Free A King's Trade by Dewey Lambdin Page B

“Lucy is my prime suspect of writing scurrilous, anonymous letters to my wife, about my…overseas… doings …” he trailed off, blurting out more than he’d meant to.
    â€œAh, those letters!” Twigg said, brightening with cruel amusement. “Why must you suspect her?”
    â€œYou
know
of ‘em?” Lewrie quailed, though he had to admit that ZachariahTwigg had spent his entire life as a Foreign Office agent—he just
had
to know a bit about everything!
    â€œYour
father
has, since the mutiny at the Nore, he said, so…knowing my old profession, he approached me to delve into things, and discover what I could. ‘Smoak out’ the culprit. So far without joy. Why do you suspect her?”
    â€œWhen we met in Venice in ‘96,
years
later, Lucy, I felt, was …still after me,” Lewrie told him as he at last accepted a heap of rice, a slice or two of roast kid, and a dribble of the spiced
dahee.
“Even if she was married not six months, still on ‘honeymoon’ with Sir Malcolm Shockley, she was…”
    â€œWhat a
burden
it is,” Twigg amusedly drawled, “to be the romantic masculine paragon of one’s age…and in
such
demand!”
    â€œAll but throwing herself at me, aye!” Lewrie retorted in some heat, and grovelling bedamned. “Her foot damn’ near in my lap, even with her husband at-table with us, and when I wouldn’t play, she took up with Commander William Fillebrowne, another officer from our squadron. There’s another I suspect, the smarmy bastard! Our last words, Lucy caught onto my…involvement with a lady I’d rescued from Serbian pirates, and said—”
    â€œMistress Theoni Kavares Connor, the mother of your bastard,” Twigg offhandedly interjected ‘twixt a bite of food and a sip. “She of the Zante currant-trade fortune from the Ionian Islands.”
    â€œEr…yes,” Lewrie barely squeaked, having been rein-sawed from a full gallop to a pale-faced, hoof-sliding halt, for a moment. “Well… Lucy said something very like ‘I should write your wife and tell her what a rogue she wed’…
playfully,
but not without a
bite
to it. I told
her
what Sir Malcolm should know ‘bout
her
doin’s with Commander Fillebrowne, and that’s where we left it, but…”
    â€œAnd
was
she, in fact, involved with Fillebrowne?” Twigg asked.
    â€œWell, o’
course
she was!” Lewrie snapped, hitting his stride, “I saw ‘em for myself, spoonin’ and kissin’ on the balcony of a rented set o’ rooms, just before we sailed the last time, whoever could notice ‘em bedamned… only Dago foreigners, I s’pose they thought. An old friend of mine from Harrow, Clotworthy Chute, was with me, too! Chute was doing the Grand Tour of the Continent with Lord Peter Rushton, at the time. And…she gambles. Gambles deep,” Lewrie added, recalling what that Flag-Lieutenant at Portsmouth said of Lady Emma Hamilton, as if that would be proof enough to sign, seal, and deliver the truth of his account.
    Twigg cocked an eye at him as if he thought that Lewrie had lost his mind, and was about halfway towards laughing out loud at such rank priggishness, especially coming from one so “low-minded” as Lewrie.
    â€œDo assay the wine, sir,” Twigg instructed after a long ponder. “A Dago wine, how further coincidental. A Tuscan
chianti,
in point of fact, of a very dry nature, that complements the richness of the goat quite nicely. I can understand, on the face of it, why you might susect Lady Lucy, Lewrie, but…you say you also suspect that Commander Fillebrowne?”
    â€œWell …” Lewrie elaborated, after a tentative bite of kid and rice, and a sip of the
chianti,
which brought back memories of Naples. “When we first met, he was anchored at Elba. Tupping a local vintner’s wife, as I