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"Be back sooner or later. We'll have more fun, hey?' "Don't know as I'll be here when you gets back, Alan me love."
"Oh? Why?"
"Well, the housekeeper'll prob'ly turn me out without no ref'rence," she intoned with a hard gulp.
"Did she discover about our little arrangement?" Alan asked, abandoning his packing once more. "How'd it happen?"
"I think I'm gonna have a baby, Alan," she managed to say, her lower lip quivering, and tears starting to flow from her eyes. "Yours."
"Well, shit, what next?" he sighed, and sat down at the table with her as her face screwed up and copious tears bubbled out.
"Alan!" she wailed. "Wha's gonna happen t' me? I can't care for a baby! I'll be out in the streets, an' no house'U take me on, not with a littl'un comin'. Alan, you gotta do somethin'!"
I knew it was too good to last, I knew it, I knew it! God, he thought miserably, remember that promise about swans? I think I meant it this time!
"Umm, are you sure, Abigail? Absolutely sure, I mean…"
"Hadn't had me courses this month. An' I get sick as anythin' o' the mornin's, I do! My stomach feels a little hard, too. Here, feel of it. Don't it feel diff'runt to you? I can't have no baby, an' me a spinster girl, Alan. Parish'll turn me out an' tell me t' move along t' the next. Same with that'un, too, I reckon. I seen it before, I have, back in Evesham. Girls havin' t' run off t' Birmingham, an' nothin' good at the end of it. But if I was t' be married, I could cry widow, blame it on a farmboy…"
"What? Married?" Alan exclaimed in shock.
"Yes," she bawled, putting her face down on the table and blubbering fit to bust. "Say you will, jus' t' let me have the record for the parish! I'm sorry! I thought we was bein' so careful, you with your cundum an' all. Don' let me be rooned, Alan, if you love me…"
In the middle of this, while Alan was trying to think of some way to escape being bound to the little mort for all eternity, there was another scratching at the door.
"Wait your bloody turn, damn yer eyes!" Alan barked with his best quarterdeck rasp, which startled Abigail into a fit of hiccups. "What?" he demanded, flinging the door open.
"Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy?" The messenger from the Admiralty sniffed at his unexpected greeting. He took in the bawling girl at the table, and gave another audible sniff.
"I am."
"Then this is for you, sir. If you will be so good as to sign here to shew I have delivered it to you? I have a stub of pencil, sir. No need for a pen," the old pensioner intoned with all the hauteur of a flag officer. "I was instructed to await your reply, sir."
Alan scribbled off his name and slammed the door in the man's face. He broke the blue wax wafer on the parchment and opened it to read it.
"Bloody, bloody, flaming Hell!" he muttered.
"Sir;
Our Lords Commissioners of The Admiralty have seen fit to offer you an active commission, the exact nature of which we shall be glad to discover to you should you deem yourself able to accept immediate Employment. You shall be appointed 4th Lt. into a Ship of the Line, the 80-gun 3rd Rate Telesto, now lying in-ordinary in the port of Plymouth, for three years' Commission in foreign waters.
Please communicate to us your Availability, or state reasons why you cannot fulfill a term of active service, pursuant to the customary usages such as loss of half-pay, reduction in seniority from the roll of commission Sea Officers, etc.
Yr obdt srvnt,
Phillip Stephens, Sec. to Admlty"
"God, I meant that bit about the swans, but this is a trifle extreme, don't you think?" he said to the ceiling.
"Wot?" Abigail hiccuped.
"Not you. Look, my girl. Marriage just ain't in the cards, see?" Alan told her matter-of-factly. "Yes, I'm going away. I've been ordered to go to sea. I'll give you some money to take care of you, and to see to your lying in. That's the best I can do."
"Oh, my God, you heartless bastard," she wailed.
"Twenty pounds to see you through, Abigail. And another twenty pounds so the baby's looked after. Tell people whatever you like. I can't marry you, and you know it. I'd make you bloody miserable."
"Miserable's I am now?" she spat, changing emotions quickly.
"Worse, most likely," he replied, trying to gentle her. He knelt down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders,
and held her even as she tried to shrug him off. "Look, girl, I'm fond enough of you. You're a sweet little chit, that you really are. There's plenty of homes would like a healthy baby, if you don't want to keep him, or her. You'll have about six years' wages for food and lodging, if you don't squander it on foolishness. And there are houses that'll have you. I'll write you a letter of reference if you want. I'll say you worked for me. Blame it… blame it on some sailor who took advantage of you on your day off. Tell the parish you were raped by some sailor you never saw before or since. Long's you have money to keep yourself, and you're not on their Poor's Rate, they won't care a whit."
"But you won't marry me," she sobbed, quieter now, and put her arms around him sadly.
"I'm going to foreign waters, Abigail. Three years and more. Dry your eyes, now. Call me a bastard if you like, but I'll try to do right by you, as much as I'm able. But marry you… I'm sorry."
He shooed her out, scribbled a quick acceptance letter for the Admiralty messenger, who fled before his old soul was corrupted any more than it most probably was, and sat down to relish a huge glass of brandy. God knew, he needed it about then.
