King, Ship, and Sword

Elizabeth Lewrie, once he discovered that some of his fellow officers had bamboozled him with a 'false justice,' a sham wedding, and an elopement to Holland, there to wait for the riches that should have come with his mother's dowry and goods. Once Sir Hugo'd discovered that there would be no quick fortune, that a very pregnant girl was boresome, nagging, and a burden on his shrinking purse, and that he was, technically, as free as larks, he had fled her, taking her jewelry along, and danced his way back to London!

'Didn't know that,' Lewrie commented. 'I thought you'd sailed direct from Amsterdam.' He tilted up the brim of his hat to peer at Sir Hugo's answer to that, tacitly jeering.

'Got distracted,' Sir Hugo rejoined with a toothy fuck-ye-for-asking smile. 'Why d'ye ask, m'dear?'

'Well… now we're at peace with France,' Caroline tentatively said as she poured a glass of tea for herself, 'and it seems that they mean for it to last… I was thinking on what Sophie and her husband told us of their jaunt over there. It may not be like a Grand Tour of the Continent, as wealthier folk than we undertake, yet… I must own to a certain… curiosity.'

Very rich members of the aristocracy considered a Grand Tour of France, Holland, some of the Germanies, Spain, and Portugual, and, of course, the ruins of ancient Rome and the 'artistic' cities of Italy, with a stopover in Vienna and Venice, a necessity for the 'finishing' of their Well-educated and polished children. And to seek bargains in paintings, sculptures, and gold and silver work to enhance the furnishings of their mansions and estates.

'Seen Toulon, at least,' Lewrie harrumphed. 'Spots ashore in the Gironde, to boot. That's enough o' France t'hold me for a lifetime. A squalid damned place, Toulon. Dirtier than Cheapside or Wapping. No, I don't mean you, cat. You know t'bathe, if the Frogs don't,' he had to tell his black-and-white torn, who, at the mention of his name, leaped into Lewrie's lap. Not to be left out of it, Chalky came trotting to join Toulon, abandoning his butterfly hunt.

'It would be educational for the boys,' Caroline went on in an offhanded way. 'Improve their French, which every civilised man must speak.'

'Je suis un crayon, mort de ma vie,' Lewrie quipped.

'Oh, tosh!' Caroline objected. 'So you're a pencil, are you… death of your life?'

'Papa's a pencil?' Charlotte gawped, then burst into titters.

In point of fact, Lewrie's French was abysmal; execrably bad.

'I s'pose a tour o' France might teach 'em something, m'dear,' Sir Hugo told her. 'How vile are the French… so they hate 'em as bad as the Devil hates Holy Water, th' rest o' their lives, haw haw!'

'Perhaps as a… proper honeymoon,' Caroline said, lowering her eyes and going a tad enigmatic. 'As Sophie and Anthony did not have when they wed, with his ship ready to put back to sea as soon as the wind shifted. As short as ours was… recall, Alan?'

There had been one short night at a posting house in Petersfield and two weeks at the George Inn in Portsmouth, with him gone half the time fitting out little HMS Alacrity for her voyage to the Bahamas.

'Hemm,' uttered both Lewrie and his father, for both knew what she was driving at, and the reason for it.

'You're sunk!' Hugh yelled. 'I shot you clean through!.'

'Did not!' Sewallis loudly objected. 'I dis- masted you, so you can't move!'

'Can too!' from Hugh, face-down on the grass to shove his ship.

'Ships don't sink!' Sewallis insisted, shuffling on his knees to move his model frigate. Hugh's followed, at a rate of knots.

'Do too! They burn… they blow up! You're on fire!'

'Lads!' Lewrie barked, springing from his chair and scattering cats. 'Leave off!' Another instant and they'd be rolling and pummelling each other. 'Here, let me show you how things go.'

Lewrie knelt on the grass, green stains on the knees of his old and comfortable white slop-trousers bedamned. 'Now, which of ye is the enemy?'

Both pointed at the other accusingly, faces screwed up.

'Let's say the wind's from there, from the stables and the paddock,' he instructed, 'so you both should be sailin' this way, on the same course. Sewallis has the wind gage, aye, but his larboard guns can't elevate high enough to dis-mast ye, Hugh. You, on the other hand, in his lee, can shoot high enough… '

And, as he explained to his sons, a couple of curious setters, and both cats, that it was very rare for a ship to be sunk in action, that extreme pains were taken to prevent fires, and that it might take an hour or better to batter a foe into submission, Caroline looked on with a fond smile on her face, the very picture of contentment as she absently jammed a fresh scone for Charlotte.

'Ye look… pleased with life, m'dear,' Sir Hugo pointed out.

'In the main I am, sir, thank you,' she told him with a grin.

'France, though… Paris?' Sir Hugo queried with a scowl.

'Perhaps a second honeymoon,… as I said. A proper one this time,' she answered, Though she was smiling, the determined vertical furrow 'twixt her brows was prominent. 'After all I've had to put up with… I believe we owe it to each other. A fresh beginning.'

'That he owes you, more t'th' point?' Sir Hugo leered.

'Indeed,' Caroline rejoined with a slow, firm nod.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

This'll most-like put me in debtors' prison, 'fore we're done! Lewrie ruefully told himself as he delved into his wash-leather coin purse to tip the porters, once their luggage had been stowed aboard the hired coach- some in the boot and the most valuable inside the box. It was prime sport for vagrants and street thugs to slit the straps and leather covers of the boot and make off with the luggage, with the travellers all unsuspecting 'til they reached their last stop.

The porters were a surly lot, unhappy to accept British coinage and to deal with an Anglais, a 'Bloody,' a Biftec in pidgin French.

'All square?' Lewrie asked the porters. 'Uh, c'est tout?Bon?'

'Uhn,' growled one; 'Grr,' the other porter sourly replied.

'Au revoir, then,' Lewrie concluded, boarding the coach. 'And may ye all catch the pox… if ye ain't poxed already,' he muttered under his breath after closing the coach door. 'Such a warm and welcomin' people, the Frogs,' he told his wife, Caroline, seated by herself on the forward-facing padded bench seat. 'Feelin' a touch better, my dear?' Lewrie solicitously enquired.

'The ginger pastilles seem to have availed, yes,' she replied.

The crossing on the small packet from Dover to Calais had been a rough one. They'd had bright skies and brisk winds, but the narrows of the Channel when a strong tide was running could produce a prodigious chop, and the packet had staggered and swooped over steep ten-foot seas with only thirty or fourty feet between the swells. The last time that Caroline had been at sea, returning from the Bahamas aboard the little HMS Alacrity, a ketch-rigged bomb converted to a shallow-draught gunboat that would bucket about in any sort of weather past placid, she'd suffered roiled innards for days before regaining the sea legs she had found on the stormy passage out in 1786.

The packet voyage had been so short that Caroline had had no time to acclimate, and she had spent most of the trip past the harbour mole by a bucket or the lee rails. Even last night, spent in a squalid Calais travellers' inn, she could tolerate nothing more strenuous than cups of herbal tea and thin chicken broth.

The ginger pastilles were made in London by Smith amp; Co., recommended by another couple crossing to