"The same person who provided the, uhm… copy to you wrote the newspaper items, as well, I s'pose?" Lewrie idly wondered aloud; trying for idle, anyway. "I did notice a certain… similarity in tone."
God help me, does he ask for specifics, Lewrie thought, wishing he could cross fingers for luck against that eventuality.‹
"Not exactly sure, Captain Lewrie," Mr. Leaver allowed, ruminating with a faint frown. "I usually never met the writers. The text was delivered by someone with the Abolitionist Society, and where they got it was anyone's guess. Now, there was Missuz Denby, who writes for the papers, who also came in with anti-slavery articles about you. She'll write for anybody. Sometimes the most scandalous flummery, ah-hmm."
"Gossip and such, like in The Morning Post?" Lewrie asked, with rising hope, and striving to not look hopeful.
"Hmpfh!" was Mr. Leaver's opinion of such. "Missuz Denby styles herself the doyenne of the 'Quality's' doings… though she writes under the pseudonym of 'Tattler.' Poor thing. 'Twas her late husband, God rest him, was a printer like me, and a tract writer, and not a bad hand when it came to turning a phrase, I'll give him that, but… once he'd passed on, Missuz Denby lost the business, and has had to live by her wits, since. Hardly a business for a woman, hey? At least she gained enough from the sale of the presses and such to keep body and soul together. Would have gone under in a year, had she not. Women simply do not have the proper head for business."
"I wonder how she manages to gather her information. I've seen her articles under 'Tattler,' and she seems remarkably well informed," Lewrie said, even if he'd never clapped "top-lights" on that by-line before in his life.
"Attends everything," Mr. Leaver said with a shake of his head. "Brags that she's on cater-cousin terms with half the maids and footmen in London, and that rich and titled ladies slip her gossip all the time."
"Why, if she attends everything, I must have run across her," Lewrie pretended to gape in astonishment.
"Can't miss her, with all that red hair. Why, speak of the Devil, if that's not her heading into Chester's shop, just cross the street this very minute," Leaver declared.
Lewrie turned to espy a very chick-a-biddy dumpling of a woman, quite short, but done up in the latest fashionable colours of lavender and puce, and sporting one of those pillow-like "Pizarro" bonnets atop a towering old-fashioned mountain of vividly red hair.
"Good Christ!" Lewrie muttered.
"See what I mean?" Mr. Leaver said, chuckling.
"Well, thanks again for all your good services, sir, and I will take my leave," Lewrie announced, slurping up the last of his tea and doffing his hat on his way out the door with undisguised haste. He had a gossip-monger to deal with, and time was of the essence.
"Your pardons, Ma'am, but might you be Mistress Denby?" Lewrie enquired with his hat to his breast, and bestowing upon her a gallant bow as he did so; to which the startled-looking woman replied with a quick, dropped curtsy. "The one who writes under the name of…?"
"Well, damme!" Mrs. Denby yelped. "You're 'Black Alan' Lewrie, to the life! Oh, sir!" she gushed as she dipped him an even deeper, and longer-held, curtsy… even if she had to brace herself with her furled parasol. She rose at last, looking as if she had tears in her eyes behind the hexagonal spectacles perched on the end of her nose. "Noble Captain Lewrie! Courageous Captain Lewrie! Oh, but it is my greatest honour to meet you at last! I could but catch the briefest glimpse of you, 'til your recent trial, o' course. I tried my best to get close enough to you once 'twas over, to receive but a mere press of your hand, in passing. Damme! Might you grant me the favour of an interview? A round dozen papers would bid for it, damme do they not!"
"I was led to understand you wrote many of the Abolitionist chapbooks and tracts, regarding my case… '' Lewrie began to say.
"I felt it the greatest privilege of my life, sir!" Mrs. Denby loudly declared. "I still do… write their tracts decrying slavery, d'ye see my meaning, Captain Lewrie," she said with a nervous laugh, all but fanning herself.
