'Well, it is not as if you have much of anything else better to do, Lewrie,' Twigg purred, 'what with how things stand with you at Admiralty, at present.'
'Oh, thank you just so bloody much!' Lewrie barked.
'Do you want to be reconciled with your wife, Lewrie?' Mr. Twigg asked with a piercing, probing stare.
'Well, o' course I do!' Lewrie shot back.
Hold on, do I really? he had to wonder, though; Aye, for our children, if nothing else. It's not as if I've any other women in my life… that I could dally with openly, anyway. Nelson can get away with his affair with Emma Hamilton, but…
'Even if we don't,' Lewrie told Twigg, 'after all the tears that Theoni put her through… I put her through!… I owe Caroline a semblance of a marriage.'
'She would never believe a word that crossed your lips,' Twigg said, matter-of-factly for a change, with none of his usual top-lofty acid. 'Leave that to me. After all, 'twas I who sicced you on Claudia Mastandrea in Genoa, for the good of the Crown. That still leaves your Corsican mistress, Phoebe Aretino, and Theoni Connor to deal with, but… one could be explained by long separation, and the other by wounds and laudanum, in the beginning. And the machinations of a scandalous and crafty, spiteful, and possessive home-wrecking bitch.'
'You would do that?' Lewrie asked with his head cocked over; it just wasn't like Twigg to be charitable, or very much care about people who were (sometimes) useful to him.
'You've done me excellent service over the years, Lewrie,' Twigg told him. 'Perhaps I feel as if I owe it to you. I will coach to your home town with the evidence, including the maid's confessions, and the last letter… to Caroline, at any rate. No need to include the one written to Eudoxia directly, hmm?'
'Caroline will still think I'm trying to put the leg over her,' Lewrie glumly confessed.
'Then amaze her, and… for a rare once… don't,' Mr. Twigg shot back with a brief bark of amusement. 'Her father would feed your chopped-up carcass to his lions, if you did, ye know.'
'Of that I'm quite aware!' Lewrie replied in sour higg
'Well, that should conclude our business,' Twigg said, quickly finishing his coffee and tossing his napkin onto the table. 'I must be off. Too damned many Danes, Swedes, and Russians in England, with the sudden urge to correspond with people in their home countries… especially those who reside, or trade, in our naval ports. Codes to be decyphered, whole letters to be lost, or… enhanced with false information,' Twigg simpered.
'Throats to be slit,' Lewrie posed, tongue-in-cheek as he rose.
'Well, only do we must,' Twigg said with a vague wave of his hand and an evil little grin.
'I don't s'ppose you still have any influence with Admiralty, do you, Mister Twigg?' Lewrie said of a sudden. 'Mean t'say, there's war in the offing, and… ''
'Not all that much, no, Lewrie,' Twigg had to admit, grudgingly, as they left the alcove dining room and crossed the main hall towards the coat cheque. 'Not, at least, with the current administration over there, though there are rumours… ''
'Hey?'
'Pitt is quite unhappy,' Twigg told him as a manservant took their tickets and went to fetch their hats and greatcoats. 'He managed the Act of Union with Ireland, and convinced the King to ennoble all those new Irish peers, yet… Pitt hinged his entire legislation on a promise of Catholic Emancipation, allowing Papists to serve in the Army, Navy, and hold public office… perhaps stand for seats in the Commons, as well. King George, however, as Defender of the Faith, as his full title tells us, was adamantly against that. Does Pitt step down… d'ye see my meaning?'
'A new Prime Minister, a new First Lord, aye!' Lewrie enthused for a brief moment, then deflated. 'But probably someone who's heard of me, and despises me as much as Lord Spencer already does. Damn!'
'Nelson has already hoisted his flag in the San Josef over at Torbay, in Plymouth, Lewrie,' Twigg further informed him as the servant returned with his hat, greatcoat, and long walking-stick, and another club servant came to help him dress. 'You've served under him I believe. Perhaps he could intercede for you. And you did Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker good service, and fattened his bank accounts, with your seizure of all that lovely Spanish silver a few years ago. You could write him and ask for employment.'
