"Sir Hyde? What's he to do with this?" Lewrie asked, puzzled.
"Why, Sir Hyde Parker is to command the whole Baltic.
"God Almighty, Parker?" Lewrie was forced to gawp.
"To wed, again?" Twigg snickered, completely missing the point of Lewrie's sudden discomforture. "And why not? Though his bride-to-be is the daughter of Admiral Sir Richard Onslow… Frances, I believe her name to be… and is barely eighteen."
"Christ, Mister Twigg… Sir Hyde's sixty, if he's a day!"
"Lucky devil," Twigg simpered as he drew on his gloves. "Sir Richard Onslow, to get a son-in-law so rich in prize-money. The girl to land such a secure future, and Sir Hyde the, ah… fresh dew of her youth."
"Mister Twigg," Lewrie muttered, stepping closer to impart his knowledge of that worthy, "surely they must know that Sir Hyde's not possessed of an urgent bone in his body! 'Twas his frigates that did his work for him, and specially commissioned lesser tenders. The Frogs and the Dons didn't have anything in the West Indies with which to challenge us, so Sir Hyde spent all his time sittin' on his… officiatin' from his shore office, and his flagship anchored 'til the Apocalypse. He might've cruised Barfleur over to Saint Domingue to talk with some of his junior officers now and again, but he hasn't sniffed gunpowder since the American Revolution!"
"Indeed," Twigg asked down his long nose, with a worried look on his skeletonously lean face. "Now that is rather discomfiting news to me, when speed is of the essence, anent the melting of the ice over yonder in the Baltic naval ports. Ah, but he does have Nelson, don't he, Lewrie? And with Nelson involved… a most impatient and urgent fellow, he… we cannot go very wrong. Well, I am off, Lewrie. I do hope my informations have lightened your burden somewhat."
"You have my eternal gratitude, sir, for all you've done," he had to respond, with a hand upon his breast, and a sketch of a bow.
"I'll hold you to that, Lewrie," Twigg said with an ominous look as he clapped his rather unfashionable old hat on his head. "One never knows when your, ah… inestimable talent for mayhem may prove useful again."
That promise-in-parting turned the excellent meal in Lewrie's innards to cold lead, for he already knew what neck-or-nothing, harum scarum use Twigg could put a fellow to!
And, there was yet another cause for his dyspepsia… now he knew that it had been Theoni writing those letters all these years… what was he to do about her?
And how best to go about crushing the spiteful bitch!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Another hellish-cold morning in London, though the sun was out, for a rare once, and the sky was fresh-washed and clear blue. Lewrie's breath steamed as he briskly strolled to the Admiral Boscawen Coffee House, deftly dodging the throngs of other pedestrians, the trotting teams of carriages, goods waggons, and carts, and the impudently rude London drivers and carters, who filled the morning with shouts of "By yer leave!" and " 'Ave a care, there!" and "Make a way, make a way, ye bloody…!" with the choicer curses bitten off.
Admittedly, it was rather early for Lewrie to be astir, given his bred-in-the-bone penchant for laziness; it was barely a tick after 8 A.M., and even the usually unperturbable servants at the Madeira Club had been forced to goggle their eyes to see him up and dressed so early, and bound out the doors "close-hauled" at a rate of knots.
Once seated with a cup of coffee before him (closer to the fire than before) he slathered up a finger-thick slice of toast, spread the jam heavy, and chewed as he perused The Morning Post, one of London's saucier papers, and the one most filled with gossip and anonymous innuendo.
Sir Hyde Parker's appointment to a command in the North Sea has converted his honeymoon into a sort of ague; a complaint always attended with a sudden transition from a hot to a cold fit.
A ragged earlier edition told him, followed by the newest of that morning, the thirty-first of January, to wit:
Should the gallant Admiral who late entered the Temple of Hymen be sent to sea again, he will leave his sheet anchor behind him.
Which smirking line made Lewrie wonder if the writers at The Morning Post were referring to Nelson, as well; hadn't that worthy left Emma Hamilton behind to hoist his flag in the San Josef?
Wonder who writes this drivel? Lewrie pondered; And how may I get in touch with one of 'em, an' put a flea in his ear?
He supposed that somebody, perhaps a great number of somebodys, fed juicy and lurid tidbits of scandal and gossip to the paper, for The Post, and several other of the dailies, seemed to be marvellously well informed, with many of their racier items printed up the morning after the event, not days or weeks later, so they must have an host of tattlers and informers.
Informers, hmm… Lewrie thought. Zachariah Twigg possessed an army of informers, though he dreaded going to that well too often; he was already too "beholden" to that top-lofty old bastard. Lewrie also imagined that a clumsy call upon the offices of The Post would result in gales of laughter, and an item mocking his naпvetй printed the very next day. Yet there must be some way to expose Theoni's scandalous letters.
"Where does The Post get all this drivel?" Lewrie said as the waiter poured him a fresh cup of coffee and took his order for fried eggs, a pork chop, and grated potatoes.
"There's thousands o' waggin' tongues, sir," the waiter replied with a snicker, "an' Grub Street's full o' scribblers livin' hand t' mouth, in need o' dirt. Don't work for the papers, direct, d'ye see. Might not eat, do they not git a morsel t'write up an' flog t' which ever paper'll take it. Most of 'em make their livin's off the tracts an' such. Hard-fry yer eggs, sir, or do ye prefer 'em softer?"
Grub Street, hmm… Lewrie mused as he stirred sugar and some rather dubious-looking "fresh cream" into his coffee; didn't they do all those bloody tracts 'bout me for Wilberforce and his crowd? All those anti-slavery things?
While he was no longer the subject of almost-daily printings, the campaign against slavery in the public mind, and the halls of Parliament, continued, with earnest hawkers on every street corner. All it might take would be for him to accept one of the damned things, see who had run it up, and call upon the printer… to offer his gratitude for all his efforts on his, and the Abolitionists', behalf, ha ha! If one of the scribblers could be named, he could approach him. A bit of hemming and hawing as to how one might expose a woman who had caused a British hero's wife so much pain… carefully leaving out the fact of said woman bearing said hero's illegitimate child, of course!… with an authentic anger, which he figured he could manage to convey.
Hmm, with a hint of a public scandal to come? Lewrie wondered; something right out in the open, like his scrambling from her sight at Ranelagh Gardens, he imagined with a wince of chagrin, to make it even juicier a story.
He took a sip of coffee and frowned as he considered how this plan might go awry. Am I devious enough t'pull this off? he thought; Never have been, before! Dim bastard, most people think me. Yet…!
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.