"… just a bloody nuisance," his father Sir Hugo was saying in aspersion as he wiped his mouth with a napkin as his plate of pudding was whisked away by a table-servant. "Women should not gamble anymore than they should attempt to smoke, or curse." To which their companions at-table grunted their amiable and dismissive agreements. "Had I the 'tin,' I'd found a man-only club, gentlemen. Somewhat like The Cocoa Tree, White's, Almack's, or Boodle's… with the ladies allowed in to dine and be decorative, surely, but shoo them out by midnight. Make a male sanctuary, before they overrun all our masculine institutions by the battalions. Dash it all, a place where men may rest 'twixt entertainments, perhaps with lodgings, where a feller may let down his hair and put up his feet…"
"Hear, hear!" one of their fellow diners cheered. "Gentlemen of standing and quality only allowed," he posed, drawing agreement from several others who had been seated by twos or singletons at their long table, hit-or-miss.
"An in-town retreat for serving officers, say," another opined. "Reasonably priced, of course, so we won't have to hunt high and low for lodgings each time we come up to London. Like a regimental mess, a ward-room, or…" the gentleman in Army uniform, a captain of foot, proposed. He was well turned out, but half his worth was surely on his back, Lewrie thought, not in his purse or with his banker. "What say you, Captain Lewrie?" the Army man asked him. "An intriguing idea?"
"Most," Lewrie answered, which was about all he could manage as a belch arose, redolent of baked sole, roast beef, pigeon pie, and wine. "A refuge from… domesticity," he glumly supposed.