Dewey Lambdin - The King

"Damme, who'd a thought you'd end up a swindler, Clotworthy?" Alan marveled. "I'd have put you down for nothing higher than amuser back when we were caterwauling in '79."

"Might as well be a pickpocket or a handkerchief snatcher," Clotworthy sniffed. "Never steal out of need. Amusers blow snuff in some cully's eyes, beat him up into the bargain, and elope with what they can get. Now a true artist, such as I, only accept payment for my services. That's not true stealing. I mean, damme, Alan! What good's an education if you can't use it fer yer own improvement?"

"And since you did so poorly in school…" Rushton supplied, waiting for the expected tag line that was almost Chute's cri de coeur.

"A man's got to be good at something, don't ye know?" Chute bellowed, and shook with amusement at his own well-tried jape.

"Well, the last of the last bottle," Rushton said, sharing the last of the wine into their glasses. "Port, cheese, the house's specialty sherry trifle? Or should we just pay up and head for the nearest bagnio and get ourselves stuck into some bareback riders?"

"I must confess I'm most pleasantly stuffed," Alan replied, with not an inch more room for dessert or cheese and biscuit.

'Too much food stifles the blood's humors," Clotworthy added, burping gently. "Let's pass on dessert and stroll supper off. Time enough for a cold collation after the whores."

"Afraid you'll have to roister without me tonight, gentlemen," Alan said, waving for the waiter and digging for his purse.

"Ah, an assignation, is it?" Rushton teased, digging him in the ribs. "Who is it tonight, then? Lady Cantner, or the lovely and so-edible Dolly Fenton?"

"Now that would be telling." Alan grinned with an air of • mystery. Besides half-pay and prize money from his naval service, he could always count on the generosity of women whose husbands or keepers were too busy about their public affairs to pay proper suit to their private amours.

Tonight it was to be Dolly Fenton, who had been his mistress at Antigua for a few delicious weeks after he'd gone into the Shrike brig. She'd gone back to England on the packet once his ship had been transferred to the Jamaica Squadron, but she was still half in love with him, even if she had gained herself a wealthy City magistrate as a patron and lover. The man had to spend time with his wife and family, which left Dolly bored and lonely. She was to come to his lodgings for a few hours of bliss, and he was going to be a trifle late if he didn't stir his young arse up and hurry home.

Dolly was a few years older than he, but that hadn't been a detriment so far. Alan had solved her financial difficulties after her husband left her a penniless widow on Antigua, by the simple expedient of pointing out to her that instead of whoring of even the most genteel sort, she could sell the late Captain Fenton's commission in the Army to a richer junior officer of his unit who wished to buy his way up in rank.

Tomorrow, though, he would have to devote all his time to Lady Delia Cantner. When Alan had been a midshipman aboard the small dispatch schooner Parrot in 1781, she and her husband had been their passengers. In the midst of an outbreak of Yellow Fever among the crew, Alan's insubordinate actions had burned a French privateer to the waterline, a ship that had appeared like the last act of a capricious God to torment them in their already dire peril.

Lady Delia was years younger than her husband, the ancient squint-a-pipes Lord Cantner, who was most conveniently crossing over to Holland to transact some business, and would be gone for some time.

Where Dolly Fenton was green-eyed and blessed with hair the color of polished mahoghany, with a slim young body, Lady Delia was dark, like a Spanish countess. Black hair, smoky brown eyes with a lazy, sensuous cast and a bountifully soft and round form with the biggest bouncers Alan had ever doted upon. He would be hard put to choose exactly which of the pair he'd prefer, if he had to give one of them up.

And with two such lovelies in his life, both so eager to be rogered to panting ruin as often as possible, the idea of going on a rut among the drabs was less than appetizing. At least with Dolly and Lady Delia, he didn't have to worry (much, anyway) about catching the pox and suffering the dubious, and painful, mercury cure.

They paid their reckoning, gathered up their hats and cloaks, and headed out into a bitter night. Sleet was falling. The streets and walks were already glazed with a rime of slush half-frozen into ice, and a brisk nor'westerly wind would harden that into a proper snowfall before dawn.

"Nasty bloody weather," Clotworthy grumbled from the depths of his three-tiered cape-collared overcoat.

"Who'd be a sailor on such a night," Alan sighed, wishing just once more for the sort of balmy warmth he'd experienced in the West Indies, and shrugging deeper into his dark blue grogram watchcoat, part of his uniform he'd never expected to use.

"Damn your invigorating stroll, Clotworthy," Rushton said. "Let's whistle up a coach. Here comes one now."

A coach and four was indeed trotting up to the doorway of Gloster's, the horse's hooves splashing and skidding a little in the muddy slush of the roadway. A postillion boy muffled to the eyebrows in yards of scarves jumped down and opened the door to hand out the occupants, as Clotworthy arranged a fare for Drury Lane.

There was something familiar about the bleak, almost harsh-faced young man who was alighting from the equipage. Snapping hazel eyes, ash-blonde hair and a certain, stiff, almost military manner in which he carried himself. Alan's face split in a grin of recognition. And when the second young man with the same features alit, he stepped forward and extended his mittened hand in greetings.

"Governour Chiswick, is that you?" Alan demanded.