'Sir Hyde? What's he to do with this?' Lewrie asked, puzzled.
'Why, Sir Hyde Parker is to command the whole Baltic.
'God Almighty, Parker?' Lewrie was forced to gawp.
'To wed, again?' Twigg snickered, completely missing the point of Lewrie's sudden discomforture. 'And why not? Though his bride-to-be is the daughter of Admiral Sir Richard Onslow… Frances, I believe her name to be… and is barely eighteen.'
'Christ, Mister Twigg… Sir Hyde's sixty, if he's a day!'
'Lucky devil,' Twigg simpered as he drew on his gloves. 'Sir Richard Onslow, to get a son-in-law so rich in prize-money. The girl to land such a secure future, and Sir Hyde the, ah… fresh dew of her youth.'
'Mister Twigg,' Lewrie muttered, stepping closer to impart his knowledge of that worthy, 'surely they must know that Sir Hyde's not possessed of an urgent bone in his body! 'Twas his frigates that did his work for him, and specially commissioned lesser tenders. The Frogs and the Dons didn't have anything in the West Indies with which to challenge us, so Sir Hyde spent all his time sittin' on his… officiatin' from his shore office, and his flagship anchored 'til the Apocalypse. He might've cruised Barfleur over to Saint Domingue to talk with some of his junior officers now and again, but he hasn't sniffed gunpowder since the American Revolution!'
'Indeed,' Twigg asked down his long nose, with a worried look on his skeletonously lean face. 'Now that is rather discomfiting news to me, when speed is of the essence, anent the melting of the ice over yonder in the Baltic naval ports. Ah, but he does have Nelson, don't he, Lewrie? And with Nelson involved… a most impatient and urgent fellow, he… we cannot go very wrong. Well, I am off, Lewrie. I do hope my informations have lightened your burden somewhat.'
'You have my eternal gratitude, sir, for all you've done,' he had to respond, with a hand upon his breast, and a sketch of a bow.
'I'll hold you to that, Lewrie,' Twigg said with an ominous look as he clapped his rather unfashionable old hat on his head. 'One never knows when your, ah… inestimable talent for mayhem may prove useful again.'
That promise-in-parting turned the excellent meal in Lewrie's innards to cold lead, for he already knew what neck-or-nothing, harum scarum use Twigg could put a fellow to!
And, there was yet another cause for his dyspepsia… now he knew that it had been Theoni writing those letters all these years… what was he to do about her?
And how best to go about crushing the spiteful bitch!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Another hellish-cold morning in London, though the sun was out, for a rare once, and the sky was fresh-washed and clear blue. Lewrie's breath steamed as he briskly strolled to the Admiral Boscawen Coffee House, deftly dodging the throngs of other pedestrians, the trotting teams of carriages, goods waggons, and carts, and the impudently rude London drivers and carters, who filled the morning with shouts of 'By yer leave!' and ' 'Ave a care, there!' and 'Make a way, make a way, ye bloody…!' with the choicer curses bitten off.
Admittedly, it was rather early for Lewrie to be astir, given his bred-in-the-bone penchant for laziness; it was barely a tick after 8 A.M., and even the usually unperturbable servants at the Madeira Club had been forced to goggle their eyes to see him up and dressed so early, and bound out the doors 'close-hauled' at a rate of knots.
Once seated with a cup of coffee before him (closer to the fire than before) he slathered up a finger-thick slice of toast, spread the jam heavy, and chewed as he perused The Morning Post, one of London's saucier papers, and the one most filled with gossip and anonymous innuendo.
Sir Hyde Parker's appointment to a command in the North Sea has converted his honeymoon into a sort of ague; a complaint always attended with a sudden transition from a hot to a cold fit.
A ragged earlier edition told him, followed by the newest of that morning, the thirty-first of January, to wit:
