The Gun Ketch (4 page)

"Well, and
full
of ginger, Mother Chiswick," Alan told her with a droll roll of his head. "It's the Hindoo cooking, ya know, full of ginger and chilies. Well, and in command of his own light company in my father's regiment, so he'll continue in good hands."

If you may call that good hands, Alan qualified to himself. The last time he'd seen him, Burgess was up to his teats in tawny Hindoo maidens that he and a fellow officer shared in the quarters as their private
bibikhana.
And his father had been going "birr!" into a set of dugs himself! Well, he thought, pirate loot and satisfied creditors in London'd keep his father on the straight and narrow. And now that he was confirmed as Lieutenant Colonel of the 19th Native Infantry, he'd be happy enough. For awhile.

"Uncle Phineas, allow me to name you Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, one who has done so much to restore the fortunes of the Chiswick family, sir."

"Your servant, sir," Alan offered, extending a hand. "I'm delighted to meet you at last."

"And I you, Mister Lewrie," Uncle Phineas replied, not looking one whit delighted by anything in the last thirty years. He was a lean old stick, dressed in rough homespun breeches, wool stockings and old shoes that appeared to have been restitched, but well blackened. The waistcoat he wore was a very old style, as was the linsey-woolsey cut of his shirt and neck-stock. Rich the man might be, but he looked as dowdy as one of his poorer tenants. He must have been in his sixties, wrinkled as last winter's apples, with stray wisps of white hair peeking from under the green eyeshade.

"Can't thank ye enough, Mister Lewrie," Uncle Phineas said as he dropped Alan's hand after one quick, dry shake, and stuck thumbs into his waistcoat watch pockets. "Gettin' little Burgess employed with the East India Company. Wasn't sure he'd find a situation, not with times so hard. Wasn't cut out fer farmin', that's God's truth! And fer seein' Sewallis an' his family safe to Charleston so they'd be able to come home where they belong."

"And for saving Burge and Governour after Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Uncle," Caroline reminded him, and he looked as if he'd been reminded of that act of desperation perhapsonce too often, for he screwed his wrinkled lips together and merely nodded. "I welcome ye to me home, Mister Lewrie. Stayin' long, is it?"

"A few weeks, if I may be allowed, sir. Better that than kicking my heels in London, or down in Portsmouth waiting for my new ship to be turned over," Alan replied, wondering just what sort of welcome he'd come to. "Ah, Caroline, Mother Chiswick, look who's here, too? You remember my man, Will Cony?"

Cony had arrived with the pack horse, and slid off his own to come to mem, hat in hand.

"God bless you, young Will," Mother Charlotte exclaimed. "I remember you well from Wilmington, and all you did to get us aboard that ship! Ah, you're filling out like a yearling colt, you are! And does our Mister Lewrie treat you decent?"

"That 'e does, ma'am," Cony nodded, shy in front of company.

"Well, if he doesn't, I know a snug niche for a good farm lad like you, right here with us, my word on it!" the older lady cackled.

"Missus Chiswick, Miss Caroline," Cony nodded again, blushing.

"More important, have you been taking good care of Al... of our Mister Lewrie, Cony?" Caroline asked.

"Saved my life time and again," Alan supplied, for the ears of the comely housemaids who had gathered in the yard. "And did his King's enemies into fillets."

"Then 'tis more than welcome you are in this house, Will Cony," Caroline said, stepping forward to give him a sisterly peck on the cheek, which made Cony turn even darker red with embarrassment. "Home you are, for awhile with us."

"Thankee, Miss Caroline... ma'am," Cony bobbed.

"And this is Millicent, Alan," Governour said, turning boyish as he introduced his young wife. She was a lovely girl, smooth and milky of skin, with dark curling hair and startlingly gray eyes, and a merry expression of her own. It seemed as if Millicent had gotten all the Embleton elegance and neatness, leaving her brother Harry with none.

"My best wishes to you, ma'am, on your marriage. You've a fine man in Governour, as well I may attest. Your servant, ma'am."

"Oh, do call me Millicent, Mister Lewrie," she chided with the regal dignity of her father the baronet. "Such old friends of my dear Governour should not stand on ceremony."

