"The carrying charges, aye," Lewrie said with a nod and a sip of his wine, "the freight. So?"
"Upriver, up and down all the bayous, there are so many rich men," Charite slyly enthused, cuddling up to him so she could look him directly in the eyes, "men who would pay to have ships of their own to carry their goods, to bring in the fine things they desire, even from China or India! They would form the, ah… syndicates, oui? to create a fleet of their own ships. And, those rich men would pay a capitaine extremely well to manage the nautical details that they do not know … n 'est-ce pas, mon amour ami? "
"What? D' ye mean they'd hire me on?" Lewrie laughed, picturing that fantasy. "So I could be an underpaid mate again?"
"Non, Alain… a capitaine of your own ship," Charite cajoled, "The sort of ship our rich men would pay you to design and have built, then command! With a share in the profits, perhaps? And later, after the profits grow very huge, you command all the ships, one of the syndicate directeurs. A seat on the board of a firm as important and rich as your old British East India Company, peut-etre? A seat on the board of a bank… a planter with hundreds of arpents of land, with the town house and the country mansion, aussi/ Hundreds of slaves to work your lands and make you even richer, to serve at your every beck and call…"
And I'm t 'mount you every time you feel an itch, hey? he thought in amusement; Though, damme… it does sound tempting!
Lewrie shammed a far-off, speculating expression, one eyebrow cocked. Was Charite posing a legitimate proposition? Or was it merely a girlish daydream? She could not be much older than nineteen or twenty in his estimation, not that long away from dry tutors and even drier chaperoning nuns, raised as bleakly as most Catholic girls were. Though, she had galloped a good distance from whatever tutors and nuns had driven into her, Lewrie cynically thought. And dammit…
She was absolutely lovely. From her speech and manners-minus her odd penchants for drinking, card-playing, men's clothing, and fucking notwithstanding-Charite obviously came from good family and ran in rich (though sporting) circles. So…
Why ain't she married off and cloistered already? he worried; That's the way they do it in Popery, ain't it? Get 'em engaged soon as they're fourteen, wed em off at seventeen? Damme, why hasn't some beau-nasty put in a bid… or does she scare most of 'em off? Black sheep? Blotted her copy book, has she?
"Now, that'd be, ah… that'd show the bloody Royal Navy!" Alan decided to tell her, just to see where it would lead. For if someone in New Orleans wanted his own ship, they came much cheaper if pirated, and even an innocent interest in a ship of his own might smoak out a seller who'd been involved in stealing ships, and Charite would be the one who might steer him to that seller, that supposed "syndicate" that backed the piracy; and her all unwitting! And in the meantime… she'd be his temporary "ride," even if nothing came from it!
Oh, what fun! Lewrie lewdly chortled to himself.
"Captain Alan Willoughby, of the Willoughby Navigation Company! I rather like the sound of that," he exclaimed.
Charite broke out in giggles, gave him a congratulatory embrace, then sat back and took away his wineglass to set on the nightstand on her side of the bed. Lewrie snuggled down in bed, expecting a hug…
She spun about and leaped atop him, pinning him to the mattress and his hands to the pillows, shifting demandingly astride of him.
"You have the six preservatifs remaining, mon c?ur?" Charite coo-asked, writhing against his groin, her face and eyes alight with greed. "Ooh, tres bien!"
"Laisser les bons temps rouler!'"Lewrie hooted in return.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mr. Pollock appeared to be in fine fettle when Lewrie trundled into the eatery he had specified for breakfast. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as some might put it, in point of fact, and bubbling over with bonhomie as he untucked his napkin from under his chin and courteously rose to greet him.
"Ah, good morning to you, Mister Willoughby. I trust you slept well? The set of rooms I suggested proved pleasing?" Pollock gushed.
"Barely a wink," Lewrie replied as he dragged back a chair and sat down at the table, smirking, despite his seeming complaint.
"Oh, so sorry," Mr. Pollock said, frowning in concern as he sat down himself. " 'Twas a quiet place when I lodged there. Nothing too disturbing or dangerous, I trust?"
"The company I kept, actually," Lewrie said with a worldly leer.
"Ahem!" Pollock shied, primly nigh-appalled. "This will not… descend to common talk, will it, Mister Willoughby? A gentleman never tells, after all, ah… ahem! What?"
