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Authors: Dewey Lambdin

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“Comfortable?” he asked her.

“Blissfully,” Lydia murmured back.

“Warm enough?”

“Delightfully so,” she assured him, then lifted her lips to his for a soft and gentle kiss. He stroked the length of her back and her flanks; her thigh thrown over his slid higher, but …

“Except for your feet, it seems,” Lewrie said, grimacing.

“I could say the same of yours,” Lydia replied, giggling as she slid her foot down next to his, wriggling her toes as if to grasp, or play at toe-wrestling. “Alan, I hate to ask, but … might you mind pouring me a cup of tea, with a dollop of brandy?”

He let out a theatrical groan and a weary “Well, if I must.”

Outside the bed covers, the room was merely cool, not frozen solid, but Lewrie made a quick chore of it, pouring tea, adding sugar and a splash of spirits.

“You are a dear,” Lydia vowed quite prettily as he handed her the cup and saucer, and hopped back into bed. She slid up to prop herself against the thick piilows, and drew the blankets up to her neck.

“Damned right I am, and I’ll thankee t’remember it!” Lewrie hooted, which brought forth a laugh. That was another point in her favour, in Lewrie’s books at least, that in private she allowed herself to be raw, open, and genuine, and to laugh out loud when amused.

In public, well … that was another matter, as Lewrie had seen early on in London. As late as breakfast here at the George Inn not two hours before, the difference between the private Lydia and the one which wore her Publick Face was as stark as night from day.

She’d been homely as a child, and still thought herself so. In her late teens, her first exposure to the “marriage market” of a London Season had been cruelly disappointing, even for a Viscount’s daughter with a dowry of £500
per annum,
and a future beau’s access to more land and property than most people had hot dinners. The beautiful, the giddy, and silly who’d only fetch £100 had ruled the rounds of all the balls, salons, routs, and drums. Years later, at her lovely mother’s harsh insistence, she’d been placed on the block again, this time with £2,000 for her “dot”, and Lydia had been knee-deep in slavering swains … most with the twinkle of golden guineas in their eyes, which had disgusted her to the point that she had treated them all most rudely, which only made the greediest declare her “modern” and delightfully “outspoken”!

And when she’d finally wed, quite late, her choice had been a man most vile, so secretly depraved that she’d run for her life, and had pressed her brother, now the third Viscount Stangbourne, to seek a Bill of Divorcement in the House of Commons. Two years or more of charge and counter-charge, made a scarlet hussy and a scandal in the papers before winning her suit, and she was
still
pointed out as that “Stangbourne mort”. No wonder Lydia was so guarded, so icily aloof and imperious in Publick, and preferred the safety of the country, and a
very
small circle of friends, where she could shed her armour.

She was now thirty-two, ten years younger than Lewrie, and most firmly determined never to place herself under another man’s control, definitely not as a wife—what man could she trust no matter his promises—or, so Lewrie suspected, allow her heart to be won by a lover’s blandishments. Once bitten, twice shy, she was. Yet …

Lydia found Lewrie’s company enjoyable, right from the first. He was a widower since 1802, his two sons were “on their own bottoms”, and his daughter, Charlotte, was with his former in-laws in the village of Anglesgreen, in Surrey. Lewrie also suspected that the reason that Lydia found him acceptable was the fact that he was in the Navy, and unless the war with Napoleon Bonaparte and France ended suddenly, he would be gone and far away for a year or more between
rencontres.

Or, maybe it’s ’cause I’m nigh as scandalous as she is,
Lewrie wryly told himself as he watched her sip her tea with a grin on his face. His father’s family, the Willoughbys, had always ridden their own way, roughshod, headstrong, and “damn the Devil.” His father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, had been a charter member of the Hell-Fire Club, for God’s sake, and Lewrie was his bastard. Like the old adage “acorns don’t fall far from the oak tree”, he could boast of two by-blows of his own.…
Did
one dare boast of such things?

His nickname, gained early in his Lieutenancy, was “the Ram-Cat”, and that was not for his choice of shipboard pets!

“What?” Lydia asked of a sudden, peering at him.

“I was just enjoying watching you enjoying your tea,” Lewrie told her. “A little thing, but a nice’un.”

