Reefs and Shoals (31 page)

“I’ll take you up on that, too, Mister Cotton, most gladly,” Lewrie assured him, “and perhaps … a cool shore bath before supper.”

“It shall be done, sir!”

Damn whether that Frog sails,
Lewrie thought;
I’ll have enough fresh water for a
proper
scrub-down, for a rare once!

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

By half past six that evening, Lewrie was much refreshed by a good nap in a sinfully soft bed, sprawled nude atop the coverlet and cooled by a gentle breeze. He was also much cleaner, after a brass tub full of cool water had been provided in the wash-house behind the house, with enough soap for a thorough scrubbing, behind his ears and between his toes. He’d sudsed his hair and used two whole buckets of water with which to rinse, too. He had shaved himself quite closely, but had submitted to the house servant’s, Amos’s, ministrations when it came to dressing in his best shore-going uniform that had been sponged and brushed free of cat-fur, completely so for a rare once, too. With his neck-stock tied just so, the sprig of hair at the nape of his neck bound with black ribbon, his gold-tasseled Hessian boots newly blacked and buffed, his sash and star over his chest, and his “hundred-guinea” dress sword on his hip, he could take time to stare at himself in the tall
cheval
mirror and deem himself one Hell of a natty fellow, and a man possessed of an athletic stature and slimness, despite being fourty-two years of age. He still had a full head of mid-brown hair, turned lighter by the sun below the brim of his cocked hat (thankfully closer to dark blond without a hint of grey!) that still showed no sign of receding. His face was bronzed by constant exposure, but it was not yet lined … though he thought that the “raccoon eye” look of squint lines at each outer corner of his eyes, normal flesh colour against the ruddiness, did look a bit comical.

If people wished to laugh at those squint lines, though, there was the faint, vertical scar upon his left cheek, the mark of a long-ago duel on Antigua in his Midshipman days, to belie them.

He flashed his teeth, pleased that they looked whiter against his skin, then puffed his breath into a hand; one more of his ginger pastilles would not go amiss.

Witty and charming?
Lewrie thought;
I think I’m ready t’please Charleston.

*   *   *

Mr. Cotton laid on a two-wheeled, one-horse hack for the short trip from his house down to Broad Street, and a hotel which he assured Lewrie had a fine dining room. It would be a small dinner party, assembled at short notice, but Mr. and Mrs. McGilliveray would definitely attend, as well as the U.S. Navy officer commanding the two gunboats which guarded Charleston harbour, and a few others.

As they alit by the doors to the hotel, Lewrie took a moment to savour the early evening. Broad Street was awash in light from many large whale-oil lanthorns that bracketed the entrances of the shops, taverns, and houses, as well as regularly spaced tall street lanthorns, which were just being ignited. The skies and the thin clouds overhead were shading off to dusk after a spectacular sunset, and there was a welcome coolness to the breezes, though the air still felt humid.

“Red skies at night, sailors sleep tight, hey, Sir Alan?” Mr. Cotton japed. “Shall we go in and take a glass of Rhenish to prompt our appetite?”

“Certainly,” Lewrie agreed.

“And, here are some of our guests, sir!” Mr. Cotton exclaimed, ready to make the introductions. Lewrie turned with a smile plastered on his phyz, recognizing Mr. Douglas McGilliveray, who had captained a converted merchantman, a U.S. Armed Ship, in the West Indies during the Quasi-War with France in 1798. There was a fellow in his thirties wearing the uniform of a navy officer, still the dark-blue coat with the red facings and lapels, the red waist-coat and dark-blue breeches that had been in style since the Revolution.

At least they got rid o’ the tricorne hats and changed over to cocked hats. They looked like sea-goin’ farmers, else!

Ever the good host, Mr. Cotton did the introductions, first to the McGilliverays, though Mr. Douglas McGilliveray eagerly offered his hand, and introduced his wife, himself.

“You’re coming up in the world, Captain Lewrie,” McGilliveray jovially said. “The last time we met, you wore but one epaulet, but now, ha ha! For bravery and success, surely.”

“A squadron action off New Orleans, sir,” Lewrie happily explained. “So good to see you, again, sir, and in such fine health. And, Mistress McGilliveray … your servant, ma’am,” he said with a bow, and a doff of his hat.

