"I could have tattled on the others, but I didn't," Alan said in conclusion of his tale, "and he still won't pay me for those tatties. Or the beating I got, either."
"Were I your father I'd have tanned your bottom, sir!" Mrs. Chiswick declared, swooning with laughter with the rest. "No wonder a career at sea, where you could indulge your passion for explosives, resulted. Oh, what a scamp you were, sir!"
"And still is, I'll be bound," Caroline added fondly. "I can see where your sense of adventure comes from, Alan."
"And where is your father, now, Alan?" Governour asked. "In London as well?"
"Last I heard from him," Alan lied smoothly, "he went to Portugal. Something about the wine trade, I believe."
Such as getting closer to the source of his sherry, Alan told himself, hoping they wouldn't pursue the topic any further. By the time he'd brought Shrike back to pay her and her crew off at Deptford Hard, his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, who had been pursuing a suit against Sir Hugo, had told him he'd fled to the Continent, leaving a host of creditors behind, and was rumored to be living in Lisbon where even the impoverished could scrape by, as long as one did not upset the church authorities and the Inquisition by one's behavior.
"Even so, he must indeed be proud of you, sir," Mrs. Chiswick continued. "To become a Sea Officer in only three years."
"Well, there was the war, ma'am. They were pretty desperate, you know." Alan chuckled in mock deprecation.
"Yes, tell us what you did after we lost track of you, Alan," Caroline urged, totally ignoring her portion of Dover sole and wine.
"Urn, Battle of St. Kitts under Hood. And then our ship Desperate fought a French twenty-eight-gunned frigate and took her as prize the same day," Alan said, sounding as if it was nothing much to take note of, but secretly glad to have a chance to boast. He'd had few enough in the last months-half of London had tales of battle and bravery and the populace was heartily sick of hearing them by then. "Passed the examination board right after, and was made first lieutenant into the Shrike brig. Made a nuisance of ourselves along the Cuban coasts… took a fair amount of prizes. Ran guns to the Creek and Seminolee Indians. Ended up anhissi to the White Clan…"
"The devil you say!" Governour burst out. "Of their fire, ey?"
'Took a Foreign Office party up the Ochlockonee and the Chatahootchee to get the Indians to side with us against Spain if we landed troops, but nothing came of it," Alan said, frowning between sips of wine. "Got ambushed by the coastal Apa-lachee. Had an exciting hour or so, 'til the Seminolee showed up and rescued us. Then we got stuck in at Turk's Island in the Bahamas to retake it from the French. That didn't work, either. My captain was wounded pretty sore, and Hood gave me command temporarily, really. The war ended two weeks later, and we brought her home to pay off with the first batch of ships."
"You actually commanded a ship!" Caroline exclaimed. "Alan, I cannot imagine! You remember, mother, how masterful he was, how nautical, the morning we sailed down the Cape Fear? 'Quartermaster, half a point to'-to what-you-may-call-it-'helm up and hands to the braces'? Lord, Alan, I knew you were a competent sailor even then, as a master's mate. But to run a ship of your own, well!"
"For the shortest commission in naval history, I expect," he replied, almost glowing inside on the warmth of their regard. "But I also expect Governour and Burgess have more interesting adventures, and I'm dying to hear them. Allow me to sport us all to another brace of this rather good wine, and tell it all to me."
He stayed long past his intended departure time, partly because the Chiswick brothers indeed had exciting tales to relate. Of how they had used the remnants of their North Carolina Loyalist Rifle battalion alongside depot troops and recovered sick from Simcoe's Queen's Rangers around New York for a few months as scouts and raiders to keep the Rebels on the hop, then had been trans-shipped to Charleston to defend the approaches to the city from Rebel probes. Partly because he was with Caroline Chiswick, who had been beautiful before, but was now so incredibly, deliriously handsome.
"And you stay in London how long?" Alan asked as they stood on the icy street once more, whistling up another coach to take them back to their lodgings.