What a fine hymn-singer he is! Lewrie wolfishly thought; After what my lady concierge told me about him and his "shore wife. " Kept her there, beforehand! A lovely near- White Octoroon she said! Put me to spyin', my man, you'l1 never know what /'// discover!
"I didn't intend to give you chapter and verse, no," Lewrie said to soothe Pollock. "Most p'culiar, though… I wandered into the Pigeon Coop cabaret you mentioned, and there was this most adorable wee fellow…"
"Hey, what?" Pollock nearly screeched, blanching. "Ahem?"
"She was a girl, Mister Pollock… play-acting in men's togs," Lewrie quickly assured him. "Made sure o' that! A full inspection… keel to truck. She said she was from a proper Creole family here in town… out for a stolen night of gambling and fun whilst her folks are in the country. Well-spoken and mannered, obviously educ-"
"Well, I rather doubt that, Mister Willoughby," Pollock drawled back, once he'd gotten over his utter shock and no longer looked like he'd dive out the window shutters in disgust; now he was condescending and simpering with superior local lore. "Proper young Creole ladies never indulge in such, in such low haunts. Sons, however, are expected to, are even encouraged to sloth, indolence, and vice. Daughters, good'uns, might as well be raised to be nuns. No no, sir! I suspect you were spun a merry tale by a cunning bawd who earns a high 'socket fee,' ahem!… for her ah, novelty," Pollock tut-tutted, blushing.
"Didn't ask for tuppence," Lewrie rejoined quickly, boasting a bit. "Well, a brace of champagnes, and she did take me for ten pounds at Boure before we left the cabaret. Intriguin' game, that, but never a word about being for hire. Oddest, most intriguing girl, too…"
Pollock winced, as if Lewrie would descend to Billingsgate smut to describe his evening, but was saved by the waiter's arrival. A cup and saucer was placed before Lewrie without asking, and a stout coffee was poured. "The omelettes are quite good here," Pollock said instead.
"French style… piss-runny and underdone?" Lewrie scoffed.
"A Catalan Spaniard owns the place, so they're properly done," Pollock advised. "Quite succulent with their ham or bacon." To which suggestion Lewrie took heed and placed a hearty four-egg order.
His coffee was stout and strong, the best ever passed his lips, but with an odd, bitter aftertaste, a tang that put Lewrie in mind of the ink-black council brew the Muskogee Indians inaptly termed "White Drink" that caused copious perspiring, pissing, and purifying puking.
"South American or Mexican coffee beans, hereabouts," Pollock explained, "though I do prefer the Turk or Arabica. The climate and soil in Louisiana is much too damp for coffee, and sometimes subject to frost. With the war on, the locals eke out their imports with the local equivalent, chicory. Tasty, once you develop a palate to it. With sugar and cream. Lots of cream, I'd advise, which makes what the French call a cafe au lait."
"Hmmm… better," Lewrie agreed, after a liberal admixture and a second taste. A smallish platter of little crescent-shaped sugared rolls sat between them, on which Pollock had been snacking before his own breakfast arrived, and Lewrie tasted one… or two or three. A French breakfast, he'd found in his Mediterranean travels, always did lean towards a lot of breads.
"Towards the end, the girl seemed quite taken with me," Lewrie continued his tale, in a confidential voice.
"Indeed," Mr. Pollock frostily commented. "Ahem?"
"She mentioned the possibility that ex-Lieutenant Willoughby, RN,
might make his fortune as captain of a New Orleans-owned merchant ship, maybe even end up master of an entire fleet of merchantmen, did I play my cards right. All sorts of hints that their new crops of rice and cotton are the coming thing, and that she was on good terms of some sort with a fair number of the rich and powerful who'd fund the ships I'd design, or go survey and buy for 'em. Damme, but these… whatevers are good!"
"She did, did she?" Pollock mused aloud, perking up and giving at least one ear to Lewrie's tale. "Well, well… oh, but that might have been but wee-hours 'pillow talk,' " he piffled a moment later as he tore one of those little rolls in two, stared at both bites, as if unable to decide which to swallow first, and mulled all that over.
"Not the sort of offer one hears from a common trull, don't ye know," Lewrie pointed out. "Usually, the well-pleased strumpets hint at 'going under the protection' of the lout, is he a gentleman of any means… or making him her bully-buck and pimp for a cut of the profits t' keep her safe on the streets. Lurk near her rooms…"
"Indeed." Pollock icily glared at him.
