Tested by Fate

by David Donachie

  She couldn’t read Nelson’s mind. Looking into his one good eye gave her no clue as to what he was experiencing. He felt the same set of sensations that came upon him as he went into battle, familiar from so many engagements: racing blood, acute awareness, the ability to see things in a detail denied to him normally, access to those juices that made a fighting man aware of a threat and gave him the speed with which to counter it and stay alive. What seemed odd to Nelson, when he realised his state, was that for the first time in his life, he should feel all this in the company of a woman.

  However, concentration on each other was impossible in a banqueting hall containing three hundred people. And when the meal finished and they repaired to the ballroom to dance, Emma was engaged by a variety of partners. Never much given to formal dancing, more at home with a hornpipe, Nelson had the excuse of only one arm, as well as a degree of exhaustion, to avoid participation.

  It was unlikely that what happened that night would have occurred if he hadn’t been quite so fatigued. An added complication was that Nelson wasn’t alone in feeling so. When it came to saying good night, Sir William made it plain that he was worn out by the events that had preceded the ball, never mind the assembly itself. Emma wasn’t put out by this nor was she surprised: her husband’s desires had diminished steadily since he had turned 65. In the last year that had accelerated, since Sir William refused to abandon his other pursuits. He still coached out to Pompeii for his excavations, still climbed Vesuvius, albeit slowly, and he continued to oversee the care of his English garden. He claimed he had scant energy left for copulation. Tonight was one of many in which he made it plain to Emma that her presence in his apartments was not obligatory.

  The absence of servants was also due to the night’s entertainment: clearing up after so many guests saw everyone busy, with few to spare for lighting candles, warming beds, or seeing to a most important guest. Under the supervision of Mary Cadogan, the entire staff, including those brought in especially for the occasion, was busy washing, drying, and packing crockery or filling hessian bags with linen and breaking down the dozens of assembled tables. Aware of this, Emma Hamilton saw it as her duty to ensure that the hero of the Nile was comfortable.

  Illuminated only by the pair of candles he had used to guide himself to his accommodation, the suite of rooms Nelson occupied was in near darkness. A portrait of George III above the mantel of the fireplace in the drawing room rendered a glowering rather than an inspiring image, which reminded him that royalty were a fickle crew. There was no sign of Tom Allen, who’d last been seen heading for the kitchens, which were full to overflowing with local women.

  The act of undressing was difficult without assistance, barring his dress coat, with the embroidered star of the Order of the Bath, which slipped off easily. When it came to the heavy brass waistcoat buttons it was a struggle, and he cursed his servant for deserting him. That was until he recalled that Tom had been at sea as long as he had himself and was, like him, a man. The sight of all those olive-skinned jades would have been enough to inflame any red-blooded fellow. That brought back to him the way he himself had behaved, and he recalled the thoughts he had toyed with earlier, which caused him to smile, then frown, then mentally beg forgiveness from his all-seeing God.

  When a knock came he assumed it was from a household servant and called that he or she should enter. The breath stopped in his chest as Emma Hamilton came through the door.

  She was still dressed in the costume that had been created to flatter him. What light there was, was playing across her face and hair, as well as the gold embroidery of her clothing.

  “I came to see if all your needs have been met.”

  Was the double entendre deliberate? Nelson didn’t know, and his reply, which was automatic, only added to the confusion. “Without aid and only one arm, I find it difficult to undress.”

  “Your servant?”

  “I fear after months at sea some Neapolitan lady has claimed him, leaving me to struggle with these waistcoat buttons.”

  Emma was halfway across the room by the time Nelson had said that, close enough for their eyes to lock. “Allow me to aid you,” she said.

  “That would be very kind,” Nelson replied huskily, his mouth as dry as it had ever been in battle.

  She stepped up close, so that the faint light from the candles on the mantel shone over his shoulder into her eyes. The green orbs seemed huge, steady, and direct. He knew that any woman with a modest desire just to undo his waistcoat buttons would not look at him like that. She knew that no man making an innocent request would jerk as he did when her hand moved down to the lowest button on the long garment.

  Several spasms ran through Nelson’s body as each button came loose. He was achingly aware of her long fingers, her smell, a mixture of bodily musk and perfume, the way that her shawl was less than modest and that the breasts it was designed to cover were rising and falling too fast for a woman hardly engaged in anything like exertion. He wanted to touch her but was frightened to move, fearful that even now he was mistaking kindness for passion and that any act on his part would break the spell.

  Emma, with much more experience, supposed Nelson was suffering from a mixture of shyness and fear. Ever since her first days at Mrs Kelly’s she had known there was a breed of men frightened of their own passions, so unsure of themselves as to freeze when they should act. That this man, a garlanded hero who could board an enemy deck without fear, should show such an emotion when faced with Emma Hamilton, made her hand tremble slightly.

  She was also aware that, in coming here, all her excuses of seeing to Nelson’s comfort were just that, pretexts to cover an irresistible desire to be close to him. His mere presence set off something she found hard to control, which had existed since their first meeting five years before. Absence made such a thing seem foolish, but proximity made it so forceful it could not be gainsaid.

