The King`s Commission

Chapter 7

Thank God for looking glasses for vain cock-a-hoops like me, Lt. Alan Lewrie, RN, thought to himself with a smugness matched by the smile that greeted him in the hall mirror of the Old Lamb Tavern as he entered.

The cocked hat which had adorned his head nigh on for nearly two and a half years had lost its plainness with the addition of the wide vertical gold strip of lace, held by a gold fouled-anchor button, under which a stiff little bow of black silk riband stuck up above the rim of the brim in a commission officer's "dog's vane."

Black neck cloth over the stock, and the longer tailed naval blue coat with its low stand-collar trimmed at the edge in white. The pristine new broad white turn-back lapels that ran from collarbone to his waist, also adorned with gold buttons bearing the fouled anchor device of his Service. He reached up a hand to remove the cocked hat and could not help but admire his sleeve, dressed with a wide white cuff, a widely spaced row of three large gold cuff buttons.

Damme, but I make a fine-looking officer, he preened.

"'Ere fer the commission party, sir?" one of the tavern's daisy-kickers asked, wipping his ale-stained hands on the universal blue publican's apron. "Take yer 'at, sir?"

"Yes, thankee, yes I am. Guest of honor, actually," Alan said, sneaking one last look in the mirror to see if his light brown hair was in place, the black silk riband tied properly around his now long and seamanly queue of hair at the back of his collar. He could not help winking one blue-grey eye at himself as the servant took his hat away for safekeeping.

"Right 'iss way, sir," the servant beckoned, leading him from the common rooms to an upper private suite overlooking a cool patio.

Alan shot his lace to show the proper amount of ruffles on his wrists, tugged the waist-coat down, and entered.

"Huzzah!" The occupants raised a cheer, some already standing atop the long dining table.

"Marcus Aurelius was right," Lt. Keith Ashburn, now fifth officer of the fifty-gunned 4th Rate squadron flagship Glatton japed from his perch atop a chair seat as he waved a bottle of champagne and a glass in the air. "'How ridiculous and what a stranger he is,'" he quoted, "'who is surprised at anything which happens in life!'"

"Wet the bugger down, somebody!" Jemmy Shirke, a former shipmate aboard Ariadne, Alan's first ship, suggested. Shirke was still a midshipman, now about eighteen or nineteen by Alan's recollections. Only the fact that he was a passed midshipman who had yet to find a suitable opening allowed him to be away from his ship.

Wine was sloshed in his general direction, soaking his shirt and fine new coat-thankfully Alan had had the money from his hidden cache of guineas to purchase four. A glass was shoved into his hand and quickly filled with champagne.

The only other officer present was Lt. William Mayhew who Alan had worked for briefly when that poor young fellow had served Adm. Sir Onsley Matthews as flag-lieutenant. Mayhew had come ashore with Ashburn.

"Get down from that chair, Keith, you're making me dizzy," Alan jested, stepping up to shake hands with him after nearly a year of separation.

"Never did have a head for heights. Same's the day I ran you up the mast for the first time," Keith hooted, jumping down with easy grace. "Goddamn my eyes, you of all people, a commission officer!"

"I thought pretty much the same of you at the time," Alan replied. "Mister Mayhew, is he worth a tinker's damn yet?"

"Oh, for God's sake, call me Billy, will you, Alan?" the ginger-haired, permanently sunburned young man snapped impatiently. "No, he's no more use than the duck-fucker. Never will be. Good to lay eyes on you again, that it is, Alan. And congratulations on passing the board. I'm told not one in five passed, and not one in ten got an immediate commission. Lucky bastard, you are, I'll tell you."

"And we had to be at sea when it happened, more's my luck," Jemmy Shirke complained. He had passed the previous board, but wasn't in port when the blessings were handed out this time.

"You know all good things come from the flag," Ashburn stated, and that was pretty much true. Promotion came more rapidly for those fortunate officers in a commodore's or an admiral's wardroom than it did for two-a-penny lieutenants in lesser ships, no matter how good their records. And the same could be said for lieutenants' vacancies dropping from heaven to midshipmen who were more favorably placed and endowed with the proper connections; those who had, got.

"Aye, damnit, I do," Jemmy Shirke grumbled, and Alan wondered why Ashburn had suggested inviting him, if he was still the same surly, practical-joking lout he had been in Ariadne. They had been mess-mates, but never true friends, not like he and Keith had been. Time had not seemed to have changed him much, either.

"Last I saw of you, dear Jemmy," Alan said, hauling a chair out from the table to take a pew, "you were still lashed up like a fished course yard, pumping away like a stoat on some dark-haired wench. God, must have been July of '81? What did they assign you once you healed, after Ariadne was condemned?"