"Well… or so I've heard," Lewrie replied, shifty-eyed, making a throat-clearing "Ahem" of his own before furthering his point. "The way she suggested it, her understanding of syndicates and such, and her air of… actual gentility was what convinced me that it might be-"
"Dressed in men's attire, I b'lieve you said she was?" Pollock interrupted.
"Aye, and with a false mustachio pasted on her upper lip, too," Lewrie sulkily insisted.
"Well, surely… ahem!" Pollock brightened, bestowing upon his breakfast partner an almost pitiable look, "a girl out on the town who dresses so… perhaps well-raised once, as you described, I grant you… might delight in spinning phantasms about herself, about what she could do for you. Telling you everything or anything she thought you wished to hear once she'd sounded you out. Either for your monetary support and, uh… protection later on, or… scalping you for ten pounds, or fourty Spanish dollars, was her night's earnings. Anything she dreamt up afterward was moonbeams, and you her, ah… pleasurable, but unwitting, baa-lamb, Lew… Willoughby."
"Well, now really!" Lewrie objected, though not too strongly. There was a sordid possibility that he'd been gulled. God knows, it wouldn't have been the first time! He crossed his arms and grumped.
"And was this after you fed her your, ah… alias?"
"Aye," Lewrie replied, tight-lipped.
"And did she supply one of her own?" Pollock asked, nigh leering.
"Charite Bonsecours, she said she was," Lewrie told him. "And in the course of our card game, she introduced me to a pair of brothers by name of Darbone, who sat in with us."
"Oh, sir," Pollock commiserated with a world-weary shake of his head. ' "She was their handmaiden most-like! An attractive lure to get you bedazzled, off your guard, and skinned by a pair of sharps!"
"They barely won five silver dollars each off me, ten at most," Lewrie countered, "and they each bought a fresh bottle of champagne to keep the game going, 'cause… well, I got the impression as we were intent on leaving for my rooms that… they seemed more jealous than disappointed. And, sir! If she was their man-trap, why wasn't she in a revealing, gauzy gown, with her poonts hangin' out? Why suited, booted, and damn-near spurred?"
"I know of the Darbones, though I cannot recall…" Mr. Pollock deeply frowned, almost chewed on a thumbnail. "I know most of the established Creole families, if just in passing. What were their names?"
"One was Baltasar, t'other, ah… Claude," Lewrie dredged up at last. "They were all fair-haired, chestnut-ey, I'd say, and blue eyed. In fact, they all three bore a striking resemblance to each other."
"Oh, half the Creoles in Louisiana fit that description," Mr. Pollock pooh-poohed. "They all marry their distinguished cousins."
"So one of the Darbone brothers said, about the resemblance… nothing about the cross-eyed cousins part," Lewrie replied. "She was a very fetching girl, most…"
"Hmmm… pity you were not intrigued enough to follow her home and get to the bottom of the matter," Pollock grumpily commented.
"By cock-crow, 'twas all I could do to hand her down the stairs to the door!" Lewrie countered with a smug look. "Had an old captain, said whenever he made a grand night of it ashore, by the time he'd come back aboard, he hadn't had a wink, and one more passionate kiss, or a cold breakfast, would've killed him!"
"And one had hopes you wouldn't boast, ahem, " Pollock despaired with a heavy sigh. "Still… Charite Bonsecours, didje say? Hmmm, how old? Under twenty, or about twenty, ah-ha. I can't say that I am able to place her, though French Creole families don't trot their females out, in the main. Not quite as bad as Hindoo purdah, but…"
"Well, perhaps your wife, being a local lady, might know 'em," Lewrie offhandedly suggested, slyly watching Pollock's reaction.
"My wife!" Pollock instantly bristled. "How did you-"
"My concierge, your former landlady, told me she took the young lady you boarded with as your epouse," Lewrie said, intrigued, and wondering what it was he'd said to nettle the man.
"Yes, well… ahem, " Pollock said, strangling, purpling, and tugging at his neck-stock. "My wife, of course."
"Once we've eat, shouldn't we call on her to ask what she knows about the Bonsecours and the Darbones?" Lewrie coyly hinted, his mien as seemingly guileless as the densest, most uninterested cully.