"We may spend two weeks at the outside," Governour informed him. There probably wasn't money enough to allow them to rent rooms and buy food for longer. Burgess would have to be settled in that time, or he would have to return to Guildford and take what little the countryside had to offer.
"We must see each other again, sir," Caroline insisted, from the frame of the same dark red velvet, hooded traveling coat; she'd worn in Wilmington in 1781. It was a little shiny in places from too much wear, but still presentable enough, and it made Alan feel an urge to buy her a new one, a cloak fine enough to suit her, and what he felt she deserved from life.
"Call on us, do, Mister Lewrie," Mrs. Chiswick agreed. "We lodge in St. Clements Street. Oh dear, I forget the house number, but it's a decent enough house, I'm told. Governour knows it."
" Panton Street for me," Alan said. "I'd never be able to afford it but for Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews and his wife. You remember I wrote of them, Caroline."
He and Governour exchanged addresses while Burgess managed to flag down a coach, one of the few that would still risk horses on the streets that were now icing over under the constant drizzle of sleet. Caroline and her mother huddled for warmth to one side by the door.
"Goodnight, and thank you for the wine, Alan. Do call on us!"
"Aye, I shall," Alan told Mrs. Chiswick again, then turning to Caroline, said, "We have so much to catch up on."
Which sentiment Caroline agreed with heartily, and gave him a last smile of invitation, and a firm nod of her head as they said their goodnights as well. Then the coach trundled off, leaving Lewrie to trot home on his own, swaddled up in the voluminous dark blue watchcoat he'd never thought he'd find a use for back in the West Indies.
His lodgings were one pair-of-stairs up from the main floor in the front of the house. Once a substantial mansion, Lady Maude Matthews had turned it into sets of rooms to let. For a very decent fifty guineas a year, about half what Lewrie suspected it was really worth, he got a sitting room with fireplace and mantel, and two whole windows-the Window Tax be damned-that overlooked Panton Street, a fashionable address for foreigners, secretaries and under-ministers to overseas embassies, well-heeled younger blades such as himself; home, too, to a regiment of mistresses. The set of rooms bent in an L, with a bed-chamber to the rear along the outer wall, and from a tiny window, in that room, he could look down upon Oxenden Street, and farther down to the Haymarket and St. James' Market. It was inclined to be a trifle noisy in the mornings, but he'd learned by then to sleep through almost any din, as long as he wasn't at sea. Civilian noises and alarums meant nothing to a weary sailor who'd developed the habit of trotting (or crawling) up his own stairs at "first sparrow-fart" every morning and caulking like a sodden log until noon.
He stepped into the sitting room, where a small sea-coal fire burned in the grate, and the embers and flames were reflected into the room by a brass back-plate. It was the only light in the room until his manservant Cony woke up at his entrance and used a paper spill to light him a candle or two.
"Mistress Fenton still here, Cony?" Alan asked as he shrugged off his watchcoat and went to thaw out before the fire.
"No, she ain't, sir," Cony was forced to admit. "She did come, but when the church bells went ten o' the clock, she went on 'ome, sir."
Cony shyly handed Alan a folded and wax-sealed letter that had been waiting on the silver tray by the door.
"She lef ya this, sir," Cony told him. "I 'spect you'd be wantin' a brandy'r somethin' warmin', sir?"
"Aye, thankee, Cony. I'd admire that," Alan said, drawing a well-preserved William and Mary chair he'd found at a second-hand shop closer to the fire to read it. Alan Lewrie had gotten too many notes or letters from women to imagine that it was good news. Which explained his waiting until he had a brandy in hand and one sip in his belly for fortification before he broke the seal and unfolded it.
"Ah," he said after a first, quick, perusal. Cony was thankfully busy in the other room, putting a warming pan into his bed and building up the fire in the second fireplace so Lewrie could retire and undress without turning blue from exposure.
If it had tears splashed on it, it couldn't be more plaintive. This wasn't the first time Alan had so shamefully ignored her, he read, and he had to admit Dolly was right. There were so many other things to do in a city as great as London. So many interesting people to hear speak, edifying exhibits to visit. Theatres, dramas and comedies to gawk at. Oranges to be bought and hurled at poor players. So many young women to bull.
