"Yes, she does!" Caroline agreed. "Even so, though… Lord, that gown of hers! Sir Pulteney must be hellish-rich, indeed, I'd not wish to ascribe Lady Imogene's motives for marrying such a… daft fellow like Sir Pulteney," Caroline cattily said, pausing her brushing, looking pensively into the mirror as if drawing a comparison, "but… a chance to flee France and all the bloodshed, and to a man with so much money… seeming money, rather… "
"Silly as a goose," Lewrie agreed again.
"He does laugh rather a lot, doesn't he," Caroline said, chuckling, beginning to under-brush. "I must admit, though… they seem to be besotted with each other, still. Did you not notice, Alan?"
Usin' my first name, hey? Lewrie exulted; that sounds promisin!
"Can't say that I did, my dear," he said, tossing his shirt at one of his old sea-chests, and donning a dressing robe. "But it takes all kinds, don't it?"
"I suspect a great, mutual passion," Caroline said, done with her hair, and swivelling about on her stool to face him. It sounded wistful.
I'm up for passion! Lewrie told himself, feeling frisky; should I break out the dental powder or settle for a swill-out with brandy?
"Did you think her fetching, Alan?" Caroline teased; it seemed like romantic teasing, at any rate, Lewrie hoped.
"Well, I was too busy tendin' to you on the packet, Caroline," he replied with a non-committal shrug. "Only really met her tonight. Aye, I s'pose she's handsome… in her own way."
"Lady Imogene and I will go shopping tomorrow," she said as she put her toiletry items aside in a roll-up "house-wife," then stood to go to the far side of the inviting bed, nearest the last candle. "You will have another day to yourself. If we are to be presented to that ogre Napoleon Bonaparte, I will need something truly grand to wear, and she has promised to advise me. We cannot let the French form a low opinion of how British people dress. Oh, she has such an exquisite sense of style and taste… as does Sir Pulteney."
"Well, I s'pose I could find something t'do with myself," he allowed, sweeping back the covers on his side of the bed.
"So long as you don't go in search of scents," Caroline said, much more coolly.
"Scents? Hey?"
"Most especially at a shop called La Contessa's in the Place Victor," Caroline said on, her expression and tone hardening, the furrow 'twixt her brows appearing. "A shop run by a Corsican baggage by name of Phoebe Aretino?"
"Uhm, er…! Who? Honest t'God, Caroline, how was I to know she was in Paris?" Lewrie flummoxed. "Mean t'say, rather…!"
Shit, there it is! Lewrie quailed; fourty-two-pound coast guns!
"And it did not give you pause that Lady Imogene and your… whore!… resemble each other remarkably closely… my dear? Here!" she snapped, handing him the candle from the night-stand. "It trust you find the settee in the parlour a pleasant bed for the night!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By mid-morning two days later, whilst the unsuspecting Lewries were coaching along another bucolic stretch of the Seine, an increasingly concerned Joseph Fouchй was receiving a summary report on what his agents had been able to glean about this troubling Anglais visitor.
"The Ministry of Marine notes that this gars was instrumental in destroying a secret alliance with native pirates in the Far East, back in the bad old days of the Ancien Rйgime," Matthieu Fourchette, one of Fouchй's cleverest and most persistent agents, related to his chief. "A dumb idea, anyway, that wouldn't have lasted a year once war broke out again and the Biftecs put enough warships out there to escort a China convoy," Fourchette told him with a sneer. "Only a Lieutenant, but the Anglais force was directed by secret agents from their Foreign Office. Just a lackey at the time, I'd suspect."
Matthieu Fourchette was one of the few people in France who did not cringe at the mention of Fouchй's name or shudder in fear when in his presence or carefully guard every utterance. Fourchette was too insouciant, too casual and carefree to fear the man he served so well, and it was against his wry and sarcastic, cynical nature. Fourchette did not sit upright, but slouched with his legs sprawled in the chair in front of Fouchй's desk, making free with a Spanish cigarro and knocking ash to the marble floor.
"Now, there's this retired Capitaine Guillaume Choundas's notes, but he's dйbile on the subject of this Lewrie mec," Fourchette breezed on, "and thinks the Anglais is a demon from Hell, sent specifically by the Devil to torment him. I can see why he thinks so, since this Alain Luray Lew-rie… was the one who sliced him up like a veal sausage and crippled him. Odd, though… how often Choundas was put in charge of something that smacked of spy-work combined with combat, and Lewrie just happened to turn up… like a bad penny, as the Anglais say, hmm?"
"Anything recent?" Fouchй pressed.
"We're getting there, citoyen" Fourchette said with a grin. "In the Mediterranean, he put a hitch in Pouzin's plans, again with connexions to the same Anglais spymaster that ran things in the Far East. Poor old Choundas lost his arm to Lewrie that time. Poor old salaud… this fellow just keeps whittling Choundas down to a nub. It's good our Navy retired him, hawn hawn! Anyway…
"This Lewrie did rather well in the West Indies, taking prizes, keeping the Nйgres slaves on Saint Domingue, so their uprising did not spread to Jamaica," Fourchette went on. "I spoke to that Citoyenne Charitй de Guilleri, as you ordered… Mon Dieu, citoyen, what a fine young thing, and thank you for the assignment! I'd love to 'dip my biscuit' in that. The fellow did dress in civilian clothes and go up the Mississippi to New Orleans as a spy, though there was no provable direction by Anglais spy agencies, but it is hard to believe that he did it on his own, n'est-ce pas? Then, when we and the Amйricains had our little disagreement, Choundas was out there on Guadeloupe, and, again, Lewrie was instrumental in his last downfall. Crippled the fellow's frigate in his own harbour, and rolled up many of his privateers and smuggler vessels before the Amйricains captured him and his last convoy."
"Perhaps this Choundas is not so demented, after all," Fouchй rumbled. "After that, then?"
"Strictly straightforward," Fourchette said with a shrug, brushing his loose shock of dark hair back from his broad forehead and his oddly pale green eyes that sometimes, in the right light, looked yellow. He was lean and fox-faced, not much above middle height, but despite his insouciance, there was an air about him that made others tread as wary about Fourchette as most did about Fouchй. "A time in the South Atlantic, escorting China convoys, a fight with one of our frigates, which he won… Uhm, there's a note from the Gironde that he was responsible for the reduction of two forts in the bay of the river, a bombardment of troops dug in on the Cфte Sauvage that resulted in heavy casualties, and one of our naval officers who was spying on the Anglais blockade ships, pretending to be a poor fisherman who'd trade with them, sent a letter to the Ministry of Marine to say that the man is a clever liar.