THE GUN KETCH

Chapter 5

For perhaps a week longer, Lewrie and Caroline were inseparable. There were more daily rides, pique-niques, strolls through the village to shop together, with Alan allowed the signal honor of carrying her basket for her, of opening doors for her, of offering her his arm upon which she would from time to time rest her soft hand and forearm.

There was Divine Services at St. George's with Alan ensconced by Caroline's side in the Chiswick pew-boxes, holding the prayer book and hymnal for the two of them, which perforce required them to come together, demurely, at hip or shoulder. And in the yard afterwards, it was Alan who was by her side as introductions were made to other young people of her acquaintance, especially the other young ladies of Anglesgreen and its environs; introductions at which Alan Lewrie strove to shine, to be singularly pleasing and courteous, though never more than mildly interested in anyone else, as he appeared so attentive to Caroline and her mother. The other girls tittered behind their fans and prayer books, casting sly, meaningful glances at the pair. Or peeked from beneath their bonnets or over their shoulders at the Hon. Harry Embleton, who ground his teeth and cursed under his breath at being shut out so completely, left to stand in foolish neglect when he insinuated himself into their company.

Alan had always considered Caroline Chiswick the jnost delightful young woman of his acquaintance, the most skilled, the easiest to talk to, and one of the most intelligent. Beyond her fair, willowy beauty, which any young girl could for a time boast, there was an intellect, a depth beneath the frippery and japery which had always intrigued him. She was not a snickerer or titterer, much; and though it was the nature of young women to be enthusiastic and at times giddy (or so Lewrie thought from past experience of young women who could be styled "ladies") mere was beneath Caroline's merry nature a placidity, a centered calm not unlike the eye of an Indies' hurricane, where one might discover a safe lee, abounding common sense, and natural grace and warmth far more alluring than the most exciting young "chick-a-biddy," which would be there when all else failed or withered.

What had he really known of her before, he wondered? A brief encounter in Wilmington during the evacuation in '81, a day and night aboard the Desperate frigate on the way to Charleston, and one soul-shattering midnight kiss on that freezing quarter-deck. Letters on rare occasions when mail caught up with his ship. And then three weeks of closely chaperoned, and too-brief, meetings in London whilst he finagled an appointment for her brother Burgess through his patron Adm. Sir Onsley Matthews, a whole three years later!

All of which had led him to say that "now there's a sensible and lovely young lady who'd make me a fine wife… someday." Assuming he lived long enough to wed, he qualified; assuming he ever had an urge to do something so completely stupid, and alien, to his rakehell, Corinthian nature!

Now, in a positive orgy of constantly keeping company with her, and, given the heady rush of randiness she aroused in him, her wholehearted approbation of him, and her merriest, most affectionate and warmest encouragements, Alan Lewrie gave up thinking and dove in to wallow in that affection, consideration and encouragement.

His heart, too, went out to her, when he contemplated which of her gloomy choices for her future she might have to accept once he was gone. He had met the Tudsbury fellow her Uncle Phineas liked, and the tenant Byford, and it made him ill to think of either of the elderly farts sharing table with her, much less bed. Worse than Harry Embleton, damme if they weren't, he gagged!

There was, too, at last, Lewrie's perverse streak to consider. He doubted he'd ever warm to the Hon. Harry Embleton, who struck him as the sort of complete fool who, were it raining claret, would have but a flour-sieve to catch it in-and he'd drop that! Lewrie knew his constant and seemingly affectionate attentions to Caroline made Harry's liver fry. He knew Harry detested him more than cold, boiled mutton, and made no bones about it. One could toast bread on his overt scorn, his hostility.

And, being Alan Lewrie, Lewrie cheerfully, and with much mirth, enjoyed every cutty-eyed glare, and schemed to see what new devilment he might invent to vex him.

"I haven't the lip for it, I fear, Caroline," Alan admitted to her after a paltry assay at playing her flute. He laid it aside on the blanket and lay back on an elbow to poke into the commodious food basket to see if there was anything left of their rustic repast.

"Perhaps a flageolet would serve better," Caroline told him, a wry smile still on her lips from the horrible sounds he had produced. "One blows into the end, not across, and how one's lips are pursed is of no matter."

"Pursed lips are unsuitable for other amusements, as well," he chuckled, trying not to sound (too much, anyway) as if he were leering.

"We were discussing music, sir." She reddened, eyes demurely downcast, but with a smile on her face.

"I enjoy music immensely, but I've never seemed to have had a talent for the playing of it," Alan shrugged. "I admire your gift as a musician. Almost envious, in truth."

"Ah, but have you ever really applied yourself, Alan?" she said, teasing, inclining her head to one side and making her long, glittery light brown hair swish most fetchingly. "I cannot imagine anyone so capable as you not mastering anything he attempted."

