Lewrie hitched his heavy wool cloak closer about his neck as he rode near the Red Swan Inn. Late as it was, as close to suppertime for the revelers inside, whom he could espy through the cheery diamond-paned windows, there was quite a merry crowd gathered there. A fair number of horses were hitched outside, blanketed against the cold, under the now bare but towering oaks. The richer patrons had theirs temporarily stabled in the warmer barn behind. He thought he spotted Gov-ernour's tall gray gelding, and beside it, two hunters he knew as belonging to Sir Romney Embleton, Bt, and his whey-faced son Harry.

Now there's shit for you, Lewrie thought with a rueful grin. For a mad fleeting moment he thought of going in the Red Swan for a stirrup cup of hot gin punch, or a mug of mulled wine to warm his journey home. Just on a lark, to see the looks on their phizes for daring to show his own in the more refined, high-gentry squire-ish Red Swan!

For just a moment, he envied his brother-in-law Governour, too. He was married to Sir Romney's daughter Millicent, long before Lewrie had come to Anglesgreen and wed Caroline, upsetting all the plans of seven years before. Governour and Millicent could socialize when and where they might. Bad as blood was between Lewries and Embletons, and because of them between Chiswicks and Embletons, Governour had welcome still at Embleton Hall, and at all the parish and county's doings. Though it was sometimes a trifle thin. His and Caroline's, however, was nonexistent. And looked fair to being nonexistent far past the advent of the coming new century.

Truth, even further, be told, since they'd returned from the Bahamas in '89 when his last ship Alacrity had paid off in Portsmouth, they'd been treated bad as leprous Gypsies by those locals who walked in dread of Embleton disapproval, or fawned on Embleton largesse.