H. M. S. Cockerel (3 page)

And for himself, well, like it or not, not a fortnight before, on Epiphany, he had gone over the edge. He was
thirty!
Middle-aged, and Caroline soon to follow by spring.

As if I don't have enough complaints, God help us, he thought.

He felt vaguely queasy and unsettled at the fetching of such a prominent seamark. Like espying the peaks of Dominica, which signified arrival on-passage to the Caribbean, yet knowing that whatever West Indies port of call one was bound for, no matter how joyous the passage, was no more than a week's sailing down-wind. And no beating against the inevitability of those insistent nor'east trades had ever availed.

Lt. Alan Lewrie, RN, peered out at him from the picture with a hopeful grin, the hint of devilment in his eyes that were gray or blue by mood. Shiny, midbrown hair, sun-bleached to light brown and curling slightly at the temples and forehead, yet drawn back into a proper seaman's plaited pigtail, lay over the ears and tumbled over the uniform coat's collar. It was a youthful courtier's lean face he saw, though tanned by blistering sun and sea glare beyond a courtier's fashionable paleness. And the slight hint of the vertical scar upon one cheek—the result of a duel for another girl's honour, a girl now long gone, in point of fact—the artist had wished to suppress that, but Alan had been quite proud of his disfigurement at the time and insisted it be rendered exactly. Just as they had disputed the teeth-baring grin, too; English gentlemen were supposed to be sober and dignified in life, and limned so in portraits for posterity.

Yes, he'd wash up, he decided, taking the first of the stairs. And see if he, at the advanced age of thirty, even slightly resembled the young “sprog” he used to be.

Thirty, Jesus, he thought! And he used to spurn women who had gotten a little long in tooth. If only he'd known then in his feckless days what he knew at present!

There, he thought, almost satisfied. His reflection didn't vary much from the portrait downstairs after he had washed and toweled.

Much, he amended.

He'd been eating well, and even with rugged, outdoorsy country pursuits he was not
exactly
the lean-cheeked courtier of his youth, nor so pale as a titled lord. But it was near enough.

Cony finished brushing his coat and waistcoat and he redonned them. He'd slipped out of his top boots and exchanged them for a pair of indoor shoes, little more than soft-leather pumps, more like womens' dancing slippers than anything else. Insubstantial though they felt, they were all “the go” lately.

Standing well back from Caroline's dressing mirror, he perused his form as well. He
had
been eating well, after all, though there was no snugness to the sewn-to-be-snug, buff-coloured suede breeches beyond what fashion demanded. His bottle-green coat and waistcoat sat well upon him, he thought—though they
were
new, run up before Christmas, so what comparison would they be?

Well, there's my uniforms, he sighed, almost relieved.

They'd changed the Regulations for Sea Officers' dress in '87, whilst he was overseas, and though he'd gone on the half-pay list as soon as
Alacrity
had paid off, he'd faced the expense of meeting the new dress regulations so he could call upon the Councillor of the Cheque each three months, about the time of the quarterly assizes, to prove that he was alive, that he still possessed all his requisite parts, that he was eligible for future sea duty, and to collect what was laughably termed “half-pay.” He'd just come back from the Admiralty in London, just before his birthday, and his uniform had fit him admirably well.

Damme, though . . . He frowned, lifting his coattails to study the heft and span of his buttocks. Hmmm . . . ?

“Supper is served, sir . . . mistress,” Cony announced at last, as the rum punches at the Olde Ploughman threatened to consume his stomach lining.

“My dear,” Alan beamed, rising to greet Caroline as she swept into the smaller second parlour, where he'd been kicking his heels.

“Sorry, dearest, but I simply had to stop by the nursery to look in on little Charlotte,” Caroline smiled in reply, coming to his arms for a welcome hug and an affectionate, wifely, kiss. Alan took her up off her feet, unwilling to let a pat and a peck on the lips suffice. Children be damned, servants be damned, he thought, I want a proper welcome!

