Oh God, but he will prose on! Lewrie thought; Preen, rather!
"Unfortunately, such fine writing paper is available throughout London, and many of the larger cities and towns," Twigg said, frowning, "so until the unknown author sent a letter to your wife, insinuating your further adulterous doings, and was caught in the act, we had very little to go on, other than the clues unknowingly included in each of them… to wit, the proximity of certain suspected persons to you at the moment when you indulged your proclivity for the fairer sex, ahem."
Coming, so is bloody Christmas! Lewrie silently fumed, wishing he could lay hands on Twigg, take him by the lapels, and shake it out of him… assuming Lewrie lived after doing it, it went without saying, for, as he could attest, Zachariah Twigg, one of the Foreign Office's master spies and cut-throats, was a thoroughly dangerous man.
"I could, however, reduce the number of suspects to those who could have witnessed, or heard of, your doings," Twigg archly related, "and, through the employment of my 'Irregulars,' discreetly surveill those in England."
Twigg employed upwards of an hundred of his so-called Baker Street Irregulars, for his town-house upon that thoroughfare was the very centre of his spider's web, the lair from which he directed minor spies to keep an eye on foreign embassies, even the friendly ones, and foreign individuals who kept too lively a correspondence with people on the Continent. Chamber-maids and street vendors, messenger lads, cooks, sweeps, and beggars, as well as an host of "Sharps" from London's criminal element who could pick the right pocket, crack the right window or door in the dead of night or the light of day; copyists who could forge false information or duplicate hidden documents quickly, so the house-breakers could put the originals back where they'd found them with no one, any foreign spy, the wiser 'til some other of Twigg's minions, recruited from the military (who could safeguard the innocent, or corner the guilty) either leave them bleeding in some dark alley, or simply spirit them away as if they'd never been, never to be seen again.
"Sir Malcolm Shockley's wife, Lucy, who was once one of those Jamaican Beaumans, came to mind," Twigg simpered on, "for the first of these letters appeared soon after you ran into her in Venice in '96, whilst she was on her honeymoon tour of the Continent with Sir Malcolm… and sporting with that Commander William Fillebrowne, who took your former mistress on. Tsk-tsk," Twigg said with a twitch of his mouth. "A rather disreputable baggage, for all her beauty. As for Fillebrowne, well… he's the spiteful sort. He proved that by throwing his possession of Phoebe Aretino in your face so tauntingly, yet… he's been at sea since, and nowhere near any of your recent slips, so we could eliminate him."
"All this, and the King's business, too?" Lewrie sourly asked. "Two jobs for the price o' one, or something like that?"
"If you do not wish to know, Lewrie…," Twigg warned.
"Say on, then," Lewrie surrendered with a long sigh.
"I was able to place a maidservant in the Shockley residence, to keep an eye on her correspondence," Twigg proudly explained, "with an assistant coachman, as well, able to report quickly, and, the most likely to be given the task of carrying any such letters. Lady Lucy, I have determined, is not your tormentor."
"Well, that's a relief, I s'pose," Lewrie said, going for the coffee, cream, and sugar on the sideboard.
"Pour one for me, as well… noir, no sugar," Twigg ordered. "For a time, I considered that the letters might have been a French ploy, 'til I realised that no matter the wrath of Guillaume Choundas… the Americans exchanged him home in '99, did you know that?… there was no real advantage in it, not with you so junior and un-important in the greater scheme of things."
Demean me some more, I ask you. Please! Lewrie fumed.
"That Lombardian female spy they set upon you in Genoa, that Claudia Mastandrea, I therefore dismissed," Twigg said with a pleased sniff as he sipped his coffee, "as I did your former mistress, Phoebe Aretino, for, though she may have prospered greatly the last few years, and could buy expensive paper, she is not as literate, nor possessed of a fine handwriting, as our culprit."
"Leaving…!" Lewrie pressed.
"I even considered that your former ward, la Vicomtesse Sophie de Maubeuge, might have written them, if only to pique your wife and her interference in her early flirtations with that idiot neighbour of yours, Harry Embleton. To escape the dreariness of Anglesgreen for the delights of London… as she managed to do at last."
"Sophie? Never!" Lewrie was certain enough to declare.
"Indeed, the young lady in question is sweet-natured and kindly… intelligent and commonsensical," Twigg admitted.
"Leaving…?" Lewrie posed again.
"Theoni Kavares Connor, Lewrie," Twigg said with a triumphant smile. "The mother of your bastard."
"What? Why, the bitch!" Lewrie exploded. "Not three days ago, she was… well, it could have been embarrassing."
"I know of it, and it was," Twigg archly declared, sniggering, quite enjoying watching Lewrie slowly twist in the wind. "Consider… the letters to your wife began in '96, just after you rescued her from those Adriatic pirates, then bedded her on your passage back to Gibraltar. Did you blab your peccadillos, did you boast your older conquests to her?"
"Christ, no!" Lewrie gawped. "Mean t'say, what gentlemen'd be that foolish?"
Twigg looked down the length of his long nose at Lewrie as if he suspected that Lewrie was that sort of gentleman.
Superior bastard! Lewrie fumed to himself.
"Right, she was grateful for her life, her son's life," Lewrie said to fill the embarrassing silence. "That, and pleasin' sport after Lights-Out, well… and, fleein' the Greek Isles for good to come to England a step ahead of the French? Not sure she'd keep the fortune in the currant trade her dead husband'd made, and fear of how his kin would receive her?"
"She fell in love with you, Lewrie," Twigg said, "for all those reasons, and your skill at 'rogering,' I'd imagine. Then, to discover that she would bear your child… and also discover what a rakehell you are, yet still wished to keep you… '' He trailed off with a gleeful smirk, to take a sip of his coffee. "Amazing, how women find cads so intriguing, and do anything to delude themselves, and wish to keep their unworthy men. Had she any sense at all, given your history with the ladies… soon as she ferreted it out… that she didn't simply write you off as a bad penny. The boy, I expect…"
"As if she needed me t'support him," Lewrie scoffed. "She's as rich as the Walpoles… richer! And it's not as if she needed me for the Guinea Stamp. Her husband wasn't that long dead that she couldn't explain the boy's birthing as legitimate."
"So many bastards," Twigg pretended to be shocked. "One of them a Midshipman in the American Navy, of all things! Half yours, t'other half a Cherokee 'princess'? My word, sir! One could refer to your offspring round this world as the Lewriean Miscellany."
"How'd ye know o' that 'un?" Lewrie asked, much humbled and pale.
"I have my ways, do I not?" Twigg smugly simpered.
"Mmm, d'ye mean there's others ye…?"
"For me to know." Twigg almost laughed out loud for a rare once. "And for you to confront in future, Lewrie."
"Sure it was Theoni," Lewrie said; it was not a question, really. One thing he was sure of was that Twigg knew what he was talking about, when he finally got round to it.
"Watchers on the house, a street urchin for running messages in my employ always at hand to deliver her correspondence," Twigg said. "She don't write her own, ye know… no, she has a cultured personal maidservant for that, who polishes things up, and owns the fine hand.
"Evidently," Twigg said, reaching inside his double-breasted tail-coat to a breast pocket, and withdrawing one of the poisonous billets-doux, "your lack of attentiveness to Mistress Theoni Connor of late, and your public sham of respectability for Society the last two years to satisfy Wilberforce and his crowd, prompted her to take desperate measures."