“I am pleased that you are pleased,” she said with a chuckle and a fond smile. “Though it’s no
great
skill or social art. What if I slurped or smacked my lips? Might you find
that
enjoyable?”

“I might draw the line did you belch,” Lewrie japed, “but, did you, I’m certain you’d do it … kittenish.” He leaned over to kiss the point of her bared shoulder.

“Oh, kittenish!” Lydia laughed again. “Like a proper lady’s sneeze? With a wee mew in punctuation? You are
easily
pleased.”

“Well, damme … yes I am,” Lewrie told her with a laugh and a grope under the covers. She finished her tea, handed it to him so he could set it on the night-stand, then slid back down into his embrace once more, giving out a long, pleased sigh. After several long and lingering kisses, Lydia settled down with her head under his chin.

“I suppose it’s too cold to even think of going out to that inn you told me of,” she murmured.

“Wouldn’t wish that on a hound,” Lewrie assured her. “Dinner at the George, here, will more than do, when you feel famished.”

“All those senior captains and admirals, and their wives,” she hesitantly replied, making a
moue
in distaste. “As dear as I wish the pleasure of your company, I’m surely bad for your repute in the Navy.”

“Didn’t know I had one,” Lewrie quipped, “and if I do, it’s as bad as it’s goin’ t’get. Personal repute, anyways. There’s none that can fault me when it comes to fighting, and that’s what counts.”

He sat up to look down at her.

“Your reputation’s more at risk for bein’ seen with me than I for bein’ with you,” he told her. “And I don’t give a damn for others’ opinions on
that
head. Bugger ’em. Feed ’em thin, cold gruel.”

She drew him down close, pleased by his statement.

Lewrie feared, though, that Lydia didn’t much care for how the other diners would stare, point with their chins, cut their eyes, and whisper behind their hands and napkins; the matronly proper wives’d be the worst.
They
were respectable, she was not, and they would find a way to make that tacitly clear.

“We could order in,” Lewrie suggested.

“And give the inn servants gossip to pass on?” Lydia said with a sour grimace,
and an impatient shrug. “They probably have ties to the London papers!”

The many daily publications in London all had one or two snoops to gather spice for their reportage of Court doings, or the appearances of the famous and infamous. The morning after Lydia had dined out with him, there’d been a snarky item about them in several papers. No names were printed, but anyone who had kept up with Society reporting could make an educated guess about “… a recently divorced lady often featured in our pages the last two years running…” and the distinguished Naval Person she’d been seen with, ending with a smirky “… will the lady in question teach her Sea-Dog new tricks, or has our Jason found himself a fresh Sheet-Anchor?”

“‘Which infamous divorcee was seen dining, clad in nothing but her shift, with a dashing naval hero, similarly
sans
his small clothes at an inn in Portsmouth,’ d’ye mean?” Lewrie scoffed.

“Exactly so!” Lydia snapped.

“Then we’ll dress, and dine publicly,” Lewrie decided. “Much as I’d admire t’see you gnaw a chicken leg, nude.” He drew her back into a snug embrace and stroked her hair to mollify her.

“Do I live to eighty, they’ll
still
find something delicious to write about me,” Lydia groused in a small voice.

“Nonsense!” Lewrie hooted. “They’ve Nelson and Emma Hamilton t’write about, or the doings of all those damned Bohemian poets.”

“Well…”

Lewrie yawned and slowly stretched against her.

“Lady Caroline Lamb,” he added. “
There’s
a road smash, and good for daily scandals.” He yawned again, louder and longer.

“Now you’ll get me started,” Lydia said, covering her mouth as she snuggled closer, and lower down the bed.

“Let’s try something novel,” Lewrie suggested. “Ye know, we’ve never…”

She stiffened and slid away from him a few inches, bracing herself on an elbow. “Something novel? Something un-natural? Bind me to the headboard posts? Just what perversion do you desire, sir? Do you drop your pretense, at last, like the beast I foolishly wed?”

“Lydia … Lydia, I mean nothing at all like that!” he gently insisted. “
Reliant
’s in Channel Fleet, and no officer is allowed to sleep out of his ship. We’ve never had the time before to just cuddle up, nod off, and
sleep
together. Take a long, snuggly nap?”

