Dewey Lambdin - The King

• Название: The King
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

Fresh from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto, to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teaming Canton, Lewrie--reunited with his scoundrel father--discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy's hands, a King's privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea.Ladies' man, officer, and rogue, Alan Lewrie is the ultimate man of adventure. In the worthy tradition of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin, his exploits echo with the sounds of crowded ports and the crash of naval warfare.

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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!"

Chapter 2

"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.

"If not a regiment, Burgess had a decent education, Alan," Caroline told him, drawing his attention most willingly back to her. "There must be something clerical for him to do. He knows lumber from our mill before the war. Horses. Trade. I've come to learn it's not socially acceptable to admit to a career in trade here in London, but there surely is something he could do to earn his way in life."

Law, Parliament, the Church, military service, banking or such careers were for the upper crust, Alan knew. Burgess was too old at twenty-one to be 'prenticed out to learn a trade, and it sounded as if farming was out, too. What little was left for him? That this spectacular specimen of mankind would grub away his days in some counting house, clerking and writing for a bank or mill owner? It was a ghastly thought. And, with the country inundated with veterans returned from the war, jobs were scarce as hen's teeth already, with a hundred queuing for every opening, and a thousand more tramping the roads from one rumor of employment to the next.

" Bow Street Runners!" Alan spoke up with sudden inspiration. "You know, that Fielding fellow's watch service. Replacing the parish Charlies with a police force. It's a bloo… a devilish un-English idea if you ask me, having a police force like the Frogs over in Paris do. Might as well declare martial law and have done, but they'd look kindly on a well set-up young fellow with military experience. I've read he hires ex-servicemen, sergeants and corporals, mostly. Good men handy with a staff, who can take care of themselves. Surely, they'd need someone like you, Burgess. You could show 'em what Red Indians fight like."

"It's a good idea, Burge," Governour opined heartily. "Not too much different from the Army, I suppose. Get in on the ground floor, so to speak. And with your education, and your skills, you'd move right up quickly."

"Aye, it's a thought," Burgess piped back, but Alan could see, even if the others didn't, that his heart wasn't exactly in it. From their time at Yorktown, besieged by the Rebels and the French, and in their daring escape after being blown downriver in those damned barges the night before the surrender, Alan was pretty sure being a constable of the watch was not the career Burgess Chiswick would care for.

He was a strange young fellow. So woods-crafty, so in control of his troops by an almost natural sense of superiority. Yet down in his depths, Alan had always caught an inkling of fear, of uncertainty. God knew, Alan had seen enough war to make his own knees knock every time he heard a cannon go off, and he still couldn't quite credit the Navy with making him a Commission Officer and giving him command of a ship of war, even one so small as Shrike in the closing weeks of the war-he of all people by God knew uncertainty like a close relation! But with Burgess, he felt a… softness. A nature too soft for the slings and arrows of life, like setting foxes to outfight hounds. And yet the ember of ambition burned within his breast, the wish to do great things perhaps beyond his measure.

"Who knows?" Burgess went on between bites of his fish course. 'There's always the sea, like you. Or the East Indies. I've heard officers with 'John Company' come home at least a chicken-nabob. Fifty thousand pounds in diamonds and rubies'd suit me right down to my toes."

"I pray not, Burge," Caroline said, frowning. "So far away, so harsh and hot. Why, they die like flies among the Hindoos, do they not, Alan?"

"So I've read, Caroline," Alan replied, and was rewarded with another of those deep gazes, and a slight touch of her hand on his in thankfulness for backing her words. A touch that struck a spark between them as remarkable as their first timid kiss on the Desperate frigate's midnight quarterdeck two years and more before.

Why'd I act so miss-ish with her before? Alan wondered. I even entertained a thought of marrying her, even if she was poor as a church-mouse. 'Course, that was back when I still had hopes of Lucy Beauman and her daddy's guineas. Any other girl, I'd have bulled her aft by the taffrail and damned anyone in the watch who'd interfere. Governour or Burgess would have called me out and skewered me for it, though. Maybe that's why I didn't. Maybe that's why.

"It would be a capital way to renew the family fortunes," Burgess insisted. "To get on with 'John Company.' Even as a clerk to some trading house out there would put me in the way of money beyond measure. And it wouldn't be but for a few years."

"Your friend Mister Chute intimated he had influence, Alan," Governour said. "Perhaps he could suggest something."

"I'd not trust him any farther than I could spit, Governour," Alan replied. "I knew him at Harrow, before I was expelled. He still owes me half a crown for tatties and gravy after all these years, and devil a hope I have of ever being repaid. He makes a career of making efforts on people's behalf. But he charges a pretty penny for it."

"Ah, that kind." Governour scowled again.

"And I thought after Mister Richardson's novels about such doings, they'd be a law to stop such as he," Mrs. Chiswick all but cried in alarm. "Harrow, though. A good school, for all I've heard tell. And what did you do to get yourself expelled, Alan?"

"Tried to blow up the governor's coach-house. And his privy," Alan was forced to admit. "Come to think on it, Clotworthy Chute and Peter Rushton were both in on it with me, and left me holding the bag. Or the wick, in this case." The food had been swill, the new governor of the school had strict ideas about discipline, and most schools were run by terror, anyway, with the students ready to riot at any provocation. Just before term ended, when parents came to fetch their children and saw the one instance of decent victuals (put on for their benefit and not to be seen again), they had decided to do something grand. A small keg of gunpowder had been procured, with a length of slow-match. It had been only extreme bad luck that the governor had been on his way to the privy behind the stables when the charge went off.

The intent had been to destroy the man's splendid coach and let him know how reviled he was among the students. But the measure of powder was a lot more than it ought to have been. Alan had lit the slow-match and run back away from the stables and coach-house what he thought was a safe distance to watch the show, and Clotworthy, Peter Rushton and a couple of other young scamps had hidden in the box hedges, tittering with anticipation.

The roof had been blown off. The doors and windows disappeared in a whoof of flame and smoke, and the carriages inside had certainly been turned into heat and light. But the horses had panicked and broke free from the stalls, and ran all over the county as the barn caught fire. Everyone had run for his life, and Alan had had the misfortune to choose the wrong direction, had not thought to put down his port-fire and had collided headlong with the governor, ramming his head right into the man's stout stomach and nightshirt, which abrupt collision had addled both of them, and Alan was last to his feet, with the incriminating evidence by his side.