  She knew because of what had happened on first acquaintance that it was the man, not just his fame. Besides that, Emma wasn’t the type to dwell too long on wondering. At dinner, all that contact had been no accident. She had known what she was about as she pushed herself close to him, eager to feel the tingling sensation his close presence brought her. She had it now and, in the glow of the candlelight, looking at his hooded eyes, feeling the trembling of his body through the slightest of contact, she knew he had it too.

  Taking hold of his stock to untie it, she exerted a degree of pressure. Instead of holding his body tense against it, Nelson allowed his head to be brought to within an inch of Emma’s. To kiss seemed natural, a gentle meeting of lips stretching little to touch each other, the increase of pressure as Nelson slipped his good arm round her waist to pull her body into contact with his. At the back of his mind he knew that what he was doing was wrong, sinful, but elemental.

  The lips parted and Emma put a good foot of distance between them and Nelson felt disappointment overwhelm him. Then her hands came up, and slowly, her eyes still fixed on his, she began once more to undo the stock, slipping it off slowly and sensually. At the same time his fingers found the edge of her shawl, which slid from her shoulders to the floor.

  Emma continued to take the lead, knowing that this man would hesitate at every stage of what was now inevitable. Her body was on fire, she wanted to rip off his shirt, with its one pinned-up sleeve, and her dress with it. Yet there was great pleasure in denial, gratification in lack of haste, in putting her hand behind Nelson’s head and pulling it to her bosom. The throaty chuckle that emerged when his lips brushed the top of her breasts was caused by a thought, not the touch; that a man who couldn’t undo his waistcoat would probably have trouble with the button on his breeches too.

  “How odd,” Nelson murmured. “I feel as though both my hands are upon you, even my right. I swear I can feel your skin through my missing fingertips.”

  His left hand was pulling her hard, and through the thin material of her dress she could feel his cock pressing against her belly. Nelson’
s head came up and the kiss he gave her this time was crushing and passionate. Suddenly Emma put two hands on his chest and pushed him away. Nelson tried to resist, but with only one hand she spun out of his embrace.

  Seeing his crestfallen expression Emma put a finger to his lips, then slipped across the room to the double doors, turning the key smartly, before spinning round to lean against the wood. Her dress, new and for the occasion, hooked at the back where she couldn’t reach, gave way at one of the seams as she tugged hard to pull it down. Everything underneath seemed to go in that one swift movement till she stood naked, one foot raised, the flat of her hands on the lower door panels, inviting him to gaze on her.

  Nelson’s groin was aching. He felt as if he wanted to do ten things at once: rip off his own shirt and the buttons on his breeches, kiss her, fuck her, caress her, worship her, yet he did nothing. He just stood, feeling a little foolish, until Emma, laughing, came back to him, to help her one-armed hero. His shirt was pulled over his head, Emma’s hand, then her lips, caressing his chest before wandering to the stump that hung off his right shoulder, to kiss the point where the healing skin had puckered at the base. Her other hand was at his breech buttons. Nelson nearly ejaculated as her fingers took hold of his prick to ease it out of the restraining clothes.

  She had to hold up his falling breeches to get him to the bed, making Nelson feel slightly ridiculous, and propriety resurfaced. But contact with cool sheets as Emma pushed him back, the sight of her kneeling to take off his shoes, her head, still in her cap of victory with his name sewn into the band, bobbing at either side of his erection, produced the first feeling of humour he felt he had had for months, a deep chest-heaving laugh. There was a feeling of evaporation as he lay there, as though every thought that bothered him, every difficulty that assailed him, marital and professional, was being chased away by the action of this stunningly beautiful woman.

  Emma wasn’t at his feet for long. She knelt on the bed beside him, her hand once more caressing that stump. Her lips were parted showing the tip of an enticing tongue, her eyes full of amusement, her beautiful breasts rising and falling evenly in a way that made him want to raise himself up to suckle the nipples. Then she spoke.

  “I fear, hero that you are, that I must take command here.”

  Nelson laughed again. Then, using his good arm, he raised himself up with every ounce of force he could muster, the weight of his body throwing hers backwards. Emma let out a peal of laughter as he rolled her on to her back, his knee immediately jabbing between hers to open them, not difficult since she was a willing victim. Looking up she saw in Nelson’s eye a look that only men who had gone into battle with him had seen. It told her without words that no one commanded Horatio Nelson.

  His stump was jabbed into the bed to hold his right side, both his legs now between hers, his hips jabbing forward to get inside her, a manoeuvre that had to be repeated several times before she reached down to help him. Nelson had to struggle to contain himself under the coercion of that cool hand. His lips were buried in her neck and in his head it was as though that orb of the vision he had had when he was sick on his return from India came back again to tell him that what he was doing was right.

  He tried hard to be the practised lover, to hold himself, but the passion was too great, uncontainable. The groan as he came was a mixture of deep relief, overwhelming gratitude, and the boyish shame that always afflicts a man who feels that he has failed. Emma, one hand behind him pulling his buttocks in tighter, legs lifted from the bed, pelvis writhing and lifting and falling, was laughing, a deep gurgle that Nelson thought was ridicule and she knew was gratification.

