The Baltic Gambit

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

He was best known about London as Captain "Black Alan" Lewrie, Royal Navy, so it was not a night for what his brother-in-law, Burgess Chiswick, called civilian dress in Hindoo; mufti. No, it was his full-dress uniform with all the gilt lace and twin epaulets, his hundred-guinea East India Company sword, and both the Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown medals, and Covent Garden was the site of the confrontation-to-be.

Lewrie had already called upon Theoni's house in Montagu Mews, after determining that she and her maid were away, shopping in the Strand, and had raised quite a ruckus… after seeming to have knocked at the door and being denied entrance (during which he had slipped a card into the jamb), then descending the steps to the street to begin his rant… "to the roof-tops," as Mrs. Denby insisted.

"Hide from me, will you, Madam?" he had cried for a start, and feeling like the greatest fool; at the several good public schools of his youth, Lewrie had taken part in more than a few stage shows, to the detriment of his studies, and had usually been jeered for clumsy readings and stiff performances. "You wrote those scurrilous, lying notes to torment my wife, and I'll not have it! Admit me, or come out, you jade! You have poisoned my marriage with your lies and hurt my wife sore with your filth!"

Hold on, he'd thought; Should it 've been 'sweet marriage,' or…? Should've written this down first. Gad, this is lame!

"How dare you! I'll have you in court for it!" he'd gone on, warming to his topic, as passersby, residents in the Mews, and street vendors had gathered. "Just 'cause I saved you and your son from those Serbian pirates in the Adriatic,… oh, your, letters to me were flatterin', but just 'cause I wrote you back didn't mean I favoured you… or felt anything for you! You're deluded! Jealous and spiteful! Get a man of your own, and leave me and my wife be!"

"Here, now, what's all this?" a dyspeptic neighbour asked him, coming out upon his own front steps from next door. "Hush up, you!"

"Not 'til Mistress Connor offers apologies!" Lewrie shot back.

"What, the Greek baggage?" the neighbour said with a sniff.

" 'E's arter some furrin mort, 'e is," a milk-seller wench told a girl with a trey of posies and nosegays.

"She's tormented my wife with lying letters for years," Lewrie accused to the neighbour, whose wife had now joined him. "Daft stuff, imaginin' she's in love with me, 'stead of bein' merely grateful, sir! Spun moonshine 'bout us together, sendin' anonymous letters to drive my wife and me apart,… as if I'd ever leave my Caroline for the likes of her! I found out just yesterday who's been sendin' 'em, and I mean t 'get satisfaction!"

"Well, get it somewhere else, damn ye," the neighbour grumbled. "Sue the uppity foreign bitch, and leave off botherin' this neighbourhood, or I'll call the 'Charlies' on ye. Begone, sir!"

"Mus' be a mad woman, lives 'ere," the teenaged flower vendor told a pieman and a passing couple of strollers. "Thinks she's got 'is feller fer 'er 'usband."

"An' 'im already married, tchah!" the milk-seller said with a spit on the cobbles. "Ready fer Bedlam, she is."

"Furriners," the pieman commented. "Too damned many of ' em in England, ye akses me. Oughter be run out o' 'ere."

"You'll hear from my attorney!" Lewrie shouted one last time, shaking a fist at the windows of Theoni's parlour before departing.

Covent Garden Theatre, the biggest and grandest of all the play-houses in the district, was, thankfully, no longer staging Pizarro and had fallen back on a popular Sheridan play, a recurring staple, though the styles and colours of the fashionable ladies showed that the fads inspired by that play would be around at least 'til midsummer. Lewrie milled round the ornate lobby with a glass of a rather thin Rhenish in one hand, barely tasting it in tiny sips that only moistened his lips as he scanned the arrivals for his prey. And, feeling as nervous as a pick-pocket in a room full of justices, wondering if Theoni would actually dare show her face in Publick, after Twigg had exposed her maid, and he had staged his petty dramatics before her doors.

Nervous as he felt, though, it was hard to keep his mind on the matter, for there were rather a lot of most-attractive women entering the theatre that night, more than a few fetching courtesans and ladies of the demimonde strolling and trolling themselves before the gentlemen without partners, and even the girls who vended oranges and such… whose charms were as delightful as the high-priced courtesans, and whose morals were even lower than most actresses… seemed even more alluring than usual.

Lewrie bought himself a fresh glass of Rhenish, finding that he had drained the first without even noticing, and took an inventory of how long it had been since he had "put the leg over" anything.

