The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Think nothing of it, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Leaver, the rotund, ink-smudged proprietor of the printing business told him with a laugh. “You did us proud, this past year, with all the tracts and chapbooks ordered. Though, ’tis rare for the subject of our firm to come calling with appreciation, ha ha! More like, with an injunction, d’ye see.”

  “Reverend Wilberforce and his compatriots did us all proud, as I see it, Mister Leaver,” Lewrie replied, “with all the financial support. And the well-written articles placed in the newspapers.”

  “Well, the texts were not our doing,” Leaver told him as he poured them both companionable cups of warming tea. In the back half of the firm, past a high railing, printing presses creaked and clacked, like to drown out normal conversation, and everyone but Mr. Leaver seemed to be deeply stained and splattered black; the proprietor was nigh-immaculate by comparison.

  “The same person who provided the, uhm . . . copy to you wrote the newspaper items, as well, I s’pose?” Lewrie idly wondered aloud; trying for idle, anyway. “I did notice a certain . . . similarity in tone.”

  God help me, does he ask for specifics, Lewrie thought, wishing he could cross fingers for luck against that eventuality.

  “Not exactly sure, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Leaver allowed, ruminating with a faint frown. “I usually never met the writers. The text was delivered by someone with the Abolitionist Society, and where they got it was anyone’s guess. Now, there was Missuz Denby, who writes for the papers, who also came in with anti-slavery articles about you. She’ll write for anybody. Sometimes the most scandalous flummery, ah-hmm.”

  “Gossip and such, like in The Morning Post?” Lewrie asked, with rising hope, and striving to not look hopeful.

  “Hmpfh!” was Mr. Leaver’s opinion of such. “Missuz Denby styles herself the doyenne of the ‘Quality’s’ doings . . . though she writes under the pseudonym of ‘Tattler.’ Poor thing. ’Twas her late husband, God rest him, was a printer like me, and a tract writer, and not a bad hand when it came to turning a phrase, I’ll give him that, but . . . once he’d passed on, Missuz Denby lost the business, and has had to live by her wits, since. Hardly a business for a woman, hey? At least she gained enough from the sale of the presses and such to keep body and soul together. Would have gone under in a year, had she not. Women simply do not have the proper head for business.”

  “I wonder how she manages to gather her information. I’ve seen her articles under ‘Tattler,’ and she seems remarkably well informed,” Lewrie said, even if he’d never clapped “top-lights” on that by-line before in his life.

  “Attends everything,” Mr. Leaver said with a shake of his head. “Brags that she’s on cater-cousin terms with half the maids and footmen in London, and that rich and titled ladies slip her gossip all the time.”

  “Why, if she attends everything, I must have run across her,” Lewrie pretended to gape in astonishment.

  “Can’t miss her, with all that red hair. Why, speak of the Devil, if that’s not her heading into Chester’s shop, just cross the street this very minute,” Leaver declared.

  Lewrie turned to espy a very chick-a-biddy dumpling of a woman, quite short, but done up in the latest fashionable colours of lavender and puce, and sporting one of those pillow-like “Pizarro” bonnets atop a towering old-fashioned mountain of vividly red hair.

  “Good Christ!” Lewrie muttered.

  “See what I mean?” Mr. Leaver said, chuckling.

  “Well, thanks again for all your good services, sir, and I will take my leave,” Lewrie announced, slurping up the last of his tea and doffing his hat on his way out the door with undisguised haste. He had a gossip-monger to deal with, and time was of the essence.

  “Your pardons, Ma’am, but might you be Mistress Denby?” Lewrie enquired with his hat to his breast, and bestowing upon her a gallant bow as he did so; to which the startled-looking woman replied with a quick, dropped curtsy. “The one who writes under the name of . . . ?”

  “Well, damme!” Mrs. Denby yelped. “You’re ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie, to the life! Oh, sir!” she gushed as she dipped him an even deeper, and longer-held, curtsy . . . even if she had to brace herself with her furled parasol. She rose at last, looking as if she had tears in her eyes behind the hexagonal spectacles perched on the end of her nose. “Noble Captain Lewrie! Courageous Captain Lewrie! Oh, but it is my greatest honour to meet you at last! I could but catch the briefest glimpse of you, ’til your recent trial, o’ course. I tried my best to get close enough to you once ’twas over, to receive but a mere press of your hand, in passing. Damme! Might you grant me the favour of an interview? A round dozen papers would bid for it, damme do they not!”

  “I was led to understand you wrote many of the Abolitionist chapbooks and tracts, regarding my case . . . ‘’ Lewrie began to say.

  “I felt it the greatest privilege of my life, sir!” Mrs. Denby loudly declared. “I still do . . . write their tracts decrying slavery, d’ye see my meaning, Captain Lewrie,” she said with a nervous laugh, all but fanning herself.

  “You did me a magnificent service, Mistress Denby, for which I am eternally grateful,” Lewrie told her, clapping his hat back on his head at last. “I just spoke with Mister Leaver, over yonder, to give him my thanks, and enquired of him who wrote such moving things about me, He told me, and then, like a Jack-in-the-Box, up you pop, ha ha!”

  “Fortuitous, indeed, Captain Lewrie,” Mrs. Denby gladly replied. “And I am quite honoured . . . ever the more 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 alre
ady 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 entrée” 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.

  More notoriety, he mused as he sorted out coins for the waiter; That won’t win me any less disapproval with Admiralty, he reckoned to himself. If I can’t hope t’get another ship, well . . . I hope I enjoy this!

  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 great
est 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!”