He frog-marched her backwards into the suite, across the room and onto the edge of the high bedstead, all the while fumbling with the buttons and hooks of her sack gown, with her strong, capable hands on his breeches flap and belt in a fury. They tumbled onto the piles of goose-down mattresses, his feet still just touching the floor. Up went his hands, searching and hungry, lifting skirts and petticoats, sliding needful and possessive along her silken knee hose, up along the outside of her thighs, bare and soft, so milky white and malleable.
"Caution," she insisted, lifting his head from his delightful work, whimpering and panting with want of her own, taking his face in both hands and raining wide-mouthed, writhing, dewy-wet kisses on him. "Caution. A moment. Have you…?"
Bloody Hell, what if I don't, he groaned silently. Kissing her one last time, he shucked his breeches and strode in his shirt-tails to the armoire, digging into his shore kit.
God, thankee, Cony, you still know how to pack for me! Shaking out one of Mother Jones' very best (guinea the dozen) lambskin cundums from the Old Green Lantern in Half Moon Street, he went back to her.
She'd snuffed candles, all but the last on the nightstand, and shed her gown and petticoats and chemise. Almost demure, tucked into bed beneath the silk sheets, her mass of ebon curls spilling stark on the shining pillows.
He slid into bed with her, sinking into the mattresses, sliding together as the center gave and the edges rose to enfold them in sleek luxury. She raised a thigh, hugged him fierce again and let him roll atop, between… enfolding him with her own soft, yielding flesh. He went back to her shoulders, her breasts, sliding down to render total worship, but she almost dragged him to a stop, reached down, dandled his manhood, and chuckled deep in her throat as her hands surveyed his size and strength. Helped him with their "caution," then guided him… guided him…
"Ah, God!" she muttered huskily, straining with him, lifting her legs high about him, pressing her ankles and heels into his buttocks, rocking her hips to exact his last, full measure, to the very depths of her. "Lord, yes, I…!"
"Emma!" he panted, against her mouth, cupping his hands over her shoulders, sinking into her, losing himself in her.
"Gawd," she cooed, bemused by her own responses as she clasped him snug and rocked him, thrusting upwards to meet him, "I'll never in my life know… what it is… 'bout me and sailors!"
He felt insatiable. Lucky for him, Emma Hamilton was a perfect match. Though she did tend to babble more than he liked, between bouts.
He learned, whether he cared to or not, that she'd been born a village girl, one Emma Hart, daughter of a smith in Neston, Cheshire. Close enough to Liverpool, so her first lover had been a sea officer, when she was in her mid-teens. Then had come London, and the stage…
Or at least something close to theatrical, Lewrie smirked, in fond remembrance of the "actresses" who plied their wares about his old haunts of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.
Blithering away, chirpy as a magpie, she boldly confessed she'd taken up-"under the protection," she put it-with the wealthy Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, and had lived at his fabulous estate, Up Park, in Sussex, for a time, grooming her stage presentations, whatever that signified. But then something cross had occurred between them, and he shipped her back to Neston. Yet soon after, she'd lived under the protection, again, of Charles Greville. Through him, she'd met Sir William Hamilton when he'd come home from Naples for a visit, had come away with him, had lived in his palazzo as his paramour for five years, and had then become his wife for the last two.
"Separate bed-chambers, I take it," Lewrie murmured, rolling to embrace her and nuzzle suggestively. Out of her rags, he found her to be a touch more fubsy than he'd thought; but it was such a welcoming and biddable fubsiness! "An old man, with his infirmities?"
" Hamilton was a soldier, a sportsman. He's climbed Vesuvius, Lord, I don't know, twenty times since he's been here. Poor dear isn't as infirm as you think, Alan. No," she frowned, sloughing off his attentions to stretch for the Armagnac and plump up the pillows to sit against the headboard. "It's more… you come to our palazzo, you'll see. Hamilton is a collector. Roman, Etruscan, Greek antiquities… books and maps, rare old things. Palazzo Sessa's more museum than house, all on loving display," she sneered into her snifter.
"So, are you on display, too, I take it?" he pressed, sliding up to join her and take a sip from her glass.
"Yes, in a way, I am," she chuckled, a bit moodily. "Everyone tells him what a delightful and wondrous adornment I am to his house. Like his vases and kraters. As if I should be in a niche somewhere, in one of the galleries, where the light's best. One man even dared to say-in my hearin', mind!-that I was a credit to the station to which I'd been raised!"
"Yet you're not on display. You put a foot forward, bold as I ever did see," he cooed to her, blowing her a kiss, which she turned and intercepted, leaning over him to bestow the real thing. "An ear for languages… on familial terms with royalty…"
"God, sometimes I wish to God I was a man!" she huffed, and he tried to jolly her out of her pet, in his own, inimitable fashion. But she was having none of it, at that moment.
"How far may a woman go in this world? Aye, I've sense, more'n most. An ear for languages, music… books and learning. Not just the frightful novels. What you described this morning, about fighting the pirates and all. I'd love to be able to do something meaningful… be a voice people heeded. Wield as much influence as you did. Hamilton… well, he is happy with me. He tolerates my… enthusiasms, yet…"
And you know which side your toast is buttered, Lewrie thought.
"His passion, though… I think he saves his passion for diplomacy, for antiquities… studying volcanoes. We're comfortable together as old shoes. Because I ornament him so well, like his marbles." She sighed and took a deep sip of brandy. "He bought me, you know. Same as his ancient urns," she confessed with a shrug and pout-lip sigh.
"He bloody what?"
"Charlie Greville is Sir William's nephew, Alan," she told him, snuggling close, confidentially, her head on his shoulder. "I lived quite happily with him, but… he wanted to improve his estate. He'd more than enough, I thought. Though his condition was not of the very best, it was more than comfortable. He had a chance to make a rich marriage, and… I'd have been quite content to stay with him, but for that. Anyway, Hamilton came home on leave, to palaver with the Foreign Office or something, and… blink of an eye, I sailed away, here to Naples."
"The cads. Both of 'em," Lewrie groused, slipping a protective arm about her shoulders.
"Oh, no! Never say that about 'em, Alan," she dissented, sitting up and away. "Charlie Greville was wonderful to me! He's still a dear friend. Before Charlie, I hadn't two letters in my head, and as for my cyphers…! He saw I was tutored. Speech, singing, music and cultural attainments. He brought my mother down from Neston, to be my companion. Bought both of us the best of everything, paid for… well, paid for what Sir Harry would not, settled… well. And as for Hamilton! He's such a dear, true gentleman. Mentor, companion, loving friend to me! He's opened my eyes to so much, introduced me to so many wonderful people. Goethe? Where'd a chit from Neston ever have the chance to meet Goethe, sit at table with him and chat him up? Haydn… kings and queens?"
"I see your point. Like being royalty yourself? Ennobled?"
"Exactly!" she giggled. "Why, tonight, after supper, I went up to Maria Carolina's chambers, swept in like family, and had a chat at her bedside… all sorts of womanly matters, frank and first-name as a sister. Think of it, Alan! That's why I love Naples so, it's so accepting. Here, I can be who I was truly born to be. Not like sneering London. Cold and hateful, stay in your place… well, when Hamilton and I go back to England, authors of a treaty that won the war and put every royal house in Europe in against France… and France is done to a turn. You will do France to a turn for me, won't you, Alan? Do just think how people will have to take to me, no matter what!" Emma boasted, brazen, yet wistful for what-was-to-be. "Heavens! Is that the timeT