Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"Mementos of an arduous life," Twigg scoffed again, perhaps with long-engrained English gentlemanly modesty, "spent mostly in places so dreadful, the baubles were the only attractive things worth a toss. I assume you like goat. Do you not, it doesn't signify, for that's what we're having. Keep a flock to dine on… sheep, as well."

"But, no pork, nor beefsteaks, either, I'd s'pose," Lewrie said, with another wry scowl.

"Taboo to Muslims in the first instance, taboo to Hindoos in the second, aye," Twigg replied, his thin lips clasped together in the sort of aspersion that Lewrie had dreaded in their early days. "Old habits die hard. Well, don't just stand there like a coat-rack, sit ye down," Twigg snapped, pointing imperiously at a chair at the foot of the six-place table, whilst he strode with his usual impatience to the chair at the other end, and Lewrie almost grinned to see himself seated "below the salt," no matter there were only the two of them.

The elderly servant, Ajit Roy, bearing a brass tray on which sat two glasses of sherry, shuffled in, obviously waiting 'til they were seated before intruding. Twigg took a tentative taste, looking puckery, as if assaying his own urine for a moment, before nodding assent and acceptance, at which point Ajit Roy came down-table to give Lewrie his small glass.

"Laanaa shorbaa, Ajit," Twigg ordered, and not a tick later, an attractive Hindoo woman in English servant's clothing, but with a long, diaphanous shawl draped over her hair and shoulders, entered with bowls of the requested soup on another tray.

"Dhanyavaad, Lakshmi," Twigg told her.

"Thankee," Lewrie echoed in English. He'd never learned Hindoo as glibly as his father, Sir Hugo, and had ever sounded pidgin barbarian when he did speak it, but it was coming back to him, in dribs and drabs. She was fetching; did she and Twigg…?

"Ajit Roy's second wife," Twigg said, with a knowing leer after one look at Lewrie's phyz. "The first'un cooks. And no, I don't. My tastes these days, well… I also own a place in the City, quite near your father's new gentlemen's lodging club, in point of fact. His is at the corner of Wigmore and Duke streets, as you surely recall, while my set of rooms is nearby in Baker Street. We run into each other…"

"Oh, how unfortunate for you," Lewrie sourly commented.

"We speak rather often, act'lly," Twigg said with a mystifying smile. "Sometimes dine, drop in for a drink, or play ecarte with him at his club, with no need for its lodging facilities."

"And does he give you a discounted membership, sir? Or… does he make up for it by fleecing you at cards?" Lewrie cynically asked.

"My dear Lewrie… no one has ever fleeced me at ecarte… and lived," Zachariah Twigg drawled, with a superior simper. "Your father and I rub along quite well, together, act'lly. We're much of an age, and experienced much the same sort of adventures in exotic climes, so… absent the disputes resulting from, ah… 'boundary' friction in the expedition against Choundas and the La-nun Rovers… his concerns for his sepoy regiment, and taking orders from a Foreign Office civilian, we've discovered that we have a great deal in common. Having you and your, ah.. .follies in common, as well. How is your soup?"

"Simply grand," Lewrie sarcastically muttered, though the soup was as close to a Chinese "hot and sour" as a Hindoo cook could attain, and as tasty as any ever he'd had when moored off Canton in the '80s.

"Amazing, what a small world in which we live, Lewrie," Twigg went on, carefully spooning up his own soup, and slurping it into his thin-lipped mouth, then daintily dabbing with his napkin. "Sir Hugo is partnered with Sir Malcolm Shockley in his gentlemen's club enterprise… Sir Malcolm thinks the world of him, and of you, more to the point… though I've yet to see a valid reason why, other than gratitude for getting his wealthy arse out of Venice and the Adriatic before the French took it in '97. And, wonder of wonders, Sir Malcolm is wed to Lady Lucy Hungerford, nee Lucy Beauman, of the Jamaica Beaumans who wish you hung for stealing their slaves. Well, well, well! Quite the coincidence, what?"

"And Hugh Beauman's already written Lucy and told her all about it?" Lewrie said with a groan, feeling an urge to slide bonelessly or lifelessly under the table, and stay there, unfindable, for, oh, say a century or so. "Christ, I'm good as dead!" he moaned, his brow popping out a sweat that was not entirely the fault of the spicy soup.

"And… here comes the roast!" Twigg enthused as Lakshmi entered, bearing a tray of sliced kid goat, and a heaping bowl of savouried rice, mango chautney, and such. "Done to a. perfect turn, I am bound!" he added, not without a purr and glare that Lewrie took for sheer maliciousness-making him feel even more inclined to slink beneath the table, un-fed!

"I take it, an…" Lewrie managed to croak, "that Sir Malcolm's mentioned it to Father?"

"B'lieve so, Lewrie, yayss," Twigg responded in a further purr of hellish delight at his predicament, all the time hoisting slices of goat onto his heaping plate of rice and mild, baked red peppers.

Lewrie felt his face flush {not from the spicy soup!) picturing Sir Hugo's reaction to his folly, not so much anger or disappointment, really, for they'd never really been proper father and son, leaving it quite late-in India in '84 or '85-to tentatively reconcile, thence to keep a wary distance ever since, so whatever rage Sir Hugo might display was water off a duck's back. No, what upset Lewrie more was a firm suspicion that he'd chortled his head half-off that Alan had gone and done something so goose-brained, and been caught at it, red-handed!

"Damme… Lucy knows, 'tis a safe wager that all London knows, by now!" Lewrie muttered, dabbing his brow with his napery. "The hen-headed, blabbery… baggage!" he nigh-stuttered in new dread. " 'Tis a wonder I've not been taken up, already, with…!"

"One'd be surprised, Lewrie," Twigg loftily told him. "Do try the kid. There's a dahee to go with it, one of those yogurt gravies I recall you liking when in Calcutta. Tandoori-roast chicken to follow!"

"Christ!"

"You and Lucy Beauman were, at one time in your mis-spent youth, quite fond of each other, Lewrie," Twigg breezed on, come over all amiable, as he spooned spiced dahee on his goat and rice. "She went on to wed a rich'un she met at Bath, her first Season in England… dare we speculate on what is called the 'rebound' following her family showing you the door for the utter cad you proved to be, hmm? Lord Hungerford, Knight and Baronet, surely was a great disappointment to her, since he proved to be just about as huge a rake-hell and rantipoling 'splitter of beards' as you… though, Lady Lucy seems to have been spared revelations anent your poorer qualities, for some reason. The illogic, and the blindness, that the fairer sex possess towards their un-deserving men, no matter proof incontrovertible served up on a gilt platter, hah!

"She still has, as they say, Lewrie, a 'soft spot' in her heart for you, therefore, and, so far as I am able to ascertain, has yet to utter the first word to anyone, other than her husband, Sir Malcolm, of the matter."

"You must be joking!" Lewrie exclaimed, almost leaping from his chair in amazement at such a ridiculous statement. "Lucy is my prime suspect of writing scurrilous, anonymous letters to my wife, about my… overseas… doings…" he trailed off, blurting out more than he'd meant to.

"Ah, those letters!" Twigg said, brightening with cruel amusement. "Why must you suspect her?"