The Captain's Vengeance

by Dewey Lambdin

  And she was so skilled at other times, almost suspiciously so; she chuckled, so pleased with herself, like the costliest courtesans who had experienced it all, yet still beguiled with believable eagerness.

  She’d start half the fun, shyly “bride-like” one time, then as demanding as a boa constrictor the next. She could slink across the room to fetch something, wine or a washcloth, and taunt him with her nudity, certain of her comeliness and its effect on him.

  She’d hike a leg over a chair-back, twine about a bedpost and bare everything, as bawdy as the cheapest jade ready to take six pence for a “knee-trembler” in a dockyard alley. And she must have seen a good collection of “risible artworks” somewhere, good as any his father, Sir Hugo, ever had squirrelled away, for some of the “poses” she struck looked damnably familiar to him! Lewrie reacted, of course, just as he had in his wide-eyed, pubescent days… to the detriment of their upstairs maids and serving wenches!

  Then there were good old-fashioned Christian fucks with him on top, plunging away like Billy-O, followed by turn-about, with Charité riding St. George atop him like a jockey whipping into the last corner at the Newmarket race course. Followed by a return to the side of the bed, ankles crossed behind his neck, and squealing like a shoat… followed, perhaps finished off, by another turn-about, bent over face-down and her legs thrashing and dangling before him, and her nails clawing at his hips, her teeth gnashing on the bed linens.

  “Oh la, Alain, mon cher amour,” Charité said with a sleepy sigh, spooned with him in the light of a fresh candle, watching his face in the conveniently placed cheval mirror. “I am so glad you come to New Orleans! To Le Pigeonnier, tonight of all nights… What does bring you to my city?”

  “A dowdy brig with a weedy bottom,” he lazily quipped. “Nothin’ at all like yours, sweetlin’. Uhmmm …” he purred, taking some more fondling strokes of the temptingly yielding aforesaid.

  “No, do not tease!” She prettily pouted, making a moue at him. “You are British, I think. So many things you say that I do not hear Americans say… Is it not dangerous for you, with Britain and Spain at war?”

  “Used t’ be British, love,” Lewrie told her, dredging up his new biography, just in case he was too sated, drink-muzzled, and jaded to make a mistake, even with an intriguing girl with nothing to do with piracy. “Used t’ be. But… they sort of got tired of me, so off I went and turned American. New start.”

  “You were a… criminal, fleeing British law?” Charité posed with a fearful, fretful sound of sudden concern, tossing herself over to face him abruptly.

  “No, I’m not outlaw, dear’un,” Lewrie assured her with a grin. “I’ve already faced my court and been sent away. A court-martial, in London. I was in the Royal Navy… once. Lieutenant Willoughby, if you can feature it, Commission Sea Officer. God, Crown, and Country…”

  “Oh la, what happened?” she all but wailed in commiseration.

  He fed her the whole fiction, chapter and verse, that Peel had penned for him, that he’d rehearsed with Pollock before coming ashore. Drink made it come out slurred, slow, and believable; weariness after all their sporting made it sound plausible even to his own ears, with just the right touch of tiredness with his own life, even bitterness.

  Damme, I could’ve become a Drury Lane actor! he cynically cajoled himself as she seemed to eat it up like plum duff. Especially the part about India and the Far East, the Great South Seas …

  “How grand!” Charité marvelled. “What fun, to see elephants or tigers, rajahs or even… real pirates!” She was as excited as a tot on Christmas Day, pounding pillows so she could sit up on the headboard and listen raptly. “You must tell me everything of your adventures… the next evening we are together. That is,” she shied, going miss-ish, and meek, “uh… if you wish to…”

  “Oh, aye!” Lewrie swore, “no doubt o’ that, sweet’un,” suddenly engorged with desire to have her again, night after night of heavenly, bawdy bliss. “Truthfully… I cannot get enough of you!”

  She rewarded that ardour with a soul-kiss, snuggling him down alongside her. After a long, purring moment, she asked, “You had to come back when the war began… from the Far East?”

