Henry took a swallow of claret and hunched forward over his plate. Dinner – which he had been looking forward to earlier that day – was proving anything but the jolly experience he had intended. The idea had been to invite Anne and Jane and take pot luck of the kitchens while making the best of the cellar. His father, he knew well, would have made no objection – he would have enjoyed the spectacle with what remained of his senses. It would have been a fine evening, and doubtless would have ended with the two milkmaids naked and game for whatever entertainment they might have devised between them.
As it was, the arrival of Stephen, Peggy Wray and Captain Jinks had put an entirely different complexion on things. Stephen’s presence alone would have put a stop to any frolics, as he would have been shocked at the thought of even allowing two mere milkmaids to dine at the house, much less with the family. He had even had some pause before deciding that it was acceptable for Peggy to join them rather than eat in the pantry with the Catchpoles and Charles’s man Griggs.
Each guest now added their own element of misery. His father sat at the head of the table, mumbling vaguely about a land dispute that had been settled shortly after Henry was born. Stephen was to the old man’s right, attempting a ponderous analysis of the current political situation, to which nobody was paying more than cursory attention. Charles Finch, who might normally have been among the gayest of any company, sat picking morosely at his food with a look of both misery and terror on his face.
Peggy Wray was little better, evidently uncomfortable in the company and also sulking because of Henry’s flat refusal to return to France with her. Once the reason for her appearance had been made clear, he had reacted with astonishment and then outrage. The idea that Peggy should expect him to risk life and limb to come to the rescue of Eloise de la Tour-Romain struck him as a piece of temerity so gross that, for some while, he had found himself bereft of speech. When he had finally managed to put his feelings into words, she had burst into tears, reacting as if Eloise had been his dearest friend rather than a woman who had not only utterly humiliated him but was also responsible for his indefinite confinement in Devon.
To make matters worse, both Stephen and Captain Jinks had taken Peggy’s side, the one stating that the family honour demanded that Henry help, the other calling his courage into question in more general terms. The fact that Peggy had convinced them both that Eloise was actually enamoured of Henry had made matters worse, but he had stuck to his refusal to have anything whatever to do with the scheme. At the end, he had walked away in a blind rage, while Stephen stood looking noble and disapproving and Captain Jinks comforted a distraught Peggy.
It was Jinks who put the final touch to the sour atmosphere of the dinner table. Learning that Charles had made for the west, he had put two and two together and followed with Stephen, determined to pursue his argument. He was an arrogant, spiteful man who had already killed one opponent in a duel and severely wounded another. An excellent swordsman and a fine shot, he had little to fear from the languid and short-sighted Charles, who had been forced to accept the challenge but now stood in fear of his life. As a final touch, Jinks’s manner at the dinner table was anything but that expected of a man on the eve of a duel. Instead, he was the merriest of the company, cheerfully relating his deeds during the conflicts at the start of the decade. This boasting was evidently intended to awe Charles and impress Peggy, and Henry’s sole crumb of satisfaction came from the failure of the latter intention.
Deprived of genial company and smarting from Stephen’s remarks on his courage and morality, Henry was doing his best to punish the indifferent claret that Stephen had ordered up from the cellar. The drink, however, did little to soothe him, serving instead to inflame the lust that had been denied full expression by Stephen’s untimely interruption of the pony-girl race, to stoke his sense of outrage at the sheer impudence of Eloise and Peggy and to increase his resentment of the insufferable Captain Jinks.
Claret passed on to Barsac, and Barsac to port, Henry becoming increasingly drunk, Stephen increasingly tedious, Charles increasingly white and Jinks increasingly loud. With Peggy’s departure from the table, the Captain’s boasts became less valorous and more bloodthirsty, also more evidently directed at Charles Finch.
‘. . . always aim for the body,’ Jinks was saying as Henry took the decanter of port from him. ‘It takes longer for the wretch to die, but there’s less chance of a miss, which is the important thing . . .’
‘Damn you, Jinks!’ Charles suddenly roared. ‘Let’s get this thing done then, now, outside!’
‘Very well,’ Jinks replied coolly. ‘Barkers or cold steel?’
‘Pistols,’ Charles answered in a thin, tense voice.
