The King's Marauder Read Online Free PDF Page A

Millicent prompted, going to Charlotte’s chair to scoop up the noisy dog and shoo it towards the entry hall. It came right back to defend its mistress, making fake lunges at Lewrie’s boots, to the point that Millicent dumped it in the hall and shut the doors on it, at least muting the growls and yaps.
    He stayed a little more than an hour, and a testy one it was.
    Yes, Charlotte had gotten his letters, but left it to Governour to inform him of her progress. Yes, she had heard from her younger brother, Hugh, and of his doings aboard HMS Pegasus, and the battle of Trafalgar. Yes, she also had gotten letters from her older brother, Sewallis, also a Midshipman aboard the Third Rate HMS Aeneas. Most pointedly, she recalled Sewallis’s description of being in Portsmouth the same time as Lewrie, and dining with him … and his new woman!
    “The lady is Miss Lydia Stangbourne, the sister of Percy, Viscount Stangbourne,” Lewrie explained, “both of whom I met the day that I was knighted and made baronet, at Saint James’s Palace.”
    “Yes, Sewallis said that you had begun associating with the better sort,” Charlotte had simpered, “though he also said that there are rumours that she is a divorcé? And, in his opinion, nowhere near as pretty as our mother was,” she’d concluded with a sniff.
    No, he hadn’t forced Sewallis to go to sea, that had been the lad’s own idea, and of his own doing behind everyone’s backs, he had to explain for the umpteenth time. And no, he was not getting ready to replace Caroline with another, either!
    Of his recent exploits, taking part in the re-capture of the Dutch colony at Cape Town, and his jaunts ashore with the Army, and hunting, then the foolish expedition over to Buenos Aires and the Plate River Estuary, Charlotte was dismissive.
    “The papers say that Commodore Popham and General Beresford were both captured, and the entire army lost, and both are to be tried for it,” Charlotte said with a moue. “A ludicrous endeavour, but one suitable to you, one must suppose,” she’d scathingly said, all the while smiling nigh wickedly.
    “Charlotte!” Millicent weakly chid her. “Your own father!”
    “No matter, Millicent, no matter,” Lewrie had said, surrendering any hope of ever thawing his relationship with his daughter. She had, absent her mother, become a product of Governour’s biting tutelage, a pupil of his bile. Charlotte had been given a decent education in all the social graces. Lewrie was sure that she excelled at music, grace of carriage, and the housewifery skills necessary for her to become the mistress of some fine house. Earlier on, Governour had written to express how well-tutored and well-read she was. It was just too bad that her lessons in graciousness in speech towards all had been wasted!
    God help the poor bastard who takes her for a wife, if he don’t toe her line to a Tee! Lewrie concluded.
    “I think I’ll be going,” Lewrie had announced at last.
    “Oh, must you, Alan?” Millicent had fretted.
    “So soon? Must you really? ” Charlotte had echoed with sarcastic feigned sweetness, then pointedly looked away, tending to her teacup.
    “Charlotte!” from Millicent, again. “Stay a while longer, Alan, do. Governour is sure to be home, soon.”
    “I’ll run into him, surely. In the village, at church?” Lewrie had said with a shrug. “ Adieu, my dear.”
    “ Adieu, ” Charlotte had responded with a very brief sweet smile.
    *   *   *
    A proper father’d break out in tears, Lewrie told himself on the coachride back to his father’s house; But all I want t’do is give the little bitch the thrashin’ of her life! She wants t’be Governour’s brat, let him have her, and without my money t’support her arrogant, snippy airs! Let Governour pay for all her gowns and bonnets, and the food she eats, and I’ll save myself fifty pounds a year, and keep the money I’d planned for her dowry in the Three Percents!
    He wasn’t welcome