‘My dear lieutenant, none would dare attack a Somerset,’ Cecil replied.
‘And I will take my cousin’s squirrel gun and shoot them between the eyes if they do,’ Aurora added. ‘I am a crack shot – yes, my cousin has taught me. Besides, the blockhouse is the safest place, is it not? You do care, Lieutenant, for the safety of women?’
‘I suppose.’ He squinted at Jefferson’s letter again, as if it might include instructions on handling this demand.
‘I will keep a sharp lookout for red savages – and for any of your garrison that dare intrude on my privacy! This is how we do things in England and it would be well to pay attention. It will be instructive for you.’ She sniffed. ‘This has a little of the smartness of a British post.’ She touched his cheek and gave a thankful smile. ‘I do appreciate your hospitality, Lieutenant.’
With that Porter was in full retreat, Bunker Hill taken, Yorktown avenged, and Britannia triumphant. If she’d asked for his own washbasin, he would have surrendered it in an instant, and Indiana Territory, too.
I, of course, am more experienced when it comes to women. But, alas, no more sensible than poor raw Porter: I am a man, after all, anxious as an insect, and I immediately set to scheming.
‘You want to jeopardise our passage north and infuriate Cecil by going after his cousin?’ Magnus hissed while I looked hungrily at the blockhouse, just begging to be assaulted. ‘This is as irresponsible as your dalliance with Pauline Bonaparte!’
‘He’s not her husband or father. And believe me, Magnus, conquering Aurora might prove as useful to our safe passage as Pauline Bonaparte was in getting us away from Mortefontaine. Women can be resourceful allies when they’re not betraying you.’ I am ever the optimist.
‘She’s above your station and has two cannon to hold you off.’
‘Which means I have to be as wily as Pontiac’s Indians when they took Michilimackinac.’
I didn’t think I could follow a lacrosse ball to her boudoir, but I had a Trojan horse of another sort. I took my most prized possession, my longrifle, and enlisted Aurora’s maid to place it on the bed of my quarry’s blockhouse sleeping quarters, with a note offering it for her protection and amusement and applauding her claim of marksmanship. Meanwhile we dined at the officers’ mess. Everyone was curious about Jefferson, so I told them what I thought.
‘The man writes like Moses, but can’t speechify enough to hold a schoolhouse. He keeps a live bird and dead elephant bones in his office and knows more about wine than the Duke of Burgundy. I think he’s a genius, but mad as a hatter, too.’
‘Like all leaders not born to the post,’ sniffed Cecil. ‘The American democrats are admittedly quite clever, but there is breeding, is there not?’
‘At table he’s the most entertaining man I’ve met since my mentor Franklin,’ I said. ‘Insatiably curious. He’s fascinated by the west, you can be sure.’
‘I admire your young country’s talent,’ Aurora said, ‘given that the highest-born fled to Canada or back to England during the Revolution. I’ve read your Constitution. Who would have thought such genius could be found in common men? It’s a remarkable experiment you’re defending, Lieutenant Porter. Remarkable.’ She gave him a smile so dazzling it made me jealous.
He blushed. ‘Indeed, Miss Somerset. And the bitterest of enemies can become the best of friends, can they not?’ Then he smiled like a courtier. I swear, the young rascal had recovered his grit!
When she obligingly left for her little fortress so we men could talk over port and pipes – Somerset making a show of lighting a cigar, an innovation out of the Spanish Main – I made an excuse, crept out before Porter or anyone else could manoeuvre ahead of me, and scampered across the parade ground to her blockhouse. My knock was answered by her maid. I announced I’d loaned out my weapon and wanted to make sure it was handled properly. Smirking, the girl let me in.
‘Is this what you’re inquiring about, Mr Gage?’ Aurora’s voice floated down from above. The muzzle of my longrifle appeared in the trapdoor entrance that led to her chamber above, like a probing serpent. ‘I was surprised to find this tool in my bed, though I’m informed by a note that it may be useful.’
‘Your comment about shooting savages made me think you might enjoy practicing with a well-made rifle,’ I said. ‘We could study this evening.’
‘Forged in Lancaster, I presume,’ her disembodied voice said.
‘Jerusalem, actually. It’s a long story.’
‘Well, if we are to go shooting together, do come up and tell the tale. Aim is improved with understanding, don’t you think?’
So up I scrambled, closing the trap and dropping a couple of furs over it to muffle her expected cries of passion. At her invitation I perched myself on a trunk while she smoothed her gown to sit daintily on the edge of her bed, her eyes flashing and her wondrous hair glowing in the candlelight. She was just dishevelled enough to look erotic, two buttons carefully undone, escaping strands of hair artfully aglow, her slim boots slipped off her white stockings.
‘The gunsmith was a British agent, and the stock was carved by his beautiful sister,’ I began.
‘Was she really?’ Aurora tossed her hair.
‘Not as beautiful as you, of course.’
‘Of course.’ She stretched like a cat, giving a dainty yawn. ‘But you’d tell this other woman the same thing, wouldn’t you? Naughty man. I know your type.’
‘I’m sincere in the moment.’
‘Are you?’ The rifle was across her lap. ‘Well, Mr Gage. Then do come over and show me how your weapon works.’
And so I did.
Now the most astonishingly beautiful being in all nature is a woman, and the best become a gate to heaven. I appreciate a sweet girl. But then there are the hotter, more disturbing, more tempestuous types who are a gate to a place of an entirely different sort. That was the ruby fire of Aurora, her auburn hair tumbling to white shoulders, eyes flashing, mouth hungry, breasts pink-tipped and as taut and aroused as I was, skin flushed, all curve and fine waist and wondrous, mesmerising shank: there was no mountain as glorious as the rise of her hip when she lay beside me, no glen as lush and mysterious as her particular vale. She was a paradise of fire and brimstone, an angel of desire. I was lost in an instant, except I’d already been lost when she came down the stairs at Detroit. The smell of her, the glow of her skin, the beauty mark on her cheek that demanded obeisance: oh yes, I’d thrown the reins away and would go wherever she stampeded. We writhed like minks and gasped like fugitives, and she coaxed sensation out of me I didn’t know was there, and suggested things I’d never quite imagined. Yet pant as we might, she never seemed to lose her curiosity about the famous Ethan Gage, her sly questions about my rifle giving way to murmured entreaties as we embraced that I share just what exactly it was that we were looking for beyond Grand Portage.
‘Elephants,’ I mumbled, and went at her again like a starving man.
My mention of pachyderms only added to my mystery and so when we finally caught our breath I tried to put her off by explaining curious ideas I’d picked up from Napoleon’s savants and the new American president. They thought that the world might be older than the Bible, and home to strange creatures now entirely extinct, and that the whole puzzling cornucopia of life, while testimony to the Almighty, also raised questions about just what our Creator was up to, so as a naturalist myself …
‘You are toying with me!’ She was beginning to stiffen, just as I was not.
‘Aurora, I’m on a diplomatic mission for President Jefferson. I can’t share all the pertinent details with every bedmate …’