She is getting a little long in tooth, Alan told himself. His putative mistress was getting on for thirty. There were the first hints of wrinkles around her mouth, kissable as it was. The first crow's feet around her peculiarly dark green eyes, bright as they were still. Or perhaps, it was because she was available for his pleasure so little of the time.
In the beginning, when he'd run into her at a supper dance back in the summer, it had been intriguing to have her again, to pick up where they'd left off on Antigua. And having her free, with another man to pay her keep, and enjoying her between the magistrate's visits, with one ear to the hallway and the latch was exciting, too.
"Just as well," Alan decided. "Come to think on it, I was getting a trifle bored with her."
"Yew say somethin', sir?" Cony asked from the other room.
"Just maundering, Cony; pay me no mind," Alan called back;
"Aye, sir."
Dolly had been so grateful for his assistance, and his money which kept her during the war. She'd made a real shore home for him, an activity he strongly suspected she'd want to do again, if he had enough money to support her as he once had. Dolly Fenton was at the upper end of marriageable age, and her magistrate wasn't doing her much good in that regard. Only the most fascinating widows ever got a second man to take them on, he knew. The best Dolly could hope for was someone incredibly rich to keep her on the side, as her magistrate did. Someone titled, who could keep a mistress openly, care for her all his life and leave her well provided for when he turned up his toes.
Damn hard lot for most women, Alan thought, folding the letter up with a sense of finality. Wonder what Caroline Chiswick's lot's to be? American Loyalist, not a hundred pounds for her "dot" if she did marry. Country girl, even lovely as she is. Service with some family around Guildford? Married to some pinchbeck "Country-Harry" and up to her ankles in dirty children and sheep the rest of her life? God, what a thought, he shivered with more than cold.
"That be all, sir?" Cony asked.
"Aye, Cony. You go caulk."
"Tomorrow's me day off, sir," Cony reminded him. "If there's anythin' you'd be a'wantin' afore I go in the mornin', sir?"
"Hmm," Alan pondered, tossing Dolly Fenton, and her letter, on the coals. "I'll have a couple of letters for you to run about the town. One to St. Clements Street, to the Chis-wicks."
"The Chiswick brothers 'ere in London, sir?" Cony brightened.
"And the mother and Mistress Caroline, too. You tell 'em I sent you, and I expect you'd want to visit them as well after all we went through during the siege."
"That'd be wondrous fine, sir! I liked the Chiswicks!"
"And there'll probably be a dram or two in it for you, and some of the mother's ginger snaps. I'll leave the letters on the tray by the door," Alan promised. "Tell one of the housemaids to do for me, so you can depart early as you like."
"Aye, thankee, sir."
"And I expect you'd be needing some cash, hey?" Alan teased his longtime hammockman, wardroom and cabin servant. "Can't make a grand show with the young ladies without a shilling or two."
He dug out his purse and gave Cony his four shillings.
"Thankee, sir, thankee right kindly, sir," Cony said, pocketing the coins and almost skipping down the hall to his own bed belowstairs with his week's wages ready to burn a hole in him.
"Damme," Alan spoke to himself aloud (a habit he'd developed in those few weeks he'd inhabited the captain's great cabins aft in Shrike), "I don't believe I've been home this early in weeks. And by myself, at that. What a novelty it is!"
He trailed into the bed-chamber and shucked his street clothes for a silk nightshirt, and a dressing gown thick and heavy enough to serve as a horse blanket. Sleet rapped on the panes, and the glass was frosted almost opaque as a muscovy-glass lantern on the windows.
