The King

felt only slightly grateful.

Get the fuck off, you cow! he screamed mentally. Let me get on my feet and out of here! I need clothing, and a head start!

'Me own wife!' Lord Cantner tried to howl in outrage. But it came out little more than a petulant screech.

'In name only, Roger, as we both are well aware. A wife may expect conjugal relations now and again,' Delia said, smiling wickedly. 'Of a successful, and pleasing, nature, n'est-ce pas?'

Lord Cantner put a hand to the hilt of his smallsword, and Alan gulped in total fear, his suntanned complexion aiming white as Delia's flesh.

But Lady Cantner only chuckled deep in her throat at that threat. 'Would you run me through, dear Roger? Or Alan? That's murder, you know. Too public a thing to share with the Mob. And you might swing for it at Tyburn, even so.'

Alan couldn't credit it. Under the secrecy of the sheet, she was stirring her hips once more, as if she wanted to torment the old cuckold into mayhem! And, God help him, what should have shriveled up like a deflated haggis was now hard as a marlinspike inside her!

God, I promise you, let me get out of this with a whole skin and I'll be good, I swear! he prayed silently. I'll marry Caroline Chiswick, I'll be monogamous as a bloody swan forever-more!

'Or would you rather go to Pickering Place and duel for your honor, my dear,' Delia almost snickered. 'Come slap him if you wish. I'll hold him down for you.'

'For God's sake!' Alan finally gave voice.

'You little bastard!' Lord Cantner rasped, his sour little mouth working around what was left of his teeth. 'Should have known when I come in on ye an' this bitch aboard that schooner, you all snivelin' on her tits, oh, I knew then ye were spoonin'' her yer cream-pot love even then! One o' me own I praised t' the skies!'

The hand had, however, dropped away from the sword hilt and both were wringing themselves in quandary. Alan felt a moment of hope.

'Murder, then, Roger dear?' Delia sniffed at her husband's indecisiveness. 'A challenge to a duel? No? Then please be good enough, after me fruitless years we have spent together, to go away and make up your mind and leave me to my pleasures.'

Lord Cantner stamped one of his little feet and gave out with another feeble bleat of displeasure. 'Bedamned to ye, ye bitch! And Goddamn yer traitorous blood, Mister Lewrie! I'll see the both of ye in hell, I swear I shall. You'll pay. Oh, my yes, you'll pay. I'll have both yer heart's blood, ye see if I don't!'

But, amazingly, the old man quavered out another unintelligible warning, and doddered out the door, slamming it behind him!

'Well, I'm damned!' Alan gasped, going limp as Italian pasta against the pillows. 'Christ, that's torn it! He'll have me dead!'

'He won't, dearest,' Delia cooed, stirring her hips to revive him as coolly as if one of the servants had dropped off clean towels and departed.

'Easy for you to say!' Alan raved, after drawing a deep breath.

'Alan, don't flatter yourself; you're not the first,' Delia said, giggling. 'We've slept in separate rooms almost from the wedding night, and he knows his limitations at his age. Would he take the risk of dueling my darling lad? He shakes too much to hold a pistol, and the weight of a sword is quite beyond him for more than a minute. He's too stubborn to die and leave me everything. And too proud to ask Parliament for a bill of divorce. He's known about you.'

'Then how could he play cards with me if he did? How could he stand to have me eat his fare?'

'What he knows is one thing,' Delia grinned, leaning down to him once more. 'What he wants others of his circle to know is quite another. They believe him capable in bed, and I give no sign he's not. I brought enough money to this miserable marriage to walk out anytime I cared to. So far, I have not. My family was rich Trade. He was respectable aristocracy. So we have no heir as of yet. Before he dies, I shall present him with what he wants most. Had he his wits about him, he'd have sent word on ahead from Dover he was returning. I expect the sea voyage upset him, poor thing.'

