A King`s Commander

How scant her breath, how thready her pulse…!

Christ, if he was here now, I'd strangle him, Lewrie thought in once-more impotently distanced rage; and quite damn' gladly, too! By God, he's done me no favors!

Yet, miracle of miracles, and with the unstinting, damned near ferociously tender care of Sophie de Maubeuge, Caroline had rallied… she'd lived! The crisis was over, sometime in late February, and since Caroline was well on her way to a full restoration of her health, but still too weak to pen much more than spidery hen-scratches, Governor thought it was time he was told. In morbidly excruciating detail.

And what the hell was I doin' in late February, Lewrie sneered to himself, scathing himself again with self- loathing? Why, I was on top of a Corsican whore, dickerin' with criminal prize agents… too full o' lust for Mammon… an' just plain old lust!… t'give family more'n the idle, passin' thought!

When did I get his damned letter? Late April. Just after a night ashore with Phoebe, damn my blood! Feelin' like the Devil's Own Buck-of-the-First-Head, with nothin' on my mind but more quim, and breakfast! Noble, honorable… Arduous Service, mine arse!

He felt guilt, a shipload of raging, bellowing Guilt. Not just for his dalliances, for his venal concerns placed ahead of family, but for his smugness, his conceit, his blithe disregard for life's lessons.

How fortunate he'd been so far, and how cocksure he'd breezed through. Battle, wounds… that he'd not lost an eye like Nelson, or a limb like Lilycrop; that he'd been exposed to the most hellish fevers in both the Indies, China, that he hadn't come down with sepsis or lockjaw fever from a cut in battle, or those two unspeakably daft duels he'd fought in his callow, feckless youth. That it was such a wonder he'd lived this long was some assurance that he always would!

Or that those close to him would be just as fortunate, and that he could pay them no mind, dismiss them from his thoughts once he had sailed them under the horizon-and gaily assume that they'd be there at home, unchanged, pristine and untouched, like porcelain gewgaws he might collect, like marionettes stashed in a glass-front cabinet until the next performance. Which would occur whenever it suited his lights!

Sobering, to think he could have lost them all. Wife, children, heir, love, and joy… shameful and sobering, to consider what he'd been up to while all this near-horror had happened.

Hadn't he seen it? How many couples birthed ten, twelve babes, and ended burying all but two? A man with means, and the best physicians on retainer, might lose two, three wives to child-bed fever before they interred him, as well, at the 'ripe old age' of fifty!

* * *

That letter, and the ones that had followed from Governor and his mother-in-law Charlotte, finally a shaky one from his dearest Caroline herself, had brought him relief, but little joy. Perhaps this was what the reverends called an epiphany. Perhaps it had occurred in some ironic conjunction with seeing a stern, tarry-handed fire-eater such as Horatio Nelson spoon and coo over his mort, Adelaide Correglia, making an utter fool of himself, even though he still spoke of his dear Fanny back in Norfolk as some sort of household goddess. Or of seeing the dour, taciturn, and inarticulate Capt. Thomas Fremantle chortle and blush as he tried to play the gallant with his Greek doxy at the opera in Leghorn.

How much of a purblind fool do I look? he'd wondered. How huge the quim-struck cully have 7 been? Hmm…

Whatever. As drenched as a dog doused with a bucket of water to get him off a bitch in season, he'd cooled to Phoebe. Turned surly and short. Made excuses, invented duties that kept him aboard Jester until he could hide from her no more.

And what a muck I made o' that, he squirmed, working his mouth on his weakness as the squadron stood on nor'west toward Cape Sepet.

He'd gone to break it off, cut swift and clean. To make amends to Caroline, even if she never learned of it. Pray God she never learned of it! But, in explaining himself, and his reasons… And it hadn't helped that Phoebe that day had looked so fetching, so damned handsome! Neither had it helped that her huge brown eyes had filled with tears so readily at his sudden, and inexplicable, dismissal and betrayal.

