The King

Christ knows what else. Better not to ask.'

'If I'm delaying your retiring…' Alan offered, impatient to go.

'Not at all. I can still keep up with the young bucks of the first head.' Sir Hugo smiled lazily, puffing on his pipe once more.

'You always could, I grant you,' Alan agreed. 'But then, you were damn near a charter-member of the Hell-Fire Club back in your early days, weren't you?' he concluded with a suitably arch sneer.

'And when did you become a regular churchgoer, my boy?' Sir Hugo replied. 'God, if I only had penny to the pound of all the blunt I spent bailing you out of trouble, I'd still be a rich man!'

'Wasn't my caterwauling got you in debtor's prison,' Alan sulked. 'Wasn't me damn near press-ganged me into the Navy so you could lay your hooks on the Lewrie fortune.'

'And how is Grandmother Lewrie these days? Mistress Nuttbush now?'

'Alive and kicking, spry as a pup.'

'Her kind always was harder to kill than breadroom rats.'

'Sounds like you considered it.'

'Now you do me too much injustice, Alan m'dear.' 'Oh, please!' Alan said, starting to rise, but Sir Hugo reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm.

'Bide awhile, son,' he said, and for once, he sounded as if he was begging. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby never begged. Alan made up his mind to stay for a while longer, if only to see him beg again.

'How can you call me son?' Alan shot out, sure of his superior position over the older man for the first time in his life. 'Aye, you sired me, that's true, but when it came to being a father to me, you had your chance, and all I ever got from you was a cold shoulder, a snarl now and then. I wasn't a son, I was an investment! Your hole-card to take the Lewrie trick once 1 was of an age to inherit and granny passed over. And soon as it looked like happening, you packed me off with that crimp Captain Bevan and had me off at sea, so I'd never even know there was a Lewrie family to inherit from! You told me my mother Elisabeth was a whore, dead at my birthing, that I had no family other than you, God pity me! You and Pilchard forging documents left, right and center to get what you wanted…'

'Needed's more like it,' Sir Hugo confessed with a deprecating shrug and a sip of his brandy.

'Yes, you always needed money,' Alan pressed on harder, trying to get a rise out of him, to puncture that slightly sad, but maddeningly calm demeanor. Damme, he thought, does the old bastard truly not have a sense of honor to shame? 'And there was Belinda and Gerald, their inheritance you squandered before they came of age, too. How was your marriage to the Cockspur widow, your second wife?'

'Bloody depressing most of the time. She was a termagant twit.' Sir Hugo chuckled slightly, and gave Alan a rueful grimace and a shake of his head in less than fond remembrance. 'And how are Belinda and Gerald faring?'

'What the…' Alan was rendered incapable of cogent speech by the man's sang-froid. 'As if you care!'

'You're right, I don't, but I thought it would satisfy my curiosity about them,' Sir Hugo replied, tippling another sip of brandy. 'Bloody awful children, right from the start.'

'Yet… yet, you treated them as the rightful heirs, and me as the barely tolerated… bastard!' Alan barked. 'Well, Goddamn you!'

'Of course I did. Agnes' bloody sisters were still alive to plague me, and to all intents and purposes, you were the little bastard, the by-blow of a youthful indiscretion. You wanted for nothing. What else did you desire? A damned pony and cart?'

'Yes, yes I bloody well did!' Alan howled with rage. 'I wanted'-Alan was so full of rage, of tears, that he had to get out of the place before he killed the man!-'I wanted a father! I wanted a mother!' He shot to his feet to flee.

'You had a mother!' Sir Hugo roared, getting to his feet and seizing Alan, who struggled to get away. 'She died. And, God help you, you had me for a father, such as I was.' 'You told me she was a whore!' Alan screamed. 'She was!' Sir Hugo screamed back. 'Know why I ran off with her jewelry in Holland? Because I caught her in bed with another officer of my regiment who'd made the crossing with us after we eloped!'

'You lying hound!'

