“El-isson, or that Capitaine fellow?” Hippolyte quickly objected, blanching. “It’s best if neither of them know us.”
“We must beard him,” Charité insisted. “In drink, he may blab or even wish to befriend us to help him with whatever it is he’s come for. If Capitaine Lanxade is wrong, and he’s seeking pirates… we could pretend to help discover them!
“Oui!” Charité exclaimed, to their appalled expressions. “We send him on a goose chase down the bayous, looking for truly desperate cut-throats. La Fourche, or Bayou Terre aux Boeufs, not Barataria, you see? And, if he’s not a spy, we learn it. Come on, one of you! Have you no spirit? Must I do it?”
Oh là, how delicious! Charite thought suddenly.
Which would be sweeter: to sham the idle, elegant Creole gentilhomme and befuddle the man’s wits, or reveal herself, beguile him with her novelty, her modernity! Perhaps even to seduce him, then get him to talk unguardedly, half-sodden and nigh spent? True Jacobin patriot girls, heroines of the glorious Revolution in France, had applied their wiles in such a fashion to ferret out Aristos and sympathisers. Could she do no less for their coming liberation?
She looked back over at him. No, it wouldn’t be such a horrid chore, Charité decided, her lips parting in an expectant smile, with a frisson of pleasure-to-come swelling inside her. He is certainly not… unattractive!
Charité felt her nipples harden at the thought, felt them swell and pucker against the caressing silk of her shirt, the tautness of her waist-coat. That made her squirm a bit more on her chair, blaming the snugness of her trousers’ crutch-fork for the restless, warm feeling that ghost-tickled up her innards, and clasp her knees together, clutch her buttock muscles as if…
“The Devil take you all,” she said with a bold laugh, draining her champagne glass and tossing her head in frustration, in a mad-cap finality. “I’ll be the one to beard him! Just you watch this, you… timid garçonnets!”
With what appeared to others as a dashing stroke of her mustachios, but was really reassurance that that “appliance” was still firmly stuck on, Charité de Guilleri sprang to her feet and began stalking her prey.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Bonjour, m’sieur … you are new to Le Pigeonnier?”
Alan Lewrie had been trying to make sense of the dealing, discarding, and redealing of the “Poke Her” game, yet not get so close that the players might object, when that “sweet” voice stole his attention.
“Hey?” was his bright rejoinder.
“I ask if you are new, here, m’sieur. You are not a familiar face” came the reply, from a slim, short, over-elegant fop, who put him in mind of cheap dolls sold at fairs, a “Bartholomew Baby.”
Lewrie beheld a saucy, possibly half drunk cock-a-whoop so pale-complexioned he couldn’t have seen sunlight since his christening; so lean-faced and pert-chinned, so young he had no need to shave, yet, but with an oddly lush mustachio; three or four inches shorter than Lewrie, even with the help of riding-boot heels. The idle jack-a-napes lazily twiddled an empty champagne glass ’twixt the lean fingers of his right hand, with the other challengingly poised akimbo on his hip.
For a second, another whippet-thin fellow came to mind: Horatio Nelson, his old squadron commander. Lewrie’s second recollection was sorrier: his Sodomite half brother, Gerald, or others of that “Molly’s” idle and depraved “Windward Passage” crew.
“You buy me champagne, m’sieur?” the wee fellow asked, his blue eyes twinkling, his cheeks as dimpled as a randy chambermaid’s.
“Sorry, lad,” Lewrie gruffly responded. “Not t’give offence but… I don’t think we’re in the same regiment.”
“You are new to New Orleans, I take it?” the mininkin persisted, smiling even wider. “British… or American? Vous parlez pauvre Français, peut-être? The poor French, perhaps? Un peu, but a little? You will need the translator, and I am he, m’sieur! Vairy bon marché… pas cher,” he gaily beguiled. “That is to say, ‘inexpensive.’ The ‘cheap’?” he added with an amused titter.
“Nothing personal, young fellow, but… I don’t need help with the language, and I won’t buy you a drink, and you ain’t my sort, so do toddle off, won’t you?” Lewrie rejoined, beginning to get irked. “If you aren’t a pimp… un entremetteur … I’ve no need of you, or your services, thankee. Comprendre ‘no thanks’? Try someone else.”
“Ah, yes! I can introduce you to a girl, m’sieur.” The elfin imp brightened, attempting to step closer, which set Lewrie to backing up a matching step or two. “None of these drabs, non! You would be interested, m’sieur … your name escapes me, sorry?”