  He collapsed on her body, his head sinking into her breasts, feeling the chest below them heave as he continued to jerk inside her, small, delicious spasms that slowly but steadily diminished. Her hands were stroking his back, both of them, palms pressed into his shoulder blades and spine as if that alone would convey to him the feelings that racked her body.

  As he rolled sideways Emma followed him, so that it was now Nelson who was thrown on his back. She lay over him, to gaze down at him with a mixture of gratitude and wonder. “Have I just been conquered, Nelson?”

  “No, madam,” Nelson said, softly, “you have just been victorious.”

  Sir William, on his way to give a message to Emma, had gone to check on his guest for the same reason as his wife. He was just in time to see the door to Nelson’s apartments close on that well-lit and unmistakable dress, blue and gold, decorated with entwined embroidery of Nelson and Nile. He stood for several moments, his mind going back to the dinner, to the way that Emma had fawned over her hero. Recollecting what he had observed, he saw her behaviour as different from those times when she had allowed other men to raise in themselves expectations that would not be met. Her reaction to Nelson had been different, more tactile and very effusive.

  There was a sobering moment when he remembered the dozens of letters they had exchanged over the last five years, since Nelson’s visit to ask for aid at Toulon. Every one had contained a request to pass on kind sentiments and flattering comments to Lady Hamilton, even though she, too, was his correspondent. He had only been in Naples four days, and had left in a rush that seemed, in retrospect, over-dramatic. Had there been another reason, outside the need to engage an enemy warship?

  Close to the door, Sir William had heard the muted voices of a conversational exchange. But that was followed by silence, which lasted a long time. Then he heard the faint sound of pressure on the door, followed by the grate of a turning key. A man of the world, Sir William Hamilton could easily deduce what that meant.

  They lay together, Emma face down while he lay on his back, talking intermittently, she fondling his limp cock until the blood began to flow again. As soon as he was erect she threw one leg over his body and raised herself up to look down at him. The previous tussling had thrown back his hair, exposing the scar where a piece of langridge from Spartiate’s cannon had sliced into his forehead. She bent to kiss it and his lips found a nipple as her breasts sank to his face.

  They made love slowly, Emma in charge of both pace and passion. Her own hair, now loose from that cap of victory, would occasionally brush his chest as she bent closer, while her inert lover gazed up in wonder, sure he must be dreaming that this perfect creature was intent only on his pleasure. Sometimes she would sink low to kiss him, pressing her breasts into his, her whole upper body in contact.

  Then he was lost again in that mental wilderness of conflicting images; thoughts of what they were doing and might yet do, the feeling of her belly, warm against his, the way her thighs pressed into his side, the texture of one buttock as he held it and squeezed with his one good hand. The groans that seemed to come from the very base of Emma’s spine as she quickened her pace, the rising feeling in his own groin.

  When Emma Hamilton left, Nelson lay on his back, his mind racing over what had just happened, the pleasure of which made him writhe with recollected memory. The murmured name of his wife turned that to a guilty squirm. Then he thought of his host, a man who had shown him nothing but kindness and consideration, such nobility repaid by a scrub who had just made love to his consort. It made no difference that she had been willing, had in some senses taken the initiative. But that still made him an ungrateful louse when it came to Sir William, a man who had boasted to him of his wife’s fidelity.

  Regardless of how much he chastised himself he knew in his heart that he wanted what had occurred tonight to happen again. He felt as if he had been struck by lightning, a coup de foudre that no amount of self-control could overcome. The word love barely registered, but lust did, of the most unbridled kind. He could try to put his love of God and his regard for Fanny as a shield between himself and Emma Hamilton, but he knew in his heart it would never answer.

  Nelson resolved to move out of the palazzo and go back to the cabin on his ship; to put seawater between himself and temptation. The excuses he would use began to form in his mind, based on t
he knowledge that in such a large establishment, the chances of Sir William being aware of what had taken place were slim. Lady Hamilton would never have allowed it to happen if there was a risk. He would say that he needed to harry the dockyard or Vanguard would never be ready. That even if he had defeated the French fleet in Aboukir Bay there were still two capital enemy ships at sea threatening trade. Sir William would understand, and Nelson could get away from Naples, as he had before, without any damage to either his reputation or that of Sir William’s wife.

  As he knelt to pray for forgiveness and help, he was conscious of his nakedness, of the stickiness of his body as well as the smell, a combination of her perfume, their sweat, and the odour of stale carnality.

  Mary Cadogan was waiting when Emma came back to her own suite of rooms, sitting in the chair she often occupied, but awake. She looked her daughter up and down, noting that her dress was not as well fitted as it had been earlier, her hair not as neat, the cap of victory nowhere in sight. And Emma had her slippers in one hand, almost a badge to tell anyone who saw her in the passageways what she had been doing.

  “Sir William seems to have recovered some of his ardour,” Emma said.

  “Has he?”

  “I think Admiral Nelson’s victory must have inspired him,” Emma added, throwing herself into another chair. “He was quite the bull and I am quite exhausted.”

  “You’re a fool, Emma, and what is worse for me is that you think I am too.”