“Sir Alan!” the older lady gushed as she dipped a brief curtsy. Evidently, even egalitarian Americans
did
“dearly love a lord”!

“
Hmpf
 … what’s
he
doing here?” Mr. McGilliveray muttered, making them all turn to take note of three men slouching against the side of a carriage further up the street.

“Sir Alan, allow me to also introduce to you Lieutenant Israel Gordon, the officer commanding U.S. naval forces in Charleston,” Mr. Cotton soldiered on, after a nervous peek at the three men, “and his lady, Mistress Susannah Gordon. Lieutenant and Mistress Gordon, allow me to name to you Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate,
Reliant.
”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Gordon, Mistress Gordon,” Lewrie said, making another bow. “Your servant, sir … ma’am.”

“And to make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Gordon replied with equal gravity, in a jarring New Englander’s accent; his wife sounded like a Down East Yankee lady, too, when she spoke. Mrs. Gordon found need to use a silk and lace fan, even after the day’s heat had dissipated.

“But weel no one introduce
me
to such a grand
Anglais
sea-dog?” one of the men who had been slouching by the coach requested, forcing them all to turn to face him.

“And you are, sir?” Mr. Cotton archly demanded, screwing up his mouth over the man’s impertinence.

“I name myself,” the cheeky fellow said, smirking. “
Capitaine
Georges Mollien, of ze
Otarie
 …
à votre service.
” He snatched off a rather small cocked hat, one whose ends had been pulled down nearly to his earlobes, and laid it on his breast as he performed a sweeping grand mock of a bow.

Bloody Frogs!
Lewrie furiously thought;
Never more top-lofty and arrogant than when ye
can’t
shoot ’em on the spot!

This Captain Mollien was a short and wiry fellow, two inches shorter than Lewrie, with a pinched, foxy face. On his hip he wore a small-sword, and by the way his dark-blue coat sagged, there might be a brace of pistols in the side pockets. Behind him, grinning just as scornfully, stood two of his mates or crew, both “beef to the heel”.

Lewrie had been the recipient of many a scornful look in his time, delivered by superior officers, gawping nobility, or St. James’s Palace courtiers who’d caught him in “pusser’s slops” or shirt sleeves, so he
knew
how to deliver one when given the chance. With one brow up in dis-belief, and a wee lift of a corner of his mouth for amusement, he slowly inspected Mollien from the top of his head of loose, lank, and long dark hair to his open shirt collar and neck-stock worn loose like a rag in the style of the
sans-culottes
revolutionaries, down an
écru
linen shirt front to a garish red waist sash, and scanned buff-coloured trousers crammed into a pair of top-boots indifferently buffed and blacked, to Mollien’s scuffed boot toes, and back, again. At the end, he said “How marvellous for you,” in a flat-toned drawl, and turned back to chat with his supper party guests.

“Well, shall we go in and take seats at our table?” Mr. Cotton quickly suggested.

“I weeshed to see ze man ’oo ’as come to mak’ war on me,” the Frenchman said, a little louder as if wishing to attract witnesses to his “bearding” of an enemy officer. “To tak’ ’ees measure.”

“You are impertinent, Captain Mollien,” Lt. Gordon stiffly said.

“A dog in a doublet,” Mr. McGilliveray harumphed.

“Make war upon you?” Lewrie purred, after fighting down an urge to swing about and punch the man in the face. “I certainly will, but not in Charleston Harbour. It’ll come … all in good time, gunn’l to gunn’l,” he promised with a bright smile. “Not in the middle of Broad Street, either … unless you
desire
a violation of the city’s hospitality, and American neutrality. Is that what you came for, with your bully-bucks to protect you?”

“But I am ze peaceful
marchand
man,
M’sieur le Capitane
,” Mollien said, wide eyed and with a hand upon his heart as if basely accused of wrongdoing, shrugging and smiling. “I do not fear one such as you. Ze soft-’anded
Anglais aristo
?” he added with another smirk.

“You should,” Lewrie told him, stepping a bit closer, “Indeed, you should.”