"I doubt there's need of that, Mister Willoughby," he snipped back, as if scandalised by the suggestion. "Colette is, ah… ahem! indisposed."
She that ugly? Lewrie maliciously thought; Is he ashamed about her, 'cause she 's not lily-white or he's proper-married somewhere? I just have t 'clap eyes on her 'fore we leave New Orleans!
"Wouldn't it be worth it to run this Charite Bonsecours to her lodgings, then?" Lewrie suggested, "to see if she knows what she was boasting about? If I posed ready to bolt your employment and enter theirs, it might lead to the ones who back our pirates. I might even get hired to be a pirate captain myself!"
"I s'pose we could…" Pollock somberly mused. "It might not cause too much harm. Could you dissemble well enough. Ah, breakfast!" he cried, instead, glad for the interruption.
Middling large platters were slid before them, holding omelettes as big as roof shingles, oozing cheese and done to a perfect firm turn, laced with bits of red onion and bell pepper. Each platter bore slabs of ham as large-about as ox hooves, half an inch thick. A woven straw basket of piping-hot croissants arrived, too, a fist-sized ball of soft and sweating fresh, salted butter, and an array of local preserves.
"Tasty," Pollock enthused over each ravishing bite, "and all for a song, don't ye know. You'll not find this in an English four-penny ordinary… which is the equivalent cost, here. I've come to love New Orleans… though not its summer climate. Or its current owners," he muttered from the side of his mouth.
"I expect it'd be much cleaner, were someone other than the Dons in charge," Lewrie said, snickering. "Put in gutters or something… shovel up the horse dung, hire indigents to sweep the garbage into the river, at least. Town drains… gurgle, gurgle, gurgle!"
"We'll not talk of that," Pollock warned in a faint whisper. "Dung and garbage?" Lewrie twinklingly quipped. "Why not?" "The, ah… change of ownership, ahem," Pollock hissed, leaning closer in the act of reaching for the salt cellar.
"Oh," an only slightly chastened Lewrie replied.
"As for our other matter, sir," Pollock continued to mutter. "Both Lanxade and Balfa have been seen in New Orleans within the past two days. Done up in new finery… Balfa in shoes and stockings, for a rare once, and shop- " ping like an unexpected heir. You ride well, do you, Mister Willoughby?" Pollock suddenly queried, putting Lewrie off his stride with the question.
"Hmm? Aye, main-well, in point of fact," Lewrie answered, at a loss. "We plan to gallop out to their secret 'rondy' and scrag 'em in broad daylight?"
"Their present whereabouts are unknown to me, their exact location," Pollock said, shying back again
by Lewrie's aggressive air. "I merely suggest that we go for a long ride today. You're new here… I, as your putative employer, must show you the sights, orient you to the city," Pollock explained, buttering a roll. "It may be that whilst gadding about, we either spot them and their lair, or make discrete enquiries of them. 77/ do that part, I'm known, and, ah… harmless, ha! In the course of things, we could also survey Lake Pontchartrain, what the lay of the land looks like to you."
Well, I wasn 't going to draw sword, yell 'Yoicks, Tally Ho, ' and charge at the first sight of 'em! Lewrie told himself; I ain 't a total fool. A passin'-fair fool at
times, but…
"Are we not successful today, we could ride tomorrow as well, does the weather turn off fair," Pollock suggested, louder this time, as if nattering with a new employee for real, playing the genial host to a brand-new city. "Out east, there's still land going begging, if you can believe it. We'll take a good look at it, shall we?"
We find Lanxade and Balfa, though, we whistle up my sailors for a 'hoarding action ' and leave 'em bleedin ' on the cobbles like steers in a Wapping slaughterhouse, Lewrie grimly decided to himself, steeling himself to action; Aye, let's be at it. And that other nonsense.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"Shameless!" Helio de Guilleri spat, still seething after what she'd done; had been seething since she and that lout, a common sailor, a despicable Englishman, had left the Pigeon Coop hours before.
"Do quit stomping about, cher," Charite lazily scolded, covering another weary yawn, "or Madame D'Ablemont below us will be angry and send the concierge after you. I told both of you that someone had to sound him out, to see if he was dangerous to us. And I did," she concluded, with a well-hidden, secretly pleased grin.
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