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!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In mufti again, armed with a stout walking-stick that disguised a slim sword, and with bank notes squirrelled away in several pockets, he was pleased to discover himself back in his old haunts, where he had rented his first London lodgings; in Panton Street, where many foreign emissaries lived… or kept their mistresses. The house that his hired coach took him to he remembered as one which in his time, in 1784, had been the residence of a single family. Now, though…
No finer establishment for the discerning gentleman in search of Corinthian delights in St. James's, in the utmost of security and serenity, the house of Mistress Batson may offer the most exquisite selection of jewels of the demimonde…
Or so the guidebook said, and if Mistress Batson's lived up to a tithe of its advertisement, it would be worth it, Lewrie decided as he alit and paid the coachman.
There was a hulking sort of fellow loitering by the front stoop who gave him a chary look-over. 'Come as a patron, sir?' he asked in a gruff warning voice.
'Aye,' Lewrie simply replied.
'Then go right in, sir, and take joy.'
Lewrie barely had to rap the large door-knocker once before the portal was opened by the hulking fellow's obvious twin, this one done up in a sober sort of livery. From a cold night street to a gust of warm air, from the stinks of London to inviting aromas of perfumes and Hungary Waters in a mйlange of scents; from the din of carriages and dray waggons and the humm-umm of people to almost a hush. A violin played in company with a flute or recorder. There was a faint clink of glasses, a convivial buzz of conversation, and soft, teasing female laughter coming from somewhere beyond the entry foyer.
A stout older woman in the sack gown and over-done makeup of at least two decades past greeted him with a curtsy, to which he replied with a short bow, a 'leg,' and the doff of his hat.
'Welcome to Mother Batson's, sir,' she said, looking him up and down, much like a tailor might. 'You come for ease, I take it?'
