"I have no idea, sir."
"Carry on, Mister Ballard. I'm going ashore!"
He was rowed to the town's one long pier, debarked onto a lower landing stage atop a catamaran work platform, and almost ran down the pier for the tiny village. A man on horseback waited for him at the shore end, with another mount held by a groom near at hand.
"Lieutenant Alan Lewrie?" the man asked. "That is the Alacrity yonder, sir?"
"She is, and I am, sir. And you are?"
"Andrew Deveaux, sir. Delighted to make your acquaintance," he said, springing down from his saddle as lithe as a cavalryman. Deveaux was a rather small and lean fellow, shorter than Alan. His face was fox-lean, with a pointy patrician nose, almost a woman's soft mouth, large, liquid brown eyes, and a smallish, tapering ball of a chin. He wore two-tone black and tan top boots, white sailcloth breeches, and a loosely flowing silk shirt, his face shaded by a very wide-brimmed woven straw hat. They shook hands, muttering the expected "your servant, sir," and that's when Alan discovered the steel in the man, for his grip was stronger than a fencing master's.
"Didn't think you'd come to Port Howe," Deveaux commented. "I was prepared to ride to The Bight on the western coast, if necessary."
"Alacrity is shallow-draught enough to enter, sir, so I thought this would save time. You've been watching for me?"
"For nigh a month, sir. Here, sir, do you ride? My groom has a mount for you, and my coach can be fetched if you do not."
"I ride, sir. Thankee."
A black servant brought a fine gelding forward and held reins while Alan got aboard. They set off down a sandy track between thick clusters of sea-grape trees for his plantation house to the west. Alan was struck by how young Deveaux was, how unremarkable.
"This is quite an honour, Colonel Deveaux," Alan said. "To meet you, a hero of the Revolution, and the man who recaptured Nassau from the Dons." Another of those frail but game scrappers? he wondered.
"Neck-or-nothing," Deveaux shrugged. "But bloodless. People do make much more of it than it really was. I am quite honoured to meet you, sir. I heard in the Nassau paper of your feats at Conch Bar, and Walker's Cay."
"Well, Walker's Cay, sir…" Alan grumbled sadly, then sat up and looked back towards the harbour. "Sir, we put up day-marks and some warning beacons earlier. They're gone now. Do you have any…?"
"Oh, those!" Deveaux hooted, throwing his head back in delight. "Damme, sir, do you not know that before the war, a third of Bahamian revenues came from shipwrecking and salvage? Blackbeard, Henry Morgan… Port Howe was one of their old haunts, so the locals tore down your marks the minute you were out of sight and moved 'em ashore for lures, to make the town look bigger at night. Needed the timber for buildings, too. They light the place up like a major city, put lights in the harbour so it appears deep-draught ships are anchored in Port Howe, in hopes of luring the foolhardy onto the reefs, so they may strip the wreck. You got off easy, sir. I'm told a Navy officer formerly in these islands was almost lynched for even suggesting he'd erect a lighthouse on Great Exuma!"
"Worse than Cornishmen, I do declare," Lewrie smiled, surprised all over again in spite of his supposed worldliness.
"Indeed. We get so little news here on Cat Island. What about Walker's Cay, sir? Peyton writes that all talk of suits and such have been dropped long ago. Did you…?"
"Dropped?" Alan cried. "I had no idea, sir. I've not had even a single word from Nassau in six months!"
"Not even from your wife?" Deveaux frowned. "Pardon me, but he also wrote that she was most greatly upset that she had not heard from you, Lieutenant Lewrie."
"She is well, Colonel Deveaux?" Alan demanded with alarm. "Did he say more? She's with child, and I've been beside myself with fear!"
"He did state she was expecting, and that he and his wife were perturbed that her worries about your silence would affect her health. But she is well, Lieutenant Lewrie, he did assure me of that. She had begged him to discover what had happened to you, and why you hadn't responded to her letters."Damme, sir, I got no letters! Nothing!" Alan shouted. "No one aboard Alacrity's had a single thing, except for our purser, and only inventories of supplies sent out to sustain us, which do not require an answer. I've sent request after request to my squadron commander, and dozens of letters to Caroline, and it's like dropping a stone down a wellshaft and never hearing even a splash. I feared… you cannot imagine what I have feared, sir!"
"Well, rest easy," Deveaux assured him. "There's a small bag of correspondence for you and your ship, sir. And a thick packet of letters from your wife. Peyton could not believe you would ignore her so callously. He stated in his note to me that he suspects your superiors are withholding your mail to and fro."
"I know Commodore Garvey was wroth with me over Walker's Cay and John Finney's trial. He sent us down here out of anger. But I never thought he'd be that vindictive to me!"
"You've written him often, then?" Deveaux demanded.
"Weekly, sir. We're running out of all manner of stores except for food and drink. Sir, if this goes on, my ship'll be crippled for lack of new spars, rope and sailcloth. Yet, without specific orders, I am barred from returning to the Navy dockyard at Nassau."
"And I trust you've saved a fair copy of your every plea, sir?" Deveaux hinted slyly. "As a precaution for the future?"
"Aye, sir, that's customary. And in black ink, too," Alan had to grin as he said it. "But why would he interrupt my mail? How can a man be so spiteful?"