"You did me a magnificent service, Mistress Denby, for which I am eternally grateful," Lewrie told her, clapping his hat back on his head at last. "I just spoke with Mister Leaver, over yonder, to give him my thanks, and enquired of him who wrote such moving things about me, He told me, and then, like a Jack-in-the-Box, up you pop, ha ha!"
"Fortuitous, indeed, Captain Lewrie," Mrs. Denby gladly replied. "And I am quite honoured… ever the more so!… that you took the time to thank me personally! Oh, might you agree to let me interview you!" she gushed. Had I known your lodging place, I'd have written a note, long before… Even though certain salacious doings in Society have had me quite occupied, of late, I most certainly could make time to probe your innermost thoughts!" She was all but bouncing up and down on her toes.
Christ, but she can wear ya out, quick! Lewrie thought, wondering if turning his innermost thoughts loose on London was all that good an idea. Wonder if she was Mister Denby's cause o' death! Enthusiasm!
"I also was led to understand that you write for the papers as the 'Tattler,' " Lewrie said. "Are those the Society doings of which ye speak, Ma'am?"
"They are, indeed, Captain Lewrie!" Mrs. Denby admitted with a hearty cackle. "As to that… not only did I write in support of Abolition, and in firm support of you, I spoke… among all my contacts in the fashionable set, d'ye see, sir… lauding you to the skies, as enthusiastically as I decried the abhorrent institution of slavery!"
"You, ehm… have many contacts, I take it, Ma'am?"
"Oh, Captain Lewrie!" Mrs. Denby coyly confided (though a bit loud) and looking as if she would link arms with him. "Even servants at St. James's, Marlbourough House, any palace or estate you may name, confide in me… as do their masters and mistresses, when they wish to dish a tasty little rumour about their rivals, ha ha! Why, there isn't a drum, rout, exhibition, or public subscription ball that I do not attend, and… come away with fresh meat for grilling!" Mrs. Denby confided, snickering with wicked glee.
"Then I might have something right up your alley, Ma'am," he told her.
"Oh, Captain Lewrie! Call me Georgina, do!" she insisted with an even broader, hungrier grin. This time she did link arms with him. "Is it delicious? Is it scandalous? Filled with intrigues, romance, or betrayal? You have my complete curiosity, sir! And…," she said with a sly look, "there is a lovely little coffee-house, quite near to hand, and there, in all discreet confidence, you must reveal it all to me!"
"Well, damme!" Georgina Denby said at last, thumping her plump little self back against the high wood divider of their corner booth. "What a trollop! What a… foreign baggage the wench is!" She took time to wipe her hands on a table napkin, for in her large bag she had stowed a steel-nib pen and a screw-top jar of ink. Steel-nibs weren't all that cheap, as Lewrie already knew, so he had to assume that hints and innuendos, and "dirt," paid extremely well. All through her interrogation (for that was what it had felt like once he'd broached the subject) she had been scribbling away in a large accounting ledger, filling several pages quickly, both front and back, with the details of Lewrie's "connexions" to Theoni Kavares Connor, and her damnably anonymous "Dear Friend" letters.
"Though you do admit that you might very possibly be the father of her bastard," Mrs. Denby added, in a pensive taking for the first time in the better part of an hour. "She has yet to take you to court with a 'belly plea,' so…"
I wager she'd sing-song a soft whisper, Lewrie told himself.
"So?" he prompted, busying himself with pouring them both more tea.
"Damme, it's so obvious, Captain Lewrie!" Mrs. Denby chirped, back to her enthusiastic self. "She wished the child. You saved her and her first-born, and she became besotted by you! I can easily see why…," Mrs. Denby added with a flirtatious look. "An heroic, well-set-up man of all his parts, such as yourself? Still and all… it's hardly the way, is it, Captain Lewrie? Such affairs… with children born on the wrong side of the blanket… A touch more cream, do you please, ah!… Why, the mort was angling to land you for her own, and nothing, and no one, was to get in the way of it!