'You've only heard your granny's side, boy!' Sir Hugo ranted. 'How sweet and innocent she was. How I seduced her for her money and left her without a penny. Well, let me tell you, if she'd lived, I'd have lost count of how many times she'd have put cuckold's horns on me. God help me, I'd be here in India after all, 'cause it'd be cheaper'n trying to get a bill of divorce through Parliament! I might have ended up on the gallows for killing her and her latest! Do… you… under

stand… me… you little… jingle-brains?'

The last was punctuated with some massive shaking that almost loosened Alan's teeth in his head each time his jaw snapped shut.

'Elisabeth could be the sweetest, liveliest, most alluring damn woman ever I did see, Alan,' Sir Hugo relented at last, easing his tone and his grip. 'But I found out I couldn't trust her out of my sight! Oh, we went to Holland, yes. Her daddy Dudley Lewrie cut her off without a farthing. So we lived on my Army pay and what little was left of my family estate after my elder brother got through with it. Mortgaged to the bloody hilt! And do you really think I wanted to enter the Army when I was sixteen? Like bloody Hell, I did! I didn't get much of a choice, either.'

'But that doesn't excuse…' Alan almost sobbed.

'I know, son, nothing excuses it,' Sir Hugo shuddered. 'I've treated you like dirt your whole life. Thought I was doing well by you, by my own lights. And nothing's going to make up for it. But I'd like you to at least understand me. If you're going to despise me to the end of time, then at least do it for the right reasons, if nothing else.'

'You miserable bastard!' Alan hissed, on the verge of weeping, of falling on his father's shoulder and crying his eyes out. Either that or fetching a curved tulwar, a Persian sword, off the wall and hacking his head off. Sir Hugo put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a soft pat-perhaps as close as he would ever get to empathy or comforting.

'Thomas de Crecy,' Sir Hugo muttered heavily, turning away. 'Good, honest, cheerful, unfailing Tommy. My fellow officer in the 4th. 'Twas him arranged the minister and all for us to wed.'

'Aye, I remember,' Alan said with a snort and a hiccup. 'But it was a false justice married you. I guess he didn't know you needed real clergy. Just a sham to get her into your bed!'

'No need of that, Alan,' Sir Hugo replied, grinning. 'Elisabeth had the shortest pair of heels of any girl I'd ever seen. We'd already been bedded. And I want you to know this, laddy. I loved her so dearly I was totally besotted. Money be damned, I really did want her to be my wife! Ah, but Tommy de Crecy knew what he was doing. Came over to Holland with us, brought my last installment of Army pay. Stayed with us in the same town, to see us through until Elisabeth's family came 'round and accepted the marriage. Do you see what he had in mind?'

'No, frankly,' Alan replied, blowing his nose.

'Well, there we were, rapidly running out of money, 'cause your grandfather Dudley Lewrie was tighter with a shilling than a Maltese pimp, and he'd never admit the match. But there was always good old Tommy. Tommy, with his little loans. Tommy with his lord's purse. Tommy with his kind-hearted generosity!' Sir Hugo turned somber, and just a trifle angry, even after all these years as he related this. Or, as Alan suspected, he was a consummate actor and was putting on a sublime theatric.

'You mean he was the one caught in bed with her?' Alan asked, dubious still.

'He'd wanted her all along, aye,' Sir Hugo grumbled, and bent over the tray table to pour them another stiff refill of brandy. His face was older, heavier, lined; the skin mottled by years of too much drink, too much tropic sun in the last few. The fine shock of light brown hair was receded, and there were liver spots on the exposed scalp. And, Alan noticed as hepoured the spirit, so were the backs of his hands. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby was no longer the fashionable buck of St James' Place, White's, Almack's. He was a slack old man, or near enough to it not to matter, gone ropey and croupey.

'He was waiting for the moment when Elisabeth was at her weakest, I suppose,' Sir Hugo maundered on. 'When we both realized the enormity of what we'd done, and that things were most definitely not going to turn aright. Knighthood or not, she was married to a penniless captain of foot, currently unemployed. Trading down from good lodgings to the cheapest we could find, and still wondering where the next