  “Aye, but late. Too late for a shipboard commission,” Lewrie said, spinning his lie again. He departed from the script, creating a chapter on the fly from his own experiences. “I finally got aboard a perfect scow of a Third Rate ship of the line as Fourth Lieutenant… fourth out of five, d’ ye see? Went to the Mediterranean, worked out of Gibraltar. That’s a place t’ see, too, ma chérie! We took part in the Toulon expedition, in the time of the First Coalition, when the damned Spanish were our allies. I rose to Third Officer, but we sailed home for repairs, and she ended up dropping her bottom in Porsmouth harbour. Too long laid up in ordinary, weeded, wormed, and dry-rotted, so they had to scrap her. That was … ’95, it was. I thought I’d board another ship, but… things didn’t work out the way I wished.”

  He sketched a miserly three months ashore on half-pay between assignments, before being forced to beg for employment, the best, and soonest, opening being in the Impress Service! Ashore!

  Midshipmen making Lieutenant, if they turned up two hundred “recruits” by Christmas; intercepting merchantmen in Soundings and pressing most of the crew, leaving just enough to work her into port; splitting the seamen’s pay with the ships’ masters, to boot! Brothel, tavern raids in connivance with publicans and “Mother Abbesses,” of inflating per diem pay and the rum and ale bought to gull volunteers, lodging costs, and pocketing the difference… The bribes from weeping parents, wives, and employers to spring a swept-up man…

  “And you… profited from all that?” Charité asked him, hesitantly, though his tale had lit her merry blue eyes with delight.

  “Had to,” Lewrie gruffly seemed to admit, “‘cause I needed the money so perishin bad!” he cynically barked, for that was his father’s excuse for disowning him and shipping him off to sea. “Life ashore costs more than sea duty, and every officer but the titled wealthy are forever in debt, and even a goodly share o’ them! Everyone else was working a ‘fiddle’ on the King’s money, but me, they caught! I never seem t’ be able to prosper or hold my luck for long, d’ ye see, love.”

  “How terrible for you… for your family, quel dommage!” she actually sounded affected by his fraud. The candle’s glint revealed a hint of moisture in her eyes, to Lewrie’s chagrin.

  “No family to shame, really,” Lewrie lied. “I was a third son, and we were never that close.”

  “Poor Alain!” she groaned, hugging him close to her. “And was there ever… a young lady whose heart was broken to see you shamed? Were you ever affianced, or …” she meekly asked in a wee voice, her head nigh buried in the crook of his shoulder.

  “What the money was for,” Lewrie told her, forcing a credible hitch into his voice. “I was wed. Daft thing for a mere Lieutenant t’ do. Our Navy thinks married Lieutenants are useless… lost to the Service, with their minds half-ashore. But… she died.”

  He blushed tomato-red, covered his chagrin by busying himself at his wineglass; that was a lie most damnable to say, as if a word was parent to the wish; as if he’d called fickle Fate to heed him and harm Caroline!

  “Mon Dieu, no! Pauvre, pauvre … poor, dear man!” she said in a shuddery tone, quivering against him.

  “Sweetest, kindest… not a rich match, no, but… Caroline was my landlord’s daughter, when I lodged in Portsmouth,” he grunted.

  Damn, damn, damn! he chid himself; Why’d I give her real name? This won’t do, it’s gettin’ too personal! Should’ve said, “No, never wed,” should’ve said Cheapside, ‘stead o’ Portsmouth, where I really was with the ‘Press! Christ, let’s hope she wasn’t listenin’ all that close… or geography’s not her strong suit! Else, I’ll never put a leg over again. And God help me, I want to!

  “How did it …” Charité asked, and he could feel moisture on his shoulder; she was really weeping for h
im! He felt like such a cad, but… in for the penny, in for the pound. It was too late to recant.

  “She got sick soon after we wed,” Lewrie continued, his voice most believably husky, with many a pause to marshall fresh stages in a tale of woe. “All the coal smoke… she began to suffer a wracking cough, sometimes spotted her handkerchief… We tried an apothecary at first. Then a naval surgeon I knew. He sent us to a proper physician, who sent us to a London physician, and it all cost so bloody, bloody much, and… nigh onto an hundred pounds, yet she still went weaker and paler, wasting away. And carrying our first child as—”

  Charité flung herself on him, trembling fingers pressed on his mouth. She kissed him with a fierce, life-giving hunger for almost a whole minute, then sank her head into the small of his neck, sobbing!

