"As I hope to be, Anne," Alan told her.
"Ah, here's your Lucy," Anne said, pointing out a group of young men in high finery almost eclipsing the figure of a young girl with blonde hair. "Such a darling girl."
"Amen to that," Alan agreed heartily.
"Lucy?" Anne called. "Look who's here."
Lucy peeked from the crowd, gave a small gasp, fanned herself, and stepped through to rush to his side.
God Almighty! he thought as he took her in. How could she have gotten prettier?
Lucy Beauman's bright aquamarine eyes lit up, her lips parted in a fond smile, showing her perfect little white teeth. Gloved hands touched his arms, there was a whiff of some maddening scent as they stood gazing at each other. He noted her high-piled hair, so delectably honey-blonde, the perfection of her neck, her shoulders, the white and pink and maroon gown she wore daringly off the shoulders (the proud swell of her breasts against the gown even more bountiful than formerly); he took in how petite and lovely her figure was, how round and inviting her arms were.
"Lucy," he breathed, all other sights gone from his ken.
"Oh, you are here!" she sighed, like to faint, her lips trembling. "I shall die of happiness, surely."
Much as he wanted to crush her to him, he had to stand back and hold hands with her, his own hands trembling with emotion. Money be damned, she was so beautiful, so much more beautiful than he even remembered, that he would have carried her off that moment if she didn't have two ha'pennies to rub together.
"You look so grand as a lieutenant," she admired. "The uniform suits you so well!"
"And your gown is delightful," Alan complimented in return. "But no gown could hold a candle to your beauty, Lucy."
"You are such a rogue, Alan," she gushed, blushing prettily but mightily pleased that he took the time to notice. "Oh, I have missed you so much!"
"And I you."
"You must come and meet father," she told him.
"I already have. I would have been at your side long before, but I was intercepted. Father, mother, Hugh, Ledyard, Floss…"
"Oh, good then. And you have met Anne as well?"
"Yes."
"She is such a dear. Oh, I fear I am neglecting the other guests, the gentlemen who…"
"Damn their blood, I say," Alan growled.
"Alan!" she whispered, pretending to be shocked, with a glance over her shoulder in the general direction of her miffed admirers.
"I haven't seen you in almost a year," Alan insisted, leading her further away from the disgruntled pack of suitors towards the back of the garden, where there looked to be a bit more privacy. "Why would I wish to make acquaintance of your other worshipers?"
"You are so forward!" she protested, but not very much.
"Forgive my eagerness, but it has been a long time."
"Of course, I forgive you, Alan. And you would never do anything to cause undue comment." She acquiesced, matching him stride for stride. "Oh, do tell me everything. Your last letter said you had left that ship Desperate, and had made lieutenant. And you were in a new vessel, the name escapes me?"
"Shrike, a brig o'war. I am first officer."
"You captain your own ship?" she gaped. "Already?"
"Uh, no" he had to admit. "The captain is a Lieutenant Lilycrop, but I am next in command, his first officer, you see."
"Oh, but that is marvelous for you." She beamed. "Now you are no longer a midshipman. And you have an annuity. And your grandmother's inheritance. Oh, Alan, I could never have dreamed things would turn out this way. Dad can have no objections now. And do they pay you?"
"I'd hardly do it for fun, now, would I?" Alan teased. They reached a wall of lush tropical plantings, heavy with flowers and thick with bouquet. There was a narrow path that led under and through the thicket, and Alan grinned at her as he cocked his head in that direction. Lucy met his eyes and grinned mischievously in reply. They were just about to step through for some real seclusion, when the rain that had been threatening began to spatter on the lawn and the leaves.
"Oh, my gown!" Lucy wailed. She stood up on tiptoe to kiss him briefly on the lips, then tugged him into a dash for the house as the rest of the guests ran for cover as well, and the servants gathered up what they could before the storm ruined furniture and tablecloths.
They made it to the porch, where Lucy bewailed the state of her dress and her hair, sure she had been disfigured by the raindrops; and from the sound of it, was sure the condition was permanent.
"I must go change," she told him as he mopped his hair and face with a pocket kerchief. "I hope my maid may be able to salvage it."