Chapter 5
The more he thought about the arrival of the Admiralty's offer of immediate employment, the better he was resigned to it. A commission in foreign waters, far away from Lord Cantner's wrath, and any hulking minions he might hire, was probably the best thing. It also got him out of London, out of England, so little Abigail could not cry "belly plea" on him before a magistrate if she found his terms of settlement unacceptable, once she had a chance to put her little brain to work on them.
Surprisingly, Cony had seemed suddenly eager to go to sea with him as a seaman and cabin-servant as well. The Matthewses said they'd store his furnishings in the garret of his lodgings on Panton Street, though Sir Onsley had been mystifying as all Hell about why Fate had chosen that exact moment to bless him with active service. The old Admiral had made offers before, but nothing had ever come of them, and after three years' privation in the Navy, Alan was not exactly "cherry-merry" to go to sea again, though he showed game enough when Sir Onsley talked about the possibility.
There had come another letter from the Admiralty before the week was out, though, delivered by the same pensioner porter, and this one had advised him to travel to Plymouth at once, in civilian clothes. What had been the point of that, he speculated? At least, his route took him through Guildford, where the Chiswicks resided. It was the final disappointment to his feelings to learn that they were not at home. He sighed heavily, left a letter for Caroline with their housekeeper and got back on the road.
"I thinks they's a rider comin' up a'hind of us, sir," Cony warned. Once leaving Guildford, they had taken the coast road for Plymouth, from Dorchester to Bridport and Honiton, skirted south of Exeter for Ashburton across the southern end of the Dartmoor Forest. Highwaymen were rife with so many veterans discharged with nothing but their needs, but so far they had traveled safely enough in company with other wayfarers.
Ever since leaving their last inn that morning, they had seen no one, though when they stopped to rest their horses they had thought they could hear one, perhaps two, riders behind them. The wintry air was chill. Snow lay thin and bedraggled on the muddy ground like a sugar glace on soaked fields. Rooks cried but did not fly in the fog that had enveloped them. It was thinning now, not from any wind but from the mid-morning sun, and sounds carried as they do in a fog, easy to hear from afar but without any true sense of which direction they came from.
They were two men on horseback, with a two-horse hired wagon to bear their sea-chests, driven by an ancient waggoner and his helper of about fourteen. They had gotten on the road just before dawn, and now stood listening, about halfway between Buckfastleigh and Brent Hill. A lonely place. A perfect place for an ambush, Alan thought. He cocked an ear towards the road behind him, trying to ignore the creaking of saddle leather and bitt chains.
'"Ear 'em, sir?" Cony whispered. "Sounds more like two now."
"How far to South Brent from here?" Alan asked the carter.
"Jus' shy of a league, sir," the grizzled old man replied, looking a trifle concerned. "Maght be an' 'ighwayman, ye know. Lonely stretch o' road 'ere'bouts. 'R could be trav'lers lahk y'selves, sir."
"Let's be prepared, then," Alan ordered. The carter and his boy had bell-mouthed fowling pieces under their seat, and they took them out and unwrapped the rags from the fire-locks. Alan drew one of his dragoon pistols, checked the priming and stuck it into the top of his riding boot. That pistol's mate went into the waistband of his breeches. Finally, he freed his hanger in its scabbard so it could be drawn easily.
" 'Tis two men, sir," Cony muttered cautiously as two riders hove into sight on the slight rise behind them like specters from the mists. They checked for a moment from a fast canter, then came on at the same pace.
"Stand and meet them here, then, whoever they are," Alan ordered. He reined his mare out to one side of the wagon, while Cony wheeled his mount to the other side. The old carter kept his fowling-piece out of sight, but stood in the front of the wagon looking backward, with one hand on his boy's shoulder to steady him.
But once within musket shot, the two riders slowed down to a walk and raised their free hands peaceably. Alan kept his caution-they looked like hard men. One was stocky and thick, tanned dark as a Hindoo, and sported a long seaman's queue at the collar of his muddy traveling cloak. The second was a bit more slender, a little taller, though just as darkly tanned. He seemed a little more elegant, but it was hard to tell at that moment as he was just as unshaven and mud-splashed as his companion.
"Gentlemen, peace to you," the slender one began, halting his animal out of reach of a sword thrust. "We've heard your cart axle this last hour and rode hard to catch up with you. "Tis a lonely stretch of road, and that's no error. Fog and mist, and I'll confess a little unnerving to ride alone on a morning such as this."
Alan nodded civilly but gave no reply.
"Allow me to name myself," the fellow went on. "Andrew Ayscough. And my man there, that's Bert Hagley. On our way to Plymouth to take up the King's Service. You going that way as well, sir?"
"The road goes to Plymouth eventually, sir," Alan replied.
"Then for as far as you fare, we'd be much obliged to ride with you, sir," Ayscough asked, "if you do not begrudge a little company on the road, sir? Four men are a harder proposition for highwaymen than two. Our horses are fagged out. Being alone out here made us push 'em a little harder than was good for them. That and having to be in Plymouth by the first bell of the forenoon watch, sir."
"You're seamen, the both of you?' Alan asked, losing a little of his caution.
"Aye, sir," Ayscough admitted. "Down to join a ship. I've a warrant to be master gunner, and Bert there's to be my Yeoman of the Powder Room."
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