Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

"Devil with it," he grumbled, inserting the large key; well, he tried to, but there was but one wee candle in the passageway, the key was perversely upside-down, then backwards, and the slot, though large, seemed to be queerly mobile!

At last he managed to unlock the door and enter the rooms, glad to see a fire in the hearth, low and orange, flickering scant light off the brass reflector plate. Only a single candle guttered on the tiny wine-table near the settee, upon which a form huddled.

"Bless me!" the form groaned, sitting up, half-scaring Lewrie out of a year's growth! "Oh, 'tis you, sir," his manservant Aspinall said, rubbing sleep from his eyes like a toddler. "Meant t'sit up an' wait for ya, Cap'um Lewrie, but…"

"No matter, me lad, no matter," Lewrie replied, waving overly wide, and unsteady on his "pins." "The wife's asleep, I trust?"

"Erm, uhh… no sir," Aspinall said with a wince. "She's gone, sir… her and the children, all. Packed up an' took the coach back to Angles-green, Lord… hours ago, sir. Not long after she come back by herself. Long 'fore dark, for certain."

Aspinall had tricked himself out in snowy white slop trousers, a clean new shirt, a red neckerchief, and a short sailor's jacket with a set of shiny brass buttons. He sloughed off a dark blue grogram greatcoat under which he had been napping, and felt about with his toes for his new shiny-blacked shoes, those with the real silver buckles that Lewrie had bought for him after coming ashore.

"Ah," Lewrie replied, after a long, deep sigh. "I see."

"Can I get ya anything, sir? Didn't know as how you'd dine, so I sent down for some…"

"No thankee, Aspinall," Lewrie said, removing his cocked hat and boat-cloak, which Aspinall rushed to gather in.

"Still some cold roast pork an' bread, sir. Make a good snack. There's some wine, and…"

"I dined, not so long ago, no," Lewrie replied, trying not to snap at his manservant; it wasn't his bloody fault. Though, from the half-empty carafe of wine, the skimpiness of the remaining slices of pork, and the half-loaf, Aspinall had dined well, he thought. And why not? Stuck in the middle of a domestic battle-royal, not knowing the details, and loath to step out to visit his ailing mother here in London, to go much beyond the public rooms belowstairs 'til his master returned… Lewrie could picture poor Aspinall standing well out of the way, wringing his hands, unsure whether he should help them pack, or scurry off and hide 'til the thunder had subsided.

"Go get some rest, Aspinall. Turn in. I can mangage. I might even discover my own bed, if my luck's in," Lewrie throatily said.

"I'll build up the fire, sir, an' heat a warmin' pan. Won't be a tick," Aspinall uneasily offered, overly anxious to please. Simply plain anxious, Lewrie could imagine. 'What shall become of us?' as Sophie had fretted earlier today… was it yesterday, by now?

"Well, then…" Lewrie demurred, tearing at his neck-stock and collapsing upright on the settee.

"Uhm, Missus Lewrie left that note, sir…"

How could he have missed it, leant against the carafe of wine. Was that a not-so-subtle slur about his "beastly" nature?

Aspinall became even more cringingly unobtrusive as Lewrie took up the note, broke the seal, and unfolded it. For being penned in the heat of the moment, Lewrie decided, it was as forebodingly chilly as a hunk of Arctic ice! Though claiming she'd never suspected a blessed thing at the time, Caroline's worst suspicions had been confirmed, in the blink of an eye. The gist of that accusing, anonymous letter she had gotten, enumerating her husband's sins, was proved true! Back in their rooms after the row, she'd dredged confirmation from poor Sophie de Maubeuge, their ward; yes, he'd had a mistress in the Mediterranean, Phoebe Aretino, kept at Gibraltar 'til his return in '94, kept as well on her home island of Corsica… the dread secret that Sophie had held all these years, spilled at last! Phoebe Aretino, a conniving, mercenary Corsican whore he'd met at Toulon, the damning letter had described her, Lewrie's long-term mistress, so any dalliance could not be excused as a lone moment of weakness, and even much worse than any passing idea Caroline had had about Theoni Connor, whose appearance in the park had set all this off! Though confirmed in Caroline's mind was his adultery with Theoni, now, for the anonymous letter had spelled it all out for her… both the first back in the spring, and the latest!

How he had cossetted Theoni Connor, perhaps the first night he'd taken her aboard HMS Jester after rescuing her from Serbian pirates in the Adriatic, how he'd schemed and finagled to have her and her actual son Michael sail to Lisbon as his guests in his great-cabins, how he'd paid court to her in that port before she'd taken the packet to Liverpool and the in-laws of her late husband! God above, but Caroline had an inkling of an attractive, busty Italian courtesan in Genoa, and in Leghorn, and…!

She'd be shootin' lava 'bout that'un! Lewrie told himself, with a sick and swoony feeling of doom as he dashed a hand cross his brows; Theoni's more blessed in that department, too, and Caroline's more…petite! Damme, don't she know men don't marry teats… they just want t'sup on em a tad, now and then?

Though how in Blazes anyone, much less the anonymous scribbler, knew that much was beyond him; Phoebe, for certain; Theoni, well maybe. But Claudia Mastandrea, too? No, who could've known that much, and who could despise him enough to write his wife and tell all? He had suspected Commander William Fillebrowne, who had openly boasted of taking Phoebe's "saddle" after she and Lewrie had thrown in the towel with each other; he'd been in Venice, in their squadron, in the Adriatic when Theoni Connor turned up, but Claudia was long before his time, an actual, official "mission" handed him by that old Foreign Office spook, Zachariah Twigg… damn his blood! That was supposed to be very secret!

He'd also suspected Lucy Beauman, his first and frustratingly unrequited lust way back in the "early-earlies" of 1780. Now Lady Lucy Shockley, she'd been in Venice, too, also taken with that Fillebrowne; his lover, in point of fact, behind her decent (huge and filthy rich) husband's back not six months after they were wed, the filthy baggage! Lucy and Fillebrowne together, for mutual revenge?

He'd spurned her offer of a tumble or an affair, should handsome Fillebrowne go stale, or fail to clear all his "jumps"; perhaps at the same time, for all he knew or cared. So rich, spoiled, and pampered… Lucy was not a woman to cross, and Fillebrowne…!

His old schoolmates from his short term at Harrow-Lord Peter Rushton and Clotworthy Chute, ever the "Captain Sharp" without a pence to his own name-had been in Venice, too, and Clotworthy had diddled Fillebrowne over some "ancient" Roman bronze statues recently "dug" in the Balkans… about as old as the half-loaf of bread standing by the wine carafe!

The one letter his father'd seen had been written on fine paper, and done in an elegant copperplate hand, he'd said. Oh, but it was a bootless enterprise, to speculate who'd ruined him. The thing was done, and the fat was truly in the fire!

Caroline had borrowed sixty pounds from his sea chest, she wrote, to sustain their farm 'til his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, could make new arrangements for her and the children's upkeep… which she firmly intended to extract from him, no matter their estrangement. Income from their 160-acre rented farm should be hers alone, she wrote, since he'd never been a bit of help in that regard, and had never done a thing to learn it during his idle years ashore on half-pay, between the wars! He had to admit that that accusation was true.

Lewrie had been a city-raised London lad, only going down to the country on spring or summer jaunts, as a weekend house guest, and knew nothing of crops or livestock, didn't know one flower from another and could really only identify oak trees. Well, he knew good horseflesh if he saw it, and he could ride well… but Hell's Bells, was there any true English gentleman who couldn't, he'd eat his cocked hat!