"God bless you for your high regard of me, Caroline!" He sighed in pleasure, taking her hand to bestow a brief kiss upon it. "I hate to disabuse you of the notion, but I ain't perfect, not good at everything. Thankee kindly for it, though."

He lay back on the blanket to stare up at the sky, his coat and waistcoat for a pillow. She reclined as well, on the other side, with two decorous feet of blanket a gulf between them, though she still held his hand across that space.

"Lord, what a perfectly lovely day it is!" He chuckled happily.

"It is indeed," she agreed, eyes shut and lips curved in a secret smile. "And a ruined castle of our very own, not that Norman pile!" she concluded with a little laugh.

Days before, they had ridden with Governour and Millicent to the Guidier castle and bailey to tour it, escorted most unctuously by Harry and his constant minion Douglas Lane, the gamekeeper, who was there to disarm the mantraps and spring-guns. What joy there may have been in the excursion had been ruined by Harry's black looks, alternated with his feeble attempts at gallantry and possessiveness.

"This may be just as old," Caroline boasted. "Older, perhaps. Not as grand, certainly. But ours."

On Chiswick land, far by the northwestern bounds, there stood a tiny ruin atop a bare hill. Norman keep, Angle or Saxon hill fort, ancient Roman camp, or Celtic oppidum reared before Caesar's times, no one could tell, for it had lain empty and barren time out of mind.

There was a spring and a wellshaft full of stones and trash on the western side, inside a fosse now filled with weeds and bushes, behind a raised earthen parapet and man-high wall of dry-laid stones, now mostly tumbled down to lower than one's knees in most places. A watchtower reared from the center on a higher platform of stone and earth like a broken tusk, the narrow doorway gouged into a shallow Vee-shaped opening one could now drive a cart through, and its circle of walls no more than waist height, the whole green with moss and the hardiest grasses.

The spring now trickled down a grassy slough through a rent in the wall and the moat, down a slight slope littered with remnants of the walls' stones, to the musically trickling creek which marked the boundary. Inside the parapet and fosse the horses grazed and sipped water while, within the circumference of the fallen tower, they lay at their ease. They had ridden to it that morning, partly for Caroline to show off what Chiswick land could boast against Embleton, and partly for the deliciously daring separation it afforded them from the great house and its doings. They could quite easily imagine that not a single human being stirred within two miles of their aerie.

Alan was blissfully content-and most pleasantly stuffed They had dined on cold sliced tongue and mustard, served gaming-house style, a la Lord Sandwich, between crusty new bread slices, on fried chicken, cheese and sweet pickles, and had washed it down with a cool bottle of Rhenish. Another sat waiting to open in the chill waters of the spring, an expertly tied"round turn and two half hitches" on its neck made from a length of small-stuff to draw it up with, which Caroline had thought most clever of him to bring along, and also most knacky of him to know how to tie.

She let go of his hand, and he put both of his palms beneath his head, as he gazed up at the fleecy clouds that sailed overhead, framed in the circle of the watchtower's ruin as if seen through a spyglass. Birds flitted and warbled through his squinted vision, a pair of rooks sailed along from one tree to another, and a falcon circled lazily above them.

He heard music, as Caroline sat up, legs tucked to one side, and began to play a very old country song he'd heard before but never knew the name to. He gave her an encouraging smile before turning his face back to the sky and closing his eyes, more than ready for a short nap of satiation and peace.

Almost at the verge of sleep, he did not notice when her music ceased. Almost adrift, he barely sensed her shadow over his sun-shut eyes, no more than he might have noticed a cloud occluding the light for a second or two. He grinned slightly as something soft tickled his cheeks, as a sweet, fruity perfume insinuated its way into his snoozing awareness of grass, wool and fried chicken.» What woke him was the soft, moist pressure of her lips. His eyes flew open, and there Caroline was, kneeling over him, bending down with one hand supporting her, the other holding her hair back, a most fond look on her face and in her eyes; grinning at waking him, grinning with delight at the way she had done so, and grinning with excitement of being, for a fleeting moment, just a bit wanton.

Chaperoned as they had been, as in public as they had been in the last week, they had not had opportunity to kiss beyond that one enthusiastic, but interrupted, moment the first day they'd ridden.

Alan smiled back at her, and she leaned forward once more to bend down to him. Then, being Alan Lewrie, his baser instincts took over, and he raised a hand to caress her cheek as their lips met, to stroke under her thick hair to the base of her neck and hold her from escaping, his arm encircling her upper back; the other to explore the length of her, down to her waist from her shoulder. To draw her down to recline against him. His nether regions sprang awake as wefl as their Jips parted, as their tongues met and circled-his with long practice, hers in a shivery experimental response.

To his immense surprise, she did sink down beside him, atop him, sliding her feet down toward his, as he began to kiss her cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, and her brow, to nuzzle deep under her hair to her ears, below and behind them into the secret hollows of her throat, and under her chin, down past her collarbones to her exposed chest.

