“You would have to remain aboard ’til the work begins, then,” Lydia said, beginning to look a tad bleaker.

“Aye, but, once it’s begun, I wouldn’t be captain of anything for at least ten days to a fortnight,” Lewrie said, hoping to cheer her up. “We’d have to take shore lodgings, every Man Jack. As soon as that’s begun, I’ll write you and let you know when to coach back down to Portsmouth, so—”

“No, Alan,” Lydia interrupted him, letting go his hands to take another wee step back from him, and crossing her arms. “Even did you find me temporary lodgings in a rented, private residence, I would not feel entirely comfortable with such an arrangement.”

“But, Lydia—”

“I fear I would feel much the same dis-comfort at the George Inn as I did at the Blue Posts,” she continued, her expression firmly determined.

“The ogling you got? The snickers?” Lewrie asked, worried by this sudden turn.

“That is part of it, I must own,” Lydia replied, looking down at her toes as she scuffed a pebble with her shoes, before returning a level gaze at him. “Another part of my dis-comfort is the feeling that I must dash off at a moment’s notice to your every beck and call. I would much prefer that you come up to London and call upon me, in a—hah!—proper manner,” she said with a wryly amused sniff. “I trust that, have you learned to know the least bit about me, you will understand my reasons why.”

“So we can scandalise your household staff?” Lewrie posed with a shaky laugh; this was turning serious! Their first night, they had left her brother Percy to gamble in the Long Rooms at the Cocoa-Tree and had coached to her house in Grosvenor Street in the wee hours, and had ended up in a spare bedroom after the house servants had gone to bed. “I suppose we could sit up stiff and proper in your parlour, and swill endless pots of tea.”

“There shall be times for such innocent primness,” Lydia said with a becoming blush, and another fond smile as she recalled what had passed between them, too. “Though, I was thinking more along the lines of the theatres, the symphonies, dining out—”

“God, not the bloody ballet!” Lewrie cringed.

“No, not the bloody ballet,” she reassured him, crinkling her nose in amusement, though she made no move to reach out to him.

“Where Society can point, snicker, and gossip about you?” he asked, perplexed why Lydia would wish more exposure and more risk of snubbing, when that was the very thing she said she had dreaded when in Portsmouth by herself. “Oh!”

“Oh, indeed,” she replied, waiting for him to plumb to it.

She wants t’be courted! he told himself; To do things proper!

“Then we shall do as you wish, Lydia,” he promised her, “even if that involves gallons of tea. Though, if Willis’s Rooms are out, and I lodge at the Madeira Club…” Their second night together, she had booked a suite of rooms at Willis’s, as a present.

“Lord, how stricken you look, Alan!” she said with a laugh as she came to embrace him, at last, and looked up at him most pleasingly adoring. “Neither of us can pretend that we do not share a powerful mutual … desire for intimacy. Trust when I tell you that I have longed for you every moment the Navy takes you away from me, and that this last, long separation has been almost more than I could bear! I long for you so much that I would join you this very instant…,” she said in a fret, turning her head to look about. “I would let you lead me behind that thicket, yonder, but for the witnesses.”

“The thicket ain’t that far off,” Lewrie said with a leer as he took a squint where she had indicated.

“We shall find a way, when you come up to London, Alan,” Lydia assured him with a solemn expression. “We may have to be most discreet, but … love shall find a way.”

Love? Christ, this is gettin’ damned serious! Lewrie thought.

“I s’pose love will,” Lewrie said in a pensive whisper as he pulled her into an embrace, which prompted another long and fervent kiss to which she responded just as eagerly. She stroked his cheek with a shuddery touch, looking as if she would begin to weep, again.

“I must’ve done somethin’ right,” Lewrie softly sighed, “for you t’take such a risk to your heart, given all that … you know.”

“Yes, you have, Alan,” Lydia whispered, “you certainly have.”

After another long minute of kissing, Lewrie leaned back from her a bit to joke, “Imagine all this, from a chance encounter on the road!”

“A most fortunate encounter,” Lydia heartily agreed, though she stepped back from him. “Brief it must be, though. I must get on to London, just as you must get on to Portsmouth. Someone must be the practical one, after all,” she teased, taking his hands at arm’s length as if they were dancing.

“Never gave a fig for ‘practical’,” Lewrie said. “Though I fear you’re right.” He offered her a polite arm to walk her back to her coach, handed her inside, and folded up the folding steps, then closed the door once she was seated.

He stepped back from the coach, but she leaned out the opened door window to reach out to tousle his hair and stroke his cheek one more time. Lewrie kissed her palm and her wrist.

“I will see you again, soon?” she asked, grinning.

“Count on it,” Lewrie promised. “I’ll write to let you know as soon as I know when I can get away, and for how long.”

“Adieu, dear Alan. Adieu, dear man.”

“’Til the next time, dear girl!” Lewrie replied as her coach began to rattle forward. He waved to her, waited to watch her coach head up the road, then turned and strolled back to his own, shaking his head in bemusement, part wistful, and part disappointed that she would not stay for even a cup of tea, yet …

He reached the open door of his coach and turned to look back up the road, and damned if Lydia was still leaning out the window and waving, so he used both arms to return a broad goodbye wave to her with a smile plastered on his phyz that he wasn’t sure what it meant.

Now, where did all that come from? he asked himself; I would’ve thought her so vexed with me that she’d write me off completely, yet … hmmm. Love, she said? Wary as she was, ’bout love and marriage, and trustin’ any man ever again … Gawd.

Did he wish to re-marry? he had to ask himself. If he did, he could do a lot worse than Lydia Stangbourne. As far as he knew, she was still worth £2,000 a year, and that much “tin” was nothing to be sneezed at! She was exciting, adventurous, nothing like the properly-mannered hen-heads and chick-a-biddies who populated most of the parlours in the nation!

Shame, though, Lewrie thought; I’m too “fly” a rake-hell for her. Sooner or later, she’d find me out and go harin’ for the hills!

“On to Portsmouth, coachman,” Lewrie said as he mounted the steps into his coach.

“Shouldn’t blaspheme, sir,” the dour stick grumbled.

“Damn me, did I?” Lewrie quipped as he pulled up the steps and shut the door. “Well, just bugger me! Whip up!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A light and misty October rain was falling, gathering on upper yards, and the rigging, and occasionally massing into larger drops of water that plopped on Reliant’s freshly holystoned decks, on the canvas covers of the stowed hammock racks, and Captain Alan Lewrie’s hat and epauletted shoulders as he and the First Lieutenant, Mr. Westcott, and the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, made a slow inspection of both the standing and the running rigging, and the set of the top-masts and yards.

Bisquit the dog paced slowly at their heels, on the lookout for attention, or the offer of a nibble of sausage or jerky. When one of the larger drops plopped on his head, he would shy away, then look up to spot whoever it was that was pestering him.