The French Admiral

legally binding on both of the parties who partake willingly in it as a nuptial de praesenti when it comes to settling parenthood of any children. Your parents announced the intention to wed before witnesses at a dinner party, where officers of his regiment and friends of hers were present, so you are not a bastard as you have always assumed, but legally born of a legitimate couple.'

'So I am really a Willoughby.' Alan sighed.

'A lot more than Gerald and Belinda are.' Cheatham grinned. 'You see, you are the only living issue from your father's loins. That he may wish to claim, that is.'

'I don't understand.'

'Let me settle up the Lewrie part, and then I shall touch on the later events, in strict chronological order, so that it shall all be of a piece. Spousals being exchanged, love letters and gifts also being exchanged—'I give my love a packet of pins, and this is how our love begins,' remember that one?—your parents took up lodgings together as man and wife, and you were conceived shortly thereafter in 1762. But the Lewrie family, who reside in Wheddon Cross, Devon, just north of Exeter—'

'How terrible for them,' Alan commented, never a fan of the rustic life.

'The father, a Mister Dudley Lewrie, Esquire, was, as the Lewrie family solicitor for many years, a Mister Kittredge, assures us, a most strict religionist and somewhat of a Tartar to deal with. He had hated his only living daughter going off to London for a season, but the mother had cozened him into it to assure Elizabeth a chance to meet a better sort of husband than she could locally, or be assured of bonafides better than the moonshine one hears at Bath or another resort, when a footman with the chink may appear as grand as his master, and the rules of society in a resort town allow perfect freedom between classes.'

'Yes, yes, get on with it, I beg you, Mister Cheatham.'

'Well, there's your father and mother cohabiting, she pregnant with you, and the parents descending on the town to snatch her back. The happy couple flee to Holland after having a quick marriage performed to make it legally binding. The only problem was that the officiant was not certified as a recognized cleric able to celebrate a nuptial, just some hedge-priest that one of Sir Hugo's fellow officers found for them at short notice, obviously not understanding the need for real clergy. So Sir Hugo never got true coverture over the Lewrie estate, or that share of it that Elizabeth Willoughby nee Lewrie would have inherited. And Sir Hugo was not well off at all, his own estate almost an empty shell by his profligate spending and the cost of his commission to remove him from some scandalous doings in '58. She was beautiful, and one of two heirs to a sizable estate, so the temptation must have been the very devil on him.'

'I can understand that,' Alan said wryly. 'So far, sir.'

'Well, Sir Hugo abandoned your mother in Holland, taking off with her cash and jewels, quite a valuable prize to purloin, I'm told.'

'The sorry bastard!'

'Well, according to this Kittredge fellow, your grandfather Dudley washed his hands of his daughter Elizabeth after that, allowing her to lay in the bed she made for herself. I told you he was a Tartar. But your grandmother, Barbara Lewrie, was made of more charitable stuff. She had borne her husband ten children, but only two were living, and the only son due to inherit was a sickly sort, a man in his twenties named Phillip who was at Oxford, and when he wasn't deathly ill with some disease, he was suffering from either the pox or barrel fever. Barbara Lewrie sent money to pay Elizabeth's way back from Holland, enough to set her up in decent lodgings in London once home, so that her only grandson would be amply provided for. Phillip was showing no signs of giving her grandchildren, or signs of living long enough to wed formally, so you were the only hope for the family name, you see.'

Alan smiled greedily at that. It sounded suspiciously as if there would be some 'yellow boys' in his future, but he put his questions in abeyance, letting Cheatham get on at his own slow pace.

'Your mother evidently took ill on passage, and never regained her health,' Cheatham said somberly. 'She passed on just before the turn of the year, in late 1763. Her last parish was St. Martin in the Fields, and with no one to claim you, you were consigned to the parish. There you languished, until 1766, when you were three. Dudley Lewrie died in 1766, and this rescue of you is more than a coincidence. There is record that your father, Sir Hugo, and his solicitor, Pilchard even then, claimed you under your mother's maiden name of Lewrie, and took you in as his son at that time.'