"You do me great honor, Millicent, thankee," Alan replied with a short bow, prepared to like her if Governour did.

"Well, let's go into the house and have something to drink," Uncle Phineas suggested.

"Yes, I promised Alan one of our ales, even if he did lose the race," Governour laughed. "Sorry about that, but blood will tell, you know. I told you we had the start of a fine stud. 'Ribbons' was one of our first colts, and he's a treasure."

"Oh, I don't know," Alan japed. "I almost had you neck-or-nothing. Not bad for a fifty guinea New Market gelding."

"He's strong," Caroline said, brushing Alan's horse on flank and neck before he was led away by a waiting groom. "Short but a goer, he looks like. Good build, for the long stretch, not'the burst."

"Canter by the hour, he can," Alan agreed. "And worth an ale, no matter his pedigree, hey?"

"Caroline made our ale last autumn," Millicent boasted.

"Oh, just a few barrels," Caroline replied. "To try my hand at it."

"Then I must have some. I'm sure anything she turns her hand to comes out superbly," Alan fawned, and she blushed with pleasure at his words.

"Mmm, yes," Uncle Phineas frowned, wrinkling his nose as if at a peculiar odor. He surveyed the ruin of one of his flower beds, and contemplated, with very little joy of the doing, just how long this ignorant arse was going to plague him!

Sewallis Chiswick was a lot worse than Alan remembered him. Whereas in Wilmington, the old man had been strong but vague, he was now both reduced to pale ashes of a man, in a wheeledchair, and at times almost incoherent in his ramblings. At least Caroline was now spared the onerous duties of tending to him. After a last few odd pronouncements, a stout matron had announced that Mr. Chiswick would retire, and he was wheeled off to a ground floor chamber, his bib still tied around his neck and spotted with attempts at dining.

It had put a definite chill on supper, though they all tried to find other, more amusing and lighthearted conversation to cover their embarrassment, sometimes laughing too long and loud at hopeless japes, then falling into an uneasy silence.

The supper, though, had been excellent; somewhat plain, but all hearty country fare. There had been a salad (Caroline's own apple vinegar and spices for the dressing), fish from their own stream along with a plate of oysters up from Portsmouth (Caroline's own horseradish to spice them, what the French would call a
remoulade),
a cured ham baked in a golden honey sauce, snap beans from the garden, tiny new potatoes and shallots, completed, of course, with roast mutton, and followed by a peach "jumble," which Caroline's mother informed Alan was "cobbler" in the Carolinas, her very own recipe, though done personally by the talented young lady with the light brown hair.

"Aye, proper victuals," Uncle Phineas allowed grudgingly as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and untucked the napkin from below his chin. "Our little Caroline'll make a young man a 'goody,' " he said, using the old country term for a proper wife (and the first name, or gained nickname, of a third of the poor women of Britain).

Are they at it
again,
Alan sighed, sharing a smile with Caroline as she ducked her head in what he thought was shyness? I'm not under their roof four hours, and they're buttock-brokering her like a brood mare! Just like Burgess did to me back in India.

"Economical, she is." Uncle Phineas went on as he leaned forward to top his glass up with the last of a rather good claret, "Good in the stillroom, the garden, the stables. Present the
right
young feller with a goin' concern. Well-setup house, a household run in style, and economy."

Is that his favorite word, Alan wondered? He certainly takes "economy" to extremes with his own furnishings. No, let's say "cheap"!

"I am ever amazed at how accomplished you are, Caroline," Millicent chimed in from the other side of the table. "You sew the neatest, finest stitches, play and sing wonderfully well. Why, I believe you could spin straw into gold! Makes me seem such a wastrel drudge in comparison. I'm simply useless at practical things!"

"I assure you you're not!" Goveraour guffawed. "I know I have the best-run household in the county...
two
counties! And a most felicitous one, as well, m'dear. And you to thank for it."

The sight of the bloody-handed Governour Chiswick "pissing down his wife's back" and fawning so gape-jawed foolish over
anyone
was not the sort of thing Alan Lewrie had ever expected to see on this earth! Still, it was interesting to see Millicent deliver a fond gaze at the oaf and lower her lashes in a very intimate, but significant manner, and Alan, being a keen observer of "country-house games" among those circles of rakehells and Corinthians he had known before the Navy, knew in an instant that they'd be at each other before their coach got into their own drive!