  You mis’rable, fraud bastard! Lewrie scathed himself, glad that she could not see his face. He wanted her yet wasn’t sure he could look her in the eyes, not after this. His wife, Caroline, had sickened once, when he’d been so far away in the Mediterranean, and it had been a near-run thing that she’d lived and, recalling that, and his being so estranged from her sweetness now, his own eyes grew moist, but… the shudders that took him, that could have been mistaken for response to his old grief for a dead wife, were the result of sour amusement! At himself, mostly, for being such a charlatan, for being such a good liar!

  “You stole to save her. Oh, Alain. That is so… noble,” she said at last, rising on one elbow and swiping her tears. “You were almost… admirable!”

  “Didn’t help, though,” Lewrie said, flinging an arm over his eyes as a mask. “I was court-martialed and flung out. Signed aboard a Yankee ship in Falmouth as a mate and got by. But the captain, an idiot, wrecked her off the Cape Fear. Ran her on a shoal they call the Lump, ’twixt Old and New Inlets into Wilmington. I decided to be an American… New world, new life?… and damned if aboard my next ship, as Second Mate, a British frigate didn’t stop us and nearly press me ‘cause they said my certificate was fraudulent? Hah!”

  “So, you come on a Yankee ship to New Orleans?” she asked, and he fretfully caught what sounded hellish-like… connivance, gentle, beguiling probing in her tone; this made him forget his false tales and perk up and take notice.

  “No,” he answered, wondering why she sounded so curious about his means of transport. “I came on the Azucena del Oeste. She’s the Panton, Leslie & Company brig. British-owned, but Spanish-flagged, if you can feature it. They hired me on at Charleston, after I cooled my heels there a few weeks, looking for another ship. Where I washed up when Wilmington had nothing to offer,” he quickly stuck in, about to confuse himself.” As a new American, I can go inland, up the Mississippi to the Yankee settlements. They talked up the opportunity… and this part of the world, like it was the Promised Land. ‘Get in on the beginning,’ they swore. A little outside my normal line o’ work, but for command of river boats now and then, but… it sounded damn’ promising. And…” he paused, allowed himself some bashfulness, as if coaxing a shy miss to bed; back on his stride once more. “Indians to see… hundreds of miles of unspoiled wilderness! I s’pose I like the idea of a… a fresh, new adventure, and nothing the same, twice! A share of the profits, for my share of the risk, and… do I find a parcel of land that suits, well… start my own freehold.”

  “That is what you do for Panton, Leslie, Alain?”

  “Filled in as a ship’s mate, on the way here. Head up guards for their pack-trains,” Lewrie speculated, as if he meant it. “Hoist my own ‘broad pendant’ someday… commodore of the canoes or barges, if their river trade from New Orleans gets that big.”

  “So… you would come back often to New Orleans, mon cher?” Charité teasingly asked, her blue eyes merry and beguiling once more. She leaned against him, stroking him with a sleek, soft thigh, breasts pressed against the side of his chest. And Lewrie was delighted that her nearside nipple was beginning to stiffen.

  “Now, would you find that so extremely… pleasurable?” he teased right back, immensely relieved that they seemed done with his bogus curriculum vitae and were back to intimate trifles. He stroked her bare hip, purring to her, his voice deep and inveigling.

  “Alain …” Charité posed, frowning in thought and coyly biting on her delectable lower lip for a second or two, “New Orleans is going to be a très important seaport, no matter how far from the ocean. The American trade up the Great River, what our planters grow … not only the cane for sugar, molasses, and rum, but now the rice and cotton, and both so much closer to get than from India or China, n’est-ce pas? If our businessmen need to send goods out where they can make profit, other than in Spanish ports,” she sneered, “we will need ships of our own, else the Yankees or Spaniards rob us blind. The, uh…”

  “The carrying charges, aye,” Lewrie said with a nod and a sip of his wine, “the freight. So?”

  “Upriver, up and down all the bayous, there are so many rich men,” Charité slyly enthused, cuddling up to him so she could look him directly in the eyes, “men who would pay to have ships of their own to carry their goods, to bring in the fine things they desire, even from China or India! They would form the, ah… syndicates, oui? to create a fleet of their own ships. And, those rich men would pay a capitaine extremely well to manage the nautical details that they do not know … n’est-ce pas, mon amour ami?”

  “What? D’ ye mean they’d hire me on?” Lewrie laughed, picturing that fantasy. “So I could be an underpaid mate again?”

