of several voices. At once his expectant erection became a distinct embarrassment as he realized it truly was a tea, with other guests, and not the sly invitation to strum the damned woman he had thought it was! 'Ah, our other guest,' Mrs. Hillwood said, rising to greet him. 'This is Midshipman Alan Lewrie, from
’Your servant, sir,' Alan said, adjusting roles and making a graceful leg to the man, a young, chubby, and obviously poor sort of curate.
He met the reverend's wife, a blubber-booby who had difficulty even bowing from a seated position, a planter and his wife, and an army officer from the local regiment with a young woman of his acquaintance.
The tea's good, anyway, Alan thought sourly, sipping from his cup and gathering a small plate of baked trifles to pass the time. It was an agonizing hour and a half of small talk of privateers, prices in the Indies, prospects for crushing the rebellion in America, facing up to the French and the Spanish, the state of the Church, the latest poems, and a screed against those damned Wesleys and Methodism.
Lewrie got to put his oar in about life in the Navy and hoped he was amusing about some of his first experiences, but he could not hope to match broadsides with the Reverend Mr. Robinson or an opinionated young army major who was barely two years older than himself and sure that he was the last word on military affairs.
Only reason he's a major is that he could buy a subaltern's commission, and then buy his way up as people chucked it, Lewrie told himself. And he wasn't too sure that he really didn't know more about small arms and musketry, and most especially artillery, than the young man in the red coat with the scarlet sash, gorget and epaulet.
Mrs. Hillwood finally began to break up the tea party as the others began to stir in mutual boredom. The major gossip had been delivered, their bladders were full and it was getting on for sundown. Lewrie sighed and looked for his hat while Mrs. Hillwood gushed over the reverend and his chick-a-biddy wife at the door. ’You hat, sah,' the maidservant said softly. Lewrie had not had many island women; most of them were sure to be poxed if they dwelled anywhere near a harbor, but this one was tempting. She tapped the brim of his hat, forcing him to look down. There was a folded note in the inside of the crown. Aha. Now we're getting somewhere. Must be from Mrs. Hillwood. I doubt if the servant can write.
Furtively, he stood to one side, adjusting his neckcloth in a mirror with his hat resting on the small table below it, and opened it to read without the others seeing. He was gratified to see that it was short and to the point: 'Return in a quarterhour.' Alan made his goodbyes publicly with the others and set off at a brisk pace to town.
When he was readmitted to the apartments the second time after a short detour to allay suspicion, the maidservant was now dressed in a hat and lace shawl. She let him in, then slipped out the door herself, leaving him alone in the front parlor. There was no sign of Mrs. HiUwood but there was now a serving tray on the tea table that held several bottles. Alan helped himself to some claret. ’Mister Lewrie,' Mrs. Hillwood said sweetly, entering the room from the back rooms. She had changed her more formal sack dress for a loose morning gown and now sported her own hair instead of a floured wig. She walked up to him and gave him a light kiss on the cheek, as one would greet an old friend, before breezing out of his hungry reach to cross to the array of bottles.
He was amazed to see her pour herself a healthy measure of Blue Ruin. 'After the tedium of such guests I have need of gin, Mister Lewrie. I am very happy that you would accept my invitation to return.’
’I would not have missed it, I assure you, Mrs. Hillwood. ’
‘Come sit with me,' she said, alighting gracefully on a sofa and patting the brocaded fabric next to her. He obeyed. 'Those people say the same things time after time but it is my duty as a woman of some consequence here on the island to allow them to pay their respects. Though they cost me my time and my patience.’
’At sea we have no choice of our messmates, either,' Alan said, sipping at his wine. 'They can become… predictable. ’
‘And you dislike tedium, do you not, Mister Lewrie? As I?’
‘I like adventure.' He grinned, turning in his seat to her. 'A direct young man, how delightful!' Mrs. Hillwood said, waving her empty glass at him in silent request for a refill. She had the look in her eyes of a predator, and Alan noticed that her nose was long and hawklike, the only mar of her still considerable beauty, though she must have been at least in her mid-tolate forties.