‘Generally quicker that way, I suppose,’ Jinks responded. ‘Who will act as my second, then?’
‘Damned if I will,’ Henry growled.
‘Then it seems I must,’ Stephen said quietly. ‘Yet, while I appreciate the demands of honour, you should know that I consider this behaviour both morally deplorable and uncivil, given that you are a guest in my house.’
‘Well, needs must when the devil drives,’ Jinks responded cheerfully. ‘I’ve brought my irons down, so, when you are ready, gentlemen?’
Preparations were rapidly completed, with the men then assembling on the lawn. The clear, warm autumn day had given way to a cold night, and the grass was bright with frost reflecting the light of a moon that had just passed the full. Together, Stephen and Henry loaded the pistols, Henry’s cold anger rising to hot fury as Jinks continued to brag and to torment Charles.
‘. . . I suppose you imagine that the bad light will be to your advantage,’ Jinks was saying as he sipped the glass of port he had brought out with him. ‘You may be sure that the moon provides a sufficiency for my aim, yet it is a shame, in a way, for I do like to see the faces of the men I kill.’
Henry watched Charles take a swallow of brandy. His friend’s face was deathly pale, taking on a spectral quality in the moonlight. Charles’s hands were shaking too, spilling the brandy as he tried to return the stopper to the flask.
‘Don’t let him ruffle you,’ Henry advised. ‘You’re shaking too hard to aim.’
‘This . . . this isn’t really my thing, Harry,’ Charles stammered. ‘Dam’t, I mean, I’m no coward, you know that, Harry, but . . .’
‘No coward? Ha! I’ve seen more courage in a bantling whore,’ Jinks jeered from where he was standing some ten feet distant. ‘You’re nothing but a coxcomb, Finch, and not fit for the company of men.’
‘Oh, the hell with this,’ Henry retorted, cocked the pistol he had just finished loading, brought up his arm and depressed the trigger.
The roar and flash of the gun shattered the night, dying to leave a scene of absolute silence. Captain Jinks lay prone on the ground, his face still set in the malicious sneer he had worn at the instant of Henry’s firing. Beside him, Stephen Truscott stood, his front blackened with powder and his mouth and eyes open in dumb shock. Charles Finch was likewise silent, staring wordlessly at the prostrate body of his tormentor. It was Stephen who finally broke the silence.
‘My God, Henry, you’ve killed him!’ he blurted out.
‘Well, yes, dam’t. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?’ Henry retorted, immediately defensive now that the cause of his rage was gone.
‘My God!’ Stephen repeated.
‘Besides,’ Henry continued as he began to regain his wits, ‘I couldn’t let him shoot Charles. I’m still owed my dust from the pony-girl race.’
‘For the sake of God, how can you joke at a time like this?’ Stephen demanded. ‘Don’t you realise you could hang?’
‘I doubt it,’ Henry answered. ‘Juries never convict in such cases, but I suppose it might be awkward.’3
‘Awkward!’ Stephen flared. ‘What of me, then? What of my reputation? Dam’t, man, they might even name me as an accessory!’
‘No, they won’t,’ Henry replied coolly. ‘Fellow was never her
e, was he? You dropped him outside Exeter, after you left the coach road. Nobody saw you, did they?’
‘Yes, they did; Miss Wray, she was with us all the way,’ Stephen answered hotly, ‘and Father knows, and the Catchpoles and Charles’s man!’
‘All of whom may be relied upon for their silence,’ Henry continued. ‘Here’s Father now, though, and Peggy.’
‘What? What happened?’ Henry’s father demanded as he approached.
‘Henry has shot Captain Jinks, Father,’ Stephen replied in a hushed tone.
‘Jinks? Shot him, you say?’ the old man responded. ‘Good, beastly fellow.’
‘I was saying, Father,’ Henry put in, ‘that Captain Jinks never in fact arrived here.’
‘Nonsense,’ his father replied, ‘there he is on the ground. You shot him yourself . . . Oh, I see; ah, yes.’
‘Too many people know,’ Stephen interjected miserably.
‘I think not,’ Henry retorted. ‘We can rely on the Catchpoles and I imagine Griggs is sound; Charles pays him well enough, to be sure. What of you, Peggy?’
