewrie's part) in recognition of the fact that both of them, Post-Captain or new-minted Commander, were in command of King's ships, and were mature leaders of men.

Moulded ye, Langlie … damned if I didn't, Lewrie could think as he took his leave; though I had better than good material to work with. You're on yer own bottom, now… in more ways than one. And, God help the French… Sophie excepted, o'course.