He meant to be pleasant to the fellow-after all, he was paying part of the reckoning for this party.

"And the broken arm didn't slow you down much, as I remember," Keith stuck in.

"Told you to get me a gentle one and I'd take my fences same as anybody," Jemmy mellowed. "No, once my flipper was healed, I went into the Admiral Rooke. She's a hired brig o' war, duration only, but she's not bad. They've made me an acting master's mate. No Marines, just the captain, first officer, master and two midshipmen. Only eighty or so in the whole crew."

"That's grand for you, Jemmy," Alan enthused for him. "You're learning scads more than most. Like I did when I went into Parrot with Mister Kenyon. And I was an acting master's mate not too long ago, too."

"Promotion may come faster in the bigger ships," Shirke said with returning pride after his brief sulk, "but you can't beat service in a small ship for making a real seaman of you. Only thing is, some of us rise faster than others."

"It'll come," Alan assured him, not sure who Shirke was needling; him, or Ashburn and Mayhew.

"So, what ship are you getting?" Mayhew asked.

"Shrike," Alan said grinning. "Twelve-gunned brig o' war."

"My stars, you're to be a first officer right out of the starting gates!" Mayhew goggled.

That was news to Alan. He had believed a brig o' war would be big enough for a first and second lieutenant. Jesus, he said to himself, I hadn't thought about that! They're going to find out what a total fraud I really am!

Still, Railsford must have known what it meant, as did the admiral's secretary who made the appointment. Railsford had said that he'd prosper and told him to his face that this new captain would be getting a good officer.

"Not all good things come from the flag, I'm thinking," Alan told them with a lazy drawl and a grin that he didn't quite feel. He looked at Shirke, who appeared to have been kicked in the guts by the news, and at Ashburn, who was not exactly overjoyed, either. His appointment had come from Barfleur, Admiral Hood's flagship, while Keith Ashburn, for all his connections, his family's money, and "interest"-lifeblood of a successful career-left him a junior officer in a 4th Rate ship, no matter that he had been commissioned a year-and-a-half longer. It hinted at high-flown connections back home with Admiralty, with Hood; else why did not a more senior and deserving man not get the appointment, even if it was in a small brig below the Rate?

"Now, what had we planned for this celebration?" Alan asked in the dumbstruck silence. "I must own I'm famished."

"A page taken from your favorite book, Alan," Keith said, regaining his composure. "That's why we are having it here at the Lamb in Falmouth Harbor, 'stead of over the ridge in English Harbor. Less chance that a naval watch will break things up. And a better run of whore over here."

"God bless you, Keith, you read my mind. I haven't had a good ride since Charleston last August, and damn-all blood and thunder in between. Rake's Progress for us, tonight, eh?"

There was a knock at the door. "That must be the mutton," Billy Mayhew hoped aloud as he rose to answer it. Sure enough, the bare-back riders had arrived. More glasses were called for, and more wine, while they were introduced. There was Hespera (most Mother Abbesses ran to the same classical bent as Ashburn when it came to naming their stock-in-trade with Greco-Roman sobriquets), a slim and lanky young blonde of about seventeen, with straight hair. There was an older woman of about thirty, rather hard-faced but blessed with a promising body-she went by Pandora-who appeared to be the bosun's mate in charge of the distaff party. There was a girl with hair so red it had to be hennaed, short and talkative as soon as she got through the door-Electra, she insisted she be called. And there was Dolly.

Alan took a sudden like for Dolly, if only because she probably was using her own name for variety's sake. She appeared to be about twenty-five, just a few years older than Alan. And she was beautiful, rather than merely pretty, and stood out from the rest like a peacock in a barnyard. A high, clear brow, high cheekbones and a sum, almost thin face that tapered to a firm little chin; a slim straight nose cleverly shaped, and a Cupid's Bow of a mouth that showed her upper teeth in repose, and widened in a hesitant smile to show pure, healthy white. And she had the most peculiar dark green eyes and hair the hue of polished mahogany, and just as lustrous and full. She was also much better dressed than the others; not just in splendor-any whore could buy splendor from a rag-picker's barrow or a used dress shop, and these had-she wore a dress less gaudy than the others, almost respectable enough to take out on the town, with fewer flounces and fripperies. One, at first glance, might take her for a proper young woman, or a wife.

"You done us proud tonight, Keith," Mayhew commented.

"Yes, Keith usually has the taste of a Philistine," Alan said.

"Gentlemen, choose your partners," Ashburn ordained loftily. "As our guest of honor, let Alan have first pick."

