so!… that you took the time to thank me personally! Oh, might you agree to let me interview you!' she gushed. Had I known your lodging place, I'd have written a note, long before… Even though certain salacious doings in Society have had me quite occupied, of late, I most certainly could make time to probe your innermost thoughts!' She was all but bouncing up and down on her toes.
Christ, but she can wear ya out, quick! Lewrie thought, wondering if turning his innermost thoughts loose on London was all that good an idea. Wonder if she was Mister Denby's cause o' death! Enthusiasm!
'I also was led to understand that you write for the papers as the 'Tattler,' ' Lewrie said. 'Are those the Society doings of which ye speak, Ma'am?'
'They are, indeed, Captain Lewrie!' Mrs. Denby admitted with a hearty cackle. 'As to that… not only did I write in support of Abolition, and in firm support of you, I spoke… among all my contacts in the fashionable set, d'ye see, sir… lauding you to the skies, as enthusiastically as I decried the abhorrent institution of slavery!'
'You, ehm… have many contacts, I take it, Ma'am?'
'Oh, Captain Lewrie!' Mrs. Denby coyly confided (though a bit loud) and looking as if she would link arms with him. 'Even servants at St. James's, Marlbourough House, any palace or estate you may name, confide in me… as do their masters and mistresses, when they wish to dish a tasty little rumour about their rivals, ha ha! Why, there isn't a drum, rout, exhibition, or public subscription ball that I do not attend, and… come away with fresh meat for grilling!' Mrs. Denby confided, snickering with wicked glee.
'Then I might have something right up your alley, Ma'am,' he told her.
'Oh, Captain Lewrie! Call me Georgina, do!' she insisted with an even broader, hungrier grin. This time she did link arms with him. 'Is it delicious? Is it scandalous? Filled with intrigues, romance, or betrayal? You have my complete curiosity, sir! And…,' she said with a sly look, 'there is a lovely little coffee-house, quite near to hand, and there, in all discreet confidence, you must reveal it all to me!'
'Well, damme!' Georgina Denby said at last, thumping her plump little self back against the high wood divider of their corner booth. 'What a trollop! What a… foreign baggage the wench is!' She took time to wipe her hands on a table napkin, for in her large bag she had stowed a steel-nib pen and a screw-top jar of ink. Steel-nibs weren't all that cheap, as Lewrie already knew, so he had to assume that hints and innuendos, and 'dirt,' paid extremely well. All through her interrogation (for that was what it had felt like once he'd broached the subject) she had been scribbling away in a large accounting ledger, filling several pages quickly, both front and back, with the details of Lewrie's 'connexions' to Theoni Kavares Connor, and her damnably anonymous 'Dear Friend' letters.
'Though you do admit that you might very possibly be the father of her bastard,' Mrs. Denby added, in a pensive taking for the first time in the better part of an hour. 'She has yet to take you to court with a 'belly plea,' so…'
I wager she'd sing-song a soft whisper, Lewrie told himself.
'So?' he prompted, busying himself with pouring them both more tea.
'Damme, it's so obvious, Captain Lewrie!' Mrs. Denby chirped, back to her enthusiastic self. 'She wished the child. You saved her and her first-born, and she became besotted by you! I can easily see why…,' Mrs. Denby added with a flirtatious look. 'An heroic, well-set-up man of all his parts, such as yourself? Still and all… it's hardly the way, is it, Captain Lewrie? Such affairs… with children born on the wrong side of the blanket… A touch more cream, do you please, ah!… Why, the mort was angling to land you for her own, and nothing, and no one, was to get in the way of it!
'Hardly the proper way to solve such problems in English Society, is it?' she said with a disapproving sniff, and a sip of her tea. 'The hussy is Greek… most-like provincial, and ignorant of civilised ways no matter how wealthy her family was in the Greek isles, and the trade in currants. England, and London Society, does not look with particular favour on those who do not observe the niceties… the foreigners!'
That Lewrie also well knew; any day of the week, in any street in the city, there were odd-looking foreign types being showered with rotten vegetables or fruit, clods of mud, or dung, and hooted and cat-called to their lodgings in a hurry by the infamous idle Mob. Before his trial his accuser, Hugh Beauman, had been hounded from one hotel to another, him and his ultra-fashionable wife, both, for looking too grand and pretentious! The only reason that Eudoxia's father, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, wasn't pelted and insulted in his fur shapka hat, boots, sash, and odd Roosian shirt was that he looked too dangerous to mess with!
