"Well," Lewrie replied, sulkily accepting a glass. "For a bit, I thought Peel was having too much fun building me a persona, without a thought as to whether it'd be plausible."
"In a private moment, ahem!… Mister Peel might have said to me that Willoughby was a name you'd not forget, were you ever flustered," Pollock twinkled, barely concealing a grin. Aye, Pollock was enjoying himself at last, and that, right maliciously, too!
"In my cups? A 'melting' moment?" Lewrie gravelled. "Were I stuck for an answer to 'hello'? Damn that smarmy bastard!"
"You can't pose as anything but a former serving officer." Mr. Pollock pretended to commiserate, losing his grin. "You're much too weathered and roguish-looking to play a clerk, after all, sir. Even the way you walk will cry 'Sailor,' soon as you step ashore. To be a cashiered Royal Navy officer, fled to the United States in search of a seafaring post to remake your fortune, is frankly perfect. Ahem."
"And so easy for my dim wits to remember?" Lewrie groused. "I see the sense of it. Aye, I think I know how to play it."
"Assure me, pray do," Pollock entreated.
"I'm an overaged Lieutenant," Lewrie almost sing-songed what Peel had had the gall to write down for him to study on the voyage. "Was, rather. Little patronage or 'interest,' lived mostly on my pay and never had a speck of luck with prize-money… one command, early on. A despatch cutter. Glorious fun, but then I was advanced aboard a Third Rate seventy-four, and that was boresome blockading, with no chance to advance. And no adventure or fun, either."
"Mmm-hmm," Pollock encouraged 'tween sips of pepper-pot soup.
"Competent, but no one's pet," Lewrie impatiently recited his false biography, one slightly borrowed from his own past aboard the 64-gun HMS Ariadne as a Midshipman, the despatch schooner HMS Parrot. "Started in the American Revolution, second or third son of a freehold family, but nothing grand. I'm thirty-six, so I spent a lot of time 'tween the wars on half-pay, knocking about in the merchant service, so I can bore people to death with tales about the Far East, Canton in China, Calcutta… and know what I'm saying. Mate aboard a 'country' ship, not with the East India Company… that'd be too grand for me."
"Quite," Pollock primly simpered over the bowl of his spoon.
"Back in the Navy in '93, when the war broke out," Lewrie went on, by then bored with repeated recitations. "Impress Service, not sea duty, though. Deptford, 'cause my old Captain Lilycrop held that district…"
"As were you, for a time," Pollock pointed out.
"Aye, I did, damn yer eyes. Then," Lewrie muttered, taking time to sample his soup and take a drink of wine. "Um… I learned one could make a 'shower o' tin' crimping merchant sailors even with legitimate protections, farm lads. Fiddled the books, too, over the costs of recruiting, claimed more than I brought in… took bribes from merchant captains t'look the other way, and-"
"And you ended out here, in my employ," Pollock concluded for him, as if laying a permanent claim upon him. "The very sort of tar-handed fellow we need, who knows his way with artillery, good with an assortment of weapons… knows how to lead men. Useful but ruthless, none too squeamish if heads need knocking together? Hmm, though…" Pollock stopped of a sudden and gave Lewrie a skeptical appraising, up and down like a disbelieving London tailor presented with a crude, "Country-Put" ape to garb. "What you now wear will do aboard ship, but…" he speculated for a long moment. "Before I turn you loose on the city to do whatever it is you'll do to seek your pirates, I fancy you should adopt better togs. Now employed, you might be accepted all the more as a flash dandy, now you have the 'chink.' New Orleans is hip-deep in dandies. Think of it as a way of, ah… blending in. Do you own shore-going attire, Mister Willoughby… ahem?"
"Never had need of 'em," Lewrie gruffly replied, wondering what new horror might be foisted upon him. "Ev'ry stitch o' 'long clothes' I own are back in England."
"Then we must come up with something suitable, mustn't we?" Mr. Pollock decided with a lazy, feral smile and a chuckle worthy of a Covent Garden pimp. "Can't have you looking too elegant, but… I think that a bit of the gentleman, with a bit of the 'Captain Sharp' will suit your needs right down to your toes, heh heh."
"Oh, bloody joy," Lewrie warily groaned, sure he'd despise Mr. Pollock's choices, even if he did know his home ground and its tastes to a tee; and half worried that the wretched little man would charge him for new clothing!
"Couldn't I lurk about in what I'm wearing?" Lewrie asked him.
"You'd look like a costumed spy right off," Pollock warned him. "Best to appear as close to the locals' style as you may and be taken for what the town expects to see from a man of your new station. As for lurking …"
"How else do we find the pirates who-"
"Time enough for that," Pollock assured him. "All in good time."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Christ, I'm a Covent Garden pimp! Lewrie sourly thought, taking in his new "suitings" in a wavy, speckled old cheval mirror aboard the emporium hulk. One o' the canting crew, a pickpocket… an Amuser!
Mr. Pollock had suggested a touch of "Captain Sharp" and by God he'd delivered: a tawdry ensemble usually sported by "buttock brokers" and confidence men, professional gamblers and ne'er-do-wells, or those who blew snuff in a cully's eyes in a dark street, then robbed him of all he had-the Amusers of ill repute.
He'd been given a tightly woven and wide-brimmed planter's hat made of the slimmest straw or cane fibres from Cuba, nigh as big about as a washtub, what local settlers called a "wide-awake," since it was nearly impossible to see whether the wearer was asleep or awake underneath its cooling shade if one had one's head down. Below that, he now was clad in an exaggerated tailcoat, assured that it was "all the go" in Paris, London, or Madrid. The lapels were extremely wide, the square cut-aways didn't come down to his waist, there was no way it could button together over his chest, and its long scissor-tails fell to the backs of his knees. The sleeves were almost excruciatingly snug, and puffed up where they joined the shoulders, putting Lewrie in mind of a gown his wife, Caroline, was partial to. The tailcoat was bottle green, but made from an extremely glittery fabric.
Under that, he wore a shiny, nubby-silk waist-coat weaved in vertical stripes-salmon, burgundy, white, and tan, with lapels of its own, best displayed overlaid upon the coat lapels, so very snug, short-waisted and double-breasted that he found it hard to breathe.
Sensible neck-stocks were no longer the ton; no, one had to wear a florid paisley Frog invention, the cravat, which even tied could do double duty as a child's bib or a diner's napkin, and tickled his chin every time he moved, it was so big, wide, and puffy.
Pollock let him keep his own watch, fob, and chain, but tricked him out in trousers, much snugger and more stylish than his accustomed slop trousers at sea; they were white, and fitted so close to his calves that he had no trouble donning a horseman's top-boots.
A small pistol fit into his coat's breast pocket, its twin in the small of his back. He could wear his own Gills' hanger, but on a flashier snake-clasp waist belt. Finally, with a cherry-ebony walking stick to fend off riffraff and mendicants-it hid a slim eighteen-inch sword as well-he was simply "the crack," and "all the go"!