“Then let us go … how do I call you?” Maddalena asked with an impish expression, “Captain, or Lewrie, or…?”

“My given name’s Alan, Maddalena,” he told her.

“Alan,” she whispered as if it pleased her to her toes.

*   *   *

“Ye don’t get much for two pounds a month,” Lewrie commented, once they had climbed up the stairs to the second storey above the ground floor of her lodging house. There was one large, un-glazed window with inside shutters for night, with a rickety two-place dining table in front of it. Over to the left was a hard-seated, worn settee, a pair of wing-back chairs, and some end tables. Most of the right-hand wall was taken up with a waist-high stone hearth with an iron grill for cooking, the wood and kindling stored in buckets, and some pots, pans, kitchen tools, and a whisk and bucket to sweep out the embers. There was a doorway which led to the second room on the right-hand side, in which there was a decidedly ugly armoire and a couple of traveller’s chests, a vanity table and stool with a large mirror, and an ancient wooden bed-stead with a high and garishly-carved headboard, and a mattress as thin as charity, held up by rope suspension. He gave the mattress a hard shove, and it emitted some alarming squeaks. To make matters even worse, Maddalena’s windows overlooked a steep, narrow side street that led further uphill from the High Street, and he estimated that he could have spit and hit the narrow iron balconies on the other side!

“‘A poor thing, but mine own’, hey?” Lewrie quoted.

“It is cool, most of the day,” she told him. Indeed, the lodging house was in the permanent shadow of the mountainous Rock.

“Love what ye’ve done with it, even so,” Lewrie allowed with a grin, for the coverlet on the bed was nice, the bed linens smelled as fresh as new-laundered and sun-dried. There were many candleholders, most black wrought iron, but some made of shiny pewter. In both of the rooms, there were rather good Turkey carpets, some colourful end table coverings, and the settee had been draped with a large, intricately-figured cloth to disguise its age. She’d hung some paintings she’d found in the used-goods markets that weren’t all that bad, and of course there was a cross on one wall in the main room and a wood crucifix near the bed-stead. Despite Hughes’s parsimony, she had made the best of it, with planters and flowers on the outer window sills, some potted plants inside to brighten things up, and … there was a large wire cage in which a reddish warbler flitted and cheeped.

“So many need lodgings, so the prices are high, and you find what you can find,” Maddalena said by way of apologising, going to the bird cage to whisper and coo to the warbler, which came to her inviting fingers and began to sing its song.

“Down the hallway, in front,” Lewrie said, sticking his head out the front, door. “It’s open.”

“Ah, sim, a grain trader rented it, a man who had the temporary license?” Maddalena said, joining him at the door. “But, he lost the right for some reason, and gave it up yesterday.”

“Let’s go look,” Lewrie prompted, leading her down the hall. “Now, this is much better!” he declared, after a quick look about.

The corner unit’s two windows were glazed double doors which led to a wide iron balcony, and both of its rooms were much larger, to boot. The planked floors admittedly creaked, here and there, but it was much nicer, and they had been polished. Like Maddalena’s it came furnished, but the appointments were newer and showed much less wear.

“How much did he pay for it, I wonder?” Lewrie mused aloud.

“Oh, I think I heard that it was three pounds a month,” she said with a rueful look, as if that was simply too extravagant.

“Let’s see your landlord,” Lewrie announced.

A quarter-hour later, and Lewrie had taken the better lodgings for her, laying out £18 for the next six months, with another pound to see that all her own things would be moved for her, immediately. That lit a fire under her landlord, another of those English expatriates who’d served at Gibraltar and taken their retirement there. He whistled up some porters idling at a nearby tavern, and within the next hour, all her chests and household goods, her plants and linens, all her decorations, and the bird cage had been shifted. She and Lewrie had seen to her wardrobe, and it had proved to be a thin selection of clothing, which he swore that he would improve, at once.

“Deus, I cannot believe it!” Maddalena exclaimed after the last porter had gone and the door had been closed. She clutched her new key to her chest for a moment, then flung out her arms and whirled about in delight, dancing round the much larger main room.

“Done good, did I?” Lewrie teased.

She laughed, and came to him to give him a hug in gratitude, a hug which turned into a long, closely pressed embrace.

Damme, but does she feel promisin’! Lewrie thought in a delight of his own. He considered it too early on to grope her, but she felt slim and lean, and the press of her breasts against his waist-coat and shirt front bespoke firmness, and perhaps more to her than what her gown had hidden. The hoped-for revelation made his crutch tighten.

“Alan, I knew that you would be a kind man, but this! A very kind man you are,” she said, almost purring with her cheek against his, and giving him a squeeze. “And one so generous!”

“D’ye think you’ll be happier here?” he asked with a wide grin.

“Immensely happy!” she declared, breaking away at last, and leading him to sit with her on the settee.

“What else d’ye need? A cook? A maidservant?” he prompted to show her even more generosity.

“I have always cooked for myself, or my family,” she shrugged the idea off. “Living alone, I do not need a maid, like the grand ladies. What would I do with myself if there was someone else to do all the work?” She found the concept amusing. “Even if this is much larger, where would I keep a maid? Maybe … oh, once a week, I may need a woman to come in and help with the cleaning, but only for a few hours. There is a laundrywoman nearby, and the markets, when I need something, and I do it by myself.”

“How much did Hughes give you to maintain yourself when he was not around, then?” Lewrie offered.

“Two or three pounds,” she told him. “It was more than enough. He called me … another of your odd English words … frugal? I need little. Bread, jam for breakfast, perhaps an egg. Cheese, bread, and fruit at mid-day, and I cook a soup with some vegetables for my supper, with a little something sweet for after. I live simply.”

“With more, cheese, bread, and wine,” Lewrie joshed.

“But, of course, Alan!” Maddalena said, flinging back her head to laugh. “When I wish something finer, I expect that you will take me out to a nice ristoran, or, how you say, a chop-house?”

“I noted you don’t have a locking caddy,” he said, craning his head round to peer towards the cooking facilities. “You’ll need one, for coffee, tea, cocoa beans, and sugar.”

“You British and your tea!” she teased. “I love coffee in the morning, and cocoa at night, but…!”

“If we don’t find one before I sail, I’ll leave you some extra, so you can buy what you need,” Lewrie promised, describing the way he’d have his cool tea prepared, with lemon and sugar. “Why, with a little more, you could dine yourself out, when ye wish a better supper, like the lobster at Pescadore’s.”

That made her look away and down, and when she looked back up at him, she was frowning, and had turned serious.

“I have been under a man’s protection before, Alan, but I have never been a whore,” she solemnly explained. “I pray to all the saints that I never must be. A woman in Portugal, Spain, or here at Gibraltar especially, where there are so many soldiers … unless she is old, a woman who dines alone is mistaken for a whore, and that I will never do. When you are away, I live alone … frugally,” she swore, her seriousness dissolved by amusement over that English word, again. “Your women in England, they dine out alone, or do they only do so escorted by a man? And what would you think of a woman who goes out alone?”