"What the devil… Alan Lewrie!" the elder Chiswick brother boomed out loud enough to startle the horses. "Give ye joy, sir! Caroline… Mother! See who's come to meet us!"

"I declare, Mister Lewrie, London must be the world's largest little city," Mrs. Chiswick stated over supper. "Once we left Charleston and sailed for home, we lost all track of you, and then, up you pop like a jack-in-the-box!"

Alan had debated whether to beg off and run home to his set of rooms to Dolly, or stay and catch up on old times with the Chiswicks, whom he hadn't seen since Yorktown and the evacuation of Wilmington, North Carolina. It was Caroline Chiswick who decided the matter for him. She had blossomed from a gawky and almost painfully thin young girl of eighteen to a lovely young lady of twenty-one, his own age. She was still slimmer than fashion dictated, and was taller (or gawkier) than most men preferred, at a bare two inches less than Alan's five foot nine. But the hazel eyes of the Chiswicks were like amber flames into which he was drawn with the certainty of a besotted moth. Her light brown hair glittered in the candlelight as though scattered with diamonds. And her delectable mouth beamed the fondest of smiles at him from the moment he had helped hand her out of the coach. The cheekbones were high, still, the face slim and tapering to a fine chin. Her eyes still crinkled at the corners, and formed little folds of flesh below the sockets of a most merry, and approving, cast, as they had that last day on deck when she and her parents had been sent ashore at Charleston.

The way she laid her gloved hand on his coat sleeve and gave it a squeeze, and the pleading, wistful, way she had gazed at him as she had said, "Oh, please sup with us, do, Alan!" had knocked all thoughts of Dolly Fenton from his head.

Alan had had to introduce Peter Rushton and Clotworthy Chute to them. And when Clotworthy had learned they were in London to seek out some position for the younger brother, Burgess, it was all Alan could do to drive Chute away from the possibility of a few hundred pounds. Thankfully, the weather had driven his friends into the relative warmth of the carriage, and the Chiswicks into Gloster's, before cFotworthy could offer his "good offices" and connections with the influential of the town on their behalf.

"You can't imagine what a pleasant surprise it was for me, as well, Mistress Chiswick," Alan replied in turn. "Last I heard of your family, you were considering taking passage for Eleu-thera in the Bahamas to try your hand at fanning there."

"Land's too dear in the Bahamas," Governour stated. "For cotton or sugar, you need slaves, and slaves cost too much, so we didn't have the wherewithal to start over out there. There's been some talk of a compensation treaty, so the Rebels may someday make restitution to all the Loyalists who had to flee. But I'd not hold my breath waiting for a penny on the pound of all that we lost."

"We're in Surrey, near Guildford, with our uncle Phineas, now," Burgess Chiswick, the younger brother stated. "Cattle, sheep and oats. Some barley and hops, too. You must try our beer and ale! It'll never be like the Carolinas. Never be like our own place, not really, but…" He shared a glance with his mother, shrugged and shut up.

"Govemour manages the estate for Uncle Phineas," Caroline said to fill the awkward gap. "He was most kind to help us with our passage, and to give us a place to live. And although it is nowhere near as grand as our former home and acres, it is a solid enough croft."

"Aye, it is," the mother agreed firmly. "We've a roof over our heads, a tenancy with enough acreage for a good home-farm. Rent-free, may I remind you, Burge. 'Tis more than we could have hoped for, and a deal greater than most could ever dream of in these unsettled times."

"And Mister Chiswick?" Alan inquired. "He is well?" The last time Alan had seen their father in Wilmington, he'd been daft as bats.

"Improved most remarkably, sir!" Burgess was happy to relate. "He does for our acres wonderfully well. 'Twas amazing what a piece of land and herds did to inspirit him after all those trying months."

"Indeed, you would not know him now, Alan," Caroline chorused. His feebleness had been embarrassing to her. "Now, he's ruddy and hale, out in all weathers with the flocks and herds like a man half his rightful age! Dealing with the crofters and the lesser tenants."

And a tenant himself after all these years, Alan thought glumly. No matter they've food in their bellies and a dry hearth, it must still be a mortifying come-down from being Tidewater planters along the Lower Cape Fear.

"I'd think there'd be work enough, Burgess. Or do sheep put you off your dinner?" Alan teased.

"God, I hate the bloody things!" Burgess burst out, which set them all laughing. "And… well, I don't know if you have any interest in things agricultural, Alan, but what with Enclosure Acts being passed every session, and with the changeover of crops, there's little to do. The poorer crofters have been run off the common lands, and gone to the cities and mills for work, and there's no need for a large tenantry, no permanent laborers anymore. Which leaves little for me to do, either," he concluded with a wry shrug.

"We were hopeful of an Army career for Burgess here," Governour said as their food arrived. "Uncle Phineas can't extend his generosity so far as to buy Burgess a set of colors, but we both know he's an experienced officer. He made lieutenant with our regiment of volunteers before the war ended."

From the tone of Governour's voice when speaking of generosity from their blood relation, it was a slim sort of beneficence, and most like as cold as charity. It would cost this uncle Phineas nigh on four hundred pounds to settle Burgess as an ensign in even a poor regiment, and that with no support to maintain himself in the mess later, either, if the man was as miserly as Governour hinted. He didn't sound like the sort who'd spend money just to get young Burgess out from under foot, not unless there was a satisfactory return on his investment.