He took her glass and went to the table to pour her another dose of gin, and to top up his claret as well. 'Your captain allows you ashore for how long, Mister Lewrie?' she asked, tucking her legs up on the sofa and leaning over one ann. ’If the wind does not shift suddenly I have 'tiJ midnight,' he said, carrying her drink back to her. 'How generous he is,' she said, 'and such a good friend of Sir Richard Slade?’
‘
‘A gentleman never tells,' Lewrie said with a tight grin, and took a sip of his own drink. 'Nonsense, gentlemen always tell. Why else do they linger so long over the port while we poor women have to retire to cards and coffee, and talk of tatting lace?’
‘You sound like someone who enjoys adventure yourself, ma'am,' he posed. Dh please
‘It was his debut, ma'am. But I trust that your kindness and generosity treated him well,' Lewrie said, feeling somewhat out of his depth. He had never run into a woman of her wealth and position that wasn't a little sniveller and simperer, always swearing that they had never done anything like that before and that he was the ravisher that broke down their resistance. Yet here was a woman ready to admit to desires of the flesh as strong as his, and from Tad's description of his night with her, she would be as aggressive as a lioness! 'He was smiling peacefully when I left him,' she said, finishing her drink and waving for him to serve once more. 'That's good,' he said, going back to the table for more gin. ’Poor Tad smiles so seldom. ’
‘And poor Mister Lewrie?' she purred enticingly. ’I am always seeking amusements to lighten the soul, ma' am,' he told her with mock gravity.
He stood close with her drink, but instead of reaching to take it from him, she put out a hand to his crotch and ran light fingers over his evident excitement through the cloth of his breeches. ’Never send a boy to do a man's job,' she said. 'You look so stifled in that uniform of yours. Take it off and be comfortable.' As he struggled out of his coat and waistcoat she undid his breeches, and as his neckcloth and shirt went flying across the room, she bent down and kissed his manhood. ’So strong, so upright. And you taste of ocean salt.’
’Oh God,' he said, throwing his head back to look at the ceiling as she clasped his buttocks and drew him into her. 'Bring our drinks,' she ordered, breaking off and swaying off to the back rooms, while he tried to shed his shoes and breeches and follow. Mrs. Betty Hillwood was, as they said, a man-killer. She sobbed and she groaned deep in her throat, flinging her head back and forth and gasping, riding him rantipole with her hands clawed into his shoulders, and when she hit the melting moments, she sounded like someone being flogged at each warm stroke. She was incredibly slim with much smaller breasts than Alan preferred, but her nipples and aureoles were large and dark. Her hipbones dug into him harshly, but her flesh was incredibly fine and soft over her thin frame. The down of her legs was maddening as she stroked his buttocks with her legs and clasped him tight to her, and she loved to have his fingers twine in the sopping wet hair of her underarms as she gripped the headboard and thrust back at him stroke for stroke. They broke for more drink, for a cold supper that they ate in bed, still tangled in the linen. They stood in a large tub of cool water that had been standing all day, and sponged themselves, then went to the edge of her high bed and made love seated. Followed by more to drink.
Frankly, Betty Hillwood could put gin away like a grenadier, and it only made her more passionate, more animal in her actions, and in her desires, which already seemed insatiable.
She complained about her dried-up stick of a husband, who liked island boys out at the plantations more than her, of how hard it was to find suitable satisfaction for her own desires in so proscribed a society as the islands, where there were so few true aristocrats who had a freer code of conduct than the squirearchy that made up most of the traders and planters of her own association.
She then took on another load of Blue Ruin and proceeded to make up for lost opportunities on Alan, who was wearing out. Once he was spent, she dandled him and kissed him into performing once more, just once more… ’Don't flag on me, Alan dear,' she pleaded, half-drunk now and her hair hanging slattern-loose about her face. 'I