Rumour had it that her ex-husband had been driven by scandal to his country estates, wore a bell round his neck like a leper to warn off objects of his beastly desires, and would bugger ducks, geese, and stray sheep if he couldn’t run down anything bipedal, male or female, young or old.

“Just … sleep?” Lydia mused with her head cocked over, and a wry look on her face. She screwed her lips to one side as if biting her cheek for a moment. Then, with a rush, she was back close beside him, snuggling under the heavy covers. “I’m sorry I mistook…”

“After
that
bastard, you’d be right t’suspect,” Lewrie allowed. “Said it yourself, though … I’m so easily pleased,” he japed.

It’ll be like bein’ married to a parson’s daughter,
he thought with a well-stifled groan;
and goodbye to fellatio forever!

For all the innuendos and charges laid during Lydia’s two years of waiting for Parliament to grant her divorce, and what a scandalous bawd she’d been painted, she was surprisingly shy and “conventional”. He could only caress, stroke, and kiss so low down her belly, then no further. She might slide atop him and “ride St. George’s lance” now and again, but anything more
outré
was right out.

It was not that Lewrie was a
devotee
of the
outré,
but now and then some rare variety, some surprise, was pleasing, he’d found.

That’s why men keep mistresses, or go to brothels,
he thought with a secret grin.

“Yes, let’s … what do sailors call a nap?” Lydia agreed.

“They ‘caulk off’, take a ‘caulk’,” Lewrie softly whispered. “Do two sailors board a coach, one’ll ask the other does he prefer to ‘caulk or yarn’: nap or trade stories.”

“Caulk or yarn, sir?” Lydia asked with an impish tone.

“Caulk,” Lewrie said with a chuckle.

Dodged another bullet,
Lewrie congratulated himself after some minutes, when her breath against his chest became slow and regular, right at the edge of sleep himself;
Ye cheated death, again!

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

The old George Inn did set the best table that Lewrie knew of in Portsmouth, which made it the favourite destination for those Navy officers who could afford to dine or lodge there, and their mid-day meal was no exception. After a good two-hour nap, a slow and languourous awakening with much snuggling, caressing, fond mutual regardings—and a delightful if conventional bout of lovemaking—Lewrie and Lydia had risen, dressed, and come down to the dining rooms, he with his sash and star of a Knight of the Bath, at her insistence, to dine.

Hopes for a good salad in mid-winter were moot, but there was a hearty and hot tarragon chicken soup, followed by servings of haddock in lemon and drawn butter, then a course of sliced roast beef, all with roast potatoes and peas, sloshed down with glasses of Rhenish and one shared bottle of claret. Lewrie went for pound cake with cream and raspberry jam, whilst Lydia settled for sweet biscuits and coffee. She was a light diner, Lewrie had noted before, always leaving portions of her dishes un-eaten, and ordering only a few items, not the usual ritual of fish-fowl-swine-roast beef or beefsteak that could take hours to put away. “But I’ve always had a light appetite,” she had explained once, and to Lewrie’s cocked brow when she’d passed on cheese and nuts this time, she leaned over to put her head close to his and said, “You must know, Alan, that I am so
easily
pleased,” which made the both of them laugh, no matter who else dined with them, or what they thought of their intimate moment.

“More coffee, sir?” a servant asked.

“Aye,” Lewrie agreed.

There was a bustle in the entrance hall as someone new arrived, accompanied by a blast of cold air. It was a Navy officer, a Lieutenant in his early thirties, and a pleasant-enough looking young woman with him, both swaddled in travelling cloaks. Behind them came a civilian servant bearing the woman’s luggage, and a sailor loaded down with the Lieutenant’s. Once the door was shut against the snow, they shucked their cloaks and embraced.

“A fond reunion, do you imagine?” Lydia asked him.

“Seems so,” Lewrie agreed. “Hell’s Bells!”

“Do you know him?” Lydia asked him.

“No, but his man,” Lewrie told her, plucking his napkin from his lap and dabbing his mouth, ready to rise. “He’s off
Aeneas,
my son’s ship!” he quickly explained.

Atop the sailor’s head was a wide-brimmed and low-crowned flat tarred hat with a long black ribbon band trailing down his coat collar. Painted in white lettering on the front of the hat was his ship’s name.

BOOK: Reefs and Shoals
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