Talented, aye, Lewrie allowed to himself; successful with past cases, but… 'tis no skin off his arse does he fail. It's just one more court appearance… notorious enough t'make his name either way.

And it rather irked Lewrie that the stout young whelp was all but ready to cut capers, or do a horn-pipe of glee.

"Good morning, Mister MacDougall," Lewrie felt fit to reply. "I trust we'll both be smiling when the day's done… ow! Damn!" for he had stubbed the toe of one of his gilt-trimmed Hessian boots against a large wood box placed under the table.

"I am completely certain that we shall, sir!" MacDougall replied. "Now, more than ever," he added, rocking on the balls of his feet and bestowing upon his "brief" a "sly-boots" smile.

"What?" Lewrie enquired with a scowl of some confusion. It was his life on the line; for a second he could conjure that the box under the table was reserved for his head after they lopped it off, hanging bedamned. "You know something I don't?"

"A most wondrous something, Captain Lewrie!" MacDougall all but chortled, his face dimpled and rosy with delight. "Word has come to me from Mister Twigg of the Foreign Office concerning your accuser, Hugh Beauman, sir. It seems that he, that frostily handsome young wife of his… his own attorney, and all his witnesses… have decamped!"

"So?" Lewrie said with another frown of confusion. "Last time they were in court, he turned into his own worst enemy with all o' his bellowin' and threats. His barrister most-like-"

"His witnesses, sir!" MacDougall reiterated, peering at Lewrie as if he were too simple to understand plain English. "Decamped. Gone like thieves in the night. No longer in London. No longer in England, d'ye see."

Christ, Twigg's killed 'em? Lewrie just had to imagine. There wasn't any reason that he could see for Hugh Beauman to withdraw his case, short of a dire threat from official circles in H.M.