Charlotte was primly seated in a wing-back chair near the tall windows, a teacup and saucer beside her, and that pestiferous little lap dog of hers balanced on the chair’s arm. At its first sight of him, it picked up where it had left off years before, wiggling as if ready to attack, and barking shrilly. Charlotte’s gaze was level and neutral, and she made no attempt to rise and give him even the barest greeting. Her only reaction was a slow, indrawn breath.

“Hallo, Charlotte … back from the wars, at last,” Lewrie said, starting to walk towards her with a tentative grin on his phyz.

“Yes, you are, as anyone may evidently see,” Charlotte replied in an arch drawl suitable to some fatuous ass who had just announced a blinding glimpse of the obvious.

“Oh, sit you down in the other chair, Alan, and have some tea,” Millicent prompted, going to Charlotte’s chair to scoop up the noisy dog and shoo it towards the entry hall. It came right back to defend its mistress, making fake lunges at Lewrie’s boots, to the point that Millicent dumped it in the hall and shut the doors on it, at least muting the growls and yaps.

He stayed a little more than an hour, and a testy one it was.

Yes, Charlotte had gotten his letters, but left it to Governour to inform him of her progress. Yes, she had heard from her younger brother, Hugh, and of his doings aboard HMS Pegasus, and the battle of Trafalgar. Yes, she also had gotten letters from her older brother, Sewallis, also a Midshipman aboard the Third Rate HMS Aeneas. Most pointedly, she recalled Sewallis’s description of being in Portsmouth the same time as Lewrie, and dining with him … and his new woman!

“The lady is Miss Lydia Stangbourne, the sister of Percy, Viscount Stangbourne,” Lewrie explained, “both of whom I met the day that I was knighted and made baronet, at Saint James’s Palace.”

“Yes, Sewallis said that you had begun associating with the better sort,” Charlotte had simpered, “though he also said that there are rumours that she is a divorcé? And, in his opinion, nowhere near as pretty as our mother was,” she’d concluded with a sniff.

No, he hadn’t forced Sewallis to go to sea, that had been the lad’s own idea, and of his own doing behind everyone’s backs, he had to explain for the umpteenth time. And no, he was not getting ready to replace Caroline with another, either!

Of his recent exploits, taking part in the re-capture of the Dutch colony at Cape Town, and his jaunts ashore with the Army, and hunting, then the foolish expedition over to Buenos Aires and the Plate River Estuary, Charlotte was dismissive.

“The papers say that Commodore Popham and General Beresford were both captured, and the entire army lost, and both are to be tried for it,” Charlotte said with a moue. “A ludicrous endeavour, but one suitable to you, one must suppose,” she’d scathingly said, all the while smiling nigh wickedly.

“Charlotte!” Millicent weakly chid her. “Your own father!”

“No matter, Millicent, no matter,” Lewrie had said, surrendering any hope of ever thawing his relationship with his daughter. She had, absent her mother, become a product of Governour’s biting tutelage, a pupil of his bile. Charlotte had been given a decent education in all the social graces. Lewrie was sure that she excelled at music, grace of carriage, and the housewifery skills necessary for her to become the mistress of some fine house. Earlier on, Governour had written to express how well-tutored and well-read she was. It was just too bad that her lessons in graciousness in speech towards all had been wasted!

God help the poor bastard who takes her for a wife, if he don’t toe her line to a Tee! Lewrie concluded.

“I think I’ll be going,” Lewrie had announced at last.

“Oh, must you, Alan?” Millicent had fretted.

“So soon? Must you really?” Charlotte had echoed with sarcastic feigned sweetness, then pointedly looked away, tending to her teacup.

“Charlotte!” from Millicent, again. “Stay a while longer, Alan, do. Governour is sure to be home, soon.”

“I’ll run into him, surely. In the village, at church?” Lewrie had said with a shrug. “Adieu, my dear.”

“Adieu,” Charlotte had responded with a very brief sweet smile.

*   *   *

A proper father’d break out in tears, Lewrie told himself on the coachride back to his father’s house; But all I want t’do is give the little bitch the thrashin’ of her life! She wants t’be Governour’s brat, let him have her, and without my money t’support her arrogant, snippy airs! Let Governour pay for all her gowns and bonnets, and the food she eats, and I’ll save myself fifty pounds a year, and keep the money I’d planned for her dowry in the Three Percents!

He wasn’t welcome in Anglesgreen, could not think of a single house where people would be glad to greet him. He could have camped himself and his people at his father’s house in London, but that would not have lasted a week; the old bastard would’ve run them all off at gunpoint! It would have cost him some, but he could have forseen the consequences and rented a small country place just outside London, up the Hampstead Road, or even out to the East in Islington.

“Best, I heal up and go away,” he muttered to himself, massaging his achy thigh. “Get started on whatever it takes, straightaway.”

Will Cony had overcome his maiming. He’d offered to aid Lewrie to overcome his, too. Why not? He nodded his head, agreeing with himself, as he determined to ride if he could, coach if he must, down to the Old Ploughman and take Will Cony up on his offer, the very next morning!

CHAPTER FOUR

“Ow,” Lewrie said with a wince, muffling himself to appear stoic and manly. “Bloody stupid damned beast!” he added, reining what had been his favourite riding mount to a halt, and steeling himself for a dismount. He coaxed Anson over to the mounting block, slipped his right boot from the off-side stirrup, took a deep breath, and swung over and down, with the reins and his stout walking stick in his left hand. “Uhh!” he grunted as his right leg took his weight.

The Old Ploughman’s “daisy kicker” lad took the reins for him and led the horse away to the hitch-rails, leaving Lewrie atop the old wooden mounting block that was usually used only by ladies, trying to decide which leg he’d trust for the first step down. He chose the left one, switched the walking stick to his right hand to support him, set his left boot on the ground, and felt the thigh muscles of his right leg quiver in weakness.

“Christ, this’ll never work,” he muttered, slowly turning round.

“Tcha, Cap’m Lewrie, you’re doin’ better,” Will Cony said as he swung his substantial bulk from the saddle of his own horse and came to join him. “We haven’t been at it a fortnight, and ya made the better part of a mile, this mornin’, afore ya had t’saddle up. I’ll lay ya a shillin’ ya make th’ whole mile, t’morra.”

Saddling up! Anson wasn’t as tall as a blooded hunter or thoroughbred, but getting astride each morning could almost look comical to any passersby. The well-gravelled lane down from Dun Roman was a slight slope, but even turning his horse athwart the lane with Lewrie on the up-hill side for an inch more advantage was a dread, trusting his right leg long enough to get his left boot in the stirrup, after hiking that better part of a mile, and feeling his wounded leg begin to quiver and ache. This daily exercise was as exhausting as several miles of march following General Sir David Baird’s army last January when the Dutch Cape Colony had been re-conquered; Blaauwberg Bay to the Salt River in one day, with a battle included!

Maggie Cony felt it her duty to fatten him up. As soon as he sat down at a table near the fireplace, out came a plate of scrambled eggs, crispy strips of bacon, potato hash, thick slices of toast, with a bowl of butter and a pot of red currant jelly close by, and a cup of scalding hot coffee, which would be refilled several times. Some days it would be pork chops, a smoke-cured ham steak, or a chunk of roast beef instead of bacon. At least Lewrie’s aches and pains got rewarded!