Scarborough Fair
Authors: Chris Scott Wilson
SCARBOROUGH
FAIR
Boson Books by Chris Scott Wilson
Double
Mountain
Crossing
The Fight At Hueco Tanks
The Quantro Story
The
Copper
City
Desperadoes
Scarborough
Fair
From Reviewers
A staccato fast pace and the building tension of war make this audio hard to forget.
G.D.W.âAudioFile web magazine
Scarborough Fair
is a terrific story. You have a beautiful way with words. Of course, you English always had a better command of the language than we colonists. The
Serapis
and
Bonhomme Richard
battle was always a great adventure tale and you did it proud.
âClive Cussler
Chris's extremely clever way of descriptive writing takes the reader right into the place where the characters liveâ¦During the battle at sea in 1779 off the coast of Yorkshire one can smell the smoke from the canons and hear the tortured voices of frightened sailors in battle, and feel the tension of warfare at sea. A good read.
âMike Eastwood
What Chris has done in this novel is slowly take the reader to a time where historical fact is skillfully woven with the author's own brand of fiction. I was hooked after the first page, and read the whole book over three nights, just did not want to put it down!! Would love to see this book transcribed to the big screen.â
John Barchan
SCARBOROUGH
FAIR
by
Chris Scott Wilson
Boson Books
Raleigh
Published by Boson Books
An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.
© 2011 C.J.S. Wilson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and storage retrieval system, without the express written consent of the copyright holder.
ISBN 978-0-917990-75-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, with the exception of historical figures, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
For information contact
C&M Online Media Inc.
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh
,
NC
27606
Tel: (919) 233-8164
email: [email protected]
cover design by the author
Contents
When
America
needed a heroâ¦
Courageâ¦
Gritâ¦
Determinationâ¦
One man had them all.
His name was John Paul Jones.
Born plain John Paul on
July 6, 1747
at Arbigland in
Galloway
,
Scotland
, he was the son of an estate gardener. At sea by the age of 13, by 21 he was master of
John
, trading between
Scotland
and the
West Indies
. With the aim of becoming a
Virginia
plantation owner, he formed a partnership in
Tobago
. After killing a mutineer in self-defense and fearing a kangaroo court, he fled the island. He enlarged his name to John Paul Jones to escape detection; then in 1775 on the outbreak of the War of Independence, he volunteered for
America
's infant navy.
Off Flamborough Head, just south of
Scarborough
on the
Yorkshire
coast four years later, John Paul Jones became a legend.
“â¦as in the words of the traditional folk song Scarborough Fair, the word fair was not the name of a market, but had been used as an adjective placed after the noun, rather the same as saying fair Scarborough, meaning beautiful.”
Allinson's English Usage
,
Stockton 1953.
1778
La Belle
France
JULY 15, 1778
She probably has the most delightful
derrière
in all France, John Paul Jones thought, watching the pale orbs of Therese de Chaumont's bottom rotate as she walked naked to the side chamber off her boudoir. Therese's ash blonde wig curled erotically almost halfway down her back, the ridge of her spine melting into flesh above a voluptuous posterior. She was surprisingly long-legged, slender calves enhanced as she tiptoed, half turning to beam a languid smile, dewy eyed with the aftermath of lovemaking.
“I will not be long,
Cheri
,” she whispered, lips once again sliding into that smile of promise. And it will not be long before I am ready again, John Paul Jones thought as he stretched lazily among the crumpled sheets of the four-poster bed. He wiggled his toes and raked his fingernails gently across his bare chest, remembering her own talons when she screamed her delight at the fusing of their bodies. She knew all the tricks too. Enough to sate a man's hunger but still leave a handful of embers glowing in the pit of his stomach which she could fan back into desire with the merest gesture; a smile, a glance, any time she wished. Any time at all.
John Paul Jones let his eyes range around the opulence of Therese's boudoir; expensive Chinese hand-woven carpets brought by ship from the Orient, silk drapes, row upon row of bottles containing rare scents and essences that cluttered the surface of the dressing table. Oil paintings adorned the flock papered walls and each item of carefully selected furniture bore an embossed C surrounded by a gold wreath of oak leaves as though dismissing any dispute over the room's ownership. Although appreciative of luxury, John Paul Jones found the unashamed declaration of wealth overbearing, used as he was to the more spartan furnishings of a captain's cabin aboard ship.
Had he come across half the oceans of the world, he thought, to become nothing more than a woman's toy? To come wagging his tail and panting like a puppy every time she crooked a finger, offering solace with a shrug of her tanned shoulders, or promising the heat of her loins with a smoldering glance?
But perhaps a lap dog was the best thing to be right at that moment. His mistress could possibly hold the only solution to his dilemma. Their
affaire
had begun seven months earlier, when he had first been presented at court in
Paris
. He had thought her stunning and he wondered how he had known at that first meeting he could be forging an alliance to prove fruitful in months to come. In retrospect, it was almost as if the gods had planned it. How could he have chosen her from the numerous and enticing ladies he had encountered in those early months in Paris, she whose husband had the ear of King Louis XV, serving on the Privy Council, a hand in every pie whose recipe contained the French Navy?
Which was one of the reasons John Paul Jones thought her a bitch. It was a paradox, he admitted reluctantly, considering her a bitch for cuckolding a husband that he respected. Perhaps it alleviated his own guilt.
Sieur de Chaumont had not always been her husband's name. Born Jacques Donatien le Ray, he had gambled heavily in the
East India
trade and made his fortune. Now, while serving on the Privy Council and holding other honorary appointments, he owned a fleet of merchant ships and procured vast numbers of supplies for the French Navy. With his current status had come his title and ownership of the mansion where John Paul Jones now lay in bed, the Hotel Valentinois in the western
Paris
suburb of Passy. Benjamin Franklin also lived at the hotel, a strong link with
America
during these years of the War of Independence, as
America
struggled to throw off the stifling yoke
England
was determined to keep fastened on her fast expanding colonies. Like a mother reluctant to admit her children can fend for themselves,
England
refused to untie the apron strings.
Right now, without a ship, Therese's friendship could be the most worthwhile he pursued. She was younger than her husband and had a way of getting what she wanted. If protocol and the power of the infant American Congress could not obtain John Paul Jones a ship, then perhaps Therese tickling her husband's ear, and through him the ear of King Louisâ¦
He grimaced at the elaborate woven canopy of the four-poster. What if she wanted to keep him in her bed so much she did nothing to procure him a berth, only whispered empty promises as she held him to her soft breasts and clasped him in the warmth of her thighs? It had been two months now since
Ranger
was taken from him, and now she lay at anchor being refitted and supplied for a voyage back to
America
. A ship he could have done so much with, and already had done.
Ranger
had been only two months old when Paul Jones took command. 318 tons, built at
Portsmouth
in
New Hampshire
, she lay 100 feet long overall. Square rigged on her three masts with her black topsides slashed by a yellow stripe, Jones had admired her rakish bows and undercut stern. Although he'd had to modify her masts, the original sail plan more suitable for a sixty-four gunner than the 18 nine-pounders she carried, Jones had been pleased with her. An American ship with which to fight the stubborn English, and she had served him well.