"Oo shall 'ave this 'un, then," Alan chuckled, mimicking the "love call" of the lower deck when they paired off with their temporary "wives" whenever a ship was put out of discipline and the doxies came aboard. The blonde looked promising, but her straight hair reminded him too much of Caroline Chiswick from Wilmington; the others were the usual run-of-the-mill whores one could have any day of the week-he had only one clear choice.

"Mistress Dolly, if you would be so kind as to grace my side during supper?" Alan asked, bowing in conge deep enough for a duchess and taking her hand.

"If you wish, sir," she replied in a voice so soft and meek he almost had to ask her to repeat herself. So she's one of those that'll play the virgin, is she? he thought. This could be interesting.

"Sport?" Shirke suggested after picking Hespera the blonde.

"Oh, let's sup first," Alan said, and Dolly relaxed from a sudden stiffness at his side as he led her to the wine-table. "Take a pew, my dear. God knows what we're eating tonight, but it'll not be short commons. I hope you brought a bounteous appetite."

"I did indeed, sir," she replied, taking a glass of champagne.

"Oh, h'ain't never 'ad bubbly wine afore!" Hespera giggled loud when she took a sip of wine across the table. "H'it tickles me nose!"

"That's not all we'll tickle before the night's through, I'll wager!" Billy Mayhew promised his choice, which made them all roar with laughter.

The supper was more than palatable. There was a poached local fish the servitors called grouper, firm as lobster and just as succulent, served with a melted butter and lime sauce. That had been preceded by a green salad and ox-tail soup. The fish was followed by some small wild fowl, then a domestic goose. Then a smoking joint of beef which was not as stringy and lean as most island cattle. And with it all, there was hot and crusty bread, small potatoes roasted and boiled, native chick peas and broad beans, young carrots in butter and parsley.

Washed down, of course, with several bottles of hock with the fish and fowl, captured or smuggled burgundy with the beef, and more champagne when things got slow between courses.

For those with a sweet tooth, a servant wheeled in a huge raisin and citrus-fruit duff, soaked so long in brandy it was a threat to sobriety of itself, and that was followed, once the cloth was removed, by a fairly fresh cheese, apples, extra-fine sweet biscuit, and port or brandy.

"Drinking games!" Ashbum announced, climbing back onto his chair and striking a pose like a ship's figurehead. "Electra, name me a ship's mast."

"I don't know nothin' 'bout ships," the girl pouted.

"Wrong answer. Drink a full bumper in punishment! Drink, drink, drink!" he shouted, and they took up the chorus while the girl tipped her wine glass back and poured the stuff down like water, and gave her a great cheer when she showed "heel-taps" and nothing left, and they pounded their approval on the table and stamped their feet as loud as a thirty-two-pounder gun being trundled across a wooden deck.

"Alan, sing us a song!" Keith shouted. "A good, dirty one!"

"I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, Keith," Alan complained. "Look, this is all very well for you, but I have to report to my ship early tomorrow, clear-eyed and somewhat sober, if I know what's good for me."

"Wrong answer! Drink!" Keith ordered, and Alan remembered once again what he had forgotten in long absence; Keith Ashburn was the sort of take-charge bastard who had to have control over everything.

Wine was slopped into his glass from long-range, and some of it got onto Dolly's gown. She half-rose to complain, then took her napkin and tried to sponge it out quickly, while Alan stood and, to the thump of fists and feet, and the encouraging shouted chorus, tipped his wine up and drained it, displaying it was empty by balancing it upside down on his head.

"Song, song!" Mayhew called. "Girls, sing us a song! Serenade us before we strum and serenade you, ha ha!"

During the dinner, Alan had learned that Dolly was, until three months before, the proper, if somewhat youngish wife of an officer of the infantry named Capt. Roger Fenton. He had left her with no debts when he was carried off by a fever soon after their arrival in the islands, but he had left her no money, either, and so far, there had been no word in answer to her tearful letters back to England to his last living relatives. She did not have the money to pay for a passage back home, and was, no matter how she might try to economize, quickly running out of money, and faced penury in the near future.

"Heart of oak are our ships

heart of oak are our men,"

"No, no, that's not the way it starts!" Shirke corrected Hespera after she tried to sing.

"Would there be some of that sparkling wine left, please?" Doily asked Alan, her voice almost lost in the sudden din.

"Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer

to add something more to this wonderful year;

To honor we call you, not press you like slaves,

for who are so free as the sons of the waves?"

"What?" Alan had to shout back at her.

"I've heard sparkling white wine may remove stains," Dolly said near his ear. "Would there be some left, please?"

"Oh, certainly. Make free," Alan said, snaking a half-used bottle off the sideboard. He handed it to her, and was amazed to see that her eyes were full of tears.

