by Carla Kelly
He knew she was shy, so he took her hand and wrapped it around his growing member. She hesitated only a moment, then began to caress it gently.
By now, he had put one hand behind her head, and the other on her pubic mound, where he massaged her rhythmically. Her hand went involuntarily again to her privates when he coaxed her legs open, then dropped to her side. Gradually her clenched fist relaxed, as her breathing accelerated and his fingers went inside her.
She was more than ready, but still, this was her first time. He had never deflowered a woman before, and this was his wife, who would be the only female he ever shared his bed with again. No sense in rushing things, no matter how long that lifetime turned out to be. Instead of mounting her then, he ran his hand down the inside of her thighs, relishing their warmth and smoothness. How did women stay so soft? he asked himself. It may have been his last coherent thought, because she took her hand from his organ and nudged his hip, trying to slide herself under him.
“You’re certain?” he whispered into her ear, and then kissed it as she murmured something that didn’t even sound like words.
He rose up then, and other than reminding her a time or two to relax, if she could, he moved inside her, amazed at the simplicity of her response as she did as he asked, putting her legs around him, anchoring him to her.
“You’re finally close enough,” she managed to say, as she moved in rhythm with him, chuckling the time or two she got off rhythm, and then applying herself wholeheartedly to learning the mating dance that had been going on since Adam and Eve left the Garden in some disgrace, and struck out on their own.
He did not expect her to climax this first time, and she didn’t, but splayed her hands across his back as he came, as though trying to keep him safe at such a vulnerable time. He had never felt so protected before in his entire life, by this simple act. His brain was mush, but some imp told him she could probably be ferocious in his defense. The idea was absurd, but he tucked it away to consider, probably during a late night when he was standing watch and wishing he was back in his wife’s bed. That will probably be any night until this war ends, he thought.
When he finished, he didn’t feel like moving, so he didn’t. She offered no objection to his weight beyond rearranging her legs on his legs, the better to support him, and beginning a slow massage of his back that roused him more than he thought possible, considering his exertions.
He finally rose up on his elbows. “Do let me know if I’m cutting off all circulation,” he whispered. “Nana, I love you. There just aren’t words.”
She nodded, raising up her head to kiss him. Her hair was sweaty now, which brought the rose fragrance of her into a fullness of odor that made him breathe deep. He sat up finally, not leaving her, but relishing the sight of her body beneath his, her arms extended across the bed now, nothing of shyness over her bare breasts anymore. She just looked at him, her eyes lingering on the place where they were still joined together, then traveling up his chest and to his eyes. Her gaze was so direct and honest and still virginal, in a way that would always touch him, and probably arouse him, too. She was a woman in a thousand, and he was far luckier than any man he knew.
He left her with some reluctance, lying down next to her. Her hand was under his head this time, and he enjoyed the comfort of it when she drew him close so he could rest his head on her breast.
“I trust I met some expectations,” she said, which made him laugh.
“Exceeded them, Nana love,” he assured her. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I feel sore in places I’ve never felt sore before, but I expect that will pass.”
“Most assuredly.” He couldn’t help himself then. “You don’t see too many bowlegged females traipsing about, do you?”
She jerked the pillow out from under her head and hit him with it, which made him whoop and tickle her until she stopped hitting him because she was laughing so hard. She threw the pillow after him when he got up, but lay back a moment later and allowed him to wipe her privates with warm water from the brass can someone had thoughtfully provided hours ago. In another moment he was back in bed, and she was curled up against his chest this time.
When he was quiet, she put her hands over his ears.
“You’re listening for the wind, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I have to.”
“Not tonight you don’t,” she told him. “Go to sleep, my love. The sea is always out there.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nana woke up to silence. The wind had stopped. She looked at her husband who slept so peacefully beside her, his back to her, his shoulders bare. He still lay carefully composed, as though in a sleeping cot swinging from a deck beam. She watched him sleep, admiring his well-developed shoulders, appreciating the way they tapered down to a fine waist. If anything, he was on the thin side, too. Too bad I cannot bully him the way he bullies me about eating, she thought, then reminded herself that bullying wasn’t precisely her nature.
She moved closer to him and put her arm across his chest. He grasped her hand immediately, which surprised her.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” she said, resting her cheek against his back.
“I was just lying here thinking how badly I don’t want to move,” he told her, as he turned over to face her. He sighed. “But there’s a frigate down there and it needs a captain.”
She ran her hand across his face, feeling the stubble of his whiskers. “I know it’s selfish, but will you have time to think about me, once you’re back on the blockade?”
He kissed her palm as her fingers caressed his face. “I already do, Nana. It can get pretty quiet on an early-morning watch—just you, me and an ocean.” He looked toward the window, where the dawn was making an effort.
Nana kissed his chest. “Right now it’s just you and me.”
He didn’t need a gilt-framed invitation. Their first coupling last night had been followed by another one in the wee hours, and now this: more intense because she knew they were both feeling the imminent separation. She gave herself to him gladly, more accustomed now to the feel of him inside her, and the rhythm of his love, which this time carried her to another level.