“Alan!” Caroline chid him, but not sternly at all as she gave him what he demanded. He could hear Hugh blowing indignant bubbles of revulsion as they kissed again.

“Nothin' to sneer at, Hugh,” Alan chortled softly as he let her go at last. “Take my word for it.”

There was a rare light in Caroline's eyes as she knelt to give her sons a peck, too. “Ah, little Hugh. What? You'll flinch from my kiss? And Sewallis, our little angel! That's my little man,
you'll
not wipe off your mother's affections.”

“And how is Charlotte?” Alan asked as he offered his arm to lead Caroline into the informal dining room.

“Simply perfect, of course,” Caroline chuckled, filled with a maternal warmth. Baby Charlotte, named for her maternal grandmother, was barely twelve months old and still nursing.

Soon to stop, please God, Lewrie begged silently. No matter they could afford wet nurses, no matter how unfashionable for English ladies, Caroline had insisted upon it with every child, months and bloody months of nursing! Months and months of baby talk, billing and cooing between swaddled babe and doting mama, and God help the man who interfered or tried to conduct an adult conversation. Alan espied a tiny, darker damp spot on her demure woolen bodice—a dottle of lovingly egested milk, and noted the flush of pleasure she usually bore after a feeding.

Hugh made another blubber-lipped sound of disapproval as he was helped into a chair by the governess.

“You'll appreciate girls in your own time, me lad,” Lewrie cautioned him. “Even a little sister.”

He pulled out Caroline's chair to seat her at the foot of the table, saw Cony and Mrs. McGowan get the boys placed, and took his own seat at the head. Before he could unfold his napery, out rushed a maid with a steaming tureen of soup, and Cony was uncorking a bottle of hock with a cheery “thwocking” sound.

“Hearty chicken soup, with a dash of tarragon,” Caroline announced, urging them all to dig in. “Takes the winter chill away.
Out
it goes . . . then
up?
‘As a ship goes out to
sea,
so my
spoon
goes out from
me!
' And young gentlemen
never
lean over their bowls, do they, Hugh?”

Hugh gulped what looked like a heaping shovel-full into his greedy maw, hunched over his plate with the spoon held like a ladle in a clumsy little paw. His cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's as he tried to swallow, and a line of creamy soup frothed between his lips. Followed a second later by the entire mouthful, since it was so hot. He began to fan, buttock-dance on his chair and bawl.

“
Small
sips, that's the way, Hugh. Lord . . .” Caroline sighed, rising to rush to his side to sponge him down and comfort him. “See how Sewallis does it? There, there, Hugh, you're not hurt. Take a sip of water,
there's
my little baby . . .”

Oh, for God's sake, Lewrie thought, eyeing them. One son prim as a parson, one looking like he'd just spewed a dog's dinner, and a dowdy wife! A matronly wife! Definitely matronly.

Well, she is a matron, ain't she, he qualified to himself. A young'un, thank the Lord. Seven years wed. Bloom off the rose, and all that. Still, she wore a fiercely white, starched mobcap, with her hair up and almost hidden beneath it; a heavy old woolen gown drab as a titmouse, with wrist-length sleeves and a high-cut bodice, totally unadorned by even a hint of lace; a pale natural wool shawl over her shoulders which plumped and disguised even more of her youth; and a bib-fronted, slightly stained dishclout of an apron, useful during child-rearing of an infant still incontinently in nappies, but Lord!

And that baby talk—
all
the time, he thought, feeling guilty and disloyal, comparing his (mostly) delightful wife to the fetchingly handsome girl she once had been.

“I'll take them, ma'am,” Mrs. McGowan volunteered from the kitchen doors, summoned by the noises. “La, they're too excitable for a sit-down supper. Not utensil trained, neither. Come, boys? We'll finish supper in the kitchen. Let Mummy and Daddy eat their meal in peace, and you may see them later, before bedtime.”

“Perhaps that's best . . .” Caroline surrendered, though she did cock a chary eyebrow in the governess's direction, and furrowed her forehead in what Alan had long ago learned was simmering vexation.

