THE GUN KETCH

Chapter 2

"How long before you're ready to sail, Alan?" Caroline asked, once they were tucked companionably into the high bedstead, and the last candle had been snuffed for the night.

"Four days, I should think." He yawned. "She had at least a halfhearted refit before I got her. Coppering's good, hull's sound, and the bosun has most everything set to rights again. Once we're done loading stores. And our passengers."

"Oh, God, your… what did you call them… live-lumber?" She snickered in the dark as she snuggled to him, as he put out an arm to receive her head on his shoulder.

"More," he complained, putting his face to her sweet hair.

"More? How?" she asked.

"God knows, darling. There's that Trinity House master, Gatacre and his mapmaker. They're to swing hammocks in the wardroom. Six midshipmen in a draft for the Bahamas Squadron, and never one of them ever aboard a ship, hanging like bats from the overhead on the orlop, right-aft by the fishrooms. And this morning, the Port Admiral tells me I'm to transport a chaplain and his wife and servants to Nassau, in my cabins. That means I'd have to feed and water them, out of my own purse, damme. I'll end up in a hammock in the chart-space if they keep shoving bodies at me! Least they could do is put plate aboard."

"What's that?"

"If you carry coin for the treasury, or solid pay out to a foreign station, you get a small percentage. No hope of that, though." He sighed. "Some Reverend Townsley and his lawful blanket."

"Why, I met them, Alan!" Caroline exclaimed. "They're staying here at the George. Stiff company."

"Must be a poor sort of hedge-priest if he has to take chaplain pay," Alan chuckled. "You never see reverends in wartime. Too busy at saving civilian souls of a sudden, don't ya know! What were they like?"

"Snooty as earls." She shivered against him. "They're related to some captain… no, some comm-something…"

"Commodore?" Alan asked suspiciously. "That was it A Commodore Garvey, out in the West Indies."

"Oh, stap me, he's commanding the Bahamas Station!" Alan cried. "They could ruin me if I treat 'em less than royal. Gawddd!"

"We took tea together this afternoon," Caroline said. "He said your commodore already had his wife, son and daughter out there. The son's in the Navy, too. A midshipman, I think he told me. Or maybe he'd just made lieutenant. I forget. They're a formidable pair. And with two wagonloads of goods. So they couldn't have left a poor parish," she decided. "Unless they looted it on their way out."

"Two wagonloads, Lord," Alan groaned. "Where'll I stow it all? Maybe I should just give 'em my cabins for the entire voyage. And I'll leave 'em blue and rose, too. That ought to be grand enough for 'em."

"I think they're lovely."

"The Navy wouldn't. I should have painted earlier. Let them describe their quarters to Commodore Garvey once they get to Nassau, he'll think me a primping dancing-master."

"1 still say they looked elegant," Caroline decided aloud. "Found lodgings yet?" he inquired. "There's little time left."

"I know, my love!" She sighed as she burrowed deeper into him with sudden ardor. "I've seen several. I'll take care of it, never fear. Oh, God, this is going to be so hard, to watch you sail away, and here I am, in Portsmouth, where I don't know a soul! Four days?" She wailed softly.

"Four days we should make the most of," Alan muttered, running a hand over her hip and thigh, delighting in her shivers of expectation. That night in Petersfield, they'd left a candle burning in their eagerness, and she'd come to him with a robe on, not a bedgown. A robe which slid down her shoulders and parted to reveal a girlish slimness, a veritable feast of creamy skin andproud young, close-set breasts, a taut, flat belly trimmed by riding, and long, incredibly fine and tapering smooth legs. He still had not gotten over the wonder of being with anyone so delectable, of her being his to caress and stroke into passion at a whim.

Like Venus on the half-shell, he exulted silently, like Aphrodite rising from the waves… but even better!

"You don't think me gawky and spindle-shanked?" she teased him as he nuzzled her graceful neck. "You don't prefer more roundness?"

"God, Caroline, you're the loveliest woman ever I did see!" he told her truthfully. She rolled on top of him to kiss him, to receive his kisses as his hands slid down to her firm little buttocks to draw the bedgown higher.

She uttered a thrilling little laugh as he found her hips, as his fingertips brushed her bare flesh.

She sat up astride of him to lift the bedgown over her head, raising her arms high and inclining her head with her hair loose and long like a silvery shimmer in the almost-dark. His hands rose to take possession of her firm breasts and she leaned into his palms for support, and excitement.

"Rough hands," she whispered, taking one so she could kiss it. "A sailor's hands. Rough from all those ropes and things."

"Too rough on you?" he grunted in rising ardor.

"Never a bit of it, my love," she chuckled again, softer. "I know it's not seemly, but I want you to teach me something new, Alan."

"Wanton jade!" he teased, sitting up a little to nuzzle at her nipples, which had gone puckery-hard from his caresses.

"Your wanton jade!" she promised, going goose-pimply with rising delight. "Only yours, darling. Make me yours again."

He drew her down to him, enfolding her in his arms so they were drawn against each other, her knees up by his chest, and one hand of his stroking the softest, most intimate of her flesh.

"Oh, God, but making love is so…" she moaned, near to transport. Her hips were moving now against his hand, her upper body rocking slowly left and right. She began to slide off to draw him over, but he stopped her. "Come to me, now," she implored.

"Right where you are, love," he grinned.

"Oh, yes!" she sighed, gasping as she felt his member brushing her. She slid down just a trifle, rose up on her palms as he fitted himself to her and thrust upwards with gentle but insistent pressure.

Down a little more she slid, then gave out with an inarticulate groan of surprise and pleasure as he slid deep.

"Riding St. George," he exulted as she made more happy groaning sounds, each ending in a rising note.

