A King's Trade by Dewey Lambdin Page B

‘jolly good fellow,’ just so long as they perform as required to attain success ‘gainst our foes.”
    No! Really?
Lewrie thought tongue-in-cheek;
Such an out-going and amiable fellow like yourself? Perish the thought!
    â€œBelieve me when I tell you, Lewrie,” Mr. Twigg continued, now stern-faced and cold, “that people who’ve displeased me in the past I
have
ruined, for the good of the country, and, when naval or military force was involved, for the good of their respective services, in the long view. Had I really felt call to ruin
you,
whyever had I not had you cashiered
years
ago, hey?”
    â€œWell …” Lewrie was forced to realise.
    â€œYour personal life…such as it is …” Twigg scoffed on, with a leery roll of his eyes, “has no bearing on your public life, or your service to the Navy. Unless you were a drunkard, a rapist, or a brute so heedless and flagrant as to become a public spectacle, and a newspaper sensation. Thankfully, you’re rather a
mild
sort of sinner. You know how to keep your ‘itches’ scratched with little notice.
Sub rosa,
as it were. As an English gentleman should, or he ceases
being
a gentleman, and then you’d deserve ev’ry bit of your come-uppance.”
    Lewrie could have little to say to that. He squirmed a little more on his chair, and blushed like a Cully chastened by a
very
stern old vicar, ready to swear he’d never do whatever it was, again.
    â€œPut me in mind of the Scot poet Robert Burns, you do, Lewrie,” Twigg said with a thin-lipped smile and a simper. “Know of him, hey?”
    â€œAye,” Lewrie allowed himself to admit.
    â€œBurns said of himself that he was, ah… ‘a professional fornicator with a genius for paternity,’” Twigg quoted with a chuckle.
    â€œAh-hmm,” Lewrie said, clearing his throat with a fist against his mouth.
    â€œDespite that, Burns wrote simply marvellous songs and poems,” Twigg allowed, thawing a little. “Despite your shortcomings, you are an invaluable asset to the Navy, and the Crown, Lewrie, and I’ll not let you be ‘scragged’ over this smarmy jape of yours ‘gainst the Beauman family. Not ‘til this war is done, and we’ve wrung the last drop of usefulness from you. You’re as much a weapon as any broadside of guns ever you, or anyone else, fired.”
    â€œThank you, sir,” Lewrie felt called to reply, with a shiver of relief that someone, no matter how horrid, was on his side. Under the circumstances, perhaps horrid, devious, and brutal aid was just what was needed!
    â€œBesides …” Twigg simpered again. “Watching you twist about in the wind is devilish-amusing…now and then. Eat up, man! Your food’s going cold, and ‘tis too tasty to go to waste. More wine? See to him, Ajit Roy
jee. Bharnaa opar!
Fill him up!”
    Suddenly in a much better mood, Lewrie accepted more piping-hot rice, more yogurt gravy, more slices of meat, and began to eat, about to rave over the exotic, long-missed, flavours, ‘til…
    â€œHow to achieve that aim, though…aye, there’s the rub,” Mr. Twigg mused over new-steepled fingers, with his fierce hatchet face in a daunting scowl. “Stealing those slaves and making sailors out of ‘em rather
exceeded
your usual harum-scarum antics. Left ‘em in the shade, as it were.”
    â€œYou mentioned that Sir Malcolm Shockley might be of some help, sir?” Lewrie dared to suggest, with curry sauce tingling his lips.
    â€œAye, Shockley. He
likes
you, and he isn’t your run-of-the-mill backbencher in the Commons, either. No Vicar of Bray, is he, nor is he the Great Mute, either. Allied with Sir Samuel Whitbread, and those younger ‘progressives’ who associate with him. Shockley’s not a typical ‘Country-Put,’ like most of our rural, squirearchy, ‘John Bull’