"Hardly spotted," Alan pointed out as the rain gusted and blew in on the porch, swirling in the late afternoon light on the yard and the steps and railings. "It'll be fine."
"Just like a man to think so!" she snorted back, tossing her head as though her hair was still down in a more casual style. "Now you entertain yourself for a few minutes while I go change into something dry. But do not be too entertained. There are quite a few other young women here, and I should not like to see you being too charming."
"You have nothing to fear, Lucy, I swear." He told her with all innocence. She smiled once more, looked about to see if anyone was watching, and pecked him on the cheek. He kissed her hand, and she blushed again, before darting off, calling for her maid-servant.
Damme, what a lovely little minx! he crowed in silent congratulation at his good fortune just to know her, and to know that she was so fond of him. Ain't she fine, just! Lord, she's so perfect, so beddable, and admirers be damned, she's as good as mine. This time there'll be nothing to tear us apart. And if she don't fetch five thousand pounds for her portion, I'm a Turk in a turban!
There was a lot of fetching of towels, a lot of shaking of powdered wigs that left a slurry of wet flour on the terrace tiles as the other guests tended to their ruined finery, though no one looked particularly wet to Alan's viewpoint. Let 'em stand on a quarterdeck with me in a gale of wind, and I'll give 'em "wet"! he thought with a touch of contempt for lubberly civilians.
Lucy Beauman's conception of "a few minutes" was obviously not everyone's; the time passed slowly, forcing him to check his pocket watch to see how long she was taking to change. Alan occupied himself with a couple more glasses of champagne.
"Mister Lewrie?" A familiar, throaty voice spun him about.
"Ah," Alan managed to say, "Mrs. Hillwood?"
"I am so gratified you recall me," the older woman said. She was still lovely, in her lanky fashion, a bit less smooth-complexioned than he remembered from nearly two years before, when they had met at a supper-dance at Sir Richard Slade's. He had gone to her house the next day, after debauching himself to the wee hours with… whatever the little chick-a-biddy's name had been (it had been that sort of a party)… and Mrs. Hillwood had damned near killed him with kindness. If it hadn't been for her penchant for neat gin, which had put out her lights and let him dress and escape, she might have put him under for good.
"How delighted to see you once more, Mrs. Hillwood," he told her. "You are looking marvelous, as always."
"You are too kind, young sir. But what is this? You have made lieutenant. Still in that despatch boat?"
"No, ma'am. I left Parrot soon after docking at Antigua."
"And how is that young scamp we knew," she simpered, laying heavy stress on "knew," since she had "known" both Thad Purnell and Alan Lewrie, in successive evenings. "Thomas? No, Thaddeus."
"I regret that I must inform you that Thad Puraell passed over to the Yellow Jack on that same voyage, ma'am."
"Oh, how terrible." She frowned, dropping her teasing air. "He was a dear friend of yours. So young, too."
"That seems to be the way of the world, ma'am," Alan agreed somberly.
"Once you sailed, I never heard from you again," Mrs. Hillwood went on. "I am sure so much of note has happened to you. You must let me entertain you, perhaps come for tea, and tell me all about what you have b
een doing since last we had the pleasure of each other's company."
Damned if she hadn't been one hell of a bare-back rider, bony about the hips or not, chicken-chested or not, Alan remembered. It had been two months since he had even gotten a whiff of womankind, and he would not be doing much more with Lucy than holding hands and sighing a lot, he realized. Memories sprang up, like how predatory she looked with her face beaming a wicked smile up from his groin as they lay in bed and she coaxed him into just one more bout; the noises she made as she rode St. George on his member and stirred her hips and belly like an island woman grinding corn.
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he told her, and she grinned in delight, curving up those talented lips. In repose, her face, with an unfortunately hawkish nose her only mar, could appear fierce, but a smile restored the great beauty she had once possessed.
"I am certain it would, Mister Lewrie," she cooed softly, as she toyed with her fan, using it to touch him on the cheek by his faint scar. "And you must tell me all about that. Your address?"
"The Shrike brig."
"You mind where I live?" she asked. "Not quite? How forgetful of you. I trust I shall not have to write it down more than this once."
"I am certain you shan't." Alan grinned at the meaning of that threat, and his groin got tight just thinking about it. "And Mister Hillwood is still inland, I trust, being-agricultural?"