With a shuddery impatience, she put her arms about his neck and sought his mouth with hers once more. With a swishing of cloth, in ancient instinct, one thigh crept up across his outstretched legs and near his groin. Mewing with her first heady experience?»f passion, she returned his attentions measure for measure, her breath coming ragged and sweetening cow-and-clover musky as it mingled with his, as his free hand stroked down her flung-across thigh to discover the last hem of her skirts, the smoothness of a stocking tied above her knee, and the exquisitely maddening softness and smooth-as-talc texture of her thigh. She shivered and wriggled against him as he made his way, soft as butterflies and caressing with his fingertips, all the way up the back of her leg to the fold where slim thigh ended, and soft-but-firm buttock began. Until she began to weep against his neck, her tears and breath hot as a forge.

"Oh, God, Alan, but I love you so much!" she cried, trembling with her passion. "I've always loved you!"

He froze. After a moment, his insistent hand came back up to her back to hold her close and stroke her hair. She kissed him once, twice, thrice more, chastely soft then rolling with enticement each time, before she leaned back the slightest space.

"I have loved you ever since you first came to our door, in those rented rooms in Wilmington, Alan," she told him, her lovely face alive with fleeting emotions, first joy and pleasure, then hesitancy at her revelation. "Five years I've dreamt of this. Five whole years I've wondered how you'd feel. I know proper young girls ain't to own to such. I know young English ladies oughtn't say such things, but…at last, you're here where I may at last tell you face to face…"

"And other things," Alan shuddered, trying to be light.

"And other things," she echoed, nodding slowly and resting her body a little more atop him again. "Our too-few letters, they'd never serve to tell you, Alan. You were half a world away, at sea, and you could have dismissed me as a foolish young chit, had I ever dared record my feelings towards you on paper. But now, we have so little time before you're off again… I could no longer keep it to myself, do you see, Alan? Before you sail out of my life again, you have to know how much… God save me!… how deep in love I am with you!"

"Oh, Caroline!" he whispered into her hair, folding her into his arms tighter and closer, for want of something else to say, as his mind rattled about like a startled sparrow in a cage. And, like a sparrow, seeking an exit! "You darling, darling girl!"

Damme, what do ye do now, ye poxy clown, he wondered? What do ye say to the poor little mort?

It was not as if he hadn 't been half-seas-over about her those past five years! Every one of her letters that had survived the post and the voyage of delivery had been a veritable feast for his soul, every sight and scent and sound of her in their too-short rencontres had made him woozy with both delight and lust.

But then, so had a platoon of delectable young mutton!

"Have I been a fool all this time, Alan dearest?" she asked in a small, slightly scared voice against his cheek. "I do confess I love you, have loved you such a long, long time! I've dreamt about you, thought about you… made up silly fantasies…!" She rushed on, frightened by his silence and unwilling to give him pause in which to answer, fearing an answer which would break her heart.

He could not hurt her feelings… could never even consider hurting her feelings! Of that he was sure. She was indeed dear to him. But by replying with the truth, or nearly the truth, he would step over the bounds of flattering but playful gallantry and "cream-pot" courtship into another, infinitely restrictive world.

Of course, he speculated quickly as she prated on, her family might not approve, after all, and would deny them. Or, he could vow his love for her, but plead his new commission in the Bahamas, requiring a long betrothal, for what that was worth to her, sparing her Tudsbury's, Byford's, and most especially Embleton's advances; then, what he might do with his own life overseas would be his own, still, setting anything permanent far off into the future.

Could he spurn her affection and break her heart? No. Could he be callous enough to sail off and leave her to a cruel fate? No. Could he rescue her? Yes, he could. And still remain mostly free.

"I love you, Caroline!" he muttered in reply at last, stopping her lips first with a fingertip, then once more with a kiss, and she yelped aloud in shivery relief, in pleasure, and in sudden, springing joy. And when she drew back once more to gaze upon him, her visage crumpled somewhere between tears and heavenly elation, the look she bestowed upon him, so full of love and promise, was all the reward that any lover could ever hope to see.

"Truly, I do love you!" he grinned back at her, jolting himself with the horrifying thought that, for once in his miserable "damme-boy" life, he was telling the truth when he said that to a young lady.

"Oh, Alan! God, you've made me so happyl" she exulted with a trembly laugh of victory. "My Alan! Wonderful, marvelous Alan, my own love!"

There ensued a few feverish minutes during which neither of them had need for speech as they swooned with the wonder of kisses and caresses, of rolling about on the blanket, limbs twining as they took the measure of each other, heated nearly to a forge's glow, or the blue white heat of steel. Experimenting with how two alien bodies would mesh together in the years to come, first clumsy and with no clue where hands and arms would be most comfortable or exciting, but learning quickly.

