H.M.S. COCKEREL

His fingers began to twitch with a life of their own as he contemplated the butter-softness of the luscious bottom he'd soon be stroking.

'Not much needs seeing to tomorrow, I fear, dear,' she said to him, colouring a little as she saw his intent, reflected gaze.

'Muck out, feed the stock,' Alan yawned, jaws creaking in struggle against it. 'Have the beef cattle driven to the stock-pens. Not a morsel of pasturage left for 'em. And we don't wish to risk any spring calves, if the weather turns off colder.'

'You're beginning to anticipate a farm, after all,' she replied with a light chuckle, but it was very matter-of-fact. As if sensing that she'd been too blunt and critical of his farming skills, Caroline crinkled her large hazel eyes at him via the mirror, pursed her lips and blew him a distant kiss across the bed-chamber.

'After four years it's about time, don't you think?' he said, shifting under the covers. She was smiling that particular, that secret, heavy-lidded smile-it promised to be an intimate evening indeed! 'Like the Navy, knots an' rope,' he rambled on, putting his hands beneath his head on the pillows, thoroughly at ease now. ' 'Cept for the bosuns who'd flog my bottom raw if I got things wrong. Thank God. 'Can't birth a lamb, Mister Lewrie? Ton my word, sir! No way to bind a sheave, Mister Lewrie! Bosun, dozen o' y'r best, at once, sir! Bend over, kiss the gunner's daughter, Mister Lewrie!' Or is it the farmer's daughter, hmm?'

Caroline giggled, then went back to stroking her hair, humming a tune to herself, almost crooning. 'Oh,' she paused. 'We're invited to a game supper at Govemour's and Milli-cent's. Friday night. He bagged a stag, and it should be well hung by roasting time.'

'And Uncle Phineas and his dull compatriots will be there?' Alan frowned with displeasure. 'Dear as I love well-hung venison… Pity he didn't bag Uncle Phineas. Might be too tough an old boar to chew, though.'

'We're to bring a covered dish,' Caroline went on, resuming her stroke. 'I thought a dessert would be best from us. Hmm?'

'A tart fruit jumble, that'd go well with venison,' he suggested, stifling another yawn. 'Something half wild, like that red-currant preserve you put up in the fall.'

'Mmm, yes, that might do main-well.' She put aside her brush and bound her hair at last into a long, single tress. She rose from her dressing table, let the dressing gown fall open over her bedgown and crossed to the fireplace. William Pitt, their ancient tawny ram-cat, lay stretched out on the narrow padded bench in front of the fire like a rather large orange-coloured plum duff. He was whimpering and grunting in his sleep. Caroline touched his grizzled head and he woke enough to look up, thrust the top of his head against her hand, and turn over to lie facing Lewrie, all four heavy paws together as he stretched. The one good eye regarded the bed. The stubby tail curled lazily as he recalled how cozy-warm it was to sleep with humans on cold winter nights.

Not tonight, you little bastard, Alan gloated at him.

Caroline blew out the last remaining candle and came to the high bedstead, slowly undoing the fastenings of her dressing gown, shrugging it off her shoulders to puddle at her elbows. Her hips swayed in the flickering amber darkness. He put out a hand to her.

And little Charlotte took that exact, and unfortunate, instant to wake, either wet, hungry, lonely, bored or terrified- perhaps a combination of all five-and began to bawl her little head off.

Even in the near dark Alan could see Caroline's face go empty and vacant, then vexed, then subsumed with worry, and after that she had no more thought for her husband than she might for the Man in the Moon. With frantic, matronly haste she did back up her robe and was out the door and down the hall for the nursery.

'Bloody…!' Alan Lewrie groaned in a soft whimper, head back on the pillows in sudden defeat, though still up on his elbows in welcome. 'Bloody Hell!' he moaned, collapsing.

'Marrrh,' William Pitt announced in a grumpy, closed-mouthed trill as he hopped up on the foot of the bed, as if he had known how the evening would fall out. He padded slowly up the covers, tacking cautiously around the slowly sinking seamount of his master's fading tumescence, and flopped himself sideways against Lewrie's upper chest, leaning his whole, and not inconsiderable, weight against him. Pitt's good eye regarded Lewrie with commiseration, his one undamaged ear gave a tiny twitch and he yawned again, as close to a grin as felines may essay, baring his remaining teeth and mismatched fangs. One heavy, round paw, big as an unhusked walnut, reached out and patted at Alan's chin, claws nicely sheathed, to give comfort. And to demand some for himself.

Lewrie slid an arm down from inside the warm, recently inviting covers to pet him and scratch the top of his head, the shaggy ruff of fur around his thick neck.

'You knew, didn't you, Pitt?' Lewrie whispered, resignedly. 'I wish to God I knew how you do these things.'

'Murpphh,' William Pitt harrumphed, beginning to pun-loud and rattling, like a bilge- pump chain. He closed his eyes in bliss.

At least somebody 'round here's blissful, Lewrie thought. And most uncharitably, too.

Chapter 3

Breakfast was a rushed affair; strong cup of tea, leftover mutton chop and burned toast. The household was a veritable babble of activity, of sound, and Lewrie needed time away from it. That and the reek of soiled nappies. Charlotte was being her usual incontinent serf, Hugh had suffered a tiny 'accident,' no matter he was supposedly breeched and past such. Thankfully, it was the washday, and once Lewrie returned from his morning ride across the hills, the aromas of steam, boil-water, soap and starch, and hot irons would have conquered, for a time at least, the winter-pent aromas of sour milk, soiled swaddles and progeny poop.

He had one foot in the stirrup, crouched for the leap, when a voice interrupted him. It was Cony, calling his name, standing in the kitchen door, waving something at him.

'Bloody…' Alan sighed, hopping on one foot to clear his boot toe from the stirrup. 'Now what?' he demanded of the frigid morning. It had not been a good evening. He had struggled to stay awake until Caroline might return from the nursery, but it had taken what seemed like hours until she had quieted little Charlotte enough to allow the governess to finish the ministrations. She had slipped back into bed with him, her skin cool against his toasty warmth, and had snuggled close, kissed him a time or two with a weary, acquiescent, wifely absence of passion, gently puffing her lips with her mouth ajar against his throat in utterly stupefied slumber not half a minute later.

And had risen to her great joys of domestic duties before Cony had fetched him his first cup of tea!

'Letter f r ya, sir,' Cony told him as he tromped through the kitchen garden. 'They's a messenger come with it, down from London. In th' kitchen, warmin' 'is backside f'r now, sir.'

Lewrie turned the packet over and sucked in a cold breath of chill country air as he beheld the blue wax searing wafer, with the fouled anchor beneath the crown, admiralty.

'War wi' th' French, I wager, sir,' Cony declared as Lewrie broke the seal. His man was all but hopping from one foot to the other in rising excitement. 'Ever'one knowed h'it wuz a'comin'.'

'Thought the old fart'd retired by now,' Lewrie commented, as he noted the inscription below the message. A harried junior clerk had penned the bulk of it, but for the prim signature of the first secretary Philip Stephens at the bottom. He'd been first secretary to the Admiralty since the year Lewrie had been born.

20 January 1793

Admiralty, Whitehall

To Alan Lewrie, Lt., Royal Navy

Sir,

My Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord

High Admiral require your most immediate attendance

upon their Lordships. You are charged and directed to…

'Well, damme.' Lewrie breathed again. The chill settled lower, into his stomach, not just into his lungs. 'Bodkins, put Anson back in his stall. I'll not ride today. Do you fetch out the closed coach, though. It's…' He drew