The Captain`s Vengeance

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 Charite 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,' Charite 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?' Charite 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!' Charite 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 cherie/ 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?' Charite 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 1really 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…' Charite asked, and he could feel moisture on his shoulder; she was really weeping for him! He felt like such a cad, but… in for the penny, in for the pound. It was too late to recant.