"Oh, but you are so clever and accomplished, Millicent!" Caroline assured her. "It is I envy you, while I merely learned country things in the Carolinas."

"And all the better for it when the time comes to wed," Phineas Chiswick pronounced. "Ye'r, both o' ye, the finest young ladies o' me acquaintance, an' here ye'll be livin' side by side, sittin' in the same pew, an' more than just neighbors all yer lives, God willin'. Like the way ye play yer music ... Millicent to the harpsichord, an' Caroline, yer flute. A fine duet ye'll play in future!"

"Uncle..." Caroline attempted to protest, wringing her napery into a ball. Alan perked up a bit; this was more than shyness on her part. It sounded more like an old topic which had been done to death, and still dragged up for tasting often as communion wine.

And what does he mean, Alan asked himself, all this "side by side in the same pew," by God? Just who
are
they buttock-brokering her to?

She looked out of the corner of her eye to Alan and he lifted one eyebrow to quiz her; and for a hopeless, unguarded moment, there was almost panic on her face, and a silent plea.

What the hell is going on, he mused? Caroline Chiswick is one woman I never expected to look so lost and helpless. Why, she's the most capable young woman I ever did see!

"Speaking of a duet," Mother Chiswick intervened, "Mister Lewrie has never heard Caroline play her flute. She is most talented, I assure you, sir. And dear Millicent fairly makes the harpsichord sing with the angels! What was that piece we heard in London that you both do, my dears? By that German fellow. The dead one."

"Handel, momma," Caroline replied, looking in a bit of a sulk."Public music-hall antics," Uncle Phineas groused, ringing his tiny china bell for port, cheese and biscuit. "Trash. Germans, hah!"

"I fear most of the great composers
are
German," Alan chuckled. "There's that fellow in Vienna who's making quite a splash, another of 'em... that Mozart. I heard some of his stuff in London before I went to Devon. And Bach, of course. Now you can hardly call 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' music-hall trash, Mister Chiswick."

"Oh, we know that!" Millicent enthused. "Caroline, Mother Chiswick, let us leave these fine gentlemen to their port, whilst we set up the parlor for music and
icarte.
Mother Chiswick is correct, Mister Lewrie... Caroline is divine on the flute!"

She was indeed divine, for an amateur. While Governour turned pages for them from behind the harpsichord, they played several duets together. And Millicent proved to be a most accomplished young lady as well, playing with feeling and passion, instead of the clumsy, almost monotonous clumping pace and never-varying strength of tinkling one usually heard in someone's salon.

They did assay a Handel piece, a short sonata originally for flute and continuo, intermixing a program of country airs and sober Bach cantatas. Alan watched Caroline, a cup of tea cooling on his knee; he was impressed by the solemnity and deep concentration she showed, but disturbed by the too-bright glitter of her eyes when at the sadder pieces.

Millicent noticed, too, and began to play rounds for them to sing, Governour bellowing out hunting songs and things he'd learned in North Carolina. Alan had to rise and try to sing "pulley-hauley" chanties for them, rollicking verses each more improbable, and more scandalous than the last, until Uncle Phineas announced that he was tired of all the folderol and was off for bed. And no one seemed the slightest bit interested in
ecarte,
so Alan could only peck Caroline on the cheek and be lit up to his room for the night, there to ponder what could make a girl of such a gay and stalwart nature so sad.

"Mrroww!" Then again, louder and more plaintive. "Mrrrowwv!" Howls of torture, of black-hearted denial! Lewrie sprang awake in his bed and tore back the curtains. There came another.

"Mrroww?" from the door, softer and more pleading this time.

"Oww?"

"Bloody, bloody hell," he muttered, swiping his hair out of his eyes and staggering to the door. He opened it and beheld a very ragged yellow ram-cat of his acquaintance seated on the parquet flooring, one William Pitt. If anything, he had gotten uglier since he'd last seen him in 1784. One ear was tatters, one eye squinted, and the tail was missing a patch or two. But it was the same huge, one-stone-in-weight monster that had ruled the
Shrike
brig with claw and fang.