Peggy Wray turned to him, her face white and drawn but her voice betraying no more than a slight catch.
‘I have no idea of what might have become of the gentleman,’ she said softly, ‘as at the time of his disappearance I was in Plymouth, escorted by Mr Henry Truscott, and on the way to France.’
Henry stood by the rail of the Stewer’s Hope, a small, broad-beamed schooner carrying ingots of Cornish tin to the French port of St Nazaire. Luck had been with them, both during the frantic moonlit ride to Plymouth and the discovery that a ship which intended to touch in Biscay was due to leave within hours. Henry had used the time to visit the forge run by Todd Gurney and dragoon his friend into joining them. The big man had accepted, spurred by the prospect of pay and memories of Eloise’s body.
Now the city was falling astern, showing as a cluster of grey houses slowly vanishing behind the flank of Mount Edgecombe as the ship veered to the west. At the horizon was the grey-green loom of Dartmoor, highlighted by the occasional reflection of the morning sun from water or damp rock.
Henry’s feelings were mixed, his annoyance at being dragooned into Eloise de la Tour-Romain’s schemes tempered by a rising excitement at having escaped the monotony of the Torridge valley. He felt sure that the dangers of France were exaggerated, and probably had no more founding than previous rumours of revolution, in both that country and his own. What apprehension he did have was greatly allayed by the companionship of Todd Gurney rather than that of Charles Finch, whose offer of assistance Henry had politely, but firmly, declined.
For the death of the late Captain Jinks, he felt nothing but satisfaction, coupled with a mild unease that the story might somehow prove harder to cover than they had anticipated. Yet Jinks had left London on the spur of the moment, joining Stephen only when he discovered that Charles had fled for Devon. The last point at which strangers might be able to identify the missing man would be the coaching house outside Exeter in which they had spent the last night of their three-day journey. Even then, with the connivance of all concerned, it would be impossible to prove that Jinks had not died in a formal duel. With luck, all would be well, and without it Henry had at least escaped his immediate difficulties.
The feel of a hand closing softly on his arm broke his reverie. He turned to find Peggy smiling warmly up at him, her pretty, rounded face showing a look of happiness and sympathy that surprised him.
‘You are gallant, Mr Truscott,’ she said softly. ‘For all your bombast and pretence of callousness, you are gallant at heart. How many men would have risked the gallows to save a friend?’
‘Any decent ones, I would hope,’ Henry replied. ‘Charles and I have been friends since we were boys. What sort of a man would have stood by and done nothing? Jinks would have killed him, of that you may have no doubt.’
‘I am sure of it,’ Peggy replied, resting her head against his shoulder.
‘You seem mighty friendly for a wench who sold me down the river,’ Henry responded, still piqued by her behaviour but finding her physical presence hard to resist.
‘I did only what I had to do,’ she responded, ‘and, should it please you . . .’
She broke off, leaving Henry to divine her meaning. A great weight of resentment still existed in his mind, yet everything about her stirred his lust. Besides, what better way was there to work out his ill-feeling than during sex with her? Finally, there was the matter of the half-crown he had paid her, for which he did not feel he had had full value.
‘So, then, my cabin?’ he said after a pause.
Several of the deck hands gave amused or jealous glances as he led her across the deck. The Stewer’s Hope was moving slowly, with no more than a slight roll, making for light work and idle time. A good half of the crew was on deck, all of whom had been more or less attentive to Peggy. Henry favoured them with a smile and a polite inclination of his head as he ducked below.
Quartered in a tiny cabin towards the bow of the vessel, Henry had no illusions about the privacy of his situation. Indeed, the idea of the crew knowing that he was having sex with Peggy appealed to both his vanity and his sense of exhibitionism. That she was evidently either unaware or uncaring amused him, and added to his desire to make a show. How to do it was a more difficult problem, the tiny cabin offering none of the luxuries that made for enjoyable lovemaking.
‘I don’t fancy the floor,’ he remarked as he closed the door behind them. ‘Perhaps I should lie in the hammock and you may ride rantipole?’
‘As you please,’ Peggy deferred.