“Didn’t set it loose,” Lewrie huffed. “Willoughby. Now do—”
“Willoughby,” the cheeky little bastard slowly struggled to say, nodding somberly for a moment as if the name was a talismanic spell to be forgotten at one’s peril. “Very solid. Very Anglo-Saxon. You are new to New Orleans, and you wish a girl. You are un Américain, come down the Great River on a long, lonely, and pleasureless travail. Or you came up river on a ship, a long, lonely, and pleasure-denying time, aussi, n’est-ce pas? You have heard of the Creole ladies, and come to the Pigeonnier to seek one, but alas … they never come out to such a place. They sit lonely and sad in their rooms, m’sieur Willoughby… you have a Christian name? They wait for you, bold traveller, I—”
“Oh, bugger this!” Lewrie growled, “and bugger you, too! Scat! Shoo! I don’t like boys, comprenez?”
“But I am not a boy, m’sieur!” the fellow whispered so alluringly and girlishly, long lashes batting, that Lewrie was stalled in his tracks, despite whatever revulsion for the “back-gammoners’ brigade” he felt. Damme, is he or isn’t he? he wondered; he… she… a specialty of the house? Oh, the Devil with it… him, she, it!
“Adieu, m’sieur … or whatever,” Lewrie all but snarled back, exasperated enough to risk open insult and a knife fight. “Bonsoir. Hasta la vista… vaya con Dios… auf bloody wiedersehen, ‘bye!”
“Such a pity,” the wee chap said with a disconcertingly fetching pout, raising hands to hat and lip. “Adieu, and bonsoir to you as well, m’sieur Willoughby.”
“Same t’you, as … Jesus!” Lewrie gawped in astonishment as the hat was lifted high enough to reveal a bounteous beehive of silky chestnut hair, as half a broadly grinning upper lip was mockingly “exfoliated.” The… she/he/it/whatever dimpled prettily and laughed aloud, sticking out a taunting tongue as the hat was quickly clapped back on, and the false mustachio got restuck.
She—Lewrie wasn’t exactly certain that she wasn’t truly a girl at that moment!—sashayed away, swaying slim hips that swayed the female way, leaving him red-faced to be so twitted, the butt of a gargantuan joke! He shrugged and shook his head to cast off his puzzlement, then toddled back to the bar for a very needed refill of drink, leaving the publican an extra peseta or three this time. Once there, he tossed off the “heel-taps” of his last one, then craned his vision about the large cabaret to see if someone he knew had deliberately set him up for a wry jape and was now chortling in a dark corner, but no… not a single familiar face, form, or distinguising article of clothing could he spot, not a single guffaw, grin, or smile directed at him. Was she or wasn’t he, dammit? he speculated, nursing his insulted feelings on smoky-sweet and mellow aged “corn squeezings.” Was she bait t’get me somewhere dark, where some hostile bully-bucks could knife me all quiet-like? Or just rob me down t’me skin?
He leaned both elbows on the bar, hunched over his whisky like the Creole dandies, Catalan peasants, and few raw-boned Yankees did it.
Lewrie would have hauled out his pocket watch to find how late it was, would that act not perk up potential pickpockets, much like a red flag waved at a bull. The Pigeon Coop’s clientele certainly seemed to boast more than its fair share of cutty-eyed sharpers!
One more glass, he gloomily determined, still stewing over his mocking, and he’d be off to his hired set of rooms, no matter how dour a prospect that was, c
all it an early night, and—
A sharpish clack! sounded from his left as a gilt-handled cane came down flat on the bar counter to claim space for its owner, and to summon the publican.
“I am so sorry, m’sieur Willoughby.” The smooth-cheeked “fellow” chuckled as he insinuated himself—herself?—alongside him. “But it was very amuse… amusing?… to see your face when I accosted you. To see your étonnement … astonishment… over my little jest.”
“And which bastard put you up to it?” Lewrie snapped.
“Why, no one, m’sieur” came the reply, with a soft, intimate laugh. “I do this to many people. To pretend to be a man is the only way a girl could enjoy a cabaret. They are such fun, but as you see, ladies are barred. Only the putains, the whores, come here, and I do not wish to be taken for one, n’estce pas? I sincerely apologise for causing you any uh… embarrassment, m’sieur Willoughby… and I do earnestly beg your forgive… forgiveness.”
