An expression of disagreement appeared on her features for a moment, then she sighed and acquiesced, and turned away to undo her gown. Alan shucked his clothing quickly and flung himself onto the lumpy mattress. She came to him after carefully hanging up her gown in the wardrobe. She turned her back and he unlaced her stays for her, then she sat on the edge of the bed and undid the silk ribands that held her knee-length silk stockings up and she folded them as though they were precious gems. He watched her slim back while she worked, and admired the Venus dimples of her lower back. She reached up and took the pins from her hair, letting it fall thick and lustrous down her back almost to her waist.

"Could we lay under the sheet, please, Alan?" she asked in her meek little voice again. "I know it's a rather warm night, but…"

"If you wish, dear," he said gently, finding himself in thrall at the sight of a woman undressing for him, and feeling unwilling sympathy for her. She was too… nice… a woman to be forced to prostitute herself, far above the regular girls who entered the trade, and he felt for her.

She slid under the sheet with him and lay stiff as a board by his side as he slid over to her. He put an arm behind her head and drew her to him so that they lay facing each other, and he ran his free hand up and down her ribs and her hip. Reluctantly, she put an arm over him as well.

"This is what I liked best with the Captain," she whispered, and the catch in her voice told him she was about to cry again. "The being close in the night, when he had… that part was sometimes almost enjoyable, but… I'm sorry."

She almost sprang from the bed, but he restrained her and took her in both arms to let her weep on his bare chest, thinking himself such a bloody fool.

"What was he like?" Alan asked minutes later after she had quieted.

"He was much older, in his forties," she sighed. "Such a kind, good man! So patient with my frailties and my ignorance. I'm afraid I wasn't much of a catch for him. No dowry, no lands or rents. His family called him a fool to his face, a foolish colt's-tooth to take a younger wife with no prospects."

"And your own family?"

"They passed over. I was earning my way as a housekeeper in Woolwich when the dear Captain came to visit my people. Not a month later, we were married and at sea on the way here to Antigua. And six months after that, he died of the fever. Ah well, at least we had almost a year of peaceful existence together before…"

He kissed her cheek and felt the cool dampness of smudged tears. He kissed her neck, and it was a nice neck, long and graceful with so many interesting hollows to explore, as were her shoulders and collarbones. Firm, yet yielding, apulse with young life.

"Say my name, Alan," she whispered.

"Dolly," he obeyed. "Dearest Dolly. Poor, lovely little Dolly."

Her arms went about him, then, and she allowed herself to be rolled over on her back. Their lips met, and no longer merely acquiescent, she returned his kiss, warming to him and beginning to breathe heavier, to stir her arms, her hands, and her body against his.

He explored her from brow to knees with his fingertips, with his lips and tongue, and she began to writhe and moan, to whimper and chuckle as he tickled or en-fired her by turns. All through it, he praised her, praised her beauty, talked to her gently as one would approach a wary puppy or colt, and she responded with stronger moans and delighted sighs of impending bliss.

He kissed his way from her knees, up both smooth, firm young thighs and over her muff, teasing and nipping until she was panting and grasping for him, and she opened her thighs wider as he slid up to nuzzle her breasts. Such fine young breasts with large, oval aureoles and taut young nipples that cried out for suckling.

A moment's dispassionate reach for the sheepgut condom on the nightstand, and then he was pressing against her netherlips, and she arched her back and lifted her hips to press back, and he was sliding down that endless tunnel that led to the seat of heaven itself, and she cried out like a virgin on her wedding night, though she writhed and clung to him like a limpet, matching his every movement.

"Alan, say my name, please, Alan, say my name!" she panted with her mouth against his neck. "Ah, yes, ah! I never knew…"

"Dolly, yes, it's good, so good, you're such a good girl, such a YES!"

He could feel nothing but belly and breasts, perhaps her fingers digging into his shoulders, and their groins; hear nothing but her cries of pleasure and the quick wash-deck pumping noise of lovemaking until she shouted and kept on shouting in an utter transport of joy, not long after his own forge-hot release.

"Dolly, yes, lovely Dolly," he muttered soft against her neck as he lay spent on elbows and weak knees over her.

"Alan, my Alan dearest," she giggled back, trembling still, and showering him with smile-widened kisses.

"If lovemaking could always be this way," she said much later after their third bout, after they had sent down for some wine to cool them.

"My dear girl, it's supposed to be," Alan snickered, pleased as punch with himself. "Leastways, I've always found it so."

"If it could be, I could almost bear the shame of being… a whore. Until I hear from Roger's relatives, of course, and get the money to go home." She sighed.

"Think they like you that much?" Alan asked, not meaning to tease her.

"No," she replied, sitting up to hug her knees with the soggy sheet falling to her waist. "Oh, Alan, I've written and written, and there's never a word back from them. Nothing on the packet ships for me. I almost despair sometimes that I'll be bound to this life for all time!" She lay her head on her knees, hiding her face in her hair.