'By God, you're a cool 'un!' Alan marveled. He'd thought he'd met some crafty, scheming women in his time, and had suffered at their hands more than once. But he'd never seen the like before. Even Mrs. Betty Hillwood back on Jamaica hadn't been this icy.

'If he hadn't been addled by mal de men I'd have known when to receive him back, and you would not have been in this predicament. We'd have been sitting around the card table, or truly having breakfast, when he arrived,' she went on. 'He'd have known what we'd been up to in his absence, but he'd have been spared the actuality.'

'Well, he wasn't,' Alan said, trying to lever her off him so he could get dressed and obey his instincts to take a long vacation in Scotland. Perhaps change his name and herd sheep with the Chiswicks down in Surrey until Lord Cantner had the good grace to die. 'And he's seen the actuality. You said he has his pride. That means he'll get even, no matter what you think he'll do. You heard what he said. He'll hire himself some dockyard toughs to stop my business!'

'I give you my best assurances, dearest, sweetest, Alan, that he shall do no such thing,' she said, laughing, hugely amused. 'You don't know what a relief it is to end this pitiful charade at last. Just like that night he retired early, remember? Oh, I surely do. And we sat up playing backgammon until he was fast asleep?'

'Yes.' It had been one hell of a night, sneaking into her chambers trying not to make a sound, tumbling onto the carpet before a ruddy fire, all the while the old man had snored in the room next door, and all night long, they had lurched fearful between strokes each time he'd coughed, muttered or turned over, only to begin again.

She pressed back down on him, trying to revive his flagging interest in the proceedings.

'I shall most like have to get out of town for a while,' Alan told her. 'I mean, I can't just trail my colors in his face, can I?'

'Oh, do spend some time in Bath! Warm spa waters, gambling in the Long Rooms. Beau Nash is dead and it's getting more lively, now he isn't there to demand decorum,' Delia enthused. 'I could join you there for a couple of weeks if you wish.'

'Let's not press our luck, hmm?' Alan snapped. 'Don't rub salt in the wound. I'll be an old hound, too, one of these days, and I'd surely kill the first young pup that sniffed around my wife!'

'How possessive you suddenly are!' she pouted. 'Darling, if we must indeed be parted… give me something to remember you by.'

'In for the penny, in for the pound?' he scowled.

'Something like that,' she teased.

'Sorry, m'dear, I'm off like a bloody hare!'

'Cony, pack a bag for me,' Alan said, back in the safety of his lodgings. 'I feel the urge to take the waters somewhere.'

'We goin' t' Bath'r Brighton, sir? Ahn't never been!'

'Somewhere. Anywhere. No, I'll need you to take this note to Courts' for me. I'll pack myself. Post some letters for me after. And get us a couple of horses,' he added. 'And make sure they're the fastest ones alive.'

'Fer in the mornin', sir?' Cony asked in all innocence.

'Ah… hmm,' Alan replied. 'I should think tonight would be devilish fine.'

'T'night, sir? If'n ya want, sir. 'Course, hit'd be 'ard t' find a decent inn that late on the road. An' the country a'swarmin' with 'ighwaymen now the vet'rins is outa work.'

'We'll go well-armed,' Alan told him. Count on being well-armed, he thought. He had a Ferguson rifle from his time with the Chiswicks, a saddle musketoon, his brace of naval pistols and another brace of dragoon pistols, his hanger, and there was a cutlass around somewhere for Cony to wear as well. Damned right, he'd go armed! He wouldn't put it past Lord Cantner to raise a battalion of pursuers, no matter what Delia thought, with a hundred guineas for the man who harvested his liver?

Cony went off with a note for the bankers, and Alan wrested a traveling valise from his armoire and began cramming things into it any-old-how. But he was interrupted by a scratch at the door.

'Ah, Abigail, my little chuck,' he said, not pausing in his haste.

'I gotta talk to you, sir?' she said, tremulous as the first time he'd clapped eyes on her. 'You packin' t' go