“No,” Lydia had whispered, shaking her head. She had tried to glance at him, but lowered her gaze to the toes of her shoes. “I told you that I do not find London comfortable for me, any longer. Nor do I wish to sneak about from Willis’s Rooms, to a spare bed-chamber in Grosvenor Street, to a … a bagnio taken by the hour … any more than I wish to expose myself to the gawkers and snooty gossipers. I cannot, and I will not, play a part-time paramour. My heart…!”

He had reached out to embrace her, but she had stepped clear, and she finally looked him in the eye, her expression as bleak as the winter-sere gardens.

“I have loved you dearly, Alan,” she had confessed, “but there can be no ‘we’, and I cannot continue loving a man who is never here. The long separations are more than I can bear, and our few days together are so short and fleeting that they feel more like a brief waking dream, too flimsy to snatch back after rising.”

“But, Lydia, dear…!” he’d protested, his heart sinking into his stomach in shock, “I thought we were both happy with…!”

“You, perhaps, Alan,” she’d chillingly accused, not in anger but in sadness, “but men are so easily pleased, are they not, when things are going their way? Making love is so much easier than giving one’s heart in love completely.”

“You think I don’t love you, Lydia?” Lewrie had objected.

“I am sure that you do, Alan,” Lydia had said with a sad smile, “in your own fashion. That is the hardest part to bear. I hope that you will always think of me fondly, as I will of you, but … I cannot continue this way, of us being not one thing but not quite another, and…”

“Then, marry me!” Lewrie had blurted out. “Let’s wed, today!”

Christ! What’d I just say? he had thought.

That had made her weep, at long last.

“I have not had much luck with married life, Alan,” Lydia had said, lifting a mittened hand from her muff to wipe her eyes, with a rueful laugh. “I told you once, before you went off to the Bahamas, that I feared the risk to my heart too much to marry you, or anyone. And, remember what you told me, the night after we met at the palace, when you were knighted? In the Cocoa-Tree, I think it was … when I complained of being labelled a scandalous hussy, being pursued by men such as Georgey Hare, and dreading to be re-enslaved and ruled by a man?”

“I told you to forget it all, and enjoy your life,” Lewrie had recalled, vividly, and sorrowfully. “But…”

“Thank you for the offer, Alan, but I believe that I will follow that advice, and live my life,” Lydia had told him, reaching out to stroke his cheek in gratitude for his gesture. “I find it safer to be me, alone, with no more pretensions to so-called wedded bliss. Or, a pleasureable but sordid continuing amour, the sort expected of a woman as scandalous as me,” she’d said with another scoffing snort and a toss of her head.

“What’s next, a nunnery?” Lewrie had gawped, which had made her laugh out loud, crinkling her nose which Lewrie had always found to be endearing when she did so.

“Percy and Eudoxia will have many children, I fully expect,” she had said, “and I hope to be a doting aunt, as I am godmother to my old friends’ children. Life here in the country will be fulfilling, and comfortable.”

“And safe,” Lewrie had added, slumping in defeat.

“And safe,” Lydia had agreed. “Now. If you do not mind, Alan, I wish to go down to the stables, by myself, for a while. There is a mare that’s due her first foal, and a new litter of pups I’d like to look in on. I’ll see you at supper.” Then Lydia had walked away, a firm and industrious stride to her pace, leaving him stunned beyond belief.

He had stayed at Foxbrush a few hours more, discussing the matter with Eudoxia and Percy, who were as thunder-struck as he was, and pleading that if she was determined to live life her own way she would have the means to do so. Then Lewrie and Pettus had departed, taking lodgings in Reading for the night, rising early, and coaching back to Anglesgreen the next morning.

*   *   *

“Ah, Captain Lewrie!” Mr. Giles chummily barked as he entered the Common Rooms, making a bee-line for the fireplace and rubbing his cold hands. “Been to Admiralty, I see. How did it go?”

“Early days, sir,” Lewrie said, coming out of his dour reverie to find that his brandy glass was empty, perhaps had been for some time. “As uncomfortable as the Waiting Rooms are, I think I’ll only pop in once a week, and wait for a letter to come.”

“Quite right!” Giles declared with a firm nod. “Appearing anxious doesn’t work well in business, either. Gives the other fellow the upper hand, what?”

“Seen Showalter, yet, Mister Giles?” Lewrie asked, getting to his feet.

“Not yet, but he’ll be along, unless there’s a call for a division in Commons this afternoon,” Giles said, smiling almost angelically as he flipped the tails of his coat up and put his bottom close to the fireplace’s heat. “Aahh!”

“I thought to ask him where that symphony he liked was playing,” Lewrie said. “Perhaps the desk clerk knows, if Showalter’s runnin’ late. I’ll go change into mufti.”

“Lord, one hears so much more Hindoo slang hereabouts, these days,” Giles carped. “So many younger folk coming back nabobs, simply stiff with grand earnings. Must be a way to sell the Hindoos proper shoes … now there’d be a killing! Sandals … hah!”

“See you at supper, Mister Giles,” Lewrie said, departing for the stairs. He trooped up slowly, not due to any infirmity, but lost in gloomy thoughts which had arisen now and then since he’d departed Reading, and the Stangbourne estate.

What a hellish waste of a good woman, Lewrie ruefully thought; Givin’ up on London, and all her symphonies, plays, and such? Samuel Johnson said a body who’s tired o’ London is tired o’ life! No more love, no more pleasure, ever again? It’s like she’s been got at by Hannah More, or the bloody Baptists! It’ll be soup kitchens in the stews, and good works, next.

He had to question himself, though, on whether he had ever truly loved her in the permanent, ’til death did them part, sense. At best, he could confess to a powerful fondness, and dammit all … Lydia had never looked more lovely than she did when she rejected him! More desirable, more fetching … than if she had said yes to his proposal.

She rejected me! he gloomed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next fortnight passed most lazily for Lewrie, with rounds of shopping for a few new articles of uniform, and some additions to his civilian clothing, and social calls on people he knew and liked, some he knew but slightly distrusted, such as one of his old school chums who’d been expelled with him, Clotworthy Chute, his father at last, and people whom he thought might be useful, such as Peter Rushton’s brother, Harold, who held a position under the Secretary of State at War. One never could tell when Harold might give Admiralty a nudge.

His old steward, Aspinall, had made enough money off his books to buy into the publishing house which put them out, was now happily married, and was still keeping his mother and his sister, Rose, in a snug house of their own, retired from domestic service, and Lewrie had spent a pleasant afternoon with them.

He looked up the maker of his Christmas fowling piece, and his gunsmith shop, and ended up purchasing a brace of long-barrelled pistols in the same over-under configuration.

And, there were the music halls, the galleries which displayed new paintings and sculpture. He didn’t need to buy any, but looking was a good way to kill an afternoon. There were plays and farces in Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres, and the public gardens where he could idly ogle young women after a supper on the town. He could hire a saddle horse and go cantering round St. James’s Park and Hyde Park on the rainless mornings. He could walk from one end of the Strand to the other, to keep his leg fit, and peer into the bow-window shop displays. And, after that fortnight, Lewrie was surprised to discover that the city’s delights were beginning to pall, as if he was growing tired of London, perhaps even tired of life?