Alan surveyed his little kingdom, the first home of his own he had ever had that the Navy or his father hadn't provided. He'd had it repainted a cheery pale yellow before he moved in, with snowy-white wood work. The mantel and hearth were milk-veined grey marble-the genuine article instead of some painted slate most builders tried to foist off on the unsuspecting. There were some nature scenes hanging on the walls, the anonymous sort of thing sketched on some aristocrat's Grand Tour of the Continent. Roman ruins, Greek temples, viaducts with tall poplars lining narrow roads, almost awash in happy peasantry and well-rendered animals of indeterminate breed- cattle, mostly. There was a copy of some Frog artist's imaginings of a Sultan's harem, though the women weren't as Junoesque as the classics depicted them. Alan suspected the copyist had used some slimmer Covent Garden whores as models. And he wasn't so sure but that the one reclining on the couch in the foreground wasn't 'Change Court Betty, who had been one of the first whores he'd ever sprung money for. Once he saw it being loaded into a cart to be auctioned off with the rest of a household's belongings, he had to have it. Besides, the painting was so inspiring, and a harem had been one of his favorite fantasies since puberty.
A portrait of his mother Elizabeth hung on the inside wall of the sitting room near the door, over the sofa. His granny had given it to him on his visit to Wheddon Cross. A portrait of himself as a naval lieutenant hung beside it. He'd had one done for his granny, and had thought a second copy could always come in handy as a present for some future amour.
The furnishings were quite good-half London was always selling up and moving to stay a step ahead of creditors, or buy their way out of debtor's prison, so the selection had been quite varied. Deep blue velvet, sprigged with bright vines and flowers, covered the sofa and two upholstered high-backed chairs. The tables and exposed wood shone with bee's wax and lemon oil, and no one hardly ever noticed the odd nick or scratch the previous owners had caused. And he had the bench before the fire, and the two side chairs as well. The dining table, sideboard and wine cabinet made the far end of the room a cheery, cozy place to eat or play cards. Cards, mostly. The most fashionable young men dined out at clubs or chop-houses, sending down to an ordinary for meals if at home. And if he did have to entertain and feed guests, he could send Cony out shopping, and trust the kitchen in the basement of the lodging house to come up with something presentable, though he did it seldom.
He could maintain this lifestyle for some time yet, if he was careful with his money. Three hundred pounds a year had been enough to keep a single gentleman in style before the war, and with no need for a horse or coach of his own, and only the one servant, two hundred would do now. He could not purchase every book that struck his fancy. Could not entertain lavishly. Would have to watch for bargains instead of spending like a lord on the Strand.
Oh, he'd had to buy plates, saucers, silverware and serving utensils for the first time. Stock that wine cabinet. In his reverie of accounting his possessions, he opened it and poured his glass of brandy back up to full. Yes, it could be a good life, he decided. Best he'd lost Dolly Fenton, after all. She'd have turned expensive.
"Speaking of Dolly," he said aloud again with a weary mutter.
He had notes to write. One to Dolly, a parting shot to salve his ego. One to the Chiswicks, and Caroline, laying the ground for a proper reunion with her. And one to Lady Delia, to let her know she could expect him by early afternoon, if the weather would allow.
Chapter 3
Mwack. A carping little sound, half trill in the back of the throat. Then the rustle of cleverly parted bed-curtains, and a heavy weight hitting the mattress down near the foot of the bed.
Mwack, again. Something stalking up the side of the bed to the pillows. Then a leap from one side to the other that for one moment put all four paws in an area no larger than a pocket watch. Right in the center of Alan's belly.
"Oh, for Christ's sake," he groaned, opening one eye.
He was confronted by a round, furry face, and two yellow eyes staring back at him somberly from three inches' range. Mwack! More petulant, louder this time. William Pitt had his best pout on.
"And what the hell do you want, you little bastard?"
William Pitt had been the best mouser aboard the Shrike brig, a ship absolutely infested with the creatures-his former captain, Lieutenant Lilycrop had adored the little beasts-the king ram-cat and the one with the worst disposition of any feline even Lilycrop had ever met. Why he, at long last, took a liking to Lewrie (who had always thought a cat was better drowned at birth), no one could ascertain.
He'd moved into the great cabins once Alan had gotten command. More than that, William Pitt had startled the officer initially appointed into Shrike at the entry port and sent him crashing back into the longboat to break his unfortunate skull before he could even introduce himself.