"Heart of oak are our ships,

heart of oak are our men,

we always are ready;

steady, boys, steady;

We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again!"

"What's wrong?" Alan asked, leaning closer.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" a servant called from the door. "And yer ladies, if ya will! We call this tavern the Old Lamb fer a reason, ya know! Would ya please 'old down the noise, sirs, they's other patrons complainin', an' one of 'em's our magistrate!"

"It is my last good gown, Mister Lewrie," Dolly informed him, "I have had to sell the rest, and now it's spotted, and…"

"We'll buy you another," Alan assured her. "Your guinea from this evening could fill a whole wardrobe."

"We ne'er see our foes but we wish 'em to stay,

They never see us but they wish us away;

If they run, why we follow, and run 'em ashore,

For if they won't fight us, we cannot do more.

Heart of oak are our ships,

Heart of oak are our men."

"I mean it, gentlemen! We run a clean, sober, house! Any more noise an' they'll call the watch on you'ns!" the man shouted in parting and slammed the door. Shirke heaved a breadbasket at the door in salute.

"Keith, for God's sake," Alan intervened before they tried to start another verse. "You're going to get us arrested. And I don't think we paid that much for the bloody rooms, to let us caterwaul to our hearts' content."

"Yes, Keith, let's have a little dec… hie… decorum or what the devil you c… call it," Mayhew managed to say. "Potty old men with cudgels always put me off my stroke."

"Let's build a galley, then!"

"Oh, who'd sit still for that?" Shirke griped. It was a cully's game for the newlies, to be named figurehead and smeared with shit before the others ran.

"The galley's built," Keith said swaying over the table, thumping it with his heels. "I'm standing on the bloody quarterdeck, but we need a figurehead. A contest to see who's the best! Pandora you have a huge set o' cat's-heads. Hop up here and and show us your carvings!"

The older Pandora was helped up onto the table, allowed Keith to undo her buttons, and shucked her sack-gown down to her ankles, and bared her breasts to the room, kneeling on one end of the table and bracing herself with the tall back of a chair to lean forward like a ship's figurehead. Candles were fetched to that end of the room so the men could judge better.

"Marvelous!" Keith said. "I'll give her points for size, at any rate. Bit low-slung, though."

"Not a bit of it," Mayhew said, kneeling on the floor and looking straight up at them in awe. "Easier to get to whilst doing the blanket horn-pipe! Like… hie… swivel guns!"

"Alan, trot your piece out next, she looks promising!" Shirke crowed. "Nice swellings, there under her bodice."

Alan turned to her, and she shook her head in the negative, rather forcefully; the first sign of any strong reaction she had shown all night. Fresh tears streaked her lovely face.

"If you'd rather not," Alan said, putting an arm around her.

"Thank you." She almost shuddered. "I'd really… the mistress said it would be a nice supper, and… I'd really like to go, if I may, please? This is so…"

"Alan, come on!"

"Try Hespera," he said over his shoulder. "She looks like better pickings." He led her to the dark end of the room and sat her down on a chair. "You've not been long at this trade, have you, Dolly? Tell me true. I've heard enough whore's lies before to know."

She turned away from him and began to sob as quietly as she could, and he knelt down to put an arm around her once more.

"D… don't call me a whore," she wept.

"Well, what would you call it when you show up at a private party for four men and four women?" Alan asked.

"I don't know," she muttered in a little girl's timbre. "I was happy to… submit to my husband's desires, as a… p… proper… wife. I thought it would be no in… more unpleasant than that!"

"But this is low and common." Alan softened, pulling her head over to rest on his shoulder, and she submitted easily, though one of her hands took hold of his coat lapel and wrenched it into a knot from the strength of her humiliation as she trembled and wept on his coat.

"Huzzah for Hespera!" Shirke hooted. "I'll name my next ship for you, if you'll pose for the wood-carver, m'dear! Marvelous young poonts you have! Alan, you must come and see. They're like two in one. Round little darlin's, with little pink domes atop 'em for dugs. And another little mound of nipple atop that, would you believe? Mm, tasty, too!"

"Areolae, Shirke," Ashburn informed him at the other end of the room. "Mm, you're right, most delectable in form and succulence. From the Latin, you know. Juvenal loved 'em, as do I, better'n oysters!"

"'Ere, wot 'bout mine, then?" Electra complained, slinging her garments to the four winds. "Thort yew wuz sweet h'on me, me chuck!"

"Hell with it," Mayhew shouted. "All's… strip fer a boardin' action!"

"Let's get you out of here," Alan said. Damned if he was going to board any woman in public for someone else's amusement. And damned if he was going to get anything from Dolly under these circumstances.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she uttered brokenly as he lifted her to her feet. He led her toward the door, stopping to pick up his hanger and clip it to his belt frog on his left hip.