She tried not to cry out. This was an inn, after all, with paying lodgers entitled to their own rest. She buried her face in his shoulder, gasping as she clutched him across his back, attempting the impossible of absorbing him and trying to turn herself inside out, at the same time. He climaxed after her.
“How does anyone survive this?” she whispered as he kissed her sweaty hair.
“It’s a dangerous business,” he agreed, slowly continuing his motion until her eyes rolled back in her head again. “Really dangerous,” he added, when she lay still finally. He kissed her shoulder, then took a playful bite of it.
He did not leave her, but when he turned his head, she knew he was thinking about the ocean again, and the Tireless, and the men waiting for him on board. Almost instinctively, she tightened her legs around him, then relaxed them when he looked down at her and shook his head.
“I have to go,” he reminded her. He didn’t move, though, and she was content to bear his weight until that moment when he did rise.
He just stood by their bed, looking at her body, as though memorizing the rest of her this time, and not just her face, as he had done on previous occasions. Before he went toward the washstand, he gave her nether hair a gentle tug. “My goodness, Nana, just look at you,” he teased.
She wrapped herself in the blankets and moved into the warm spot he had vacated. She dozed while he cleaned himself and then shaved, using water from the brass can that couldn’t possibly still be warm. He took his time dressing, coming over to the bed to kiss her once or twice between smallclothes, shirt, breeches and waistcoat.
He was putting his watch in his pocket when she got up, retrieved her nightgown from the chair and pulled it on. She put her arms around him, stood on tiptoe and kissed him, willing herself not to cry be
fore he walked out the door.
“Gran told me last night she’d have some pasties on the foyer table for me to take along,” he told her, speaking into her hair now, his arms as tight around her as hers around him. “I don’t want you to see me off.”
“I’m not sure I could,” she said, her voice small. “I love you, Oliver.”
“I’m fully aware of that,” he replied. “I love you, Nana. A man couldn’t have a better wife. My Lord, I never thought I’d be saying that.” He chuckled. “I’m about to benefit from one of the hitherto unexplored prerequisites of being a post captain, my dear. When the bosun pipes me aboard and I have a disgusting smile on my face, there’s not a soul on board the Tireless who would dare risk a rude remark.”
“You are pretty frightening,” she teased in turn. “Which reminds me—if I had the nerve, I would go to the Drake today and tell Mrs. Fillion she was absolutely right.”
He held her away for a good look. “Her advice to you? In the general commotion in this room last night, I forgot. Do tell.”
In spite of their intimacy, Nana felt warmth rising up her chest and into her face. “She said, ‘Don’t worry, Nana. Everything fits.’”
He was still laughing as he went down the stairs.
She cried herself back to sleep after the door closed behind him, waking an hour later when the sun was truly up. She rose again and went to the window, admiring the beautiful day, the street washed clean from the rain, the Cattewater far below a bright blue, with a hint of white chop. The weather vane on the house across the road swung south: fair winds to Spain.
A modest woman, she did something she had never done before: she took off her nightgown and stood in front of the full-length mirror by the washstand, looking herself over. She smiled to see red marks on her breasts and shoulders. Beyond that, she looked the same, even though nothing was the same about her. She had been initiated into the great mystery. I wonder what is going on inside me right now, she thought, resting both hands on her belly. There might be a child growing. Even if there was not, she knew it was only a matter of time, something they had so little of.
She dressed quickly and stripped the bed, not willing for Sal to remove the sheets. She took them to the washroom of the still-dark inn, then heated herself enough water for a bath in the tin tub. She sniffed her skin, wishing it smelled of brine, but breathing nothing beyond a musty fragrance—pungent but not unpleasant—and her own roses.
When she came into the kitchen, Gran was sitting at the table, just staring into space. She smiled at Nana, who came to her side, then knelt beside the chair and put her head in her grandmama’s lap.
“Oh, Gran,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“No woman really does, until it happens,” Gran said.
“He said he wants us to get another maid so I won’t have to clean the rooms anymore.” Nana raised her head. “I said I would, but I think I won’t. Gran, I need to keep really busy.”
“He’ll be back.”
“I wish I knew when.”
Nana feared the time would drag, but it did not, mainly because Gran saw to it that she had plenty to do, from daily visits to the grocers to hemming new sheets and towels, to learning how to keep the record of hotel expenses in the ledger.
The only real surprise happened the same day the Tireless sailed from Plymouth Sound. Mr. Lefebvre disappeared.
She had served him breakfast at the usual hour. He left, as usual, before nine o’clock, except this time he did not return. After the second day, she asked Pete to go into his room with her.
“Suppose he returned and we did not hear him, and he is lying ill,” she said.
Pete did not seem as anxious as she thought he should, but he agreed, letting her into the room and standing in the doorway while she looked around.
“I hope he didn’t owe any money,” he commented. “I mean, we’ve been cheated before,” he added, which sounded to Nana like it was tacked on for her benefit.