Though still gowned, Caroline was explored with gentleness, and nowhere Alan caressed or kissed her did she flinch from, though she started now and again as she experienced sensations she had not in her limited knowledge ever even imagined. And she chuckled and sighed and groaned with delight; laughing once out loud in reverie of a neighbor boy in North Carolina who had dared to kiss her on the shoulder and lips one night when she was sixteen-purse-lipped-and how she had at that time thought that the heady sensation she had experienced then was the height of human passion!

Alan reclined atop her. Her sack gown and underskirts were rucked up near her hips, her thighs parted, by his weight and ancient instinct on her part, their groins pressed close and shifting slowly-again in instinct on her part, as Alan tenderly undid the buttons of the back of her gown, rained kisses and endearments muffled by her flesh upon her shoulders, her chest, and the tops of her breasts.

"Alan," she groaned. "We…"

"Yes," he muttered hoarsely.

"We should stop. For now, dearest." She concluded, "Please?"

Jesus bloody Christ on a cross, he groaned to himself! Damme, not now!

But he, with the utmost regret of his life, suffered himself to slide to his left, to recline beside her, though with one arm behind her, still. There was no way he would be able to ride back to the great house in his raging, aching tumescence; he thought he would be fortunate, indeed, if he might manage to walk!

But she was right, he thought, miserably, as he enfolded her once more and confined his attentions to kisses and close hugs, with no more attempts at removing her gown. I'll not make her think she was tumbled in a hayrick like a goose-girl, he told himself! What if she became pregnant-I haven't my sheep-gut condom with me. A pristine betrothal could become a sword-point wedding in the blink of an eye, and then where'd we be, I ask you?

"You'll make me yours, soon, dearest Alan," she comforted. "I must own to ignorance about…" Caroline blushed and fumbled a tentative hand against his shirt buttons. "I'm told by older ladies it may be pleasurable, after the… after the first…"

"I'll not cause you pain, Caroline," he vowed. "I love you!"

"I know you would not!" she asserted strongly. "Please be a little patient with me, dearest. I know you love me. I've seen it in your eyes, I've heard it in your voice, every time we've been so fortunate as to be together. I would not have bided my time a whole five years if I had not\ I believe that… with you, it will be a complete pleasure. If this is anything by which I may judge! Do remember, I'm a country girl, after all, with two older brothers."

"Eh?" he asked, puzzled by her seeming non sequitur.

"The barnyards." She flushed again, lowering her gaze. "And our stud-pens. The animals every spring. And my brothers' boasting… about their… when they thought I couldn't hear."

"Oh!" he fathomed with a furtive smile.

"Once we're wed, then, I know my introduction to the pleasure of marriage will be gentle and tender, and so full of joy," she said.

Marriage, he gasped? Sweet Lord Jesus, what have I…?

"You are so smart and knowledgeable, Alan," she sighed happily. "And you are a man grown, after all, and… a sailor. One might hope… somewhat experienced…" She beamed, stroking his cheek fondly.

"Uhm," he allowed with a sage nod, squirming inside, thinking it wouldn't do if she knew he'd rattled half of London. "I will own to… ermm… previous encounters, infrequent though they were, being so much at sea. And only when… well, when the need was hellish."

"Then you must teach me, sweetest Alan," she said, smiling an enigmatic smile which he was not sure signified that she knew he was lying like a butcher's dog. "I will be a most willing pupil," she ended with a most fetching shyness, and a heart-stopping promise.

"Ah… hmm," he mused nonplussed, with his erotic fantasies at a furious gallop. Right, then; could it be that bad?

"You do wish to marry me, do you not, Alan?" she asked.

"Of course I do!" he heard himself sputter, "I love you!"

"Oh, Alan!" she cried, hugging him. "The first banns could be read this Sunday. We could be wed three weeks from now! Let us go ask of my family right now, so there's no possible delay! Mother may be half-expecting our wonderful news… though the others will be all amort over it!"

"Most likely," Alan agreed wholeheartedly. And damme if I ain't amort meself! Christ shit on a biscuit-marriage!

"Not only have you saved me from any number of cruel, cold destinies, Alan," she enthused as he got her to her feet and they embraced close together once more, "but you've given me every last measure of happiness I ever imagined I could know! I was so fearful you'd want to make a higher rank in the Fleet before you'd wed. I was fearful you'd have found someone else, all the years you were gone. That I was only spinning daydreams. We are awfully young. Most wait until their late twenties, when they're solidly established and all…" A hint of doubt swept over her face. "Are you as sure as I, Alan my love?"

"I love you, Caroline," he swore. "We love each other. Now, why would I risk losing you after all this time, and run the risk of never finding your like again?" There was truth in that, as well.

"Then let's hurry home!" she beamed.