Frankly, their rencontre had not been one of his shining moments.

'Pauvre homme' she'd muttered brokenly, her face crammed into a lace handkerchief, and she'd rushed to throw herself into his arms-to comfort him ! Crying and clucking, stroking and soothing, as if he was the one to worry about!

'Phoebe, I do love them all, more than my own life, d'ye see.. he'd muttered. 'And nearly lost them, so… mean t'say… this. We…'

'But, zey are recover', Alain mon amour, merci a Dieul' Phoebe had shusshed. ' 'Ow 'orrid eet mus' 'ave been fo' you. 'Ow thankful you mus' be, mon coeurl An' no one, you may tell. But, you tell me.'

There had been that; what captain could unbend, let his tears flow, show weakness before his inferiors. Oh, he'd had Cony and Cox'n Andrews in, given them the bald facts, with hopes that Maggy Cony, and their infant son might be weathering it. But, how long he'd pondered, fretted, wished to weep, to scream, to beg God to spare 'em…

'Surely, you must see, dear Phoebe…' he'd stammered. 'Mademoiselle Aretino, rather, hahumm!-that this, that our…'

'You mus' tell me ev'rysing, dear Alain!' she'd insisted.

So he had. Sitting together on a sofa. Embraced. And his own tears had, at last, come, no matter that he'd held them in control this long, and what was another hour of a sad duty?

Wept on her damn' tits, Lewrie railed at himself! Went to end it, and I ended up toppin' her! Again! Yorktown… Toulon… there'd been a power of rogerin', the days before the end o' both, 'twixt soldiers an' camp followers. Like tellin' Death t'go bugger himself. Long as we're playin' at life-makin', you can just piss off!

He'd taken his comfort with Phoebe, the comfort and sympathy she had been so eager to offer. And he'd been so grateful to receive. But it had felt so perverse a thing to do, even more worthy of guilt than before, when he'd been unaware, that he'd ended despising her to her face. Which was to say, that he'd despised himself, and had simply found a suitable target.

They'd had a high old row; shouting, cursing, flinging expensive gewgaws at each other. And damn his blood, if they hadn't gone right back to ranti-polin' in the heat of the moment! He'd spent the night. And had awakened even more confused, even more dithering than when he'd climbed the hill-street to her… no, 'their' house.

The sudden transfer to Nelson's squadron had come as a godsend. If he couldn't make up his own bloody-weak mind, he thought, then the Navy would make it up for him, If he hadn't the 'nutmegs' to tell Phoebe off proper, then perhaps time and distance from San Fiorenzo'd do it for him.

God, y'er such a bloody coward, me lad, Alan told himself; such a weak, venal, spineless… but, damme, why's she have to be so sweet about it, so…?

'Still no signal for a change of course, sir,' Lieutenant Knolles said at his side. 'We're standing in rather close to Cape Sepet, and those batteries.'

'Hmm?' Lewrie grunted in alarm, certain his quavery musings had been spoken aloud, in even a tiny mutter or whisper. That just bloody everyone knew his business; or soon would.

'Standing on, sir,' Knolles repeated, with a quizzical expression. He took off his hat, ran his fingers through his blond hair, and clapped it on again, in a gesture Lewrie had come to know as concern.

'Why, for spite, I s'pose, Mister Knolles,' Lewrie allowed, now he was back in the real world. 'To trail our coats right to their doorstep. Rub their cowardly noses in it.'

'I see, sir.' Knolles nodded, with a slight, wolfish grin.

'Though, just what it is we're rubbing their noses in is beyond me, at the moment.' Lewrie shrugged, damned by his irresolute dithering beyond all glee of his own witticism. Knolles, though, and those on the quarterdeck nearest them, rewarded him with a tiny, appreciative chuckle, even so. As if to mollify the mourner.

The word had surely spread through the ship, as the word always will, in an eye-blink, Lewrie was certain. Since then, the people had been walking on eggshells around him. Though they certainly sympathized with his