"Ought to have some music with this," Shirke said. He went to the door clad only in a loose shirt and shouted down the stairs at the top of his voice, a quarterdeck voice that could carry forward in at least half a gale of wind, "Any fiddlers down there? Hoy, we want music up here, can't strum without it! Shake a leg, shake a leg, wakey wakey, lash up and stow! Stir up your dead arses, you farmers!"

The girls were shrieking with laughter as they were pursued in mock chase about the room, all of them now totally nude, and the males shedding what little they had left upon their persons as they ran and made the floor shudder.

Then, there was another wooden sort of thunder; the sound of many heavy feet pounding their way up the stairs.

"Shirke, your musicians are here," Alan said, grabbing Dolly's hand and running for the only other door to the room.

"Bloody good!" Shirke said, breaking off and opening the door to face an obese (and very outraged) magistrate, his bailiff, and a pack of old gammers from the watch. "The Charlies!" Shirke screamed and slammed the door in their faces. "All hands, prepare to repel boarders!"

Alan wasn't prepared to stay and take the consequences. He led Dolly into a small bed-chamber, from which there seemed to be no other mode of escape, unless they wanted to consider shinnying down a drain-pipe from the narrow window to the courtyard below.

"Damn!" he hissed in the darkness. He felt along the wall with his free hand until he came upon a small door set into the wall facing the hallway, about three feet square. It was the closet for the chamber-pots, so that servants could pick them up from the hallway and empty them without disturbing the lodgers. It had not been used, so it was empty. Alan took the two tin pots to the door to the dining room and slung them onto the table.

"You'll need these, I think," he said, slamming the door again. "Through there, quickly, Dolly."

"Oh, God!" she quailed weakly.

"Oh, for God's sake, follow me, then."

He crawled through, saw that the coast was for the moment clear, and stepped out into the hall, almost dragging the young woman in his wake. They straightened their clothing in the small mirror of a hall table at the bend of the corridor, and he then quickly led her away from the noise.

"Damn!" he hissed again. There was no outside entrance from this hallway. They would have to go back the other way, which meant running into the disturbance, which by now was beginning to sound like a full-sized melee. "Look, wipe your tears, Dolly, and look serene, or we're taken for fair."

"I'll try," she promised, taking a deep, steadying breath and groping in her small bag for a handkerchief. "There, do I look calm enough?"

"You look lovely," Alan told her, knowing it would buck up her spirits, and it did. And damme if she don't, he thought.

They advanced on the mob in the hall. Old men with cudgels from the watch, a huge bailiff the size of a plow-horse, the magistrate, several tavern servants, and many patrons, who were yelling for either peace and quiet, or more drinks. Shouts could be heard in favor of lynching the riotous heathens in the dining room, or the magistrate and his churls, or both.

"Excuse us, excuse us, if you please," Alan said with a fixed smile as he led Dolly through the press, leaning back as the door was finally booted open and the party responded with a shower of crockery, glassware, a chamber-pot, and several gobbets of raisin duff. "Will you let a lady pass, please, there's a good fellow."

The Charlies from the watch were not having it all their own way. They could not use their cudgels, and were knotted in the door like a beer bung, even with the bailiff's huge shoulder applied to shove them in by force. Alan put his own shoulder to the back of one old man and pushed, and the Charlies finally gained the bulwarks, but it was a bad mistake, for drunken whores and revelers could fight when cornered, better than the poorly paid dodderers.

Once on the first-floor level, Alan fetched his own hat and led Dolly into the street.

"'Oy, ain't you one o' them?" a servant cried out as they began to walk away. "Yes, you is! Hoy, the watch! 'Er'es another o' the bastards!"

"My dear fellow, I don't know what you're talking about," Alan countered. "But, here's a guinea on my reckoning, and please inform your cook that it was a splendid supper, thankee very much."

The servant bent over to pick up the guinea from the mud, and Alan booted him in the face, which sent him sprawling, out cold.

"Can't be too careful, you know," he said smiling at Dolly. "Now, let's walk in that direction, as quick as damnit."

"But what about your friends back there?" she asked, showing her first signs of amusement all night. "What will happen to them?"

"With friends like that, who needs enemies?" Alan shrugged. "To the devil with 'em. Hurry!"

Her lodgings were in English Harbor, so they took a coach over the ridge, and Alan paid the driver to carry a note to his own inn to his man Cony, telling him not to wait up, but to come fetch him at first light.

