Dewey Lambdin - The King

"You will be careful, won't you, sir?"

"Go lock the door," he ordered.

She was too young to need a set of stays, and had only thin, unsupported linen petticoats on under her sackgown. Alan had but to unbutton her down the back and gather her dress around her waist, and he was rewarded with soft, warm, tantalizing flesh under his hands and lips. Smooth young legs wrapped around his hips under his robe as he spread it to cover both of them. Pert young breasts that stood up proud as islets even flat on her back.

"Got t' hurry, sir, before the missus…" she pointed out as he licked and kissed and stroked her into flames, taking time with her mounting need as most would not. Pretty young house-servants were fair game for the sons, the fathers, the butlers and footmen. Too poor to be able to complain they were, mostly. Or too willing for the game to continue, as long as they didn't get caught, or turned up with a jack-in-the-box. Town servants would be turned out come summer, anyway, to spend several months trying to eke out an existence on what pitiful few pence they'd managed to save, until their families returned from summer homes in the country. London was full of part-time courtesans, willing servants such as Abigail. Some like Abigail, indeed, who were more than willing, if they could make some extra money on the side from it, get enough to eat for once, be rewarded with gifts of nicer clothing than most housekeepers begrudged them.

It was a quick, furtive sport, for the most part, done at the top of the stairs, across an unmade bed, in a rarely visited garret storage room. Fast, furious and rapidly over: that was what Abigail had grown used to. Not this langorous, incredibly sensuous stroking and kissing. Hands and lips touching her in places she had never known. Her breath came fast as she swooned with anticipated pleasure, with restless want, fear of discovery a spur to her abandon.

He entered her at long last, his member sheathed in a sheepgut condom, and she bit her lips and turned her face to cry out into the pillows. Experienced she might be at house-games, but still young and snug, reminding Alan of his temporary "wife" among the Creek Indians, Soft Rabbit. She'd been that hot and moist, that firmly gripped around his engine. And that wildly exuberant.

I may be Hell's own bastard with the women, Alan told himself as he drove deep into her and reveled in how she heaved her hips in synchronicity with him. Them that want to play. But never let it be said I left the little dears wanting for anything!

He held off his own explosion as Abigail clung to him like a squid, buried her face into his neck and squawled and mewed in climax, wishing she could scream out loud in ecstasy. Then she fell away limp and dragged him down atop of her, showering his face with weary kisses.

"Lor', sir, you're a terror," she shuddered, weak as a kitten. "Thankee… for takin' time, an' all? Can't say when I cared so much for it last. Oooh!"

Alan rose up on his hands to loom over her, and began to stroke into her once more, long and slow, delighting in her surprised look.

"Don't you be teasin' me, now, sir," she whispered, beaming an expectant smile up at him from the pillows. Her red hair had come half unpinned from under her mobcap, and she swiped a tress away from her face. "An' did I please you, too, sir?"

"Not yet, Abigail," Alan grinned, punctuating his remark with another, deeper and firmer thrust. "But you will."

"Oh, darlin'!" She gaped at his meaning, lifting her knees once more. "Hurry! Gallop away, fast as you like! I… oh… it feels so good! So… bloody… good!"

An hour later, she came back, asking if he wanted some more coffee brewed, since he could not go out for it. That was an excuse for another bout of "the blanket hornpipe." Nothing shy about this time, and they were bouncing across the bed and giggling in covert joy almost before she could set the tray down.

She returned in mid-afternoon with tea and a Cornish meat pasty, and had at each other again. It was too cold to go out for a meal at a two-penny ordinary, she assured him. They snatched another fifteen minutes of utter bliss, with her sprawled face-down on the side of the high bed and her skirts thrown up over her back.

It was almost a relief for Cony to come back from bis day off and putter around the rooms, ranting happily about how grandly he'd been received by the Chiswicks when he visited them. Cony was the one to brave the cold and fetch a meal from the handiest ordinary, though Abigail assisted in laying the table, and gave Alan a most fetching smile or two while Cony had his back turned.

"Wind's come more sou'westerly, sir," Cony opined finally as Alan prepared to turn in early that evening. "Snow stopped, an' h'it's turnin' t' rain, looks like. Be thawin' t'morro', thank the Lord."

"Filthy streets," Alan yawned, nodding by the fire with his feet up in the second chair and a blanket over his lap while he read a book about the recent war that was as factual as a Turkish rug merchant. "I'll try getting out to visit tomorrow. Set out my boots, if you would, and give them a daub or two of blacking. We'll coach where we're going as well.

"Aye, sir. That be all fer the evening', then, sir?"

"Yes, you turn in early, Cony. Enjoy a yarn or two with the rest for a change."

'Thankee right kindly, sir, that I will. Goodnight, sir."

All in all, a grandly satisfying day, Lewrie thought smugly as he drowsed by his fire with a book in one hand and a brandy in the other. His personal chronometer read eleven, the one he had "borrowed" from a Spanish brig off Cuba. Time to turn in, he decided.

There was a soft scratching at the door.

"Surely not," Alan whispered in delight, rising to open it.

Abigail slipped in and shut the door softly behind her, opening her arms to be enfolded and lifted off her feet. Her slippers fell off, and under her thin flannel bedgown, she was as toasty-warm as a bed of coals.

"Just wanted t' stop by an' see if you needed anythin' more tonight, sir," she said grinning. 'Turn your bed down? Warm the sheets for you?"

"Off for the night, are we, you little minx?" Alan chuckled, carrying her toward the bedchamber.

"If you wants, I am," she suggested, bolder with him now.

"I wants," Alan agreed. '"Deed I do!"

"So you see, Sir Onsley, I thought it best if we came to you for advice regarding Burgess' future," Alan told his host. Admiral Sir Onsley Matthews was all tripes and trullibubs, fat as a porker before slaughter when Alan had served on his staff at Antigua, and now he'd been retired by a supposedly "grateful" Admiralty, had put on enough weight for three all-in wrestlers. He'd never been blessed with the brains God promised a titmouse, but he knew just about everybody who counted, and even in retirement controlled bags of patronage and "interest," the lifeblood of a successful career.

"Damme, Mister Lewrie, but yer concern for the welfare of a colleague does ya credit," Sir Onsley heaved with deep breaths as he lolled in his wing chair, one foot up on a hassock-a foot wrapped in hot, damp cloths, to alleviate the agonies of the Admiral's latest bout of gout. "And these bona fides, Mister Chiswick, sir, shew much the same enterprise and pluck as I've come to expect from our Alan. Like bookends, you are, lads. Hewn and carved from the same hearty oak!"

"You're too kind, Sir Onsley," Burgess remarked, sitting prim and nervous on the edge of his chair by the roaring fire. He wore his best pale blue "ditto" suit, with a plain, long-skirted older waist-coast, and clutched a black cocked hat across his knees. His own glass of brandy sat untouched on the side table.

There hadn't been much enthusiasm shown for his efforts to get a position so far, and the Chiswicks had prevailed upon Alan to see if he had any influence with anyone at all, a task Alan had happily undertaken because it would allow him to see Caroline almost every day.