They'd paid off at Deptford Hard, laying Shrike up in-ordinary, and sending the crew off to civilian pursuits. Somehow, he'd followed Alan's belongings down the gangplank at the stone pier, and into the coach. The cat had an open door to depart anytime he felt like it, but so far, had shown no signs of taking advantage of it, other than a stroll out into the back-gardens, or sunning himself when the miserable London weather allowed. There were queens enough in the neighborhood for him to roger when they came into heat, and Alan grudgingly let the cat be fed in his apartments.
Pitt slept near the hearth, either in the below-stairs kitchens where the housemaids and other servants slipped him some tucker on the side, or in the bed-chamber. William Pitt wasn't picky. Nor was he of a disposition that doted on much affection from humans, so he could be tolerated most of the time.
Alan put out a hand and rubbed the top of the cat's grizzled head. Pitt allowed himself to be greeted, then shook his head vigorously and sank down on his haunches to scratch at his offended ears with a back paw. One did not make the mistake of touching Pitt more than he liked more than once. Not if one enjoyed having fingers.
"How'd you get in here, anyway?" Alan mumbled, sliding up to the headboard and plumping up his pile of pillows.
"Mornin', sir?" a tentative voice called from beyond the bed-curtains. "Your man Cony said to come wake you, sir? "Us Abigail, I am, sir?"
An "Abigail" named Abigail, Alan grinned lazily. How rare.
"Aye, I'm awake, thankee, Abigail."
Alan slid the bed-curtains on the inner side of the room back to let the heat of the fireplace in. The room was cold as charity.
The girl was kneeling down by the grate, dropping fresh coal on the embers and stirring them up with a poker.
"Hollo, you're a new 'un, ain't you?" Alan commented.
"Started las' week, sir," the girl said, turning to give him a grin. She was a lovely little thing with new-penny coppery hair and blue eyes, not a minute older than fifteen or sixteen, he noted. "Your man already done took your letters, sir. But he says to me on his way out, he says, I'm to wake you, an' ask you for your key so's I can make your tea, sir?"
"Ah, right," Alan said. "In my waist-coat pocket"
She passed out of his sight to the foot of the bed and he heard something rustle as she picked up his clothes from the floor where he'd dropped them. Then she came back to the open side of the bed.
"This be it, sir?" she asked him. Close to, he saw that she had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her saucy, upturned little nose.
"Aye, that's it."
"An' what'll you be havin' this morning', sir? Tea? Coffee? Chocolate?" she asked.
"Do you-make good coffee, Abigail?" Alan asked her, sitting up higher against the pillows. "I mean, really good coffee?"
"I reckon I can, sir," she replied, a trifle dubious.
"Grind the beans fine as corned gunpowder. Use a heaping spoonful per cup, mind, don't scrimp," Alan instructed. "Water hot as the hinges of Hell, none of this tepid water. And let it steep and drip until all the water's gone down into the pot, or the cup."
"Aye, sir, I'll do it, s'help me, though I know nothin' 'bout gunpowder, sir," she promised earnestly. 'Toast, too, sir? Or d'you want me t' go out an' get some rolls for you?"
"What sort of a day is it, Abigail?" Alan asked.
" 'Tis that cold, sir, t'would make a stone cupid shiver," she informed him. "Snow up t' the bottom steps already, an' ice under. An' more comin' down, sir, like there's no tomorrow."
"Toast, then, from the kitchens. No sense slipping and breaking your pretty young pate for my pleasure," Alan said, grinning. "First, I need a kettle of hot water for shaving, and then the breakfast."
"I'll do her, sir!" Abigail said as she curtsied her way out.
Alan steeled himself, then slid out of bed and toe-walked to his stockings and slippers on the icy cold floorboards. He stripped off his nightshirt and bundled it into the armoire, donned a clean pair of white canvas slop-trousers from his sea-chest, and the heavy dressing gown.
