Well, that seemed t'make her happy, he thought as they embraced even tighter. And, despite her protestations, it did lead to a frantic tumble back onto his bed, and one more glorious, feverishly passionate romp, spare cundums, her expensive chemise, the lateness of the hour, her family, or society's expectations bedamned.
Oh, make him happy, Charite told herself at the same time; Men! So easy to entrance… and enlist! He will aid us. Forme. And it will be pleasurable for both of us. And he is so adorable, I think I truly am falling in love! Well, perhaps I could.
It was well past seven in the evening when he handed her down to the street and walked her the short block from Bourbon Street, up Rue Ste. Anne to Rue Dauphine, where she insisted that they must part at last. Now, on public view, their behaviour had to be most circumspect and formally courteous. Lewrie gallantly doffed his hat and swept it across his chest, was just about to make a "leg" in conge, she about to drop him a brief curtsy and elegant incline of her head in parting as well, when it suddenly struck him that he still hadn't plumbed the matter of her address. He'd had other things on his mind.
"When I return and wish to see you again, how do I reach you?" he asked suddenly. "Where do I send my best regards?"
"To… Mademoiselle Charite," she seemed to stumble for a moment before resuming her gay, coquettish airs. "Write me at La Maison Gayoso. Twenty-Six, Rue Dauphine."
"Not Mademoiselle Bonsecours?" Lewrie pressed, hat in hand and shamming amiable, fond confusion.
"Our concierge will see that I get it," Charite attempted to explain, for one brief instant almost snippish with him, before relaxing into her customary air of flirtatiousness. "My parents and family… for now, mon chou, for only a while longer, just my given name, please? Until you are well settled in New Orleans, n'est-ce pas ?"
"Well," he quibbled, shuffling from one foot to another.
"And you will keep your lodgings while you are upriver, Alain?" she asked with a disarming smile. "When I return, I may write to you there?"
"No, I'll…" Lewrie flummoxed, considering that he would most-like never see her again, that his secret doings would be finished by the time she got back to the city; then hit upon a sudden inspiration. "When I come back, I expect t'be much richer, and I'll take a grander appartement, not a low, single room. Where I may 'entertain' you in proper splendour, and… discreet privacy, hmm? Oh! You could pick it for me! Choose it and help me furnish it to our, ah… our mutual satisfaction?" he said with the suitable anticipatory leer. "Try the Panton, Leslie offices first, though, and I'll come running."
Aye, feather a nest, he smugly thought; women just adore that.
"Je t'adore!" Charite cooed under her breath, her eyes glowing under the brim of her fashionable bonnet, and the parasol carried over her shoulder spinning in delight. "But of course, I shall be more than happy to help. And I shall be distraught every day that we are apart, Alain, mon coeur. 'Til then, though, alas," she said with a tremble of her lip and a forlorn hitch of her shoulders and a heartfelt gulp in her voice. "Au revoir, mon cher Alain! Trust that I do love you… madly!"
"And I you, Charite… as mad as a Hatter, as a March Hare!" he declared. "English sayings… I'll explain them all to you, soon."
"You will have to!" She chuckled. "Soon. Le plus tot possible, mon amour … as soon as possible, my love. Again, au revoir!"
A slim hand gloved in lace net almost reached out for him, but she remembered her distinguished place in Creole society-in public at least!-and dropped him a slow and graceful curtsy, that elegant incline of her head, then she was gone in a trice, rising and spinning away down Dauphine without a backward glance, as if all their fervent day had never transpired.
Lewrie shrugged to himself and turned away as well, clapping his hat back on his head and fiddling with his sword-cane. He walked a few paces back down Rue Ste. Anne as if to return to his rooms or to head for the part of town where the most eateries were located… but then paused, theatrically felt his waist-coat pockets as if he had forgotten something, and turned back to lean his head round the corner, once he'd almost assured himself that no one was watching him. A few lamplighters were sluggishly making the rounds with their ladders and port fires, igniting the entire hundred (some scoffed and said only eighty) publicly funded streetlights of which New Orleans could boast. In the entryways, above the high stoops of shops and houses, private lanterns were already lit and feebly glowing, throwing little pools of light and even deeper skeins of darkness. But he could pick her out by the pale colour of her gown, the flounces on her hat, the now-furled parasol in her hands, as she flitted from one illuminated pool to the next…
A moment later, and she'd melted away into an iron-gated entryway of a blank-walled building. Close enough, Lewrie decided, thinking that his sauntering past the place would blow the gaffe. He would recognise the building again, counted it off as the twelfth from his corner, on the north side of Rue Dauphine, and from the look of the place at his acute viewing angle, it would most likely turn out to be one of the many walled-courtyard appartement houses. No more than three storeys above the street, but with spacious sets of rooms on all four sides to face the central courtyard. Eight appartements or twelve? he speculated, seeing no sign of commercial establishments on the ground floor. With their own stabling out back, it'd be even fewer, he deduced.
Ste. Anne began on the east side of the Place d'Armes, the main city square by the riverbank; Rue St. Pierre ran down its west side, so… how did they number their houses? Outward from the centre, the lowest numbers starting on those two streets, or from Rue de l'Arsenal on the east straight to the west? No matter, he thought with a sniff; She 'd said number 26. Unless she 's been lying like a dog right from the start!
He shrugged again and drew out his pocket watch. It was nearly eight! Long past time for him to hare back to the Panton, Leslie Company warehouse offices and catch up with Mr. Pollock, to see what he'd learned today, and proudly impart to him what he had garnered. A growl from his innards warned Lewrie that it was long past suppertime, too. Frankly, he suddenly felt ravenously famished, now that the most important items of his activities list were done, and he had only the idle Spanish to fret about.
Play-acting and fucking! Lewrie happily pondered as he strolled along, clacking his cane on the pavement; Both damn' good for buildin' an appetite, ha ha! Lewrie, you sly dog!
Down Ste. Anne to cross Bourbon Street, then down to Rue Royale, headed for Rue Charles, where he thought he might take a little amble in the Place d'Armes before diving into the commercial jumble round Levee Road, where it was darker, poorer-lit, and the streets narrower, filthier, and nigh abandoned at this hour.
The first two thin and muffled shots, the twiggish crack! crack! made him slam to a stop, head swivelling to track the confusing echoes that swirled from God knew where-closer to the river, or westward down Royale? A third crack! and by God that was a shot, quickly followed by a chorus of harsh shouts and the discharge of a weapon and a keen whine of a ricochet off brick! Definitely westward down Rue Royale, near St. Pierre or Toulouse!