“Good soup,” Alan commented a minute or two of weighty silence later. “Meaty. And the tarragon brings out the flavor wonderfully well. As do all your spices, dear.”

“I'm pleased you're pleased with it, love,” Caroline smiled in reply, though with half her attention on the feeding noises from the closed kitchen doors.

“About Mrs. McGowan . . .” Alan posed in a soft voice. “I'm not entirely happy to have our own lives ordered about so. We are not her favorite sort of parents, and—”

“I have noticed,” Caroline sighed between dainty spoonfuls. “I will speak to her. If she cannot alter her ways, well—”

“You are mistress in your own house, dear,” Alan comforted her. “And a damned fine one, I assure you. I will not have your sensible ways upset, nor you distressed, by a mere servant.”

“Thankee, Alan,” Caroline beamed at him this time. “I promise I will speak to her.”

“
Damned
good soup,” he commented again, raising an eyebrow. “Too bad little Charlotte isn't ready for soup such as this. Think of what she's missing, poor tyke. Why, it may be a week or two more before she's even able to take mere gruels and paps, d'ye think, dear?”

Tell me I can have you back, hey? he pleaded, with the merest sign of innocent inquisitiveness on his phiz. Once Caroline put a child on a solid diet and left off nursing, he could play once more with those twin peaks of his delight. Once, that is, she stopped producing milk. He'd rushed it the week before, and still felt embarrassed by the almost perverse, cloyingly sweet taste of mother's milk which had flooded his mouth in the throes of passionate foreplay.

“Oh, I think more than a week or so, Alan,” Caroline told him, colouring herself at the memory. “Perhaps another month. She
will
take tiny spoonfuls of thin paps now, but . . .” Caroline shrugged in explanation, which was no explanation at all, save for the heavy way her breasts brushed and lifted beneath her prim bodice. Nursing was a very private pleasure—almost as good a pleasure as
me?
Lewrie wondered. It seemed so. Domesticity, he groaned to himself, keeping his face bland as he hid behind a sip of hock. Ain't it
grand,
thankee Jesus!

“And how was the village?” Caroline inquired, changing the subject deftly.

“Quiet as usual. Same old complaints. Same old faces.” He grimaced slightly and laid aside his spoon. Caroline rang a tiny china bell for the soup to be removed and the mutton chops to be fetched in. “Talk of the French. Bags of it.”

“Anything new?” she asked, frowning.

“Fear, mostly. Even the tenant farmers are getting worried all that leveling, Jacobin talk about equality will come here someday. Now they've murdered their king and queen—”

“Perhaps it'll die out, like Nootka Sound,” Caroline prayed. “A great deal of commotion, then. It's been ten years since America went the same way, and nothing's come of that,” she stated, to reassure them both. “Englishmen aren't as crazed as the French, thank God, nor as empty-headed as the Rebels were. There's nothing wrong with
English
society needs changing! Let the whole world turn upside down, we'll be here, season to season, sane and orderly, as usual.”

“We may, dear,” Alan countered gently. “But the Germanies, the rest of Europe . . . First the Colonies went unhinged, now France, and as bloody as you could ask for. Didn't call it the Terror for nought, y'know. There were no aristocrats to butcher in the Colonies, and a fair number of them were Rebels to start with . . . My pardons.”

Caroline's brother George
had
been butchered, by Chiswick relatives in the lower Cape Fear of North Carolina. And that pregnant woman murdered in her bed Alan had discovered outside Yorktown, before the siege set in, her unborn babe pinned to the log walls with a rusty bayonet!

“First the Colonies, then France, God knows where next—not England, o' course,” he reiterated after a bite of succulent mutton chop, heavy with hot mustard, Navy style. “But if this plague spreads, how long before we're alone in a sea of hostile Republicans?”

“Pray God it will blow over like a summer storm, then,” Caroline shuddered, all but crossing herself. Cony fetched out a bottle of burgundy, more suited to mutton, to replace the lighter hock. “And if you are called back, well, it would not be for long.”