“Well, hmmm,” Lewrie growled, turning to face… whatever, though he still had his doubts, dreading an even crueller twitting did he relent. Hmmm, though! he thought, looking down.
In the short time since their parting, the… whatever… had untied the broad cravat and let it dangle like a short scarf, undone the upper buttons of that lace-ruffled silk shirt, and had freed the top buttons of the satin waistcoat, revealing, hinting at…
There were damn’ few boys, in Lewrie’s broad experience, could sport such a flawless décolletage; nor spring free such neatly bounteous breasts. Not even rolled-up stockings could sham those!
“If you buy me champagne, m’sieur Willoughby,” she (definitely a she, Lewrie was now almost completely certain!) inveigled with her eyes and mouth lazily grinning, for knowing exactly where he had been gazing, “and I will teach you how to play Bouré, a most amusing, and very Creole, card game. I am Charité… Charité Bonsecours, though I disguise myself as Armand,” she told him, their gazes now directly bold and all but inseparable. She borrowed the surname of another proud and respectable Creole family of long standing on the spur of the moment. “For when I wish to go out and… play.”
That sweet expression on her face, that tone of voice, and her play on words, those female long lashes being batted at him, and her angel-whore’s coyness, all but made Lewrie go “Eep!” and snatch at his suddenly reawakened crutch.
“What else do you play?” he barely had the wit to ask, “Other than Bouré … and jests on ‘Johnny Newcomes’?”
“Oh, there are many other delightful games that I enjoy,” she sultrily intimated, shifting from one foot to the other, which slyly shifted a hip to brush against his. “I promise you will not be disappointed, m’sieur, ah… I must know your Christian name. If we are to be… intimates?” she cooed.
“’Tis Alan… Alan… Willoughby,” he replied, coming nigh a cropper over his own masquerade, grinning it off with an appraising leer. “I’ll allow you the champagne, and the cards. For now. Just so long as you don’t play me, again… Charité.” In a gruffer, warning tone he added, “Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, then look to your life.”
“I stand warned, cher Alain.” Charité throatily chuckled back, not daunted in the least. “Let us get a private table in the back, a deck of cards, and a bottle of champagne. And I assure you, cher, I shall have no reason to fear for my life.”
Her false mustachio had sagged completely off one side of her mouth, and her eyes and voice were so sweetly, soberly candid that he could not help but assent and whistle up the publican for glasses and a bottle. She leaned close enough to gently touch her rather cutely formed nose on his near shoulder for a flirtatious second, as if sealing a bargain, before breaking away to waft towards a dark rear corner of the cabaret to claim a table for two.
Damme, this is daft! he chid himself as he flung coins on the counter; Is she a sham, I’ll never live it down! If not, well… it might be the sort of tale ye dine out on for bloody years!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Law, Jim Hawk, ye won’t b’lieve h’it!” Georgie insistently whispered, reeking of “time-killing” whisky, fried chicken from a street vendor, and “chaw-baccy.” “H’it’s th’ oddest thang ever I did see, an’ had I not, I’da never thunk hit real,” Georgie said as he and Ellison “lurked” beneath the stranger’s wrought-iron balcony.
“Simmer down an’ tell it, Georgie,” Jim Hawk Ellison coaxed as he leaned away from the aromatic scents, “an’ kindly keep your skunk-skin cap downwind, how ‘bout. It’s still pert ripe.”
“We kep’ an eye on ‘at Willoughby feller, like ya asked us to,” Georgie began to explain, though all but wringing his hands confusedly. Confusion with Georgie was a given, though, Ellison had found. Bright help was hard to find lately. “He left ‘at tavern place, I follered him, like ye tol’ me. But he come back hyar with another fella, Jim Hawk,” Georgie nigh moaned, waving a hand at the balcony, and the dim single candle still aglow in one of the windows. Ellison was sure he was blushing as red as ripe vine peppers. “Come nigh t’chokin’ on ma chaw … way they wuz a’pawin’ an’ a’gropin’ at each other, an’…”
“With another man?” Jim Hawk gawped. “Well, he is English, but… that’s a surprise. A big’un.” Ellison scrubbed his chin thoughtfully, speculating on how Willoughby’s secret proclivity could be used, if he turned out to be a British spy; he hadn’t bought the man’s “new-come American” pose for a second! He’d come off that Panton, Leslie ship, hadn’t he? And that company and the British government might as well be tight as ticks together.
