flunky was still standing there before him, with a faint smirk on his face.

'Waitin' for a tip?' Lewrie harshly muttered. 'Bugger off!'

With the eyes of an hundred or more of his contemporaries upon him, Lewrie gathered up his hat and boat- cloak and prepared to depart, his soul smarting… to be gawked at and whispered about behind hands by such a pack of superannuated dodderers and droolers, by failures and drunkards, by fools too lack-wit to pass their Lieutenants' exams, and incompetent twits and no-hopes. Worse yet! To imagine what false sympathy some felt. 'Bugger him, more chance for me! Oh, poor fellow… the bastard! Born one, ye know, hee hee!' To be pitied by such a lot!

'Off to a new ship, are ye, sir?' the garrulous old tiler said as Lewrie stepped through the anteroom for the doors to the walled-off courtyard. 'Well, I reckon ye'll give them damned Rooskies a good bash on th' noggin, hey, sir? Make way fer a fightin' captain, ye younkers,' the old fellow barked at an incoming pack of Lieutenants and Midshipmen. 'Part like the Red Sea fer Moses, there, an' git ye in. There's a mob o' others waitin', so don't git yer hopes too high. Standin' room only, an' don't tread on nobody's boot tips, neither, mind, har har.'

Equally galling were the smiles and appreciative looks from the many civilians 'round the environs of Whitehall. England might be all alone against France, without allies, and threatened by a fresh set of enemies, the war's length and cost might be wearying, yet… the Navy would set things right, the Royal Navy; aye, the Navy and Nelson! The people who doffed their hats, the ladies who inclined their heads with grins, imagined Lewrie off to save them.

Why else was that naval fellow so grim-faced, and walking quite so quickly? Surely eager to board his ship and fillet anyone who dared challenge Great Britain! Why, the angry stamping of his boots denoted dread determination, egad! See how his hands flex so on the hilt of his sword, and all? Damn my eyes, wasn't he that Lewrie chap, by God? Then God help the Roosians! Maps, and books, just making ready…

Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN (sure to unemployed 'til the dawn of the next century!) fumed his way back to his rooms, blackly contemplating how he might trail Nepean home some dark night and throttle him for his haughty and brusque dismissal; how he'd go about challenging the next sniggerer or smirker to a duel, and how much pleasure he'd find in the skewering or shooting of the fool!

Damn my eyes, there's going t'be a battle, Lewrie furiously imagined; two or three of 'em, if we can take 'em on separately… and I'll not have a part in 'em? Become one o' those… losers? No, I'll not ever! Mine arse on a band-box if I'll haunt the Admiralty, beggin' for scraps like a… stray cur! Christ on a crutch, I've put in twenty-one years, most of 'em at sea, and miserable, too. They don't want me any longer, well… just bugger 'em! Somethin' t'be said for warm and dry, for a change.

Thirty-eight wasn't all that old, he could comfort himself to think; there were naval officers who had actually given up active commissions to sit in Parliament, go into business, enter government service… and make a pile of 'tin' off the sops and graft that resulted!

Lewrie imagined that taking Holy Orders was pretty much out for his sort, even a lowly rector's position in a poor parish, with an absent vicar taking the lion's share of the benefice and tithes. Besides, no one would ever believe it of him!

Trade, and Business? Well, he was a skilled mariner, capable of being a merchant master-was 'John Company' still grateful to him for saving that convoy in the South Atlantic last year? Captaining an East Indiaman would be pleasant, and hellish profitable, to boot.

Or he could live on his invested prize-money, his savings with Coutts' Bank, and his late grandmother's Ј150 annual remittance, keep rooms (at a family discount) at the Madeira Club, and become an idle wastrel about London. Where one could have a drink whenever…

'Drink, by God,' Lewrie muttered under his frost-steaming breath. 'I definitely need strong drink… now! Drink, and distraction.'

As soon as he attained his lodgings, Lewrie made haste to strip off his uniform and pack it away in his sea- chest, stow his cocked hat in a japanned wooden box, and change into a tail-coat that was all the 'crack'; single- breasted and cut to the waist, with wide lapels and M-shaped collars in a newly fashionable black, over a snug pair of long grey trousers, with plain and unadorned black boots on his feet, minus the gold lace trim and tassels he'd wear with his uniform. To become even more a civilian, his black neck-stock he replaced with a cravat woven in blue, gilt, and cream paisley.

Walking stick instead of sword; a thimble-shaped black beaver hat with a royal blue band and short, curled brims; a single-breasted overcoat with triple capes, and he was ready for a good, long, and very un-military dinner, a bottle or two of wine, with port and brandy to follow, and while away the rest of the day 'til it was time to toddle off to the theatre or Ranelagh Gardens.

With the aforementioned restful nap, of course.

CHAPTER NINE

The next week passed in slothful idyll; late risings and lazy days, followed by heady afternoons roaming central London for delightful diversions, followed by even headier evenings. There were public subscription balls, drums and routs, concerts, and even a rare trip to a ballet or opera-all followed, of course, by light midnight cold collations washed down with champagne, and pre-dawn tumbles into bed at the Madeira Club. Not to mention the requisite hangovers.

And while such a rakehell (partially reformed) as Alan Lewrie might have so far tumbled into bed alone, it was a Devilish close-run thing, for London, the greatest city in the world no matter what Frogs boasted of their own Paris, possessed the most impressive collection of fetching young women of every stripe and grade.

Actresses, ballet dancers, orange-seller wenches in the aisles, 'grass-widows' abandoned by straying or absent husbands still looking for affection, the handsomest, fetchingest young un-married girls down to search for a suitable husband, some of them coyly eager for a 'ride' or two, away from their unaware parents… For a stray male, London was a paradise. And that didn't even begin to count the shop girls and house servants out on a spree on their lone days off, or the ones of 'the commercial persuasion,' who ranged from costly courtesans and mistresses to the over-made, bright-eyed morts available for a 'knee-trembler' in a dark doorway.

Sadly, though, sometimes being regarded as a 'hero' played to one's detriment. People simply would regard Lewrie as 'high-minded' or even 'Respectable', after all the flattering coverage in newspapers and Abolitionist tracts, the past year. He'd be introduced to lovely un-married daughters by beaming Papas and Mamas, but was expected to be the courtly but gruff sea-dog that, it seemed, all England expected. Even though the trial was over, and he could be as beastly as he wished to be once more, still there was that damnably 'honest' part to play, and God help him should he step outside it.

Well, there was Theoni Kavares Connor, the rich widow and mother of his bastard son. She seemed to turn up wherever Lewrie sported, at least twice a week, and made it quite plain that since he had so much time on his hands, with his wife estranged from him and safely off in the countryside (and how the Devil she'd discovered that? Lewrie had to wonder) they should partake of a passionate rencontre, and Lewrie was not quite sure why he hadn't leaped upon her slim, wee body, and those glorious tits of hers, yet… there it was. Shiverin' guilt, most-like, he told himself; or lingerin' fear o' gettin' caught out.

Equally maddening and mysterious was Eudoxia Durschenko. With Daniel Wigmore's so-called Peripatetic Extravaganza (read circus cum theatrical troupe) in winter quarters 'cross the river in Southwark, the girl was free to explore London, too, and, maddeningly, was simply everywhere Lewrie had gone! Did she have a spy network worthy of Zachariah Twigg's, or the Secret Branch of the Foreign Office?

Did he hire a prad to take an icy, but bracing, ride in a park, there Eudoxia Durschenko would be on her magnificent trained stallion, Moinya, from her circus act. Did Lewrie attend a subscription ball, she was there, too, dressed in the height of fashion. At Ranelagh Gardens, Covent Garden, theatres in Drury Lane, shopping in the Strand, gawking at rarees and street performers, and pursued by a clutch of rakehells and hopeful swains, especially at those midnight champagne suppers.

With her exotically dark, curly hair and high-cheeked, almond-eyed features and full lips, and those intriguing hazel-amber eyes of hers, Eudoxia Durschenko would have been the belle of the season, no matter her class or origin, and even the latest fashionable colours of puce, lavender, purple, and all set well upon her graceful form;

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