Morgan’s Run

“What is incest?” asked Kitty, well aware of Miss Mollies.

“Sexual congress between people very closely related by blood,” said Richard. “Usually parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles or aunts and nieces or nephews.”

“Ugh!” Kitty exclaimed, shuddering. “But I do not exactly see how the Bounty mutiny fits in.”

“’Tis a literary device called irony, Kitty,” said Stephen. “What else does Jem write?”

“Ye can have the letter to read at your leisure,” Richard said, “though there is another thought in it worth airing ahead of that. Jem thinks that Mr. Pitt and the Parliament are very afraid that an English revolution might follow the American and French ones, and now deem a Botany Bay place a necessity for the preservation of the realm. There is huge trouble brewing in Ireland, and both the Welsh and the Scotch are discontented. So Pitt may add rebels and demagogues to his transportation list.”

He did not discuss Mr. Thistlethwaite’s personal news, which was excellent. The purveyor of three-volume novels to literate ladies had become so adept at the art that he could produce two a year, and money flowed into his coffers so copiously that he had bought a big house in Wimpole Street, had twelve servants, a carriage drawn by four matched horses, and a duchess for a mistress.

After Stephen left carrying Mr. Thistlethwaite’s letter and the dishes were washed up, Kitty ventured another remark; to do so no longer terrified her, for Richard tried very hard to restrain his God the Father tendencies.

“Jem must be very grand,” she said.

“Jem? Grand?” Richard laughed at the idea, remembering that burly, bulky figure with the red-tinged, pale blue eyes and the horse pistols protruding from his greatcoat pockets. “Nay, Kitty, Jem is very down-to-earth. A bit of a bibber-he was one of my father’s most faithful customers in his Bristol days. Now he lives in London and has made a fortune for himself. While I was aboard Ceres hulk he enabled me to safeguard both my health and my reason. I will love him for it all of my life.”

“Then I will too. If it were not for you, Richard, I would be far worse off than I am,” she said, thinking to please him.

His face twisted. “Can ye not love me at all?”

The eyes turned up to his were very earnest; they no longer seemed the image of William Henry’s eyes, but rather had become her own, and equally-nay, more-loved.

“Can ye not love me at all, Kitty?” he repeated.

“I do love you, Richard. I always have. But it is not what I believe is true love.”

“You mean I am not the be-all and end-all of your existence.”

“You are, such as my existence is.” Her eloquence was a thing of gesture, expression, look-her words, alas, fell down badly; she had not the knack of finding the right ones to explain what was going on in her brain. “That sounds ungrateful, I know, but I am not ungrateful, truly I am not. It is just that sometimes I wonder what might have happened to me had I not been convicted and sent to this-this place so far from home. And I wonder if there was not someone for me in England, someone I will never have the chance to meet now. Someone who is my true love.” Seeing his face, she hurried on in a fluster. “I am very happy, and I like working in the garden and around the house. It is a great joy to be with child. But… Oh, I wish I knew what I have missed!”

How to answer that? “Ye do not pine for Stephen anymore?”

“No.” It came out confidently. “He was right, it was a girlish passion. I look at him now and marvel at myself.”

“What d’ye see when ye look at me?”

Her body hunched and she squirmed like a small, guilty child; he knew the signs and wished he had not asked, provoked her into being obliged to lie. As if he could see into it, he knew that her mind was racing in circles to find an answer that would satisfy him yet not compromise herself, and he waited, feeling a twinge of amusement, to hear what would emerge. That of course was true love. To understand that the beloved was flawed, imperfect, yet still to love completely. Her idea of true love was a phantom, a knight in shining armor who would ride off with her across his saddle bow. Would she ever attain the kind of maturity that saw love for what it was? He doubted it, then decided it was better that she did not. Two hoary- headed sages in a family were one too many. He had enough love for both of them.

Her answer was honest: she was learning. “I truly do not know, Richard. You are not a bit like my father, so it is not in-incest… I like to see you, always… That I am carrying your child thrills me, for you will be a wonderful father.”

Suddenly he realized that there was one question he had never asked her. “D’ye want a girl or a boy?”

“A boy,” she said without hesitation. “No woman wants a girl.”

“What if it should be a girl?”

“I will love her very much, but not with hope for her.”

“Ye mean that the world belongs to men.”

“I think so, yes.”

“Ye’ll not be too disappointed if it is a girl?”

“No! We will have others, and some will be boys.”

“I can tell you a secret,” he whispered.

She leaned into him. “What?”

“ ’Tis better if the first child is a girl. Girls grow up much faster than boys, so when the first little man comes along, he will have at least two mothers-one close enough to his own age to grab him by an ear, take him to a quiet place, and drub the daylights out of him. His real mother will not be so ruthless.”

She giggled. “That sounds like experience.”

“It is. I have two elder sisters.” He stretched like a cat, elongating every fiber. “I am very glad that they are all well in Bristol, though my cousin James’s sight is a grief. Like Jem Thistlethwaite, he was the saving of me. I never suffered the illnesses most convicts do, especially in a gaol or on board a transport. That is why, at three-and-forty, I can labor like a much younger man. And make love to you like a much younger man. I have kept my health and vigor.”

“But you went as hungry as the rest, surely.”

“Aye, but hunger does no harm until it chews away a man’s muscles beyond repair, and my muscles I suppose had more substance than most. Besides, the hunger never lasted quite long enough. There were oranges and fresh meat in Rio-meals on a Thames dredge-an occasional bowl of fish-chowder-a man named Stephen Donovan who fed me fresh buttered rolls stuffed with Captain Hunter’s cress. That is luck, Kitty,” Richard said, smiling, his eyes half-closed. Today seemed to be a day for memories.

“I cannot agree,” she said. “I would rather call it some quality many men do not possess, but you do. So does Stephen. And I always fancied Major Ross had it too, from listening to you and Stephen talk. Nat and Olivia Lucas both have it. I do not. That is why I am glad ’tis you is the father of my children. They have a chance of inheriting more than I am.”

He picked up her hand and kissed it. “That is a very pretty compliment, wife. Perhaps ye do love me just a little.”

She huffed a sound of exasperation and turned to look at the tables and chairs, strewn with books. One chair held the hat box. “When will you deliver Lizzie’s hat?” she asked.

“I think you should deliver it and heal the breach.”

“I could not!”

“I will not.”

The question of the hat was still undecided when they went to bed, Kitty so tired that she fell asleep before she could make overtures of love.

Richard dozed for two hours, his half-dreams a parade of old faces transformed and distorted by the years between. Then he woke and slid out of the bed, donned trowsers and stepped outside softly. Tibby had been joined by Fatima and Charlotte by Flora; the two pups and two kittens stirred until Richard hushed them. They were curled together inside a piece of hollow pine Richard had thought an ideal kennel; more dogs and cats having the run of the house would discourage them from ratting. MacTavish was a law unto himself, too late to change his habits now. And he was still the sole male, ruler of the roost.