He went to the living room window and rubbed the glass clear of fog and frost on the inside to look out. The semi-translucent view he had of the street reminded him more of the Arctic wastes he'd seen north of Halifax and Louisburg than London. The girl had stoked up the sitting room fire as well, so he sat close to it as he waited for his shaving water.
Abigail was back with a large copper kettle, using a thick rag and both hands to hold it away from her so she wouldn't sear herself on it. "Your man Cony says t' me, he says, sir, that you likes plenty o' hot water o' the mornin's, so I brought ya a full gallon measure."
"Topping!" Alan cried in appreciation. "Wash-hand-stand's in the bed-chamber. Lay me out a fresh towel and I'll attend to my shaving things, Abigail. Here, let me take it. It looks heavy."
"Yessir, it is, sir, but I can manage, sir. No bother." She poured the bowl full, set the kettle down by the hearth, and handed him a towel on the way out. Alan hummed to himself as he unrolled his "housewife" and stropped his razor. It wasn't too long before he'd not had to shave every morning, and that only for Sunday Divisions aboard ship, at that. But Delia Cantner appreciated the lack of stubble to irritate her more private parts. If he was to keep his tryst with her that afternoon, he wanted to please.
Once shaved, he fetched out a washcloth and began to sponge himself down from neck to ankles with hot water and a precious bar of scented Italian soap, a present from Lady Delia (one of many she'd given him over the last few months). To do so, he had to drop his slop-trousers.
Ohpe! came a small gasp from the door to the sitting room. The young maid Abigail had come back with his coffee and toast, and was standing in the doorway with the tray in her hands, ready to drop it in shock at seeing him standing there with his robe open and his trousers down around his ankles. Before he could say a word in explanation, she was gone, and he could hear the tray and the items on it rattling as she set it down on the table and began to lay them out.
Alan grinned to himself, finished swabbing himself dry and belted the robe about himself again, neglecting the slop-trousers.
"Ah, hot as the very devil," Alan said after his first sip. "Abigail, you simply don't know how bad coffee usually is here in London. Tepid muck, too weakly brewed, looks about the color of China tea. Worst excuse for a beverage I've ever seen."
The girl was blushing a furious red from her startled embarrassment still, and only nodded and avoided his eyes as she finished bustling about with his breakfast things, her hands trembling a little.
"They brew it much stronger and thicker in the West Indies," Alan went on. "The way I'm used to it. This is good. Very good. You could show my man Cony a thing or two, I'm certain."
'Thankee, sir," she replied, losing her shocked color at last. "I'm that glad you likes it. Jam for your toast, sir? Black currant's the only sort we had below-stairs this mornin', sir. Or I could fetch you up some treacle."
"No, this black currant'll do right nice, thankee anyway, Abigail," Alan replied. The girl had looked so abashed a moment before he suspected she'd drop dead of apoplexy, but now, she was grinning again in her shy little way, eager to please with an errand. "Care for some toast, Abigail?"
"Ah, I couldn't go…" She blushed again. "I've had me breakfast hours ago, sir, an' there's so much work to be doin'…"
"Do you work for another of the lodgers, or for the housekeeper, hmm?" Alan asked to keep her in the room. She was incredibly pretty in her own way. "And how much work is there, really? Fuss and clean the lodgings after the occupants are off at work? Upstairs maid, or maid-of-all-work, are you?"
"Maid-of-all-work, sir," she admitted. "An' I does for that Mistress Harper on the third floor, too, but it's little enough there is to do for her, her bein' out on the town so much, you know, an' she with her own maid already."
A bell tinkled downstairs and the girl was off like a hare, suspending any further conversation. Alan smeared butter and jam on his toast, spooned sugar into his coffee, and began to munch, missing his newspaper. Usually, he arose late, as he had that morning, had his sparse breakfast and hit the streets, making for a coffee house where he could borrow the house paper and converse with others of his sort. He could not remember the last time he'd stayed in his lodgings this late in the day with nothing to do, long after all the others had departed for their daily chores or rounds of visits.