'So there would be on record a male heir to the Lewrie estate, a legitimate one,' Alan said, suddenly understanding. 'If he'd claimed me as a Willoughby I would have been harder to prove. God, what a scheming hound he is. All this time, all these years he told me I was the son of a whore, a poor bastard of no account. I could kill him for that!'

'That was most likely his motive. But, Sir Hugo had landed on his feet. Once your mother died, he was free of marriage in the strict legal sense, and though your grandmother sued him for return of your mother's jewelry, he presented a letter from Elizabeth proving she had given him her paraphernalia. This was obviously forged, but the court could find no fault with it, since it was your mother's hand to the letter, so he got off scot-free. He had remarried almost as soon as he set foot ashore in England. The jewelry must have been turned into cash, for he made a grand show the summer of '64 in Bath, where he legally wed one Agnes Cockspur, a widow of some means with two small children, one Gerald and a girl named Belinda.'

'They weren't his!' Alan exclaimed.

'Only in the sense that to make sure that he would have control over their portion of the Cockspur estate, he adopted them as Willoughbys. The widow became pregnant, but was carried off by childbed fever, along with the issue of their marriage,' Cheatham said, stopping to drain his glass and top both of them up. 'This is dry work, and unsavory, too. In court, your father presented what surely must be another forgery, her conveyance of her entire estate to the care of her husband. You know that a husband only has coverture over the bride's portion of the wife's estate brought to marriage, and the management of her estate by coverture only for the life of the wife, unless she specifically signs it over to him so that after her death he retains possession. Pilchard figured into this again, so we may begin to discern his true skills other than the knowledge and practice of law. The other Cockspur sisters, who had lost a sizable fortune at this conveyance, had no legal recourse, and got farmed out with small annuities to husbands less than what they had expected. I mention this because of their present interest. But, now we come to the meat of the matter, what transpired after you were shipped off aboard Ariadne.'

'For God's sake, yes, what happened?'

'Not a month after you were safely at sea, your father and this Pilchard creature went into court with a document you had signed, one giving Sir Hugo control over your estate.'

'But what happened to all that stuff I signed about giving up all inheritance from either side?' Alan asked. 'What about the agreement that made me leave England and enter the Fleet and never go home?'

'No mention of it,' Cheatham said with a shrug. 'You see, the grandfather had gone over to a higher reward in '66, the son Phillip had died without issue in 72, and at the last, Barbara Lewrie was reputed to be in ill health and of advanced years, and near her own deathbed in 79. Once again, we may see more than coincidence at work. You would be the only Lewrie still living in line to inherit, your father proved you as legitimate, could show his informal adoption of you as his son and had proof in your own hand that you wished him to administer your estate while you were in the Navy and overseas. There would be a good chance that if the grandmother passed on while you were away, and you were bound never to come home, he could have gotten it all and you none the wiser, fobbed off with one hundred guineas a year, while he got thousands. And should you die in naval service, a distinct possibility, he would be free to use it as his own.'

'The scheming dog!' Alan roared, rising to pace the small space of the spirit room. 'I'll see him in hell for this.'

'It was a nacky plan, but there was only one bad part to it: he had to go to court to prove it, and the Lewrie family had to be informed that the long-lost male heir had resurfaced.'

'How did I get lost, then? Wouldn't my grandmother have searched for me? And what did she do when I was revealed?'

'She did, on the sly with her pin money, but your mother's last official parish was St. Clement Dane, and she died in St. Martin's, so after a year or so of searching, you were as good as lost, and few children survive more than a year in a poor-house or foster care, more's the pity, so you may understand why she abandoned hope for finding you. As to her reaction at your discovery, she immediately had this Kittredge claim you as the last male Lewrie heir. Your father had gotten what he wanted, and you were safely out of Barbara Lewrie's reach, so she could not help