“Sure it wasn’t a way t’sneak a fellow spy up there, so’s they could have ’em a parley, on the sly? Just with their heads close…”
“Nossiree, Jim Hawk!” Georgie adamantly objected, wringing his skunk cap in his hands. “‘Twuz a lantern burnin’ o’er th’ door when they got hyar, an’ I seed wot they wuz a’doin’, plain! They wuz all arm in arm, had their clothes un-sheveled an’ their hands a’roamin’ round inside. Kissin’, a time’r two, too, right out in front o’ God an’ ever’body, hotter’n foxes in heat! An’ ‘at little feller with ‘im a’cooin’ an’ a’titt’rin’ like one o’ them rum-hot whores we had on th’ Natchez Trace!”
“Hmmph!” Ellison commented. “What’d this other fella look like, then? Ye git a good look, so we can find out what he’s up to?”
“Real short an’ slimmish, Jim Hawk,” Georgie related, screwing up his face, “an’ cleed all dandy-like, in rich clothes. Struttin’ as proud as a bantyrooster! Had a right mystifyin’ mustachio, too. One minute, h’it wuz thar, next h’it warn’t, an’ he’d git all giggly-shrieky. They git to th’ door, thar, wot with all th’ kissin’, his hat come off an’ he had s’much hair piled up on his haid, hit looked like a wasp’s nest, an’ I coulda swore I thought I saw a titty, but…”
Ellison lowered his chin to his chest and slowly counted to ten, as his mentor had told him to, back when he’d thought to read for the law in Salisbury, North Carolina, before blurting out foolishness when in court. He pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a heavy sigh.
“Mightn’t it o’ come to ye, Georgie,” Ellison asked in a slow drawl of seemingly infinite patience, “that your little fella might’ve been a girl dressed up in men’s clothin’?”
“Wull…” Georgie began, then subsided, abashed. “Oh.”
Comes th’ dawn! Jim Hawk Ellison sourly thought; Oh, indeed!
“Wull…’at’s unnat’ral, too, ain’t h’it, Jim Hawk?” Georgie spluttered, giving his hat another wringing, freshly aggrieved.
“How long they been at it?” Ellison asked, glancing upwards.
“‘Bout near a hour, I reckon,” Georgie muttered. “I thought to shinny up thar an’ see wot-all they wuz a’doin’…”
“You didn’t, did you, Georgie?” Ellison asked, alarmed.
“Naw.” Georgie chuckled. “’Em iron poles is slick, an’ ‘at balcony ain’t as stout as you’d a’reckon, so…”
“Goo
d!” Ellison nigh barked with relief, much louder than he’d meant to on the dark, silent street. “I’ll take over, Georgie. Here. Go git yerself somethin’ t’drink, maybe have yerself a Creole gal. A real ‘un,” he said, digging into a pocket for some silver Spanish dollars. “Don’t go blabbin’, mind, do ya git a snoot-full. This business is nobody’s but ours, right?”
“Damn’ right, Jim Hawk, an’ thankee right kindly,” Georgie said with a wide grin of delight. “But… yew figger this out, ye’ll tell me wot h’it means, won’t ye, Jim Hawk?”
“Be th’ first t’know, Georgie,” Ellison promised.
Ellison slunk into a dark shop doorway and wrapped his coat snug against the past-midnight river and swamp mists, thinking that if the sky started raining whisky, Georgie Prater would be the sort to hold a fork… and he’d most-like drop that!
The game was getting even more complicated than he’d imagined when he’d been appointed to scout New Orleans by Congress—and without General Wilkinson finding out about it! Ellison had been limited in his choice of skilled and smart backwoodsmen and volunteer soldiers to go along with him, men unknown to the Tennessee or Kentucky garrisons, who were likely already enmeshed in Wilkinson’s schemes. So, beyond a few men of past acquaintance and a surveyor or two borrowed from civilian pursuits, he was pretty much stuck with dregs—well-muscled, well-armed dregs who’d be good in a fight, but…
Jim Hawk Ellison now strongly suspected that this Englishman, this “Captain” Willoughby, was on a mission very much like his own to New Orleans, and Louisiana. A new American citizen as he claimed, or not—Willoughby couldn’t disguise his educated accent for very long, no matter how “aw shuckin’s” he tried. He was a man used to command, his sobriquet of “Captain” either naval or military, with a volunteer pack of muscle accompanying him who toed the line when he spoke. But who was he working for?
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