Dolly's room was in a ratty, cheap inn halfway up the hill overlooking the harbor. There was one small window, a set of sprung chairs and a small round table under it, a wardrobe which contained only a pair of dresses and a morning bedgown, two large chests, one of which she used for a table for her toilet with a tiny mirror propped up on it, and a high, narrow, curtained bed-stead and nightstand.

"I must apologize for this," she said modestly as she lit the one foul candle on the table below the window. "When Captain Fenton was still alive, we had a set of rooms, in a better lodging house. I tried to keep them for a while, but they were simply too dear. This is all I can afford for now, though Mistress Olivett tells me I may stay in her establishment for very little."

"That's the Mother Abbess you started working for?" Alan asked removing his coat.

"Yes. she is." Dolh replied, calm enough about it.

"And how long have you been working for her?"

"Only a fortnight," Dolly sighed. "It hasn't been so bad, not until tonight, at least. I go with the others to call upon gentlemen who wish companionship. Oh, God. I suppose I shan't get my money for tonight, after all. A whole crown I've lost, and I've nothing left."

"You're getting only a crown out of the guinea we were charged for your services?" Alan gaped. "What a gyp!"

"A guinea?" she gasped. "And I thought you were japing me when you said that earlier! Oh, how cruel she is, when she knows my need!"

"I'll give you a guinea, and it's all yours, Dolly," Alan promised her. "The night's still young." He pulled out his watch and took a peek at the face-barely gone nine. "Let's get into bed."

An expression of disagreement appeared on her features for a moment, then she sighed and acquiesced, and turned away to undo her gown. Alan shucked his clothing quickly and flung himself onto the lumpy mattress. She came to him after carefully hanging up her gown in the wardrobe. She turned her back and he unlaced her stays for her, then she sat on the edge of the bed and undid the silk ribands that held her knee-length silk stockings up and she folded them as though they were precious gems. He watched her slim back while she worked, and admired the Venus dimples of her lower back. She reached up and took the pins from her hair, letting it fall thick and lustrous down her back almost to her waist.

"Could we lay under the sheet, please, Alan?" she asked in her meek little voice again. "I know it's a rather warm night, but…"

"If you wish, dear," he said gently, finding himself in thrall at the sight of a woman undressing for him, and feeling unwilling sympathy for her. She was too… nice… a woman to be forced to prostitute herself, far above the regular girls who entered the trade, and he felt for her.

She slid under the sheet with him and lay stiff as a board by his side as he slid over to her. He put an arm behind her head and drew her to him so that they lay facing each other, and he ran his free hand up and down her ribs and her hip. Reluctantly, she put an arm over him as well.

"This is what I liked best with the Captain," she whispered, and the catch in her voice told him she was about to cry again. "The being close in the night, when he had… that part was sometimes almost enjoyable, but… I'm sorry."

She almost sprang from the bed, but he restrained her and took her in both arms to let her weep on his bare chest, thinking himself such a bloody fool.

"What was he like?" Alan asked minutes later after she had quieted.

"He was much older, in his forties," she sighed. "Such a kind, good man! So patient with my frailties and my ignorance. I'm afraid I wasn't much of a catch for him. No dowry, no lands or rents. His family called him a fool to his face, a foolish colt's-tooth to take a younger wife with no prospects."

"And your own family?"

"They passed over. I was earning my way as a housekeeper in Woolwich when the dear Captain came to visit my people. Not a month later, we were married and at sea on the way here to Antigua. And six months after that, he died of the fever. Ah well, at least we had almost a year of peaceful existence together before…"

He kissed her cheek and felt the cool dampness of smudged tears. He kissed her neck, and it was a nice neck, long and graceful with so many interesting hollows to explore, as were her shoulders and collarbones. Firm, yet yielding, apulse with young life.

"Say my name, Alan," she whispered.

"Dolly," he obeyed. "Dearest Dolly. Poor, lovely little Dolly."

Her arms went about him, then, and she allowed herself to be rolled over on her back. Their lips met, and no longer merely acquiescent, she returned his kiss, warming to him and beginning to breathe heavier, to stir her arms, her hands, and her body against his.

He explored her from brow to knees with his fingertips, with his lips and tongue, and she began to writhe and moan, to whimper and chuckle as he tickled or en-fired her by turns. All through it, he praised her, praised her beauty, talked to her gently as one would approach a wary puppy or colt, and she responded with stronger moans and delighted sighs of impending bliss.

He kissed his way from her knees, up both smooth, firm young thighs and over her muff, teasing and nipping until she was panting and grasping for him, and she opened her thighs wider as he slid up to nuzzle her breasts. Such fine young breasts with large, oval aureoles and taut young nipples that cried out for suckling.

