"And, Caroline…," Lewrie dared venture, for despite the giddy air coming from the bride-to-be and the maids, his wife sported that worrisome furrow 'twixt her brows. "How utterly splendid and lovely you look this day, as well. Smashin'!"
"Why, thankee, husband," Caroline replied, dipping him a curtsy as fine as Sophie's, and sounding pleased, with a sketch of a smile on her face. Does she still suspect Sophie… and glad t'be shot ofher? Indeed, both of them were a "picture."
Sophie, with her reddish auburn hair and bright green eyes, had chosen a bridal gown of aquamarine satin with the puffy upper sleeves and skin-tight lower sleeves that were now in fashion; high-waisted and square-cut at the bodice, all ruched and awash in white lace. Her hair was done up under a fetching, matching bonnet with fake flowers, fruit, and ribbons, bound under her chin by more ribbon. In Sophie's travelling chest lay more gowns; for the coach trip to where they'd honeymoon, for their first supper together as a couple, dainties for morning-after lounging, more gowns for enlightening tours of whatever was famous where they were going, and, surely some even daintier bed gowns to entice her new husband into starting a naval dynasty.
No wonder Caroline's "fashed," Lewrie understood; she's spent a month slave-drivin' seamstresses an' milliners, and payin' out a year's farm rent on the girl!
Caroline had chosen a soberer gown of dark blue satin with matching bonnet, trimmed in gilt lace. Hers was in much the same high-waisted and low-cut style, but with wide, shawl-like pleats over both of her shoulders, more's the pity.
Damn trepidation! Lewrie told himself, going to take hands with both of them, bestowing a chaste kiss on Sophie's cheek, then another upon his wife's.
"Both of you are as lovely as the occasion merits," he reiterated, and Sophie squeezed his hand in shy thanks. There was, though, a slight shying away from his kiss on Caroline's part, a faint stiffening of her spine, and limpness to her hand. She all but uttered a resigned sigh! Sure sign of a whole gale to come when she and Lewrie were alone, but over what? he tried to puzzle; some reconciliation^.
"And, there's my children!" Lewrie exclaimed, taking the arrival of his sons and his daughter as a convenient excuse to break free, and shove what dread he had of his wife's iciness down to his "orlop" for later… much later, could he manage it.
Sewallis, his first-born, was now thirteen, a lean and primmish lad just entering that awkward time 'twixt childhood and maturity… though he had always been too sober-sided for Lewrie to fathom exactly why. His suitings were dark grey "ditto," as stark as a parson.
Hugh, his middle child and ever-rambunctious imp, was now ten, and more flambouyant, dressed in a blue coat and buff waist-coat and new-fangled trousers, booted not shod, and though Caroline had spent a fair amount of time getting them spruced up, and warning them both to behave, Hugh already looked mussed, with his blonder hair in his eyes and his neck-stock come halfway undone.
Little Charlotte, well… at seven, she was definitely made in her mother's spitting image, her long light brown hair controlled by a pale blue bonnet and ribbons, dressed adult-like in a pale blue gown very much like Caroline's. Her amber eyes glowed as her gaze devoured every detail of Sophie's ensemble, mesmerised by a real-life bride.
Lewrie shook hands with the boys, knelt to give Charlotte a hug, and gave them all a congratulating jape or compliment. Naval service had spaced their births so far apart… that, and the use of cundums.
After Sewallis's birth in the Bahamas in '87, he'd been off on patrol duties for the most part, as far south as the Turks amp; Caicos, for months on end, so Hugh had not been quickened 'til the early months of '89 (in Alacrity's great-cabins and hanging-cot, to be truthful) and born just after he'd paid off, taken half-pay, and rented their house and lands from Caroline's uncle, Phineas Chiswick, in Anglesgreen. Where he had spent the most miserable years of his life as a know-nothing gentleman-farmer, of whom it was said that he knew how to "raise his hat, but little else," a useless drone and hanger-on to his much cleverer wife, who had grown up with a bountiful knowledge of agriculture from her childhood in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.
It was a wonder to Lewrie, so bored had he been in those days, that, for want of anything better to do, there weren't more children, but… after Charlotte's birth, and Caroline had survived the perils of childbed fever, she had suggested that three was enough, and wished him to obtain cundums; so much to do on the farm, in the still-room and truck gardens, the flower beds and decorative plantings, care for the children already born, their mutual joy of horseback riding…
The annual Bills of Mortality listed most deaths for young women as childbed fever, which usually took the infant, too. They had already birthed Sewallis as heir, Hugh to go Army, Navy, or take Holy Orders, and a lovely daughter, and they seemed to thrive, thank God, and might live to adulthood and have children of their own someday, so, why take the risk? And, Lewrie had been so much in love with Caroline in those days and so loath to risk her life, so selfish to keep him with her for all the years the Lord gave them (and, selfish to keep her the slim, tempting lass who'd come to their marriage bed, too) that he had been more than willing to go along with her wishes… his only worry had been how he could portray ignorance of what cundums did, and where they might be obtained!
Charlotte, Lewrie supposed, was a happy accident, the result of an unguarded night as the stormclouds of the French Revolution and the Terror loomed. The Nootka Sound Incident 'twixt Spain and England in far-off northwestern North America in 1790, his temporary recall to the colours, then the sureness of war coming with France, too, after the revolutionaries had beheaded King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette. After the war did erupt in February of '93, Lewrie doubted if he had been home with Caroline more than five months, altogether, in the past seven years!
He could step back and admire his well-groomed (well, there was Hugh!) and well-behaved, properly educated children (well, there also was Hugh's boisterousness, and Charlotte's penchant for blurting out whatever thought crossed her wee mind, usually at the worst possible moment!) and call himself fortunate.
He could take pride and visual pleasure in Caroline, too, for she had not battened or thickened into the typical country housewife and matron. Were the lines on her face more noticeable, they were not as prominent as those of women her age, and they were, mostly, laugh lines and crow's-feet 'round her usually merry eyes. Her hair was yet glossy, her amber brown eyes bright, her form straight and slim…
I'm judgin' her like a fox hound! Lewrie chid himself; ready to see how even she trots! Thirty-seven's not that old, after all; me or her. Why can't we…?
"I pray one of you gentlemen has confirmed that the coaches we contracted are arrived?" she rather vexedly enquired, more than ready to believe that her husband or father-in-law had forgotten that detail.
"Waiting at the kerb as I came up, dear," Lewrie was glad to be able to tell her.
"Saw to it," Sir Hugo drawled as he tossed back the last dregs of his fortifying brandy and tucked his ornate cocked hat under his arm. That worthy looked as if he needed fortifying, for with Lewrie slaving away like a Trojan to fit out his new frigate, it had fallen to him to be the go-between, the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to supply what the women needed from London, the fetcher and carrier, and guide to the better shops when Caroline and Sophie came up to the city.