The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Mus’ be a mad woman, lives ’ere,” the teenaged flower vendor told a pieman and a passing couple of strollers. “Thinks she’s got ’is feller fer ’er ’usband.”

  “An’ ’im already married, tchah!” the milk-seller said with a spit on the cobbles. “Ready fer Bedlam, she is.”

  “Furriners,” the pieman commented. “Too damned many of ’em in England, ye akses me. Oughter be run out o’ ’ere.”

  “You’ll hear from my attorney!” Lewrie shouted one last time, shaking a fist at the windows of Theoni’s parlour before departing.

  Covent Garden Theatre, the biggest and grandest of all the play-houses in the district, was, thankfully, no longer staging Pizarro and had fallen back on a popular Sheridan play, a recurring staple, though the styles and colours of the fashionable ladies showed that the fads inspired by that play would be around at least ’til midsummer. Lewrie milled round the ornate lobby with a glass of a rather thin Rhenish in one hand, barely tasting it in tiny sips that only moistened his lips as he scanned the arrivals for his prey. And, feeling as nervous as a pick-pocket in a room full of justices, wondering if Theoni would actually dare show her face in Publick, after Twigg had exposed her maid, and he had staged his petty dramatics before her doors.

  Nervous as he felt, though, it was hard to keep his mind on the matter, for there were rather a lot of most-attractive women entering the theatre that night, more than a few fetching courtesans and ladies of the demimonde strolling and trolling themselves before the gentlemen without partners, and even the girls who vended oranges and such . . . whose charms were as delightful as the high-priced courtesans, and whose morals were even lower than most actresses . . . seemed even more alluring than usual.

  Lewrie bought himself a fresh glass of Rhenish, finding that he had drained the first without even noticing, and took an inventory of how long it had been since he had “put the leg over” anything.

  Christ, has it been two bloody years? he gawped in wonder after he recalled his last amourous encounter; ’Tis a wonder I don’t drool! Or squirt semen out my ears, from the pressure.

  His free hand involuntarily went to a left-hand pocket of his waist coat. Aha . . . two cundums stowed away. Just in case . . . hmm. ’Long as I go armoured, would a whore be all that bad? he speculated.

  Theoni would most-definitely be right-out, within the hour, he grimly determined, and even nuzzling Eudoxia’s perfumed neck would be a death sentence. Caroline? The only reason his wife would ever let him under the covers with her again would be a ruse to whip out a very sharp knife and have his “wedding tackle” off, most-like! Even if she believed but half of what Mr. Twigg promised to tell her, there were a tad too many other women he could not explain away.

  Must get a recent guidebook t ’London quim, he told himself, and began to regard the strolling women with sharper eyes.

  “Dear Captain Lewrie!” a gay voice chirped in giddy sing-song. It was Mrs. Georgina Denby, damn her eyes, tricked out in a stylish satin gown of bright, shimmering blue, with rather more flesh exposed than Lewrie ever wished to see, earrings, necklace, and bracelet of a pale topaz set (if real, he speculated, gossip paid hellish-well!) and a pair of glasses perched on the tip of her nose. A reticule bag of pale blue satin hung from one elbow, and her hands held a small notebook and a pencil. “How delightful to see you, again, sir!”

  “Ah, um . . . Mistress Denby . . . Georgina,” Lewrie flummoxed and applied her first name at her coy prompting, The crowd in the lobby limited his movements, but he sketched her a bow. “You keep well?”

  “Excellently well, Captain Lewrie!” she replied, dipping him a stumpy curtsy, then came quite close to mutter, “Has the bitch shown her face yet? Is this truly the appointed time and place?”

  “S’posed t ’be, but . . . ,” Lewrie said with a shrug.

  “Frightened off, most likely,” Mrs. Denby whispered, leering and rolling her eyes. “I must circulate. Only here as a witness, not a fellow conspirator, la la!”

  “I trust you will enjoy the play tonight, Ma’am,” Lewrie said in a more-normal voice, with another brief bow.

  “Ah, yes, Captain Lewrie, I am certain I shall,” Mrs. Denby replied in her normal gushing tones. “Anything by Sheridan always proves immensely droll and amusing. Ta ta!” With that, she tottered away to smile and nod among the fashionable, and “dirt-worthy.”

  And there she was! The doorman bowed Theoni Connor inside; a very nervous-looking Theoni, no matter the exquisite care she’d taken with her appearance. Her placid smile simply would not hold for more than a few fleeting seconds, and her eyes had the look of a harried deer as she paused just inside the lobby and peered about to spot him, carefully tossing back the hood of her cape from an artful, bejewelled “do,” and unfastening it from her throat.