A moment's dispassionate reach for the sheepgut condom on the nightstand, and then he was pressing against her netherlips, and she arched her back and lifted her hips to press back, and he was sliding down that endless tunnel that led to the seat of heaven itself, and she cried out like a virgin on her wedding night, though she writhed and clung to him like a limpet, matching his every movement.

"Alan, say my name, please, Alan, say my name!" she panted with her mouth against his neck. "Ah, yes, ah! I never knew…"

"Dolly, yes, it's good, so good, you're such a good girl, such a YES!"

He could feel nothing but belly and breasts, perhaps her fingers digging into his shoulders, and their groins; hear nothing but her cries of pleasure and the quick wash-deck pumping noise of lovemaking until she shouted and kept on shouting in an utter transport of joy, not long after his own forge-hot release.

"Dolly, yes, lovely Dolly," he muttered soft against her neck as he lay spent on elbows and weak knees over her.

"Alan, my Alan dearest," she giggled back, trembling still, and showering him with smile-widened kisses.

"If lovemaking could always be this way," she said much later after their third bout, after they had sent down for some wine to cool them.

"My dear girl, it's supposed to be," Alan snickered, pleased as punch with himself. "Leastways, I've always found it so."

"If it could be, I could almost bear the shame of being… a whore. Until I hear from Roger's relatives, of course, and get the money to go home." She sighed.

"Think they like you that much?" Alan asked, not meaning to tease her.

"No," she replied, sitting up to hug her knees with the soggy sheet falling to her waist. "Oh, Alan, I've written and written, and there's never a word back from them. Nothing on the packet ships for me. I almost despair sometimes that I'll be bound to this life for all time!" She lay her head on her knees, hiding her face in her hair.

"Wait a minute," Alan said, propping himself up in the bed on a pile of thick pillows. "He only died three months ago, you say? Hell, it's three months by ship back home. Say, here to Bermuda to pick up a favorable slant from the highs. Then on to New York from there. And for reply, the packet would sail down to Portugal and then run west to Dominica first. They wouldn't even have gotten a word about your poor Roger's demise yet. And it'll most like be another three or four months before you can even expect any kind of answer."

"And I must endure more of this cruelty?" she gasped. "Oh, I cannot bear it! I shall have to enter that woman's dreadful house, after all. It's the only place that will take me."

"There's housekeeping, still," Alan suggested. "Quite a few households here on Antigua would hire a young widow who's experienced at caring for children, or such like. It's not as if you had debts."

She fell back to lay her head on his stomach and hug him.

"Do you think I have not tried, Alan? They have slaves here, not hired servants. And if hired, paid less than a dog's dinner."

Here comes the sly little hand on my purse-strings, Alan said to himself. Yet she stayed silent, hugging him like a child in her parent's lap. Alright, I'll say it for her and get it over with. Damn fool.

"I could loan you a little to tide you over, Dolly."

"I'll not hear of it, Alan Lewrie," she replied, looking up at his face in the gloom. "If I needs must, I can deal with the humiliation of this shameful trade for a short space, and there are still things to sell of my possessions. Thank you, but the answer is no. I must own that I am only a weak, stupid woman, but I can guess what you may think of me if you do loan me money. I'd like you to think better of me than that."

"You're serious!" He gaped in astonishment.

"That I am," she agreed. "After this delightful experience with you, I would not do anything to cheapen our memories of each other. I'd rather starve first. Oh, how masterful you were. and how kind to me, to take me out of that place rather than shame me by making me behave as those others. I've been such a fool to think that taking money for men to pleasure themselves is possible, even for a little time. You have opened my eyes to how low and base I would have become had you not saved me. I shall treasure you forever for that. And for this." She teased with a shy smile, and reached down under the sheet to touch his belly and lion's mane.

"Another man may wish you to be his and his alone. Have you heard of mistresses, Dolly?" Alan asked, sounding her out to see if she still rang true, that it was not a whore's lie yet.

"It would be gentler, and safer, would it not?" she asked. "But, I can think of only one gentleman that I'd care to keep house for."

Another light brush of her fingers over his groin.

"What about your husband's things, then. Have you sold any of that yet?"

"I have his chest here. But Alan, I could not bear to part with all that I have left of that gentle, wonderful man," she objected sadly. "To auction him off to the highest bidder, all that represents what's left of him, it's too horrid to contemplate."

"Let's see what there is," Alan said, sliding out of bed. "Which chest was his?"

"The one with the mirror atop," she told him, and wrapped the top sheet about her as he put on his long-tailed shirt. They knelt and she unlocked his chest with a key, lifted the lid with all the reverence of a parson opening the bread-box of a Sunday, and he helped her pull out the top tray, which was full of papers and correspondence.

