“London it is, then, no matter,” Lewrie muttered to himself.

At least he could get some shopping done, perhaps look up some old friends for a day or two, once shooed from the infamous Waiting Room at the close of the Admiralty’s working day, and …

“Oh, shit!” he groaned.

Once in Soundings of the Channel, once the Lizard had been sighted, he had written several letters for instant despatch as soon as Reliant was anchored. One, the most important of his personal correspondence, went to Lydia Stangbourne at her family’s Grosvenor Street house, in hopes that the Autumn season had drawn her back from their country estates near Reading and Henley. Lydia would never miss the new rounds of plays, operas, symphonies, and art gallery showings.

He had not yet heard back from her, but, if their history together was any judge, it was good odds that she would sling a fortnight’s heap of gowns into her coach and come down to Portsmouth, instanter! How wroth might she be to get to Portsmouth to discover that he’d run off to London like the worst sort of cad?

“Meet halfway … spot her coach somewhere on the road?” Lewrie said with another groan. “Just damn my eyes!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lewrie considered a fast horse, from which it would be easier to spot Lydia’s coach with her family crest on the doors, but in the continual misty rains, a horse just would not do. As quickly as he wished to get to London … to get to Lydia’s house before she left … the roads would simply be too sloppy and muddy, and he would end up looking like one of the urchin Thames-side “mud-lark” boys before he’d gone ten miles, and he had only two uniforms aboard, his daily undress, and his very best, and it was good odds one of them would be ruined. If only he’d kept a civilian suit and top-boots aboard, with a great-coat to protect his trousers with its long, deep skirts, but all his “mufti”, as his father called it from his days with the East India Company Army (where he’d made himself an immense pile of “tin” and had come home a full nabob!), was still at his father’s estate at Anglesgreen. Besides, there was Pettus to think of, and Pettus wasn’t skilled enough a horseman to keep up with the pace he planned! Lewrie would take lodgings at the Madeira Club, of course; his father was one of the founders and investors, and Lewrie could count on obtaining a room, at a discount, but he would not trust one of the house staff to “do” for him … not if he wished to make a good showing at Admiralty!

Only slightly begrudging the cost, Lewrie hired a four-horse coach for the trip up to the city. With only him and Pettus and their minimal “traps” aboard, he hoped that they would make much better time than buying passage in the diligence or “flying balloon” coaches, with Pettus relegated to a precarious seat on the roof in the foul weather, which would turn him surly for a week or more!

They set off the next morning, just a bit after “first sparrow fart”, and damned if the lighter coach was still too heavy to breast Portdown Hill, and they had to get down and walk. Pettus did comment that if they had booked seats on the “dilly”, they would have had to not only carry their own luggage to the top of the hill, but help with the pushing, too, which was sort of a blessing! The mud covering Lewrie’s Hessian boots like heavy plaster casts made Lewrie disagree … rather tetchily! And, once back inside and out of the drizzle, there was still the mud and mire and horse, oxen, and mule dung mixed in that was flung up in a fine shower by their coach’s spinning wheels that “got up his nose”, both figuratively and literally, that had Lewrie swiping his face and his hair in a continual grumble. Every passing equipage that looked expensive enough to be Lydia Stangbourne’s had to be peered at, did it not?

“It is a good thing that I thought to pack some extra towels, sir,” Pettus cheerfully said as he offered Lewrie yet another clean one, then dug into the depths of a woven basket. “Might you care for some of Mister Cooke’s pones, with Yeovill’s bacon strips, sir? Oh, we have butter, as well!”

“Grrr,” was Lewrie’s impatient comment to that offer, but he did take two of their Free Black cook’s “cat-head” flour bisquits and some bacon, and leaned back inside out of the wet to gnaw at them.

*   *   *

It was a given for travellers, no matter how impatient, that no matter how fast a coach could bowl along, no matter how rapid a pace a mount could be put to, how swiftly one of the new-fangled canal boats could be towed, or how quickly a ship with a fine breeze could sail, if one went a long distance, then it would take a long time to get there.

Making it even worse were the necessary stops every twenty-odd miles to change teams at a posting inn which had spare horses beyond the demands of the regularly scheduled diligence coaches. When there, no amount of grumbling and drumming of feet inside the coach would put any “urgent” into their coachman, so there was nothing for it but to clamber out, stretch their legs, head for the “jakes” to relieve themselves, slosh down some indifferently brewed tea, or sample a pint of the local beer, ale, stout, or porter. If they did not, for certain the coachman did, for which Lewrie had to pay to keep him merry and mellow. By the time they actually crossed the bridge into London, the coachman was so mellow that he began to bawl out songs in a raspy voice, laughing inanely between verses, and got so lost and befuddled that Lewrie had to mount the box with him to steer him to the corner of Duke Street and Wigmore Street, and the Madeira Club, just around six in the evening.

It was raining for real, by then, of course; just pouring down!

“Good ev’nin’ t’ye, fine sir, and I hope ye found th’ journey comf’table!” the coachman shouted down as Lewrie and Pettus gathered their belongings. “Ye wish me services for th’ return, just ask o’th’ publican at th’ good ol’ Three Nuns for Thom Wheeler, an’ I’ll come direck t’collec’ ye, quick’z ye kin say ‘knife’! Huzzah for th’ Navy, I say! Gawd bless ye, ye brave tars! ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules th’ waves … Bri-tons never never never shall be’ … someone hold me horses, I gotta get down an’ piss like an ox!”

“Should we help him down, sir, before he dashes his brains out?” Pettus fretted.

“After all he’s cost me, I don’t give a toss,” Lewrie said with a laugh. The coachman’s drunken bawlings had drawn the attention of the Madeira Club’s doorman and desk clerk, who had come out onto the stoop to goggle. “Ah, Lucas!” Lewrie called to the first one he saw and remembered by name. “Captain Alan Lewrie. I will need a room for a couple of nights, and room for my cabin steward!”

“Come in, come in, Captain Lewrie, get out of the rain,” Lucas the desk clerk grandly offered, holding the doors open for them. “We do happen to have a vacancy or two, since Major Baird found a bride, and Mister Showalter is away to his home borough, on the hustings for the next by-election.”

“What?” Lewrie gawped as he shrugged off his boat-cloak inside. “He ain’t elected yet? I don’t know which is more surprisin’, Showalter still standin’ for Commons, or Major Baird takin’ a wife, at last.”

Major Baird had come back from India years before a “Chicken Nabob” with at least £50,000 in profits, or loot, and had spent that long purportedly searching for a suitable mate … when not indulging in “knee-trembler” sex with the orange-selling girls at the theatres, and getting fellated in dark corners with his breeches undone.

“One hopes his new bride is … skilled,” Lewrie sniggered.

Lucas cryptically grinned, knowing what Lewrie alluded to, but a good enough servant to appear unperturbed.

“There is brandy in the Common Room, Captain Lewrie, Spanish brandy I fear, but quite drinkable, as soon as you are settled in your rooms,” Lucas told him as he signalled for a porter to see the luggage abovestairs, “and supper will be served at seven.”