They moved together, Peggy returning his kisses with a sensual eagerness that quickly banished the last of his resentment. With her soft body in his arms and her hand squeezing gently at his crotch, it was impossible to feel anything other than an overriding need for her. As his cock grew, he worked at the buttons of her dress, snipping them open with one expert hand while he kneaded a large breast with the other. A sudden lurch of the ship caught them unawares and Henry was forced to make a grab for a beam, successfully steadying himself as the giggling Peggy gripped on to him. Laughing, they climbed into the hammock, with Henry beneath and Peggy mounted astride him.
‘Turn around and clutch the beam,’ Henry suggested as another lurch almost unseated her.
Peggy obeyed, turning with some difficulty to present her rear to him. He swallowed, admiring the way her big bottom filled out her skirt, making a plump ball of blue cloth. With the hard bump of his cock pressed against her cunny, he could feel the heat from her and the urge to be inside her suddenly became overwhelming. Grabbing her bottom, he began to pull the material up, Peggy giving a squeak of alarm and then a delighted giggle at the passion of his assault.
Lifting her bottom, she allowed him to tug her skirt and petticoats out, leaving him with a fine view of her well-upholstered rear with the pouting lips of her cunny poised directly over the bump in his breeches. Working quickly on his buttons, he freed his cock, quickly tugged it to full erection and then placed the head against the wet opening of Peggy’s sex. She lowered herself, sliding down his shaft so that he felt himself slowly engulfed in warm, moist flesh.
‘Hold your dress up,’ he groaned. ‘I need to see your bottom.’
Peggy giggled and did as he had asked, using one hand to keep her skirts high and the other to steady herself against the rolling motion of the ship. Taking a fleshy bottom-cheek in either hand, Henry began to bounce her on his erection, watching his cock slide in and out of the taut pink entrance to her cunny with each push. Peggy moaned and stuck her bottom back, improving the angle of his cock inside her and also his view between her buttocks. With the two magnificent globes of flesh in his hands and the sight of her full vagina and stretched anus, he felt the first stirrings of orgasm inside him.
Her bottom-hole was stretched wide and slightly everted, a ring of damp pink flesh that invited a finger or even a cock. Tempted, he determined to bugger her, put the
idea aside as being better for a more leisurely occasion and then once more changed his mind as he remembered that he had already paid for the privilege.
‘Go up a bit,’ he grunted and pushed to help lift her bottom clear of his penis.
It came out and he took hold of it, rubbing the head in the wet mush of her vulva and drawing a long moan of ecstasy from her.
‘Oh, yes, Henry, like that, like that,’ she sighed. ‘Make it happen to me, Henry.’
He continued to rub, watching her buttocks and anus for the tell-tale contractions that would signal the onset of orgasm. Sure enough, as her moans rose to panting squeals, her muscles started to spasm, including her bum-hole, which opened like a little pink flower to show a dark centre. Henry waited until the very peak of her climax and then pulled his cock abruptly back, pressing it to her anus as the tight hole once more opened in involuntary response to her orgasm. The head of his cock popped inside, drawing a squeak of alarm from Peggy.
‘Henry!’ she managed in breathless protest, but it was too late; the head of his penis was past her ring and locked in place up her bottom.
Catching her quickly by her hips, he prevented her from lifting herself, instead easing himself a little deeper up her bottom.
‘Oh, Henry, must you?’ she sighed.
‘Yes, I must,’ he answered, ‘there’s something about a big bottomed girl that just cries out for sodomy, and they don’t come much bigger bottomed than you, my dear.’
Her only answer was a resigned groan, which he took for acceptance if not necessarily agreement. Tightening his grip on her hips, he pulled down on her, watching his cock force an entry to her back passage. Several times he was obliged to lift a little to lubricate the next section of his shaft. Each push drew a little grunt from Peggy, and he noticed that she had hung her head, presumably in shame. He also noticed that she kept her skirts high, ensuring that he was rewarded with the best possible view of the cause of that shame. Without lubricant it took a lot of pushing, but finally his erection was wedged fully up her behind, straining the anus out into a tight circlet of taut pink flesh around the very base of his shaft.
The Rake Page 9