There wasn't much, really. Hats and uniforms of the infantry unit he belonged to. Breeches and stockings, a high pair of boots more suited to a dragoon or horse artillery unit. A cheap watch, and the man's sword, one of middling quality.

"Twenty, twenty-five guineas for the sword," Alan said with a heavy sigh. "The boots might go for five, and the watch for ten. The chain and fob are worth more. Maybe one hundred pounds all told."

"But, Alan, that's one hundred pounds more than I have now," she said with a childlike burst of hope. "Though I do hate to part with his sword and watch. I mean, a man's honor, his…"

"Twenty pounds at the least is twenty pounds. He won't be needing a sword where he's gone, and there's no son to inherit," Alan said with a harsh rasp. He sorted through the papers in the top tray while Dolly fetched their wine glasses and topped them up, bringing a second candle Alan had ordered to better light his perusings.

"At least he didn't leave you any bills from the mess or from his tailor's," Alan jested. "Did you contact his fellow officers? What did they say they'd do for you?"

"What any man would pay for." Dolly frowned. "They thought him a little silly, I think. And… he wasn't exactly that popular with his fellow officers. I don't know why, but I always got that feeling when we were around them. Some jealousy, some argument or something."

"Goddamn!" Alan exclaimed, after he had folded out a large sheet of paper all hung with ribands and wax seals. "You've not talked to them at all?"

"I was afraid they'd sneer at me, Alan," she whispered.

"Not while you hold his commission document, they wouldn't!"

"What is that?" she said, with all innocence.

"My dear Dolly," he began, rocked back on his heels by her naivety. "You know that officers in the British Army buy their commissions. Umhumm, and do you know that they pay a lot of money for the privilege of never doing a decent day's labor again? Keep the bloody sword, hang the watch in the window for pigeons to peck on, here's your real money!"

"I meant to have it framed, as a memento, but I couldn't afford to yet," she said, staring at him goggle-eyed with building wonder.

Why, dear Lord, is every woman I meet and hop into bed with as feeble in the brains as cold, boiled mutton? he wondered to himself with a shake of his head and a reflective grin.

"It costs an ensign in a good regiment three hundred pounds to buy a commission. A lieutenancy goes for about five hundred, and I have it on good authority that a captaincy is worth nigh on a thousand pounds, Dolly. As dear Roger's nearest living relative, the one he's most like willed everything to, you now own it, d'you see, girl? It's like a small-holding, it's yours to sell." She stared at him as if he wasn't quite getting through to her. "For money."

"Oh, Alan!" she shrieked and flung herself on him, bearing him over on his back on the cold bare boards to straddle him and chortle with glee while she rained kisses and squeezed until he thought he might see stars. "I'm saved! I'm saved! You saved me, you dear man, you wonderful, lovely man! How can I ever repay you, dearest Alan?"

"Well, if you put it that way…" He laughed heartily with her.

"I can go home to England! I don't have to be anyone's mistress, or anyone's whore! Oh, out of my darkest night, God has shown me the way to security! How can I ever thank you?"

"I'm just glad I could do something…"

"I won't have to drudge as someone's domestic back home. I can live well, if I watch my pennies, and I'm not a spendthrift, I know how to economize and manage. I did well enough on Roger's pay and the pin-money he allowed me. I made a good home for him, and I can make a good home for myself. Or"-she calmed-"I could make a good home for you. Yes, I could, Alan. I could stay here on Antigua, take a tidy set of rooms, nothing grand, no need for servants… well, maybe a maid to help me clean. I'm used to cleaning for myself, Alan. And she would not have to be a live-in, just a day-servant. What's that, six pounds a year, and a dress and shoes? Oh, would it not be grand, Alan? You would come in from your ship, and we could be together again."

Hmm, he considered hard. She's a wonderful gallop, no question about that, and it wouldn't cost me tuppence. How many men can boast of free mistresses. Even if she does stray, or take in someone while I'm at sea, it's nothing more than I'm used to already. Had I bought her, I'd worry about that anyway.

"Dolly, my dearest, loveliest girl, I'll be gone for months on end. I'd love to see you again, but it would be so cruelly lonely for you. Best you go home to England, much as I could wish…"

"And if I just happened to be here, Alan dearest? Would we be able to share things? There's no one else in your life?"

"Of course we could, Dolly. And no, there's no one else."

"Oh, you have made me the happiest woman tonight. In all ways, my wonderful Alan. I had not hoped to aspire to so much joy in my life ever again. I shall love and cherish you while I have you, and you shall know how much joy you've given me by how much I give myself to you. Like now. Say you're not so tired, dear Alan. Can we do that again, could we please, my love?"