"As far as I know," she sighed. "His particular passions require greater secrecy than mine."
"Ah, Alan," Lucy said as she re-emerged from the house in a new gown of creamy pale yellow satin with gold bows and trim. Her hair had been let down and brushed dry as well.
"A few minutes, hey?" Alan teased. "Half a dog-watch, more like. Lucy Beauman, I believe you know Mrs. Hillwood?"
"We have not had the pleasure, though the name is familiar to me," Lucy replied, looking somewhat vexed. "How delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Hillwood."
"And I yours, dear. My, what a lovely gown. You are fortunate not to have gotten it wet in the rain showers," Mrs. Hillwood cooed.
"I had to change." Lucy frowned.
"Would that I could, my dear. Or at least sponge this down."
"I would be happy to offer you the use of my chambers. Did you bring your maid with you?" Lucy suggested.
"You are too kind!"
"Think nothing of it, ma'am. I would be only too happy to give you my every assistance," Lucy purred. She clapped her hands quite briskly. "Tyche?" she called without looking, and her black maid-servant came on the run to attend her. Lucy gave her instructions to allow Mrs. Hillwood the use of her toilet, and for Tyche to help her rearrange her habiliment. Mrs. Hillwood headed off for the stairs, and Lucy glared at him as he said his goodbyes.
"Alan, how could you?" she demanded in a soft voice, but one tinged with a certain menace.
"How could I what, Lucy?" Alan asked, wondering if he looked half as innocent as he was trying to look.
"Mrs. Hillwood is really the most despicable woman," Lucy told him with some heat. "I say woman rather than lady, despite her airs and her pretensions."
"Well, how was I to know that, Lucy?" Alan shot back. "I met her once before, near on two years ago at one of Sir Richard Slade's suppers."
"My God, it gets worse and worse!" Lucy spat. "The most infamous… I cannot find the strength to name the man's sinful predilictions… no proper lady could. And what were you doing in such a place?"
And just where did this termagant mort come from? Alan wondered, amazed at the change from the sweet and gentle and cooing lovely girl he thought he had known and desired.
"My captain in Parrot knew him from school, and I and another midshipman were invited to join him for supper." Alan shrugged it off.
"And were you not scandalized by all the goings-on?"
"I saw none." Alan tried to scoff. "We had a feed the like of which I had not seen since London, and the victuals held more interest. After a year of Navy issue, I'd have dined with the Devil himself if he set a good table." He chuckled.
"If you sup with the Devil, as you say, I trust you used a long spoon." Lucy fumed.
"Now look here, Lucy." Alan attempted to bluff it out when he saw that dumb innocence would not suit. "She came up to me and introduced herself. All I know of her was she was several chairs down from me at table nearly two years ago. I've probably gone into the same chop-house as notorious murderers back in London, but that don't make me guilty of murder. How could you think such a thing? As for this un-named prediliction of Sir Richard's, well, I know nothing of that, either. You use me rather ill, I think."
"Oh, Alan, I'm sorry." She mellowed suddenly, allowing him to offer an arm to lead her toward the buffet tables. "What must you think of me, to accuse you of encouraging such a woman. It is only that I have missed you so much. And I come back down to find you in the clutches of a trull whose reputation is no better than it should be. What a welcome I've given you. Please forgive me, but I was suddenly so jealous I could hardly utter a civil word, to her, or to you."
"Jealous, is it?" he coaxed gently.
"I shall own to it," she whispered, leaning close as they went to a side-board and began to pick at the delicacies to load on their plates. "After months of only letters from you, I could not let anyone steal one precious minute of our time. Perhaps the tales about Mrs. Hillwood aren't whole cloth, but you can understand why I was so uncharitable about her. Come to think of it," she smiled, poking him in the ribs with her fork, "you were not so charitable to those other young fellows I was with. Damn their blood, did you say?"
"And their eyes and kidneys, and anything else they have they can spare," Alan assured her.
"So you were jealous, too. Admit it," she prodded.
"I own to it, too," he muttered so others could not hear. "You don't know half of what I've been through since Antigua, with only your letters for comfort, and those months apart."