  “Non, Alain… a capitaine of your own ship,” Charité cajoled, “The sort of ship our rich men would pay you to design and have built, then command! With a share in the profits, perhaps? And later, after the profits grow very huge, you command all the ships, one of the syndicate directeurs. A seat on the board of a firm as important and rich as your old British East India Company, peut-être? A seat on the board of a bank… a planter with hundreds of arpents of land, with the town house and the country mansion, aussi! Hundreds of slaves to work your lands and make you even richer, to serve at your every beck and call…”

  And I’m t’mount you every time you feel an itch, hey? he thought in amusement; Though, damme… it does sound tempting!

  Lewrie shammed a far-off, speculating expression, one eyebrow cocked. Was Charité posing a legitimate proposition? Or was it merely a girlish daydream? She could not be much older than nineteen or twenty in his estimation, not that long away from dry tutors and even drier chaperoning nuns, raised as bleakly as most Catholic girls were. Though, she had galloped a good distance from whatever tutors and nuns had driven into her, Lewrie cynically thought. And dammit…

  She was absolutely lovely. From her speech and manners—minus her odd penchants for drinking, card-playing, men’s clothing, and fucking notwithstanding—Charité obviously came from good family and ran in rich (though sporting) circles. So…

  Why ain’t she married off and cloistered already? he worried; That’s the way they do it in Popery, ain’t it? Get ’em engaged soon as they’re fourteen, wed ’em off at seventeen? Damme, why hasn’t some beau-nasty put in a bid… or does she scare most of ’em off? Black sheep? Blotted her copy book, has she?

  “Now, that’d be, ah… that’d show the bloody Royal Navy!” Alan decided to tell her, just to see where it would lead. For if someone in New Orleans wanted his own ship, they came much cheaper if pirated, and even an innocent interest in a ship of his own might smoak out a seller who’d been involved in stealing ships, and Charité would be the one who might steer him to that seller, that supposed “syndicate” that backed the piracy; and her all unwitting! And in the meantime… she’d be his temporary “ride,” even if nothing came from it!

  Oh, what fun! Lewrie lewdly chortled to himself.

  “Captain Alan Willoughby, of the Willoughby Navigation Company! I rather like the sound of that,” he exclaimed.

  Charité broke out in giggles, gave him a congratulatory embrace, then sat back and took away his wineglass to set on
the nightstand on her side of the bed. Lewrie snuggled down in bed, expecting a hug…

  She spun about and leaped atop him, pinning him to the mattress and his hands to the pillows, shifting demandingly astride of him.

  “You have the six préservatifs remaining, mon coeur?” Charité coo-asked, writhing against his groin, her face and eyes alight with greed. “Ooh, très bien!”

  “Laisser les bons temps rouler!” Lewrie hooted in return.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mr. Pollock appeared to be in fine fettle when Lewrie trundled into the eatery he had specified for breakfast. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as some might put it, in point of fact, and bubbling over with bonhomie as he untucked his napkin from under his chin and courteously rose to greet him.

  “Ah, good morning to you, Mister Willoughby. I trust you slept well? The set of rooms I suggested proved pleasing?” Pollock gushed.

  “Barely a wink,” Lewrie replied as he dragged back a chair and sat down at the table, smirking, despite his seeming complaint.

  “Oh, so sorry,” Mr. Pollock said, frowning in concern as he sat down himself. “’Twas a quiet place when I lodged there. Nothing too disturbing or dangerous, I trust?”

  “The company I kept, actually,” Lewrie said with a worldly leer.

  “Ahem!” Pollock shied, primly nigh-appalled. “This will not… descend to common talk, will it, Mister Willoughby? A gentleman never tells, after all, ah… ahem! What?”

  What a fine hymn-singer he is! Lewrie wolfishly thought; After what my lady concierge told me about him and his “shore wife.” Kept her there, beforehand! A lovely near-White Octoroon she said! Put me to spyin’, my man, you’ll never know what I’ll discover!

  “I didn’t intend to give you chapter and verse, no,” Lewrie said to soothe Pollock. “Mostp’culiar, though… I wandered into the Pigeon Coop cabaret you mentioned, and there was this most adorable wee fellow…”

  “Hey, what?” Pollock nearly screeched, blanching. “Ahem?”