"We'll discuss that later," Colonel Deveaux told him. "Once we get to my house, you read your letters. And fill yourself in on what has been happening in Nassau in your absence. Then we'll talk more."
Caroline was alive! And well!
He went to her letters first, reading the one with the most recent date to assure himself of her existence and her safety. She wrote that she was blooming big as a mare about to foal, the baby was kicking lustily, and that she carried low, which the physician and midwife she had engaged considered signs of a man-child. Except for the usual complaints and pains, the clumsiness and heaviness, she reassured him that her confinement was not too hard, although she missed the pleasures of riding, gardening, and doing her own cooking; yet, between Betty Mustin and Wyonnie (Lew-rie flushed with remorse as that similar name appeared) she had no difficulties.
After that joyous news, though, there was a plaint that brought tears to his eyes as he read of her tightly denied fears; that he and Alacrity had been sunk or wrecked; that he had died of some fever; that he'd fallen out of love with her and now spurned her; that he did not really desire children, and had turned his back on her, as a rich man might discard an inconveniently pregnant mistress who was no longer as attractive or slim.
…I try and try to imagine you being so involved in some stern Duty that even our Love must be relegated a poor second for the nonce, but dearest Alan, it has been so long since you sailed away, and not one word from you have I received, nor any hearsay as to…
"Oh, Caroline, Christ!" he whispered through a throat constricted by his weeping. "Goddamme, no, it's not like that!"
He would sail at once to Nassau, he vowed. Damn the threats, or the consequences! Let them court-martial him for anything they damned well pleased, just so long as he could see her one more time, and tell her that her fears had no substance!
"And Goddamn the bastard who did this to me!" he raged. "Cruel, malicious bastard! How could anyone…? Dozens and dozens of letters and they've kept 'em all. Damme, do they read 'em? Do they gloat over her pain? By Christ, I'll have their heart's blood for thisl"
On the patio, Andrew Deveaux and his wife sat in the shade, and winced as they heard the strangled howl from within their drawing room.
"That poor young man," Mrs. Deveaux shuddered. "And his terrified young wife, Andrew! Do you truly believe that his commodore keeps his letters deliberately, dear?"
"I do," Deveaux scowled, running his hands through his thick and unruly long blond hair. "That, and a lot worse. Oh, it's foul, I…"
"You're dead, swear to Jesus, you're a dead man!" Lewrie wailed.
"I'd not wish to walk on Lieutenant Lewrie's bad side, dear," Mrs. Deveaux frowned. "Not even were I the King of France!"
It took an hour for Lewrie to collect himself enough to join them on the patio for tea, though he was still fretful and jerking at inability to be in action at that instant He could not keep his handsstill, and one crossed leg juddered upon the other as he rocked irately on his chair.
"I trust your wife is well, Lieutenant Lewrie," Deveaux asked.
"Aye, sir," Alan said, trying to be as gracious as his hosts. "The physician and midwife are confident the child's due late this month. A boy, they believe. Why, I could be a father now, even as we speak!"
"And your other letters are reassuring as well?"
"From my shore agent, Courts Co., my bank back home, my grandmother in Devon. Even one from my father in India. Caroline had saved them, no longer…" he gulped down a threatening spasm of raw emotion, "no longer believing I could, or would, respond to her until I returned to Nassau."
Sore as he hurt, he had to grin slightly, remembering what his father Sir Hugo had penned. It had begun "You silly ranti-poling dog, sir! Have I not drummed into you one should rent, not purchase, quim?" That smile, however, was just as quickly gone.
"God, it's so petty. So base! So cruel to her!"
"It's Jack Finney," Deveaux declared bluntly. "Sugar?"
"Finney? How could he get at Fleet mail, sir?" Alan gaped.
"Not Finney directly," Deveaux allowed. "I doubt he has interests in your personal letters. But you did anger him when you caught his ship trading in pirated goods, and you stung him upon his sorest spot when you burned the cache and hauled him into court. He has powerful friends, sir. And money enough to buy anyone he desires."
"So even you believe he's a pirate, sir?" Alan hoped aloud.
"I'm certain of it," Deveaux stated firmly.
"So he's bought himself a clerk in the Commodore's office, then. That way, he'd know where our patrols would be, so he might tell his piratical confederates," Alan realized. "And he never sued us because he would have been exposed as a smuggler at the least! Those goods we burned were never landed or bonded. And all this time Rodgers and I were fearing he'd end up making us jump through his lawyers' hoops!"
"I expect it cost him considerable to stay out of court on any smuggling charges, to boot," Deveaux smiled thinly. "The assembly in which I sit, sir, the courts, the Governor's Council… see here, sir, Nassau is an offal-ditch, an open sewer, a cesspit of corruption, and all is for sale! When I was awarded my grant of land for what little I did to retake New Providence, I was more than happy to settle on Cat Island. Did you know even this salubrious isle was named long ago for an Arthur Catt, a pirate? And does that not tell you something about the Bahamas, sir? Most of the year, I am quite content to avoid Nassau with all its back-stabbing, money-grubbing squalor, and limit my visits to Assembly sessions. Even so, this far happily removed, we still get a whiff of its corruption, like an ill wind from an abbatoir. I have heard rumours. Peyton did not speak of them in his letter to you?"