And in his wastrel youth (between schools after being sent down) Lewrie had hooted, jeered, and flung dung with the best of the Bucks-of-the-First-Head he'd run with. That was why ambassadors and exotic, pagan emissaries, from Ottoman Turkey, say, were escorted upon official business by royal Horse Guard cavalry!
'Well, for a foreigner, she's hellish-handsome,' Lewrie dared mention. Auburn hair, almond-shaped eyes, with a slim waist despite bearing two children (or damned good corsets!) and the most promising set of poonts… 'Beauty seems to forgive a lot in Society.'
'Medusa… Adam's fling with Lilith in the Garden of Eden… Dido…,' Mrs. Denby replied, one hand waving in the air to conjure up infamous lovelies from the classics and the Bible, 'all of them were fetching in the extreme… yet deadly and un-forgivable, like Salome, who lured King Herod to slay John the Baptist! No, Captain Lewrie… proper Society is quite brusque with those who violate the rules… unwritten, or no. Beautiful, or not!
'I see utter ruin ahead for Mistress Theoni Connor,' Mrs. Denby prophesied, with a sly grin of anticipation to be involved in it. 'She has not amassed a circle of supporters in London Society, even with all her wealth for entrйe' she said with another dismissive sniff. 'Hence, no allies. I cannot recall anyone of importance remarking upon any attempt by her to insinuate herself with them. I assure you, sir, the amusement such an attempt would have provoked among the 'Quality' with whom I associate would have reached me ears already, hmph! Why, the bitch will be completely destroyed, ha ha!'
Lewrie dared let a smile gather at that news.
'You've attempted to 'front her, I wonder, Captain Lewrie?' she asked, bird-quick, peering at him.
'We had a run-in in Ranelagh Gardens a week back,' he replied. 'Not about this matter, no, for I still had no idea the letter-writer was her. She was pouty that I hadn't called on her since the trial. A Mister… well, someone very good at getting to the bottom of matters like this did nab her maid… the one with a good, copper-plate hand and an English education… who polished 'em up for her. After that, she's dropped out of sight… my sight, thank God.'
'Oh, Captain Lewrie, you must!' Mrs. Denby enthusiastically told him; insisted on it, in truth. 'A public scene without her very doors! Accusations shouted to the roof-tops does she refuse you entrance… in dread, or shame, no matter.'
'Most-like, she'd let me in, to explain, or…,' Lewrie mused.
Damme, now she's got me sing-songin'! he silently groused.
'Well, 'twould be best were she not in, and you may feign that she denied you entrance,' Mrs. Denby slyly suggested. 'A note tucked into the door jamb, saying that you must speak with her, and most-like her curiosity, and the chance that you might have come round to her at last, will be piqued… resulting in another very public denunciation… which I and as many of the better sort shall witness… will be common gossip the morning after… along with my article in The Post and such other papers as I may induce, will take the trick, ha ha!'
'A public scene… in Montagu Mews,' Lewrie pretended to ponder, as if loath to do anything quite so sordid.
'Loud enough to startle both the pigeons and the horses, sir,' she said with a giggle. 'To the roof-tops… to the roof-tops! I say. Then, you must send me a note by runner, telling me where, and when, the actual confrontation will occur. Why, I warrant within the week, the baggage will remove her vile self from London, entire!'
'Hmm… her late husband's kin live in Dublin,' Lewrie said.
'Dublin!' Mrs. Denby barked with a shiver. 'For the shortest moment, one could almost pity her that!'
A Greek, a foreigner, with a bastard son by another man in tow along with the late Michael Connor's real son, their only grand-son… and control over his shares of the family business to irk them even further…! No, Lewrie couldn't quite imagine her reception in Dublin would be all that grand. Mind, he did have a slight desire to witness it!
'I'll see to… setting the scene, this very day, Ma'am,' he told her.
'Georgina' Mrs. Denby chirpily insisted. 'And I must be off, as well. You will, uhm…?' she added, pointing to the slip of paper which bore the reckoning for their pot of tea and her sticky buns.
'But of course… Georgina,' Lewrie said with smile, reaching for his wash-leather coin purse. He rose, handed her to her feet from the pew-like seat of the booth, and bowed her departure for the door.
