straighter. 'Da, ya oovyerin,' the bruiser assured his master. Whatever the Devil that last meant, Count Levotchkin turned his head to glower at Lewrie, as well, eyes as wide as a first-saddled colt… just before his face turned to stone, and his eyes slitted. The sides of his fine nose pulsed in and out to each audible angry breath as his visage paled, his cheeks reddened.
Panton Street, the Strand, tea whatever… Oh, shit! Lewrie at last put together; The little bastard's set his beast t'lurkin' after Tess, and put two and two t'gether. Saw us at the tea and pastry shop. Maybe that's what a magazeena is.
Count Levotchkin set his cup down in the saucer, both rattling to the shaking of his hands.
'But, what is the matter, Anatoli?' Count Rybakov asked him in sudden concern. 'You are ill? Should the ship's doctor…?'
Levotchkin answered him in a babbling flood of furious Russian and French, mixed, neither of which Lewrie could follow. Rybakov had difficulty, too, so rushed did the younger man's plaint spew out.
'Shto?' Rybakov asked as Levotchkin paused for breath. 'Viy oovyeryeni? Tojeh sama-yeh dyevooshka?'*
'Da, ya oovyerin,' Levotchkin replied, snarling this time, and glaring daggers at Lewrie. 'Sasha is certain, for he saw them. Him!' Levotchkin accused, lifting his chin to point up the table to his host. 'My honour has been insulted, and he must answer for it. I must kill him.' He rose with a napkin in his right hand and began to advance on Lewrie, who shot his own chair back and stood ready to punch the fellow in the face if he dared issue a challenge with a napkin, not a glove.
'Stoi!' Rybakov barked. 'I forbid this, Anatoli! Sit down! Do nothing. Remember our mission!' Rybakov then launched into a tirade in Russian-no French which might be shared with anyone else this time-and went so far as to lay a restraining hand on Levotchkin's right arm. 'Obey me in this, Anatoli. Obey me!'
Levotchkin uttered a growl of frustration, shaking off his kinsman's hand. He threw the napkin at Lewrie, missing wide, then, to the astonishment of everyone, gave out a howl, an inarticulate bellow akin to the sound a hound might make over the corpse of its master.
'I refuse to share these rooms with the man,' Levotchkin vowed. 'I will not dine with him, drink with him, breathe the same air…!'
That'll save my spirit store, Lewrie inanely thought.
'Anatoli, that would be imposs-' Rybakov chid him.
'Damn him! Damn him to Hades!' Levotchkin cried, spinning on his heels and stomping aft to his partitioned-off bed-space, slamming the louvred slat door and making the flimsy deal and canvas partitions come nigh to collapsing like a tent.
'Well,' Rybakov softly said in the immense silence. 'Kapitan, I must apologise for my cousin's manners, but… he feels that you give him great insult, over a young lady.'
'Not quite a lady, no, my lord,' Lewrie said with a wry grin as he sat back down to resume his cooling breakfast. 'The girl in question's adenizen of 'Mother' Batson's brothel, in Panton Street, for whom he took a fancy.'
'A… prostitute?' Rybakov asked, looking appalled as he sat down in his own chair at the other end of the table. 'A common whore?'
'Well, I wouldn't call her 'common,' no, my lord,' Lewrie said, and laid out for Count Rybakov the entire scenario, from meeting Tess to the last morning in the Strand… perversions, included.
'He was not set upon by thieves?' Rybakov mused aloud, eyebrows up in wonder. 'No wonder he explained his wounds differently. But… he really treated the poor girl so badly?'
'Afraid so, my lord,' Lewrie told him, dabbing his lips with a napkin after he'd eaten his last morsel, and asked Pettus for another cup of coffee. 'She was afraid for her life. Had she known… had I known, that his man, Sasha, was lurking to discover who else might be sporting with her, or meeting her outside the establishment, I doubt she'd have ever dared step out the door, 'til she was sure that Count Levotchkin had left England.'
'But he's so devout!' Rybakov insisted. 'Anatoli never misses a service, even in London, at the few Orthodox churches, no matter how mean the neighbourboods. He's a pure son of Mother Russia… or so I thought. Lord, what will his mother say, or the young lady to whom he is affianced in Saint Petersburg? A young lady of one of the finest families in our aristocracy. He has such a promising future… a colonelcy in one of the most distinguished cavalry regiments, assured of a place at the Tsar's court as soon as we return…'
Knew it! Lewrie told himself; Devout, and a cavalryman. They're sure t'be secret bastards, every time.
'Happens in the best of families,' Lewrie commented. 'Just look at our own aristocracy. The Earl of Sandwich, for instance… simply brilliant First Lord of the Admiralty, but a founding member of the Hell-Fire Club. Orgies in the old undercroft of his restored abbey at Medmenham, then preached in dominee clothes of a Sunday… to hundreds of cats his farm workers'd round up and herd into the chapel. Mostly against fornication,' he added with a droll expression.
Lewrie knew all there was to know about the Hell-Fire Club; his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, had been a member, too.
'I will speak to him,' Rybakov offered, as if that might mollify the young hot-head. 'Now I know the circumstances, I will point out to him the ludicrous cause for his grudge. Even so… for a few days, arrangements can be made to limit your contact with him?'
'If he wishes to take the air on the quarterdeck, he'll have to wait 'til I'm below,' Lewrie said, calmly stirring sugar into his cup. 'If he doesn't wish to dine with me, he can take his meals aft, in his little sleeping-space. I'll not give up my cabins, my table, my chart-space, or my desk or day-cabin settee. Does he loathe me that much, he will just have to take pains to avoid me, my lord.'
'You will not duel him,' Rybakov said; not a request.
'That… will be up to him, my lord,' Lewrie evenly replied as he laid aside his spoon and lifted his cup. 'Does he not heed you and accost me, issue a formal challenge, then… my own honour is put in question, and there can be but one answer.'
'Sadly, I understand, Kapitan Lewrie,' Count Rybakov mournfully said, his face twisted up as grievous as a hanged spaniel.
Outta the fryin' pan, into the fire, Lewrie queasily thought as he took another sip of coffee, all outward calm to an impartial observer. Mine arse on a band-box, he'll challenge me before we reach Russia, sure as Fate. Too damned proud an' arrogant t'do else. Christ, am I t'die over a whore?
He allowed a wee grin to lift his mouth for a second.
Ev'rybody said I'd come to a bad end, he reminded himself.
'Midshipman o' th' watch, SAH!' the Marine sentry by the door barked.
'Come,' Lewrie bade.
'The Second Officer's duty, sir,' Midshipman Furlow announced, hat under his arm, 'and I'm to tell you that the wind's come more Westerly, fine on our larboard quarter, and he requests permission to alter course a point Northerly.'
'My compliments to Mister Farley, and inform him to do so. I will come to the quarterdeck… just for the air, Mister Furlow,' he formally replied, grinning as he uttered his last thought.
As he dressed for the cold, Lewrie could not help thinking that, could Thermopylae fly with the wings of Hermes the Messenger, and get to Russia by the next dawn, this voyage, this mission of his, would still feel like an eternity!
*Da, ya oovyerin = Yes, I'm sure. Shto = What? Viy oovyereni? Tojeh sama-yeh dyevooshka? = You are sure? The same young woman?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Four days in blustery, grey weather, with the winds whipping cold and occasionally spitting rain, sleet, or fat flakes of snow, and HMS Thermopylae bowling along like a Cambridge coach, and they were shaving a low-lying coast to starboard, which emerged as ephemeral as mist, just round dawn.
'Quite good, for dead reckoning,' Lewrie told Mr. Lyle, the Sailing Master, as the shore of the Danish island of