Christ, has it been two bloody years? he gawped in wonder after he recalled his last amourous encounter; 'Tis a wonder I don't drool! Or squirt semen out my ears, from the pressure.

His free hand involuntarily went to a left-hand pocket of his waist coat. Aha… two cundums stowed away. Just in case… hmm. 'Long as I go armoured, would a whore be all that bad? he speculated.

Theoni would most-definitely be right-out, within the hour, he grimly determined, and even nuzzling Eudoxia's perfumed neck would be a death sentence. Caroline? The only reason his wife would ever let him under the covers with her again would be a ruse to whip out a very sharp knife and have his "wedding tackle" off, most-like! Even if she believed but half of what Mr. Twigg promised to tell her, there were a tad too many other women he could not explain away.

Must get a recent guidebook t 'London quim, he told himself, and began to regard the strolling women with sharper eyes.

"Dear Captain Lewrie!" a gay voice chirped in giddy sing-song. It was Mrs. Georgina Denby, damn her eyes, tricked out in a stylish satin gown of bright, shimmering blue, with rather more flesh exposed than Lewrie ever wished to see, earrings, necklace, and bracelet of a pale topaz set (if real, he speculated, gossip paid hellish-well!) and a pair of glasses perched on the tip of her nose. A reticule bag of pale blue satin hung from one elbow, and her hands held a small notebook and a pencil. "How delightful to see you, again, sir!"

"Ah, um… Mistress Denby… Georgina," Lewrie flummoxed and applied her first name at her coy prompting, The crowd in the lobby limited his movements, but he sketched her a bow. "You keep well?"

"Excellently well, Captain Lewrie!" she replied, dipping him a stumpy curtsy, then came quite close to mutter, "Has the bitch shown her face yet? Is this truly the appointed time and place?"

"S'posed t 'be, but…," Lewrie said with a shrug.

"Frightened off, most likely," Mrs. Denby whispered, leering and rolling her eyes. "I must circulate. Only here as a witness, not a fellow conspirator, la la!"

"I trust you will enjoy the play tonight, Ma'am," Lewrie said in a more-normal voice, with another brief bow.

"Ah, yes, Captain Lewrie, I am certain I shall," Mrs. Denby replied in her normal gushing tones. "Anything by Sheridan always proves immensely droll and amusing. Ta ta!" With that, she tottered away to smile and nod among the fashionable, and "dirt-worthy."

And there she was! The doorman bowed Theoni Connor inside; a very nervous-looking Theoni, no matter the exquisite care she'd taken with her appearance. Her placid smile simply would not hold for more than a few fleeting seconds, and her eyes had the look of a harried deer as she paused just inside the lobby and peered about to spot him, carefully tossing back the hood of her cape from an artful, bejewelled "do," and unfastening it from her throat.

If I didn't despise her so much, I'd be tryin' t'bed her, Lewrie told himself, for Theoni had come to impress, with a costly set of diamonds on fingers, wrist, and throat, that impressively bouncy bosom of hers a tad more exposed than most women present, and wearing a new gown of champagne and ivory figured satin, with a white lace stole over her shoulders.

She saw him, winced for the briefest moment, then plastered a hopeful smile on her phyz and threaded her way through the crowd in his direction. Lewrie stood stock-still and scowled, and, as she neared, her smile went even sketchier.

"Alan, I…," she said at last, with a nervous toss of her head.

"Madam," Lewrie intoned, still scowling. "I know what you did."

"Alan, if you would-"

"How dare you!" he barked, nigh to his quarterdeck voice. "Have you no shame?"

She squirmed as if looking for a hidey-hole, wringing her hands.

"There is no excuse for tormenting my wife with your anonymous letters, with your made-up lies, Madam," Lewrie harshly told her. "No excuse for besmirchin' me, and tryin' t'ruin my marriage with filth as you have. You'll write no more poison, hear me?"

This was as amusing as any Sheridan play, much like an entr'acte 'tween scenes on the stage inside, and the crowd of theatregoers in the lobby just ate it up, hushing breathlessly, then buzzing and whispering among themselves, all eyes on them.

"Damn you!" Theoni shot back, her artfully made face pale, and sounding breathless, like to swoon. "What of our son? What of all of our letters?"

"As for the letters, Madam," Lewrie replied, and one may trust that he'd thrashed that point out in his head beforehand, "after your rescue from pirates in the Adriatic, by my hand, you wrote me, and I wrote back, to be civil. As for your son, well… you have a son by someone, most-like your dead husband, is one charitable, for you were not that long a widow when I saved your life.

