"Hmmm… better," Lewrie agreed, after a liberal admixture and a second taste. A smallish platter of little crescent-shaped sugared rolls sat between them, on which Pollock had been snacking before his own breakfast arrived, and Lewrie tasted one… or two or three. A French breakfast, he'd found in his Mediterranean travels, always did lean towards a lot of breads.
"Towards the end, the girl seemed quite taken with me," Lewrie continued his tale, in a confidential voice.
"Indeed," Mr. Pollock frostily commented. "Ahem?"
"She mentioned the possibility that ex-Lieutenant Willoughby, RN, might make his fortune as captain of a New Orleans-owned merchant ship, maybe even end up master of an entire fleet of merchantmen, did I play my cards right. All sorts of hints that their new crops of rice and cotton are the coming thing, and that she was on good terms of some sort with a fair number of the rich and powerful who'd fund the ships I'd design, or go survey and buy for 'em. Damme, but these… whatevers are good!"
"She did, did she?" Pollock mused aloud, perking up and giving at least one ear to Lewrie's tale. "Well, well… oh, but that might have been but wee-hours 'pillow talk,' " he piffled a moment later as he tore one of those little rolls in two, stared at both bites, as if unable to decide which to swallow first, and mulled all that over.
"Not the sort of offer one hears from a common trull, don't ye know," Lewrie pointed out. "Usually, the well-pleased strumpets hint at 'going under the protection' of the lout, is he a gentleman of any means… or making him her bully-buck and pimp for a cut of the profits t' keep her safe on the streets. Lurk near her rooms…"
"Indeed." Pollock icily glared at him.
"Well… or so I've heard," Lewrie replied, shifty-eyed, making a throat-clearing "Ahem" of his own before furthering his point. "The way she suggested it, her understanding of syndicates and such, and her air of… actual gentility was what convinced me that it might be-"
"Dressed in men's attire, I b'lieve you said she was?" Pollock interrupted.
"Aye, and with a false mustachio pasted on her upper lip, too," Lewrie sulkily insisted.
"Well, surely… ahem!" Pollock brightened, bestowing upon his breakfast partner an almost pitiable look, "a girl out on the town who dresses so… perhaps well-raised once, as you described, I grant you… might delight in spinning phantasms about herself, about what she could do for you. Telling you everything or anything she thought you wished to hear once she'd sounded you out. Either for your monetary support and, uh… protection later on, or… scalping you for ten pounds, or fourty Spanish dollars, was her night's earnings. Anything she dreamt up afterward was moonbeams, and you her, ah… pleasurable, but unwitting, baa-lamb, Lew… Willoughby."
"Well, now really!" Lewrie objected, though not too strongly. There was a sordid possibility that he'd been gulled. God knows, it wouldn't have been the first time! He crossed his arms and grumped.
"And was this after you fed her your, ah… alias?"
"Aye," Lewrie replied, tight-lipped.
"And did she supply one of her own?" Pollock asked, nigh leering.
"Charite Bonsecours, she said she was," Lewrie told him. "And in the course of our card game, she introduced me to a pair of brothers by name of Darbone, who sat in with us."
"Oh, sir," Pollock commiserated with a world-weary shake of his head. ' "She was their handmaiden most-like! An attractive lure to get you bedazzled, off your guard, and skinned by a pair of sharps!"
"They barely won five silver dollars each off me, ten at most," Lewrie countered, "and they each bought a fresh bottle of champagne to keep the game going, 'cause… well, I got the impression as we were intent on leaving for my rooms that… they seemed more jealous than disappointed. And, sir! If she was their man-trap, why wasn't she in a revealing, gauzy gown, with her poonts hangin' out? Why suited, booted, and damn-near spurred?"
"I know of the Darbones, though I cannot recall…" Mr. Pollock deeply frowned, almost chewed on a thumbnail. "I know most of the established Creole families, if just in passing. What were their names?"
"One was Baltasar, t'other, ah… Claude," Lewrie dredged up at last. "They were all fair-haired, chestnut-ey, I'd say, and blue eyed. In fact, they all three bore a striking resemblance to each other."
"Oh, half the Creoles in Louisiana fit that description," Mr. Pollock pooh-poohed. "They all marry their distinguished cousins."
"So one of the Darbone brothers said, about the resemblance… nothing about the cross-eyed cousins part," Lewrie replied. "She was a very fetching girl, most…"
"Hmmm… pity you were not intrigued enough to follow her home and get to the bottom of the matter," Pollock grumpily commented.
"By cock-crow, 'twas all I could do to hand her down the stairs to the door!" Lewrie countered with a smug look. "Had an old captain, said whenever he made a grand night of it ashore, by the time he'd come back aboard, he hadn't had a wink, and one more passionate kiss, or a cold breakfast, would've killed him!"
"And one had hopes you wouldn't boast, ahem, " Pollock despaired with a heavy sigh. "Still… Charite Bonsecours, didje say? Hmmm, how old? Under twenty, or about twenty, ah-ha. I can't say that I am able to place her, though French Creole families don't trot their females out, in the main. Not quite as bad as Hindoo purdah, but…"
"Well, perhaps your wife, being a local lady, might know 'em," Lewrie offhandedly suggested, slyly watching Pollock's reaction.
"My wife!" Pollock instantly bristled. "How did you-"
"My concierge, your former landlady, told me she took the young lady you boarded with as your epouse," Lewrie said, intrigued, and wondering what it was he'd said to nettle the man.
"Yes, well… ahem, " Pollock said, strangling, purpling, and tugging at his neck-stock. "My wife, of course."
"Once we've eat, shouldn't we call on her to ask what she knows about the Bonsecours and the Darbones?" Lewrie coyly hinted, his mien as seemingly guileless as the densest, most uninterested cully.
"I doubt there's need of that, Mister Willoughby," he snipped back, as if scandalised by the suggestion. "Colette is, ah… ahem! indisposed."
She that ugly? Lewrie maliciously thought; Is he ashamed about her, 'cause she 's not lily-white or he's proper-married somewhere? I just have t 'clap eyes on her 'fore we leave New Orleans!
"Wouldn't it be worth it to run this Charite Bonsecours to her lodgings, then?" Lewrie suggested, "to see if she knows what she was boasting about? If I posed ready to bolt your employment and enter theirs, it might lead to the ones who back our pirates. I might even get hired to be a pirate captain myself!"
"I s'pose we could…" Pollock somberly mused. "It might not cause too much harm. Could you dissemble well enough. Ah, breakfast!" he cried, instead, glad for the interruption.
Middling large platters were slid before them, holding omelettes as big as roof shingles, oozing cheese and done to a perfect firm turn, laced with bits of red onion and bell pepper. Each platter bore slabs of ham as large-about as ox hooves, half an inch thick. A woven straw basket of piping-hot croissants arrived, too, a fist-sized ball of soft and sweating fresh, salted butter, and an array of local preserves.