“No, he didn’t,” she replied, as she stacked his sketches into a neater pile on the table. “He was paid up through the end of January, so he has another two weeks.”
That afternoon, Gran sent Nana and Sal to clean Mr. Lefebvre’s room. It was empty now. Pete must have cleared out the Frenchman’s possessions while she was at the fish market.
He put Lefebvre’s effects in the storeroom off the kitchen, which contained other goods belonging to those who, in the past century and more, had skipped Plymouth without paying the landlord. When no one was around, she looked through Mr. Lefebvre’s sketches, startled to see so many of her. She found a sketch of her husband, looking somewhat severe, and tucked it in her apron pocket. You don’t look that severe when you are loving me, she thought.
At the end of the week, she returned to the storeroom to claim some of Mr. Lefebvre’s pencils. There wasn’t any sense in leaving something so useful to languish in a storeroom, she told herself, even as she looked around for paper, too. To her surprise, Mr. Lefebvre’s sketchbook was on the shelf now, along with the wooden case of colored pencils and watercolors he always carried.
Where had they come from? She asked Pete about them that evening. He looked at her, as though wondering whether to say more, which only aroused her suspicions.
“Pete, you obviously know more than I do, and I won’t be kept in the dark,” she told him, trying to sound firm with a dear person who had known her since childhood.
He still didn’t rush to an explanation, and when he did speak, she did not think he confessed everything.
“He was pressed.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Is the navy that desperate? I can’t see him as a useful seaman.”
“The navy is always desperate,” he replied, with the ghost of a smile. “You know that. But I hear one of the East India ships nabbed him. The Norfolk Revels left the harbor right after the Tireless. He’s on his way to Bombay, Nana.”
She left it at that, because Pete did not look inclined to say more on the subject of a missing Frenchman. She did make a request, though. “Pete, I know you have a wealth of sources in the Barbican. Please keep me informed of what news you hear from Spain.”
He did, bearing tales from lighters and hoys, and ships that came and went from Plymouth. Soult was still pursuing Sir John Moore and his little army to the edge of Spain. More small ships came and went.
Late one night when the inn was quiet, Captain Dennison of the Goldfinch brought her a letter. “Ow! Ooh! It’s too hot to handle!” he teased as he gave it to her at the door, claimed a kiss on her cheek and ran back to the post chaise. “Exeter, Honiton, Axminster!” he called.
“Bridport, Dorchester, Milbourne,” she whispered after him. “On to London, my friend.”
She got no farther than the foyer before the letter was open, read and in her lap.
Beloved, this is too short to convey even a tenth of my regard and admiration. I’d be more eloquent, but suppose it fell into French hands? Can’t have them suspect for a moment that the British are human, can we? But I am, and I miss you. Prospects are grim here, but you still keep me company on my watches. Hope this finds you well and thinking of me now and then. All my love, my heart, my lights and liver, Oliver.
A day later, the ships began to straggle into the Sound. By noon, all Plymouth knew the scope of the disaster: the army had been forced off Spain at Corunna, Sir John Moore was dead and soldiers were being conveyed to England by every means possible, from victuallers and water hoys to ships of the line.
Without waiting for Nana to ask, Pete went down to the Barbican to find out what he could. He brought back news, along with officers—some wounded, all exhausted—who were part of the overflow from Barbican hotels and Stonehouse itself, the naval hospital near the Davenport docks. They filled the rooms upstairs and arranged pallets in the dining room and sitting room for the rest.
The demand was for food and tea, then, and hot water, the first any of the men had seen in weeks, after their 250-mile
retreat from Burgos to the coast through Spain’s snowy mountains, dogged by the French. Nana subdued her own fears as she ran up and down stairs, carrying towels and water, and then stew made of anything Gran could find. Tired smiles from men too weary to say much were enough reward.
One of the second lieutenants reminded Nana of her husband, with his thin lips and alert air, despite weariness that seemed to come off his body in waves. When everyone had been attended to, she pulled up a chair to his pallet in the dining room.
“What of the ships?” she asked. “Did you see or hear of the Tireless?”
“Your man on board?” the lieutenant asked.
She nodded.
He shook his head. “I’m no salt. I can’t tell ships by their numbers, but you should have seen the flags signaling up and down! I do know the frigates were darting in as close to shore as they dared, to bombard the Frogs just behind us on the heights.”
That would be Oliver, she thought. That would be any of them, she amended, feeling pride in the men who called Plymouth their seaport. “That’s what they do,” she said simply.
There wasn’t an answer. The lieutenant, leaning against the wall on his pallet, had fallen asleep with a piece of bread in his hand.
By midnight, everyone was settled down, although some of the raggedy men were already crying out from nightmares.
Nana wanted to stuff cotton in her ears and run down into the cellar, but she stayed with Gran in the kitchen, preparing pots of porridge for breakfast and calmly discussing plans for the noon meal.
“Thank God for Captain Worthy’s income,” Gran said as she mixed dry amounts into pots. “I’m not certain that the Mulberry, even on her best days, could afford to feed the five thousand on our two loaves and fishes.”