"The dragon spitted, 'pon his lance below… ohh!" she laughed.

"Sit up, darling," he coaxed. "Sit up, Caroline!"

"Oh, it's so… oh, yes!" She bit her lip, rolled her head to either side. He took her hands and held them tight, their fingers entwined fiercely. Hips rocking, upper body swaying, her head far back and her throat bared to the ceiling in her ecstasy, she met his movements, anticipated and amplified them. "Oh, so completely… so deeply! Jesus, I'll surely die of more! Ahh-hahhh!"

"Then I think we'll die together," Alan panted, swooning, with the entire world reduced to the friction of moist flesh, and his own release building like the pressure from a powder charge in gun's barrel. Time slowed down, time had no meaning, the planet and its tawdry doings ended beyond what they could touch, feel, or hear. And then she broke, weeping with release, crying out as if given a tiny glimpse of paradise, and he took hold of her slim hips and firm little bottom, and drove upwards, reveling in the creaking of ropes that supported their mattress, the pump-washer sound of their two bodies fused, her astonished further cries as she collapsed on top of him with her breasts brushing his chest, and then the far-away groan he shouted to the night as his groin and his brain exploded into royal fireworks.

Neither of them had an ear for the irritated thumping of the lodgers next door. Not the first time that night, nor the second.

"It's so unfair," she whispered much later, after their third congress of the night, just before well-earned sleep.

"What is?" Alan mumbled, his mind reeling.

"That we, at last, know joy of each other for such a short time before we must part," she sighed, snuggling down inside his embrace, one thigh across his exhausted lap and her long hair draped over his chest. "I wish you could smuggle me aboard your ship and take me wherever you go. To know so much pleasure from your dear hands, Alan. And then to be deprived for three whole years!"

"It's a hellish wrench for me, too, darling girl," he admitted, eyes shut and almost glued together for want of sleep.

"If only we had longer, a year or more, so I might have grown accustomed," she wished. "Or does it ever cease to be such a wonder? Will making love with each other be forever this new and daring, dear?"With our enthusiasm, I'd wager deep on forever," he chuckled as he stroked her long, smooth back.

"Spinsters succumb to the green sickness," Caroline muttered.

"Now what would you know of that?" he chid her gently.

"Fall ill and die for lack of it!" she laughed. "And their only cure is… this. Now I know how marvelous it is, I'll be taken to my bed for want of more! We both will. You'll sail back from the West Indies and find me wasted away to nothing, from want of you, and nought a cure for me but your rapt… attentions! None but your kisses and caresses will save me."

"Then I wish us a very long recovery," he rejoined.

Several long minutes passed as Lewrie began to breathe deep on the verge of slumber, then:

"Alan?"

"Ahmm," he uttered.

"I can't go home to Anglesgreen."

"Uhmm, I know."

"And I don't know a soul in Portsmouth," she went on softly.

"Uhmmhmrn."

"Reverend Townsley is taking his wife out there. And your superior thinggummy in Nassau… he has his wife and daughter with him already. There're so many Loyalist families settling in the Bahamas. With their wives and children. We once considered Eleuthera, ourselves."

"Hmm?"

"Why could you not take me with you?" she queried hopefully.

"Oh, Caroline, it's heat and flies, bad as India," he grumbled, wakened enough to counter her. "Mosquitoes, roaches big as…"

"As if in North Carolina I'd never seen a palmetto bug," she scoffed. "That was a polite way of saying a 'cockroach' big as your thumb!"

"There's fever, Caroline. Yellow Jack and malaria. Cholera now and again. Poxes that no one even knows what to call by name!" he objected. "No, dear, dear as I desire you with me, I cannot. I love you too much to subject you to such risk!"

"I've been inoculated against smallpox. We had physicians good as London," she pressed, though in a soft, almost wheedling tone as she stirred her body against his. "I've seen Yellow Jack before. I might have had it when I was little. I can't remember."

"You don't know what you ask, Caroline," he groused, sitting up in bed, now arguably awake, though the hour was late and he had to rise at first light. "Caroline, believe me when I tell you that I love you to distraction. Frightened as I was of marriage, more than most bachelors, believe that, too… life with you is a joy beyond all imagining. And it will be in future. But if we're to have that future, you must be here for me to come home to. If I lost you out there, I'd… were I selfish enough to take you with me and something happened to you, I'd wish to die, too!"

And damme if I don't mean every word of it, he realized; she's become as dear to me as… Christ, who'd have thought!

"I stand just as much chance losing you in the islands, Alan," she fretted, squeezing him tight. "What life do you think I'd care to live, with you gone in a shipwreck, or carried off by some fever! And I'd never have been a real wife to you but this single fortnight! Oh, Alan, take me with you, do! At least, when Alacrity puts into Nassau, we could have a week or two here and there together, in a snug little home of our own! Is Nassau such a terrible place, then?"

"Pirates, footpads, cut-purses," he described to her. "There're drunken sailors and their whores, reprobates and discourteous rabble; carousing and caterwauling 'til all hours…"

"Like Portsmouth, is it?" she asked, and even in the dark, Alan could almost espy her puckish grin. "Yet you entrust me to this town, half the world away from you. What would be worse about Nassau?"

"Caroline, it's so…" he sighed, his desire for her, and the lust for unknown adventures crossing swords with each other, just as they had before he'd become so quickly engaged.

"I know, I'm being so foolish and missish, Alan," she weakened. "Do but consider it, though, darling? Please, love?"

Her kisses stopped any further objections he could muster.

"Let's sleep on it," she urged sweetly, fluffing up his pillows and guiding him to recline again, so they could snuggle even closer to each other. "I do love you more than life itself, Alan. Goodnight, my dearest love. Goodnight, my darling."