Being a foursome, all in all, though, hardly ever just the two of them together, had turned the courting into a guardedly celibate affair. They had embraced, kissed, panted, yearned (Oh, how Lewrie had yearned!), but they had not had those promised nights at Willis’s Rooms or any other clandestine lodgings. Riding in the parks, shopping for civilian clothes for him, new books to read on-passage (none of those salacious, for a change, either!), it was all so very public!

“Wooing,” he muttered. “What a horrid-sounding word. Woo. Woo woo. Woo hoo.”

Lewrie hadn’t wooed any girl or woman, or couldn’t recall doing so since he was breeched! Flirting with a single aim was a different kettle of fish, and he’d been good at that since his father, Sir Hugo, had gifted him with his first dozen cundums, and cited the sage advice of Lord Chesterfield that “pleasure is now, and ought to be your business”, a motto that the both of them had followed.

It was not so much the frustration and denial that bothered him, but the sheer novelty of a seeming chastity that had him bemused and all-a’mort. Oh, he liked Lydia Stangbourne, and not merely because she had struck him as un-conventional from the first instance, and an obliging lover in the second; not because she came from a wealthy family, either. As he had told her early on, he was comfortable, and didn’t have any designs upon her share of the Stangbourne fortune, nor in any need of her standing dowry of £2,000. Stung as she’d been by her first, brutal marriage, and the scandal of Divorcement, she had liked him for not trying to win her hand, and Lewrie, in turn, had liked her for how they could play lovers without a hint of commitment.

Now, though … after a week and a bit of just being together at innocent pursuits … he felt … what?

Well, just damn my eyes if I ain’t growin’ fond of her! Lewrie realised with a wrench; Christ, I do b’lieve I even miss her! What has the world come to?

The touch of her hand, the scent of her hair, the merry, adoring glints in her dark emerald-green eyes, the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed at something, or one of his jests. An odd nose, too, a tad too wide front-on, but almost Irish and wee in profile, and the recollection of that made Lewrie smile in pleasant reverie.

My dearest Alan,

I certainly do not wish for you to feel as if our brief Time together in London was to put you on Trial, for that was the farthest thing from my mind.

Words cannot express, however, the utmost Joy your Patience gave me. Your Jests, your Gallantries, your Good Humour in tolerating my Reticence has endeared you to me beyond all Measure, beyond any Fears which I previously held. I have been shamefully out of Temperance over our star-crossed attempts to see each other, and did not intend to behave so stand-offishly, but, with Percy and Eudoxia in Town, I could discover not the slightest Opportunity to show you how warm is my Heart towards you, or how ardent is my Passion, and I beg you to forgive my Foolishness.

How cruel it is, now, that you are bound away on the King’s Business with no Promise of a quick Return, or indeed, a Return at all! As I write this, my very Soul cries out to be with you, and my Eyes are so aswim with Tears that I can barely see to …

“Well, I’m damned!” Lewrie whispered in considerable awe. She had lost her dread of trusting her heart to yet another man who would break it? What was he to make of that? Lydia was a clever and wary grown woman—did she not see that he was a dissembling rake-hell, sure to disappoint her in future? How to respond?

He opened a drawer in his desk and got out his pen, inkwell, and a fresh sheet of bond. Such activity bestirred Toulon to pad over to the desk and meow to announce his presence, and desire. With one leap, Toulon got into his lap, peered over the top of the desk to see what his master was doing, then settled down in the shape of a hairy pot roast, the tip of his tail slowly metronoming, and purring.

“Good old lad,” Lewrie praised him, ruffling his fur and stroking his head and cheeks for a while, then began to write.

October 18th, 1805

Reliant, at Portsmouth

My dearest Lydia,

How gratifying it is to receive your latest Letter. Gratifying and Elating beyond all Bounds, however, are the Sentiments, the Warmth, and Ardour in which you say you hold me! Be strongly Assured that my own Heart swells in wrenching Longing to see your sweet self for just one minute more, even do we share a parting Kiss, a touch of hands, and nothing more. Your sudden Openness to Risk quite astounds my soul, and places me in Dread that I would ever cause you to regret …

“Hang it,” Lewrie whispered to the cat, who looked up at him. “I think she’s come t’love me, Toulon. And, I think I feel the same!”

BOOK TWO

KING:

On, on, you noble English,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,

Fathers that like so many Alexanders

Have in these parts from morn till even fought

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

T HE L IFE OF K ING

HENRYTHEFIFTH,

ACT III, SCENE I, 17–21

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The passage to Madeira was an odd one, quite unlike the last that had taken Reliant to Bermuda and the Bahamas in January of 1805. While the prevailing Westerlies in the Bay of Biscay were gusty, they did not vary more than 20 degrees either side of Due West, quite unlike the howling storms and mountainous seas that had raged against their frigate before. The wind direction did not swing capriciously to smack them on the bows and force them to make long boards just to avoid being driven into the rocky angle of the French and Spanish coasts, or force them onto Portuguese shoals. Once out at sea, beyond the Scilly Isles and Cape Ushant, a few days of close-reaching gained them bags of sea-room and hundreds of miles of safety margin from the risk of lee shores. Striding along Sou’-Sou’west or South by West upon a roughly beam wind and a beam sea, even the three clumsy transports could keep up with their escorting frigate, and reel off a satisfactory eight or nine knots from one Noon Sight to the next, making a goodly way.

Those beam seas and winds were rough on the troopers of the 34th aboard Ascot, for she would wallow and reel, heeling over to larboard before coming back upright to do it over and over again, as steadily as a clock, sending those lubbers to the lee rails to “cast their accounts to Neptune” on deck, or into buckets below if they could reach one in time. That gave Reliant’s seasoned and strong-stomached tars perverse pleasure, and a cause for jeering following each meal served aboard the Ascot.

The horses were another matter.

No matter how narrow the stalls were arranged aboard the horse transports to cut down on room to stagger, the continual rolling and wallowing, and the groaning of the hulls as they worked over the sea, quite un-settled the poor beasts. Some would panic and rear, frightened by the noise and motion, would break their forelegs and have to be put down. As strong and swift as they were, able to live twenty or more years, horses’ digestive systems were incredibly touchy, subject to twisted bowels, the strangle, or colic. At least once every two or three days, a horse would die, and be hoisted out of the holds, swayed out overside, and disposed of.

There were, perhaps, no other people on earth more fond of the horse than the English. From the meanest, poorest ship’s boy to the officers aft, horses were a part of their lives, for pleasure riding and hunting among the better-off, essential to the livelihood of the cottager farmer, the coachman, the street vendor or waggoner, or the punter at the races. Every loss of a horse turned Reliant’s sailors glum and quietly sad. Below over their meals, almost every Man Jack had an idea of how those poor beasts should have been handled, or treated; if he’d been over there, they’d not have died, by God!