"Wait a minute," Alan said, propping himself up in the bed on a pile of thick pillows. "He only died three months ago, you say? Hell, it's three months by ship back home. Say, here to Bermuda to pick up a favorable slant from the highs. Then on to New York from there. And for reply, the packet would sail down to Portugal and then run west to Dominica first. They wouldn't even have gotten a word about your poor Roger's demise yet. And it'll most like be another three or four months before you can even expect any kind of answer."

"And I must endure more of this cruelty?" she gasped. "Oh, I cannot bear it! I shall have to enter that woman's dreadful house, after all. It's the only place that will take me."

"There's housekeeping, still," Alan suggested. "Quite a few households here on Antigua would hire a young widow who's experienced at caring for children, or such like. It's not as if you had debts."

She fell back to lay her head on his stomach and hug him.

"Do you think I have not tried, Alan? They have slaves here, not hired servants. And if hired, paid less than a dog's dinner."

Here comes the sly little hand on my purse-strings, Alan said to himself. Yet she stayed silent, hugging him like a child in her parent's lap. Alright, I'll say it for her and get it over with. Damn fool.

"I could loan you a little to tide you over, Dolly."

"I'll not hear of it, Alan Lewrie," she replied, looking up at his face in the gloom. "If I needs must, I can deal with the humiliation of this shameful trade for a short space, and there are still things to sell of my possessions. Thank you, but the answer is no. I must own that I am only a weak, stupid woman, but I can guess what you may think of me if you do loan me money. I'd like you to think better of me than that."

"You're serious!" He gaped in astonishment.

"That I am," she agreed. "After this delightful experience with you, I would not do anything to cheapen our memories of each other. I'd rather starve first. Oh, how masterful you were. and how kind to me, to take me out of that place rather than shame me by making me behave as those others. I've been such a fool to think that taking money for men to pleasure themselves is possible, even for a little time. You have opened my eyes to how low and base I would have become had you not saved me. I shall treasure you forever for that. And for this." She teased with a shy smile, and reached down under the sheet to touch his belly and lion's mane.

"Another man may wish you to be his and his alone. Have you heard of mistresses, Dolly?" Alan asked, sounding her out to see if she still rang true, that it was not a whore's lie yet.

"It would be gentler, and safer, would it not?" she asked. "But, I can think of only one gentleman that I'd care to keep house for."

Another light brush of her fingers over his groin.

"What about your husband's things, then. Have you sold any of that yet?"

"I have his chest here. But Alan, I could not bear to part with all that I have left of that gentle, wonderful man," she objected sadly. "To auction him off to the highest bidder, all that represents what's left of him, it's too horrid to contemplate."

"Let's see what there is," Alan said, sliding out of bed. "Which chest was his?"

"The one with the mirror atop," she told him, and wrapped the top sheet about her as he put on his long-tailed shirt. They knelt and she unlocked his chest with a key, lifted the lid with all the reverence of a parson opening the bread-box of a Sunday, and he helped her pull out the top tray, which was full of papers and correspondence.

There wasn't much, really. Hats and uniforms of the infantry unit he belonged to. Breeches and stockings, a high pair of boots more suited to a dragoon or horse artillery unit. A cheap watch, and the man's sword, one of middling quality.

"Twenty, twenty-five guineas for the sword," Alan said with a heavy sigh. "The boots might go for five, and the watch for ten. The chain and fob are worth more. Maybe one hundred pounds all told."

"But, Alan, that's one hundred pounds more than I have now," she said with a childlike burst of hope. "Though I do hate to part with his sword and watch. I mean, a man's honor, his…"

"Twenty pounds at the least is twenty pounds. He won't be needing a sword where he's gone, and there's no son to inherit," Alan said with a harsh rasp. He sorted through the papers in the top tray while Dolly fetched their wine glasses and topped them up, bringing a second candle Alan had ordered to better light his perusings.

"At least he didn't leave you any bills from the mess or from his tailor's," Alan jested. "Did you contact his fellow officers? What did they say they'd do for you?"

"What any man would pay for." Dolly frowned. "They thought him a little silly, I think. And… he wasn't exactly that popular with his fellow officers. I don't know why, but I always got that feeling when we were around them. Some jealousy, some argument or something."

"Goddamn!" Alan exclaimed, after he had folded out a large sheet of paper all hung with ribands and wax seals. "You've not talked to them at all?"

"I was afraid they'd sneer at me, Alan," she whispered.

"Not while you hold his commission document, they wouldn't!"

"What is that?" she said, with all innocence.

"My dear Dolly," he began, rocked back on his heels by her naivety. "You know that officers in the British Army buy their commissions. Umhumm, and do you know that they pay a lot of money for the privilege of never doing a decent day's labor again? Keep the bloody sword, hang the watch in the window for pigeons to peck on, here's your real money!"

"I meant to have it framed, as a memento, but I couldn't afford to yet," she said, staring at him goggle-eyed with building wonder.

Why, dear Lord, is every woman I meet and hop into bed with as feeble in the brains as cold, boiled mutton? he wondered to himself with a shake of his head and a reflective grin.

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