As soon as I decyphered 'em, he qualified to himself, for Lucy was what one could charitably describe as an inventive speller, with a quick, darting penmanship that started out in neat round (horribly misspelled) words, and when she got to the exciting bits, went mystifying as the scratches on Stonehenge.
"And you must tell me everything, darling Alan," she begged. "Was it really so terrible?"
"It was pretty rough," he allowed modestly. "There are some things you'd best never know, some of the things that happened during the siege, and during our escape are unsuitable for a lady to hear."
"And I wrote of silly social things while you were being racked by shot and shell." She sighed. "How could I have been so cruel or thoughtless? Yet I wrote you often. You did not get them?"
"Well, the mails never caught up with the fleet before we left New York, and then we were stuck in the Chesapeake," Alan told her. "The Frogs and the Rebels weren't about to trot out the penny post for us. There were dozens of letters to you I never could post myself, some the Rebels captured I suppose."
"You mean those uncouth, quarrelsome people have read my letters?"
Conversations with her take the strangest bloody twists and turns, he sighed to himself, and had to cosset her out of her pet. But for the rest of the evening, during the strolling about in the suffocatingly hot rooms, the dancing and the card games and a brief tour of the side-terrace for some air, where they could indulge their need to hold each other and kiss passionately, he managed to keep her happy and positively glowing. As he paid his respects to the family, they treated him as almost one of the family, though nothing concrete had been settled, but that was sure to come, in time.
All in all, except for walking back to the docks with an erection he could have doubled for a belaying pin, it was a good run ashore. And there was always Betty Hillwood and her invitation to "tea."
Chapter 4
There were a lot of "teas" in the next week or so. Once more Alan was thankful that in harbor officers stood no fixed watches, and once what few duties were done for the day, co
uld absent themselves to their own amusements.
If I spend the rest of my career doing this, I shan't cry, Alan thought smugly as he lay back on the soft mattress, panting for air in the close tropical heat. The linens clung to them, crinkled with perspiration, and he fanned them with a corner of the sheet.
"You insatiable beast!" Betty Hillwood uttered with a gasp for air herself. "Pour us something cool, Alan dear, whilst I try to recover my senses."
He hopped off the bed and filled their wine glasses with lemonade-she was a lot more fun if he kept her out of reach of the gin, or at least cut down on her consumption during the early hours of their trysts. He stood over her and offered her a glass, enjoying the slim form, still beaded with mutual perspiration, and her incredibly soft skin reddened in all the most interesting places by having his body pressed so close to hers. Over forty or not, she was more woman than most men could stand and live to talk about.
"The pot calls the kettle black, love?" he told her as she took a sip. "Now who's insatiable, damn my eyes."
"You're even more impressive than I first remembered," she said, shifting to sit up on one elbow and pile pillows behind her head. She gave a delightful groan when she said it. "Before, you were a randy boy, for all your eagerness."
"Clumsy, was I?" he chuckled, climbing back into bed and laying against the footboard pillar so their legs entwined.
"No, my chuck, just… exuberant," she crooned, plying her toes around his groin playfully. "A year's hard service has made you even more a man to suit my taste. Harder… leaner… the most impressive and satisfying fuck I've known."
Once out of polite society, and her clothing, Betty Hillwood had always had the mouth of a farrier-sergeant. Perhaps it was the gin that loosened her tongue and her inhibitions, if she truly had any.
She demanded pleasure as her due, since she would not get it from her husband, who preferred to live inland on one of his plantations and bugger the field hands and the house-boys. There was no longer any coy pretense of seduction between them, no more teasing conversation or tea to be poured, no guests to shoo off so he could return after he had made a proper goodbye, so they could play innocent for Society. He came to her after a morning or afternoon with Lucy and her parents, sometimes came to her direct from the ship, and the black servant let him in and then took her leave. Betty Hillwood met him in morning gown or her bed-clothing, under which she tantalizingly wore nothing. They would have a drink, no more than one, while she let her clothing fall open, and they would be grappling with each other within a quarter-hour, making it to the bedroom at the back of her cool apartments most of the time but not always-there was a good assortment of settees and chairs to roger on, an escritoire of just the right height to support her small buttocks, and a marble-topped breakfast table by a shuttered window that made a cool change if the day was too hot.
The King`s Commission l-3 Page 20
