“Then there’s the in-laws, and my daughter, Charlotte,” Lewrie had said with a huge sigh. “I wanted t’spare ye that,” telling Lydia how he’d been greeted, and his dread for how they would welcome her as the “new woman”, Caroline’s replacement, and the foul rumours of how it had been Lewrie’s fault that Caroline had died.

Lydia Stangbourne had not thought of herself as a beauty when she was a child, and still didn’t accept the fact that she’d grown to be handsome and fetching. Her first exposure during a London Season when she was eighteen had been a cruel disappointment. Even with £500 for her “dot”, other girls with less dowry had out-shone her, so much so that she’d refused her mother’s pressure to try again ’til several years later, with £2,000. She’d been mobbed by greedy young swains eager for her per annum, not her. Revolted, she’d played arch, aloof, and cynically scornful, which had made the greediest praise her for her “modernity”!

When she finally did marry, she’d been deluded by a beast in human form, from whom she’d fled after a few months and had the family solicitor apply to their Member in the House of Commons to file a Bill of Divorcement, resulting in over two years of charges and counter charges gushingly reprinted in all the papers before Parliament had granted her her freedom. All of that had turned her into a Scandalous Woman, not fit for Genteel or Respectable Company.

If Lydia had been cool and guarded with her emotions before, those early years did not hold a candle to how sensitive she was now to even the slightest rejection, insult, guarded snicker, or cutty-eyed glance! Lydia comported herself icily aloof in public settings, only revealing her true and easy self with family or a small circle of girlhood friends.

Lewrie had noted that of the five close female friends Lydia had, the ones to whom he had been introduced over the holidays, all but one of them was nowhere near what one could call pretty or fetching. They were matrons, by then, chick-a-biddies with broods of children and complacent husbands of looks less than handsome. Monied they might be, high in the local landed gentry and Squirearchy, but none of them were what Lewrie could call scintillating company; they were comfortable for Lydia, safe, sure, and ever accepting.

“It all sounds so bleak,” Lydia had said with a long sigh. “Your daughter and in-laws … your son, Sewallis, when I met him in Portsmouth…”

“Charlotte said he’d written her, after,” Lewrie had said.

“Then I can only imagine what he wrote of me,” Lydia had said with a toss of her head, “for he did not act in the least approving of me. Lord, what a small world to which we are reduced!”

“Well, we’ll always have Reading,” Lewrie had quipped.

“Your family dis-approving, most of England looking down their noses at me? What sort of life could it be, did the war end, and you were ashore for good?” Lydia had dejectedly sighed. “Even if we did decide to make our relationship more … permanent, there would be no change. With no welcome from your family, it would be even worse!”

“We … we just tell ’em all t’sod off, go to the Devil and shake themselves, Lydia,” Lewrie had replied. Admittedly, his use of the word “we” was so fraught with dread that he did stumble over it. A fond and passionate relationship when he was back from the sea was one thing; a permanent arrangement was something altogether else! Oh, he was fond of her, missed her when he was gone … but marriage for a second time?

“I sometimes wonder whether life would be so much easier did I stay in the country, at Foxbrush, and limit my world to Reading and Henley,” Lydia had gloomed. “I am so at ease here, and dread going to London, or anywhere else, lately.”

“A long way from the coast, though, Portsmouth or Sheerness, or wherever I put in,” Lewrie reminded her.

“When you rarely return,” she had said back, nigh snippily.

“But, I’m here now,” Lewrie had teased.

Fierce and passionate lovemaking had seemed to cheer her up.

*   *   *

From that night on, though, Lewrie had sensed a subtle change, a distancing from him, as if she thought it better for her to forsake him than to continue hoping that circumstances would change for the better in future.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, then Boxing Day brought more temporary house guests. There were grand suppers, music, and carols sung, with Lewrie tootling on his humble penny-whistle to the great amusement of the others, and on Christmas Eve, gifts were exchanged. She did not come to his rooms, fearful of exposure by the many guests.

Lewrie had brought a satin baby gown for the expectant Eudoxia, found in the drygoods shop in Anglesgreen, and for Percy a twelve-bottle case of Madeira port that Will Cony had ordered down from London. For Lydia, he’d found an iridescent dark green wool-and-silk–woven shawl, which had made Eudoxia laugh, clap her hands, and jape that the shawl might be the equivalent to the “paper of pins” from the old rhyme in sign of a plighting of troth! Lydia made the proper noises in gracious delight, but it had irked Lewrie a trifle that she was not all that enthusiastic, and he had caught her a few minutes later, seated apart and fingering the shawl, looking very pensive.

And Lewrie had found it odd that his holiday gift was not from Lydia alone, but from her brother Percy, as well, though it was a splendid one; a double-locked and double-barrelled fowling piece with the barrels aligned over-under along the same line of sight. It was set in a glossy walnut chequered stock, and chased with silver inlay and intricate engravings.

“A Wallace!” Percy had crowed. “I discovered it when we passed through London from the coast, and the arrangement of the barrels made such perfect sense that I got one for myself, as well, ha ha!”

“My God, it’s magnificent, Percy!” Lewrie had exclaimed, awed and stunned by its beauty, its perfection, and how much a custom fowler must have cost. He’d felt like a miser in comparison, but a new firearm had always given him immense delight.

“I can’t wait t’try it out,” he had declared. “Thankee, Lydia, Percy, and Eudoxia, I must also add. Such a crack shot must’ve had a say in buying it. Christ, you’ve made me stupefied!”

The Stangbourne estates consisted of thousands of acres spread all over the county, where deer and game birds could be found. Percy swore that they would go fowling after church services on Christmas Day, and he made good on his promise, resulting in such a bag that the Christmas-night supper and the servants’ Boxing Day supper prominently featured roast pheasant and massive pigeon pies.

It would have been wonderful to stay on a few more days, lounging about and feeding off Stangbourne largesse, but Lewrie had to get back to Anglesgreen, and his regimen. It was well that he did leave, for the last night had been the very worst.

*   *   *

Lydia had wanted to stroll in the decorative gardens behind the great house, bleak as they were in mid-Winter, and as cold and snowy as were the prospects. Wrapped up warmly, she and Lewrie went anyway, for the fresh air, and to work off a hearty dinner.

“You must go tomorrow,” Lydia had begun, sounding glum.

“Fear I must,” he’d told her, equally depressed.

“And, you won’t be back ’til late in the Spring,” she’d added.

“Have t’get fit and back to normal, after all,” he’d agreed.

“Before you come back here, you will surely go up to London to seek employment with Admiralty, first,” Lydia had reasoned. “If you do fully restore yourself, of course?”

“Well, it’s what I do for a living, so yes, I’d go to London, first,” Lewrie had told her, feeling the first disturbing twinges under his heart, sure that there was a shoe to be dropped on him. He’d looked towards her, but her face was set, half-hidden under the cowl of a greatcoat, with her arms crossed inside a fur muff that she held clenched to her middle. “We could meet there, spend a few weeks, perhaps…”