  If I didn’t despise her so much, I’d be tryin’ t’bed her, Lewrie told himself, for Theoni had come to impress, with a costly set of diamonds on fingers, wrist, and throat, that impressively bouncy bosom of hers a tad more exposed than most women present, and wearing a new gown of champagne and ivory figured satin, with a white lace stole over her shoulders.

  She saw him, winced for the briefest moment, then plastered a hopeful smile on her phyz and threaded her way through the crowd in his direction. Lewrie stood stock-still and scowled, and, as she neared, her smile went even 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, and 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 mélange 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?”

  “I do, indeed, Ma’am,” Lewrie told her as another liveried servant took his hat, boat-cloak, and walking-stick, and gave him a claim chit.

  “I see by your cloak you are a seafaring gentleman, sir,” the older woman said.

  “The Navy, Ma’am . . . just back from years at sea,” Lewrie said.

  “And God bless our ‘wooden walls,’ ” she said back, smiling at last, “though . . . years at sea, my my. You sound insatiable.”

  “As we say of those who do not stand evening watches, Ma’am, I would like ‘all night in,’ and a morning departure,” Lewrie told her. “When the sun’s above the yardarm, and the streets are safer.”

  “Now that would require a guinea, sir.” The older woman leered. “Come into our parlour, take seat, and have a glass of something, where you may find your heart’s delight.” She offered not an arm to steer him, but a palm to be crossed. Once a pound note, and a silver shilling, had been placed in that palm, she did take him by the arm and lead him into a much larger room.

  Where the music was, where other men lolled at their ease with drinks in their hands and young women by their sides; where a waiter with a tray of glasses circulated, and offered him champagne.

  “Bottle in the room will be extra, when you’re ready” was said in a soft voice. Another pound note went to the manservant, who winked acknowledgement, then drifted away.

  Lewrie took a look around and chose a short settee, a bit away from the others. Even as he settled himself, two men made their choice and were led by their Cyprians to the grand old staircase.

  Damned if one of the men wasn’t Sir George Norman, K.C., the one who had prosecuted him just weeks before, now minus his court periwig . . . and his rectitude! Sir George jolted to a halt and gawped at him, stupefied for a brief moment, before Lewrie raised his glass in salute and smiled; to which Sir George performed a slight shrug, and displayed a worldly-wise smile, before following his doxy to the stairs.

  And damned if the fellow with him wasn’t a Member of Commons, a fellow noted for being in the “progressive,” reforming, and moralising faction. By the gay and bawdy interplay ’twixt Sir George, his choice of Poll, and the other couple, it didn’t appear as if they’d be taking separate rooms, either!

  “Do you have any preferences, sir?” the older woman in the towering wig enquired after she had seen the foursome up the stairs with fond wishes. She sat beside Lewrie on the short settee, hands
in her lap as prim as a vicar’s wife at high tea. “We boast of ladies to every taste. Dark and exotic from the West Indies or Africa, perhaps? Girls worthy of a rajah’s harem in India or the Far East? Old, stout . . . slim and young . . . dark or fair? Whatever is your fondest wish . . . short of a child, of course. . . . Here, you may find your heart’s desire. And all skilled in every aspect of the pleasurable arts,” she said with many a simper and sly grins.

  “Well, hmm . . .” Lewrie paused, colouring a bit, for it had been years since he’d had to visit a commercial establishmen. Christ, wasn’t it Charleston, way back in the American Revolution? Or with Cashman in Port-au-Prince, in ’98? Had no need o’ brothels, he told himself; not with so many willin’ sorts about.

  “Slim and fair’d be nice,” Lewrie told the “Mother Abbess” at last, “as English as plum pudding . . . and, as sweet.”

  “Then I have the perfect one for you, sir,” the woman said, rising to her feet and beckoning to a girl in the far corner near the musicians, who was by herself and nodding dreamily in time to the melody. “Tess, my dear . . . come and meet our guest, the naval gentleman.”

  The girl seemed almost to jerk from her pleasant musings, as if waking from sleep at dawn. She sprang to her feet with a shy and winsome smile before remembering her “lessons” in grace, then crossed the parlour to join them in a well-schooled glide. It was a good thing the parlour was well-warmed by two fireplaces, for she wore only a thin and silky chemise, cinched round the waist with a pale blue ribbon, with a darker blue dressing gown over that, un-sashed, so it peeked open with each step to show off her low-heeled shoes, her white silk stockings tied above the knees, and now and then showed off her slim ankles and thighs . . . though she did keep her hands close to the laced edges of the dressing gown as if wishing to fold it snugger and less revealing.