"Leave my wife alone, Madam," he quickly added, raising a hand to cut off her protest, as spots of colour dappled her cheeks. "We'll have no more of your imaginings. Get yourself a man of your own, and do not torment us further. I do not know you, Madam!" Lewrie said in a stern voice, turning away and giving her the "cut direct."

"Why, you…! Lying…!" Theoni spat, then made the worst of all errors one could make in England… in her shock and outrage, she lapsed into what Lewrie took for modern Greek, hurling curses at him, and, falling back on her upbringing on Zante in the Ionian Islands, she added several insulting hand gestures, of the maledictory variety, too.

A couple of ushers and a manager forced their way to Lewrie, as another pair of ushers approached Theoni, as well. "Hear now, sir, we will have none of this. I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to leave the theatre, sir."

"My pardons to you, sir," Lewrie said in answer to that threat, in the mildest of takings, "but the scandalous way that… woman has abused my wife over the years… the identity of the anonymous writer I just discovered… rowed me beyond all temperance. I hardly expected the… her, to show her face in polite society. My pardons, again, for any disturbance, and of course I shall leave, for the sake of your other attendees."

"Well, that'd be good, sir," the manager allowed.

"Though I hope, sometime in future, to be allowed back?" Lewrie asked with a hopeful grin. "With her barred for life, I promise I'll be as quiet as a dormouse."

"We'll see, sir, and thankee for your consideration," the manager said with a relieved look, looking over towards the doors. Theoni wasn't taking it quite so well, was stamping a foot imperiously, and spitting-mad, still lapsing into Greek at times as she fumed.

"Foreigners," someone said with a sniff of disgust near Lewrie. "Simply won't behave proper, hey?" A buzz of agreement followed.

"Courtesan, most-like, my dear," a gentleman told his partner.

"Captain Alan Lewrie… that trial, don't ye know… got off, good for him… Imagine her bloody gall, m'dear, impugnin' a hero such as he… writin' his wife filthy letters, he said… alarmin' her for years, the bitch," was the general tone of the theatregoers. As Lewrie gathered up his boat-cloak, hat, and sword, and as he watched Theoni put up a brief struggle against ejection, the grin he wore upon his face could not help from slipping from muse-ful to gleeful.

Once sure that Theoni Kavares Connor had coached away in high dudgeon, and that the coast was clear, Lewrie took a stroll round the theatre district, popping into a cleaner-than-average tavern where a group of coaches awaited, and ordered himself a pint of porter in celebration. From a street stall, he had purchased a Guide to Covent Garden Women, and idly flipped through the pages. Surprisingly, his half-sister, Belinda, was still listed, though getting rather long in tooth by then, but the lavish description of her charms, and what she specialised in, was even lengthier, her "socket-fee" risen even higher.

Yet he had not come out with a full purse, and only two of his cundums, and once "in the saddle," two would not be enough. He knew he was too hungry to be sated by a mere two romps, and the last thing he needed, and what he had amazingly avoided during his long career as a rakehell, was the French Pox. What he imagined he could afford that night by way of Cyprian charms would be riskier than he wished, in that regard. There was also the very real risk of being lured into a jade's rooms, accosted by her "fancy man" and his accomplices, and being found days later, a naked corpse in the mud-flats of the Thames!

Yet…! With the idea firmly embedded in his mind, Lewrie turned the pages to Brothels. London's many church bells began to chime the hour; it was a quarter past eight P.M., or so his pocket-watch said after he took a quick peek at it. Why, it wasn't even the shank of the evening! The theatres were barely into the middle of their first acts, of yet, and the chop-houses were still packed with diners.

" 'Nuther porter, sir?" the waitress enquired, slyly projecting a hip to the edge of his table. Even here, in a somewhat clean tavern, there'd be rooms abovestairs for rantipoling, and the servers augmented their earnings with sport. She wasn't to his taste, though, in his now-stimulated state, Lewrie began to wonder exactly what his taste was and where he'd draw the line.

"No, I'm off," Lewrie said, tucking the guidebook into a breast pocket of his uniform coat, and fumbling for his coin purse.

"Cor, wot a pity," the waitress leered, 'an yew with h'int'rest in a li'l sport."

"Ta," Lewrie said, hastily taking his leave. To the first hacking coach outside, he shouted "Madeira Club, Duke and Wigmore" to the coachee, and clambered in. Time was wasting!