"Should I have sent you a note first?" Lewrie asked, confused.
"The theatre, tonight?" Caroline continued to rant, pacing the salon. "In one of my old rags? Why…! Sir Pulteney Plumb and Lady Imogene, I vaguely recall… Oh! That lofty couple? They were, as I recall, extremely well-dressed… in the height of fashion. Lord, I might be mistaken for their maid-servant in comparison! Are they anyone?"
"Well, over dinner, Sir Pulteney alluded t'bein' on intimate grounds with the Prince of Wales," Lewrie told her. "And, he seemed t'be swimmin' in gold guineas, 'tween his purchases at the tailor's and him sportin' all for dinner. Supper and the theatre's his treat tonight, too. If they're a pair o' 'sharps,' then they're both out a pretty penny, and if they think t'trick us out of 'chink,' then they're barkin' up the wrong tree. He seems genuine… annoyin'ly odd, but genuine.
"Should I write him a note and ask for a couple nights' delay?" Lewrie offered, sure that something else had set her off, and he ran better-than-good odds that he was "in the quag, right to his eyeballs" over something.
"You will not!" Caroline snapped, after a long moment to mull it over. "If the Plumbs are as well connected and as wealthy and aristocratic as you say they appear, to turn them down would be unseemly. People on close terms with the Prince of Wales, perhaps even with the King himself… "
So are pretty whores, and Eudoxia Durschenko by now, Lewrie had to imagine, though he dared not say that aloud. The winter before, in London, the Prince of Wales-"Prinny" to his friends and "Florizel" to himself, God alone knew why!-had taken a keen interest in Eudoxia, and despite her evil-looking father's Argus-eyed watchfulness over her virginity, the mort did sport a few more baubles than before!
"I'm in the same boat, Caroline," Lewrie told her. "Boat, see?" That was met with another roll of her eyes.
"I'd be wearin' me own best, and my new'uns won't be finished for days, so…," he went on. "Well, there's new stocks and such, hats and gloves, but… "
"I suppose I could throw a suitable ensemble together at short notice," Caroline allowed at last, with an exasperated, wifely sigh. "The Comйdie Franзaise? Gawd, it will all be in French!" she wailed, turning to sort through her new purchases to see if there was anything that would avail, instanter, to liven the best of her supper gowns.
Met an old friend o' mine… in Paris? Lewrie tried to puzzle out as he began to change clothes. He couldn't imagine who that would be, but… he had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd just dodged a broadside and that his wife, despite this new distraction, was still swabbing out, reloading, and just waiting 'til the range was shorter to fire off another!
Meanwhile, in the former offices of the Committee for General Security, just outside the eastern wall of the Tuileries, along the Quai Galerie du Louvre, Mlle. Charitй de Guilleri was paying a call upon the head of the National Police, Joseph Fouchй. It was not one that could be called a social visit, nor was it one done casually, for Fouchй was a very clever, coldblooded man; he had to be, to have survived from the earliest days of the Revolution, one of the last of the "old stagers" so steeped in the blood of discovered or denounced aristos, Royalists, and reactionaries. He'd created bloodbaths at Nevers and Lyon, had threaded a wary way through the denunciations and deaths of Marat, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and the other Jacobins, and had prospered.
"Mademoiselle de Guilleri, ma chйrie" Fouchй gravelled as she was at last let into his offices. He stayed seated, though, intent on the papers on his desk, scanning fresh denunciations of suspected plotters who still hoped to supplant the First Consul, undo the Revolution, and return royal rule to France. Joseph Fouchй was an ill-featured man, rather short and stocky, some might say rotund due to his barrel chest. He cared little for fashion or the proper fit of his clothes, and still wore his shirt collars open, with a loose stock tied more like a sailor's kerchief. He was also completely bald, and shaved what little stubble or fluff remained.
"What can I do for you, citoyenne?" Fouchй asked, reverting to the form of address created more than a decade before at the start of the Revolution; unlike some newly risen arrivistes, Fouchй was a dedicated common man of the Republic.
"The British captain I thought I shot, do you recall, citoyen?" Charitй baldly began, knowing that coquetry and idle niceties before business were wasted on Fouchй, and would irritate him further than she dared. She took a deep breath, waiting.
"Ouais?" Fouchй said with a leery grunt, intent again upon his paperwork. He'd always been unimpressed and dubious of the little self-made heroine's tale, thinking Charitй a foolish dabbler, too full of herself, and too ready to push herself and her "cause" forward.
"I was mistaken," Charitй meekly declared. "The air-rifle… my shot was, perhaps, too weak to kill him, as I dearly wished. I met… I met his wife today, citoyen, here in Paris, and she spoke as if he is still alive, this very moment! He spied on us once, in New Orleans. Who is to say he is not here to spy on us again, you see?"
"You suspect he is here in Paris, to spy on us, citoyenne?" the policeman responded, setting aside a document and folding meaty hands atop his desk. He seemed amused, and a touch irritated, by Charitй's assertion. "Would it not make more sense for this fellow… what is his name?"
"Alain Lewrie, Citoyen Fouchй," Charitй said, un-nerved by the man's chary tone and expression. "An Anglais naval captain."
Fouchй made a pencilled note on a fresh sheet of paper, then looked up again with a scowl on his face. "Would it not make sense he… this Alain Lew… however you say it… spies in our seaports, our navy yards, than Paris, citoyenne? Perhaps you mis-heard what the Anglaise said. You've seen him yourself?"
"Non, citoyen… I have not seen him myself," Charitй rejoined, bristling a little to be patronised or dismissed. "But I speak very good Anglais, from dealings with the barbarous Amйricains in New Orleans, and I know perfectly what Madame Lewrie said. In anger, you see? Surprised by confrontation with another woman whom she suspects was once her husband's mistress, n'est-ce pas?"
Charitй de Guilleri explained the circumstances in " La Contessa " Phoebe Aretino's parfumerie, how icy and angry Madame Lewrie had become upon her introduction… and how flustered Mlle. Aretino had become in turn at the mention of Alan Lewrie's name!
"I quote, citoyen… 'I will extend your regards to my husband, but do not expect them to be returned,' " Charitй told him. "Lewrie is alive, Citoyen Fouchй, and most likely travelling with his wife, here in Paris. I thought the presence of an Anglais officer who put aside his uniform to spy on us in Louisiana should be brought to your attention, lest he do so again against us."
"These other people rescued by this Leew… whatever," Fouchй asked, scowling more deeply. "Do you remember their names?"