There was yet another cause to make Lewrie squirm, to this day; in church or at the graveside, he could not mourn her death so much as he grieved for how he had failed her, that he had not been man enough, or clever enough, to save her, and… that he had not been husband enough to make her life content and easy! He could easily conjure that what their vicar had said was ruefully true, in a sense; that Caroline was now at peace in Heaven… a welcome peace to be shot of him, at last!
As common as death was, how she, Caroline, had perished had outraged everyone, re-kindling the instinctive mistrust and hatred of the French to a white-hot blaze in Anglesgreen, for Caroline always had been quite popular with everyone… with the possible exceptions of Uncle Phineas and Sir Romney Embleton's son, Harry, who had courted her after a fashion before Lewrie had come along and swept her away, and had never forgiven either of them for refusing what he had desired.
Lewrie suspected that it had been Harry who had started a rumour that her death had been Lewrie's fault for dragging her over to France and enflaming Bonaparte's wrath by being his usual head-strong and reckless self-a malicious slur that, unfortunately, had found a fertile field with Uncle Phineas, his brother-in-law Governour Chiswick, who'd never been in favour of the match, and, sadly, through Governour, his own daughter, Charlotte.
Lewrie had thought it done after a week, and all that was left was to order her headstone, but… people learning of her funeral too late to attend coached to Anglesgreen to console him. Anthony Langlie, his former First Lieutenant in HMS Proteus, and his wife, Lewrie's former orphaned French ward, Sophie de Maubeuge, had come up from Kent to see him. His other, much more likable brother-in-law, Burgess Chiswick, and his new wife, Theadora, had come a week after, his letter to them having arrived late at the barracks of Burgess's regiment.
And there were so many letters, some coming months later as word crept its way from London papers to provincial papers in the far corners of Great Britain, or overseas, each new missive clawing at the scabs, to the point that he dreaded the arrival of a post rider or a mail coach.
Old shipmates like Commodore Nicely from his days in the West Indies, Commodore Ayscough and Captain Thomas Charlton; people from his Midshipman days like Captain Keith Ashburn, former officers aboard his various commands, like Ralph Knolles, D'arcy Gamble, Fox and Farley of HMS Thermopylae, former Sailing Masters and Mids, even one or two Pursers had written, and, despite Lewrie's urge to crumple the letters and toss them into the fireplace, he'd kept them, pressed flat together in a shallow wood box… if only to save the home addresses after years with no correspondence for the lack of them.
His solicitor, his former barrister from his trial, his banker at Coutts', Zachariah Twigg and Matthew Mountjoy at the Foreign Office, even Jemmy Peel, still up to something shady for King and Country in the Germanies, had written. Eudoxia Durschenko had penned a sympathetic letter (her command of English much improved) just before the start of Daniel Wigmore's Peripatetic Extravaganza's first grand tour through Europe in years; Eudoxia was sure that the circus and theatrical troupe would score a smashing season. She said that her papa, Arslan Artimovitch, sent his condolences, but Lewrie thought it a kindly lie; the one-eyed old lion tamer hated him worse than Satan hated Holy Water!
Alan Lewrie sanded the last of his correspondence, then folded it and sealed it with wax. One last dip of the pen in the ink-well and the address was done. He looked up from his desk to a sideboard, on which rested a silver tray and several cut-glass decanters; one for brandy, one for claret, and one filled with Kentucky bourbon whisky. He glanced at the mantel clock. It lacked half an hour to noon. He shook his head, thinking that he'd done too much of that, of late, to fill the hours of solitary quiet… to stave off the feeling that he now resided in a mausoleum. Ring for a cup of coffee? No.
He gathered up his letters and went out into the foyer, on his way towards the back entrance past the kitchens, but paused, once there, looking into the parlour and dining room at the cloth-shrouded furniture. The heavy drapes had been taken down and beaten clean, and the lighter summer drapes now graced the windows, drawn back to let light in, and the shutters open for the day. For a brief moment, he considered selling up and moving on… to flee this house.
'Tween the wars, when it was built, it had been to her desires of what a proper home should be, when he'd paid off HMS Alacrity and settled in Anglesgreen. Caroline had made allowances for his need for that office/ study/library he'd just left, but the builder had deferred to her on almost everything else. She'd chosen the paint for all the rooms; she'd selected the new furniture and the fabrics for the new chairs and settees, the fabrics and colours to re-upholster their old pieces. They were Caroline's drapes, tablecloths, china pattern, and table ware, her collected knick-knacks and objets d'art, the paintings on the walls, of pastorals and Greco-Roman ruins, the portraits of the children and her kin; save for a couple of nautical prints and a portrait of Lewrie done way back when he was a Lieutenant on Antigua, there was little sign that he had ever lived there!
In point of fact, he ruefully thought, he had not lived there much. A few brief years from '89 to '93, and he was back at sea with active commissions, with barely six weeks at home between them. Last winter, before they'd gone to Paris, was the longest he'd spent under this roof in nigh twenty years!
Can't sell up, he realised; the children need their homeplace. Some roots, and a sense of place. Even if I… don't.
"Your pardon, sir, but you'll be havin' your dinner before you post your letters today?" the cook, Mrs. Gower, intruded on his musings as she bustled from the kitchen. "Steak and kidney pie!" she tempted.
"No, long as I'm to town, I'll get something at the Ploughman," he told her. "Does it keep, that might make a good supper, though."
"La, and I've a brace o' rabbits your man Furfy snared in the back-garden this mornin', sir," Mrs. Gower objected cheerfully. "And them skinned and all, and steepin' in an herb broth for your supper already."
"Well, don't let Phineas Chiswick know of em," Lewrie japed. Legally speaking, Lewrie rented his land as a tenant, not freeholding, and had no right to shoot, trap, or snare any game that strayed upon his property; those rabbits were Chiswick rabbits. Fish in the rills and creek, in the dammed-up stock pond, were Chiswick fish! "Rabbit does sound tasty, and we do have to… eat the evidence of Furfy's poaching. Let him and Desmond enjoy the pie."
One of the first things he'd done, once the first fortnight of mourning was over, was to dismiss that dour Mrs. Calder as housekeeper and semi-tyrant, with two month's wages. Caroline's maidservant had been let go, too, though with half a year's salary and her choice of Caroline's clothing, those that he had not donated to the church and the parish Winter charity, or let Governour's wife, Millicent, have.
Now his domestic staff was reduced to Mrs. Gower and her husband, who served as handyman, gardener, and doorman, should any caller ride up or knock. Little Charlotte still needed a maid-and-governess in one, and Mrs. Gower had need of a scullery maid and one maid-of-all-work to keep up with the cleaning, but, as for him, he felt no need for a manservant. He had Liam Desmond and Patrick Furfy, his former Cox'n and a sailor off his last three ships, to see to everything else about the stables, barns, the livestock, and the crops, with day labourers hired on as needed. It was not due to the expense of keeping a staff that he'd pared them down; it was rather that the presence of so many people bustling about the house, no matter how downcast or cheerful, rankled him!