“Then will you love me?” She pouted.
“Absolutely,” he said. “But even cannon have to reload.”
He rolled out of the bed and went to the necessary closet, then came back and wrapped a sheet about him. He picked through the supper dishes to find some cold beef, cheese and bread. He fed her dainty bites while he wolfed most of it down. She stood up and walked nude to the nearest bottle of gin, which was empty.
“Oh, damn,” she said, flinging it into a corner. With a noticeable list, she tacked her way out of the bedroom, made some alarming clinking noises in the parlor and returned with a fresh bottle.
“I must tell you, Alan my sweetling, that you are the most impressive man I have played balum rancum with in ages,” she slurred as she crawled up his body to lay her head on his chest.
“And you, Betty, are a tigress,” he said, which seemed to please her. “Also, your husband is a fool.”
“Aye, he’s that and more.” She laughed, spilling gin on his ribs, which felt cool. She licked at his side and he squirmed. “Ticklish, my chuck?”
“Felt good,” he admitted with a husky chuckle.
“Then I must do more of it,” she said, tipping her glass and making a small pool of gin in his belly button, which she proceeded to lap like a tabby, running her tongue all over his stomach and chest.
“Yes, my husband is a fool, and a backgammon player, always looking for a new black boy to play with. If I’d known that I’d have never married him and moved to this disgusting island,” she said between applications. “Were it possible to divorce him I would and go back to London where I belong, where the right sort of people don’t begrudge a woman her needs. There’re so many of them, you know.”
“I know,” Lewrie sighed as she treated his nipples with gin and tender care.
“So many Mollys out there,” she muttered.
“My half brother. Disgusting little shit.”
“But not you, sweetling,” she smiled, reaching down to dandle his penis, which was showing signs of life. “You know, at first I thought you might be, being houseguests of Sir Richard’s…”
“Me? Keep doing that and I warrant I’ll show you … again … that I’m not…” Alan vowed with heat.
“Sir Richard tries to be discreet but he’s most infamous for it,” she said, sliding down toward his groin and parting the sheet.
“Are you sure?” he asked, sitting up. “I mean, I wondered about him. Such a coxcomb.”
“Of course, I’m sure. And I’d watch out for my captain, too, were I you, dearest Alan. Shall I tell you a secret?”
“Yes,” he replied, unsure. “I s’pose…”
“Last night, on my way upstairs with your eager little friend … God, I felt like a matron leading her youngest son … I saw Sir Richard and your captain.” She simpered.
“Upstairs?”
“Entering a room together. It was quite late. Isn’t that just delicious?” She leeringly rejoiced.
“Good God, woman, it can’t be! He’s a real taut hand, a real sailor man. There’s nothing Molly about him—”
“Remember, there’s an Article of War against it,” she said. “Now let me improve your taste a little.”
Betty proceeded to dribble gin over his member, which stung after all the exertions he had demanded of it over the last two days. Then before he could complain, she slipped her warm mouth down over it, her tongue sliding and flicking. Without conscious will, he became erect deep between her lips as she raised and lowered her head over him, making him as rigid as a marlinspike, as tumescent as a belaying pin.
He gripped her head between his hands and lay back on the pillows, half his mind on what she had implied about Lieutenant Kenyon. Never mind, he decided, giving himself over to the intense pleasure she was giving him. I’ll think about that some other time. Even Drake had time for a game of bowls, didn’t he?
* * *
Alan let himself out into a dark and nearly empty street at eleven that night. Betty Hillwood had demanded, and he had risen to the call of duty, until she had cuddled up to him, reeking of gin and her sweat and the aroma of their lovemaking. He had sponged off, gotten dressed properly and had tucked her in for the night. He had also left a note in her hand that expressed his joy at their coupling and a promise that next time he was in Kingston he would be sure to spend three days sunk deep into every part of her. After her conversation of the evening he was sure that she would be aroused and titillated by his choice of language. The woman has a Billingsgate streak to her, he assured himself happily. She may play the great lady but she’s a damned great, cracking tuppenny tart, with a mouth like a fishwife.
He strolled loose-hipped down the hill to the Grapes, feeling peckish once more, and in need of sustenance and a pot of coffee if he was to pass Kenyon’s sharp eye. Most of the stores were closed, but he found a small chandlery open at that late hour and their light drew him in. They had a used copy of a Smollett novel, Peregrine Pickle, and he remembered that it was a good long read, so he parted with three shillings for it. They did not have sextants, and if they did they were twenty-five guineas—“They’s a war on, sor, an’ everythin’s short, they is”—so he loafed his way into the Grapes and took a table by the window overlooking the boat landing.
“Yer servant, sir, this fine evenin’,” the publican said.
“Still got your ordinary?”
“All gone, sor, but if yer partial to pork I can still slice ya some. Got some nice figgy-dowdy fer yer sweet tooth, too,” the moonfaced man said, wiping his hands on his blue apron.
“That and bread, and coffee.”
“Right-ho,” the man replied smartly, fetching a candle from a vacant table so he could see better. The Grapes was half-empty, the crowd made up of naval officers for the most part, none too senior to put a damper on things. The few civilians seemed there on sufferance.
Alan got his coffee and began to sip at it, enjoying it black and rolling the bitterness about his mouth to kill the odor of all the claret he had downed. He was about to crack his book in the ample glow of the candle, when he heard a coach rattling up outside. He glanced out the window with idle curiosity. The coach looked familiar, as did the mulatto man in livery who got down from the boot.
The coach occluded the lamps at the boat landing and threw a deep shadow toward the inn, but the torches by the door of the Grapes relieved that opaqueness enough for him to see that it was Sir Richard Slade’s coach and that the coachee and the footman were the same ones who had driven them out to the house party. He twisted in his chair the better to see, and to lean back against the homey brick wall above the wainscoting … so that he himself would not be seen framed in the window.
There were people in the coach, two hats and a flash of some sheened material; one hat was trimmed with feathers and white lace.
The other showed only a gold loop and the flash of a button. Very like a naval officer’s cockade. Very like a lieutenant’s plain black cocked hat, with only a dog’s vane of ribbon held in place by the gold loop of braid and a gilt fouled-anchor button.
The hats leaned close together and stayed that way for a long moment, then the mulatto opened the coach door and flipped down the steps. One passenger prepared to depart, but before he did so he leaned back in and Alan could clearly see two men pressing their lips together, not in the fond farewell kiss that childhood friends might bestow upon each other at parting but in the writhing, practiced kiss of two men who were both of the same inclination. Was it his imagination, or had he given Betty Hillwood such a fond farewell just minutes before, with the same sweet-sad spark of remembered passion? He felt sick at his stomach.