Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

Alan's horse couldn't help but paddle on across a flower bed and back in a circle, shaking his head and snuffling rage at being bested, curvetting as Alan patted his neck and realizing that Caroline had never seen him ride before, which made him sit up straighter and extend his booted feet in the stirrups as he calmed the horse.

He sprang down from the saddle as a groom appeared to take the reins, and strode to her side, arms open in greetings.

"How good it is to see you!" he cried. "It's been a long two years and more!"

"Alan Lewrie, oh, welcome, welcome!" Caroline replied. They met, embraced for a second, then held hands at arm's length to gaze at each other and twirl around in a small circle. "At last!"

She had become more lovely! Still too tall at two inches below Alan's height to be thought fashionable, still willow-slim, and what London blades would call "gawky." But filled out rounder and fuller in the most interesting places! Her light brown hair shone like spun gold, her hazel eyes twinkled with joy, and the slight folds below her eyes crinkled in such a merry manner that he thought he could go on gazing at her slim, high-cheeked face for all time.

"We didn't expect you 'til Friday, or the weekend," she said.

"I had good roads," he replied. "I was inspired! I rode like John Gilpin!"

Caroline inclined her head to one side and winked with one eye, forcing Alan to notice that her mother was standing there. He let go of her hands and fell to one knee before the old woman.

"I was inspired by your ginger snaps, Mistress Chiswick," he cried, "I could not wait another instant to taste your ginger snaps!"

"Alan Lewrie, you are such a wag, sir!" Mother Charlotte said with a simpering laugh, tapping him on the head with her fan. "Come here and let me kiss you! Oh, 'tis grand to see you well, after all the adventures you've been up to among the heathens! We've gotten a letter from Burgess telling us all about it. Pirates and such, and a battle! He's well, when last you saw our little Burge?"

"Well, and full of ginger, Mother Chiswick," Alan told her with a droll roll of his head. "It's the Hindoo cooking, ya know, full of ginger and chilies. Well, and in command of his own light company in my father's regiment, so he'll continue in good hands."

If you may call that good hands, Alan qualified to himself. The last time he'd seen him, Burgess was up to his teats in tawny Hindoo maidens that he and a fellow officer shared in the quarters as their private bibikhana. And his father had been going "birr!" into a set of dugs himself! Well, he thought, pirate loot and satisfied creditors in London'd keep his father on the straight and narrow. And now that he was confirmed as Lieutenant Colonel of the 19th Native Infantry, he'd be happy enough. For awhile.

"Uncle Phineas, allow me to name you Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, one who has done so much to restore the fortunes of the Chiswick family, sir."

"Your servant, sir," Alan offered, extending a hand. "I'm delighted to meet you at last."

"And I you, Mister Lewrie," Uncle Phineas replied, not looking one whit delighted by anything in the last thirty years. He was a lean old stick, dressed in rough homespun breeches, wool stockings and old shoes that appeared to have been restitched, but well blackened. The waistcoat he wore was a very old style, as was the linsey-woolsey cut of his shirt and neck-stock. Rich the man might be, but he looked as dowdy as one of his poorer tenants. He must have been in his sixties, wrinkled as last winter's apples, with stray wisps of white hair peeking from under the green eyeshade.

"Can't thank ye enough, Mister Lewrie," Uncle Phineas said as he dropped Alan's hand after one quick, dry shake, and stuck thumbs into his waistcoat watch pockets. "Gettin' little Burgess employed with the East India Company. Wasn't sure he'd find a situation, not with times so hard. Wasn't cut out fer farmin', that's God's truth! And fer seein' Sewallis an' his family safe to Charleston so they'd be able to come home where they belong."

"And for saving Burge and Governour after Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Uncle," Caroline reminded him, and he looked as if he'd been reminded of that act of desperation perhapsonce too often, for he screwed his wrinkled lips together and merely nodded. "I welcome ye to me home, Mister Lewrie. Stayin' long, is it?"

"A few weeks, if I may be allowed, sir. Better that than kicking my heels in London, or down in Portsmouth waiting for my new ship to be turned over," Alan replied, wondering just what sort of welcome he'd come to. "Ah, Caroline, Mother Chiswick, look who's here, too? You remember my man, Will Cony?"

Cony had arrived with the pack horse, and slid off his own to come to mem, hat in hand.

"God bless you, young Will," Mother Charlotte exclaimed. "I remember you well from Wilmington, and all you did to get us aboard that ship! Ah, you're filling out like a yearling colt, you are! And does our Mister Lewrie treat you decent?"

"That 'e does, ma'am," Cony nodded, shy in front of company.

"Well, if he doesn't, I know a snug niche for a good farm lad like you, right here with us, my word on it!" the older lady cackled.

"Missus Chiswick, Miss Caroline," Cony nodded again, blushing.

"More important, have you been taking good care of Al… of our Mister Lewrie, Cony?" Caroline asked.

"Saved my life time and again," Alan supplied, for the ears of the comely housemaids who had gathered in the yard. "And did his King's enemies into fillets."

"Then 'tis more than welcome you are in this house, Will Cony," Caroline said, stepping forward to give him a sisterly peck on the cheek, which made Cony turn even darker red with embarrassment. "Home you are, for awhile with us."

"Thankee, Miss Caroline… ma'am," Cony bobbed.