There was a rap on the outer door, and Abigail was back once more, wiping her hands on her apron so as not to soil the letter she bore in her hands.
"Iss note come for you, sir," she squeaked, in awe of the crest and the quality of the paper, and the liberality with which it had been sealed in blue wax. "From a great lord, I thinks. The footman come in the downstairs parlor grand as a lord his-self, he did."
Alan opened it and read that, due to the weather, Lady Delia Cantner would not be receiving that day. She wished his company, but not at risk to life and limb from the slippery streets, nor the risk of sickness at being exposed to such cruel cold. Besides, her previous guests were staying over because they couldn't get home, and his presence would not go down all that well. Tears, unrequited passion, etc.
"Ah, well," Alan sighed, folding it back up and tossing it aside, thinking that he'd not had much luck lately in notes from women. "So much for visiting friends for cards this afternoon," he explained. "Lord and Lady Cantner. Knew 'em in the Indies. Saved their lives a few years ago."
"Ah, did you, indeed, sir!" the girl gushed. "Your man Cony, he told me, he says to me, how you were a Sea Officer, an' how many adventures you've had, sir. Yorktown, an' Red Indians, too!"
"This was before I met Cony, before I joined the ship he was in. Oh, sit you down. Ever had coffee, Abigail?"
"Lord, no, sir! 'Tis dear stuff for the likes o' me back in Evesham."
"Have a few minutes to spare from your work?" Alan cajoled. "Have a chair, pour yourself your first cup of coffee and see if you like it. And I'll tell you all about how I made the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Cantner."
"Well… just for a few minutes, sir," she replied shyly, casting a glance toward the hallway door. 'The housekeeper, she'd turn me out if she thought I was shirkin'."
"Tell her you're doing my rooms while my man Cony is off. That I asked you to do it," Alan coaxed. "Have a slice of toast, too."
Undermaids usually were run ragged from sunrise to long after sundown for little more than six pounds a year, and not a full day off to themselves. And most were half-starved teens down from the country whose stomachs growled loud as a midshipman on short commons. The offer of a second breakfast, some quiet time away from the demands of the housework and a tale of derring-do alone with a gentleman were too much temptation. She plunked herself down in a chair, snatched toast and knife in a twinkling and laid to with a will.
"Oh, 'tis bitter," she said of the coffee, but liked it a lot better with sugar in it-another luxury most servants never tasted except when allowed. And for a few blessed minutes, she sat on the edge of her chair, gasping here and there, uttering an occasional "my stars" or "God bless!" at his saga of desperate danger, as though it were a play she was watching from the cheapest seats in the back.
"Why, sir!" she exclaimed in a soft voice when his narrative was through, "I do believe your man Cony was right! You're a true English naval hero, that you are, sir, if I may be so bold as t'say so!"
"You're too kind by half, Abigail," Alan replied, patting the back of her hand, to test the waters. If Dolly Fenton was on the outs with him, and Delia Cantner was saddled with unwanted house-guests, the day would not have to be a total loss, he decided. He admired the way Abigail's chest had heaved with emotion.
"You'd not be knowin' it, sir," she said, dropping her voice to almost a whisper once more and averting her eyes, "but the first time I clapped eyes on you, I said t' myself, I says, there goes a fine gentleman. So dashin' an' brave lookin'. I… sort of… well, talk gets around below-stairs, from one servant t' the t'other, and I heard tell you was a sailor back from fightin' the King's enemies an' all? But Cony didn't tell me the half of it, he didn't!"
She didn't stiffen up as he massaged the back of her hand, nor did she quail as he turned it over and held her small, work-roughened hand in his. He pulled her gently to her feet, towards him as he pushed back his chair. She leaned forward even before he could rise, and in a moment, she was seated on his lap and he was raining kisses on her slim young neck, on her cheeks, and their lips met in a first, clumsy little maidenly kiss. He put a hand to the back of her neck and she opened her mouth to his pressure, slipping her arms about him, warming to his play quickly. Too quickly for the shy maiden she seemed.