“’Ow much eet cos’ you to
buy
your star an’ sash?” Mollien asked him. “
Peut-être
, I can afford eet, too?” He was louder in his mocking, now that he had gathered a half-dozen or so strollers.

“Several … hundred …
dead
 … Frenchmen,” Lewrie gravelled back. “Think ye can afford
that
?”

Mollien pursed his lips to a slit, and he got a wary look on his face. His little bit of street theatre was not going the way he had thought; the idle fop
Anglais
he’d expected was turning out to be anything but, and … had the
Anglais
’s eyes gone as grey as a sword blade, from an inoffensive, merry blue?

“Oh, well said, Sir Alan!” Mr. Cotton crowed. “Well said, I
say
!”

“You’ve had your street raree show, Captain Mollien,” McGilliveray gruffly said. “You delay our supper. If you’re quite done…”

“
Un type l’aristo Anglais pédale,
” one of Mollien’s sychophant sailors muttered under his breath, elbowing his mate with a sneer.

He just call me a queer?
Lewrie fumed to himself.

“Captain Mollien, the manners of your men, sir!” Lt. Gordon barked, one hand flexing on the hilt of his sword. “Such language in the presence of ladies! Are these the fine manners one usually expects from a Frenchman?”

“Fie!” his wife chimed in with an outraged hiss.

Mollien had rounded on his sailors to shush them, but it was too late to salvage the situation. When he turned back to face Lewrie, his face writhed between hang-dog apology and frustrated anger.

“Indeed, sir. Begone with you!” Mr. McGilliveray snapped, and shifted his grip on his heavy walking stick from elegant cane to hard cudgel.

“A t’ousan’ pardons,
M’sieurs, Madames;
eet was unforgivable, and I weel be sure to puneesh ’eem as soon as…” Mollien tried to say.

“He can’t help it, Mister McGilliveray … Lieutenant Gordon,” Lewrie drawled again, trying to recall the very words that that blood-thirsty old cut-throat and spy, Zachariah Twigg, had once said to that foul beast, Guillaume Choundas, to goad him at Canton, China, so many years ago. “Captain Mollien was born under a three-penny, ha’penny planet, never to be worth a groat … a swaggerin, ‘gasconading’ Frog who’s but one step away from outright piracy!”

Mollien looked angry enough to draw his sword or one of his pocket pistols, rowed beyond all temperance by Lewrie’s caustic slur. He also looked utterly cowed and defeated. Mollien had not put his wee cocked hat back on his head; he still held it in both hands as if deferring to his betters, gripping it so hard that he was wringing it out of shape … like a desperate beggar.

Can’t find a way t’slink off?
Lewrie gloated.

“You weel nevair catch me,
Capitaine
,” Mollien said, chin up, though looking a tad shaky and unsure as he took a step or two away as if ready to depart.

“Yes, I will,” Lewrie levelly promised him, “before the year is out. Run all ye wish; it don’t signify. Leave port this instant, I and
Reliant
will find you, sooner or later. If not me, then it’ll be another of our ships. The Royal Navy will be out there, looking for you and the rest of your privateersmen. We will
always
be there, just over the horizon.
Adieu,
Captain Mollien.”

Mollien seemed so frustrated that he didn’t even deny that his ship was a privateer. He performed a sketchy bow in
congé
, realising that his hat was still in his hand, and, pinch-faced with his cheeks aflame, stepped back and spun on his heels, bumping into his sailors. He shoved them back, hissing threats and curses at their unfortunate comment that had cost him his dignity, and had ruined his taunts.

“Ahem!” Lt. Gordon said. “Apologies, Captain Lewrie, for that fellow, but …
he
isn’t an example of American manners, and I hope you don’t think less of us for
his
low behaviour.”

“Or, think less of our fair city of Charleston, Sir Alan,” Mrs. McGilliveray said in a sweet Low Country accent. She had pulled her own fan out and was fluttering away at Mollien’s effrontery.

“Short of a street brawl, Mistress McGilliveray, nothing ever could diminish my appreciation of such a lovely city,” Lewrie gallantly responded. “Now that’s over, does anyone feel as peckish as I do?”

“Indeed, let’s go in!” Mr. McGilliveray seconded. “I’m fair famished!”