"And this is Millicent, Alan," Governour said, turning boyish as he introduced his young wife. She was a lovely girl, smooth and milky of skin, with dark curling hair and startlingly gray eyes, and a merry expression of her own. It seemed as if Millicent had gotten all the Embleton elegance and neatness, leaving her brother Harry with none.

"My best wishes to you, ma'am, on your marriage. You've a fine man in Governour, as well I may attest. Your servant, ma'am."

"Oh, do call me Millicent, Mister Lewrie," she chided with the regal dignity of her father the baronet. "Such old friends of my dear Governour should not stand on ceremony."

"You do me great honor, Millicent, thankee," Alan replied with a short bow, prepared to like her if Governour did.

"Well, let's go into the house and have something to drink," Uncle Phineas suggested.

"Yes, I promised Alan one of our ales, even if he did lose the race," Governour laughed. "Sorry about that, but blood will tell, you know. I told you we had the start of a fine stud. 'Ribbons' was one of our first colts, and he's a treasure."

"Oh, I don't know," Alan japed. "I almost had you neck-or-nothing. Not bad for a fifty guinea New Market gelding."

"He's strong," Caroline said, brushing Alan's horse on flank and neck before he was led away by a waiting groom. "Short but a goer, he looks like. Good build, for the long stretch, not'the burst."

"Canter by the hour, he can," Alan agreed. "And worth an ale, no matter his pedigree, hey?"

"Caroline made our ale last autumn," Millicent boasted.

"Oh, just a few barrels," Caroline replied. "To try my hand at it."

"Then I must have some. I'm sure anything she turns her hand to comes out superbly," Alan fawned, and she blushed with pleasure at his words.

"Mmm, yes," Uncle Phineas frowned, wrinkling his nose as if at a peculiar odor. He surveyed the ruin of one of his flower beds, and contemplated, with very little joy of the doing, just how long this ignorant arse was going to plague him!

Sewallis Chiswick was a lot worse than Alan remembered him. Whereas in Wilmington, the old man had been strong but vague, he was now both reduced to pale ashes of a man, in a wheeledchair, and at times almost incoherent in his ramblings. At least Caroline was now spared the onerous duties of tending to him. After a last few odd pronouncements, a stout matron had announced that Mr. Chiswick would retire, and he was wheeled off to a ground floor chamber, his bib still tied around his neck and spotted with attempts at dining.

It had put a definite chill on supper, though they all tried to find other, more amusing and lighthearted conversation to cover their embarrassment, sometimes laughing too long and loud at hopeless japes, then falling into an uneasy silence.

The supper, though, had been excellent; somewhat plain, but all hearty country fare. There had been a salad (Caroline's own apple vinegar and spices for the dressing), fish from their own stream along with a plate of oysters up from Portsmouth (Caroline's own horseradish to spice them, what the French would call a remoulade), a cured ham baked in a golden honey sauce, snap beans from the garden, tiny new potatoes and shallots, completed, of course, with roast mutton, and followed by a peach "jumble," which Caroline's mother informed Alan was "cobbler" in the Carolinas, her very own recipe, though done personally by the talented young lady with the light brown hair.

"Aye, proper victuals," Uncle Phineas allowed grudgingly as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and untucked the napkin from below his chin. "Our little Caroline'll make a young man a 'goody,' " he said, using the old country term for a proper wife (and the first name, or gained nickname, of a third of the poor women of Britain).

Are they at it again, Alan sighed, sharing a smile with Caroline as she ducked her head in what he thought was shyness? I'm not under their roof four hours, and they're buttock-brokering her like a brood mare! Just like Burgess did to me back in India.

"Economical, she is." Uncle Phineas went on as he leaned forward to top his glass up with the last of a rather good claret, "Good in the stillroom, the garden, the stables. Present the right young feller with a goin' concern. Well-setup house, a household run in style, and economy."

Is that his favorite word, Alan wondered? He certainly takes "economy" to extremes with his own furnishings. No, let's say "cheap"!

"I am ever amazed at how accomplished you are, Caroline," Millicent chimed in from the other side of the table. "You sew the neatest, finest stitches, play and sing wonderfully well. Why, I believe you could spin straw into gold! Makes me seem such a wastrel drudge in comparison. I'm simply useless at practical things!"

"I assure you you're not!" Goveraour guffawed. "I know I have the best-run household in the county… two counties! And a most felicitous one, as well, m'dear. And you to thank for it."

The sight of the bloody-handed Governour Chiswick "pissing down his wife's back" and fawning so gape-jawed foolish over anyone was not the sort of thing Alan Lewrie had ever expected to see on this earth! Still, it was interesting to see Millicent deliver a fond gaze at the oaf and lower her lashes in a very intimate, but significant manner, and Alan, being a keen observer of "country-house games" among those circles of rakehells and Corinthians he had known before the Navy, knew in an instant that they'd be at each other before their coach got into their own drive!

"Oh, but you are so clever and accomplished, Millicent!" Caroline assured her. "It is I envy you, while I merely learned country things in the Carolinas."

"And all the better for it when the time comes to wed," Phineas Chiswick pronounced. "Ye'r, both o' ye, the finest young ladies o' me acquaintance, an' here ye'll be livin' side by side, sittin' in the same pew, an' more than just neighbors all yer lives, God willin'. Like the way ye play yer music… Millicent to the harpsichord, an' Caroline, yer flute. A fine duet ye'll play in future!"