Dewey Lambdin - THE GUN KETCH

"Then I wish us a very long recovery," he rejoined.

Several long minutes passed as Lewrie began to breathe deep on the verge of slumber, then:

"Alan?"

"Ahmm," he uttered.

"I can't go home to Anglesgreen."

"Uhmm, I know."

"And I don't know a soul in Portsmouth," she went on softly.

"Uhmmhmrn."

"Reverend Townsley is taking his wife out there. And your superior thinggummy in Nassau… he has his wife and daughter with him already. There're so many Loyalist families settling in the Bahamas. With their wives and children. We once considered Eleuthera, ourselves."

"Hmm?"

"Why could you not take me with you?" she queried hopefully.

"Oh, Caroline, it's heat and flies, bad as India," he grumbled, wakened enough to counter her. "Mosquitoes, roaches big as…"

"As if in North Carolina I'd never seen a palmetto bug," she scoffed. "That was a polite way of saying a 'cockroach' big as your thumb!"

"There's fever, Caroline. Yellow Jack and malaria. Cholera now and again. Poxes that no one even knows what to call by name!" he objected. "No, dear, dear as I desire you with me, I cannot. I love you too much to subject you to such risk!"

"I've been inoculated against smallpox. We had physicians good as London," she pressed, though in a soft, almost wheedling tone as she stirred her body against his. "I've seen Yellow Jack before. I might have had it when I was little. I can't remember."

"You don't know what you ask, Caroline," he groused, sitting up in bed, now arguably awake, though the hour was late and he had to rise at first light. "Caroline, believe me when I tell you that I love you to distraction. Frightened as I was of marriage, more than most bachelors, believe that, too… life with you is a joy beyond all imagining. And it will be in future. But if we're to have that future, you must be here for me to come home to. If I lost you out there, I'd… were I selfish enough to take you with me and something happened to you, I'd wish to die, too!"

And damme if I don't mean every word of it, he realized; she's become as dear to me as… Christ, who'd have thought!

"I stand just as much chance losing you in the islands, Alan," she fretted, squeezing him tight. "What life do you think I'd care to live, with you gone in a shipwreck, or carried off by some fever! And I'd never have been a real wife to you but this single fortnight! Oh, Alan, take me with you, do! At least, when Alacrity puts into Nassau, we could have a week or two here and there together, in a snug little home of our own! Is Nassau such a terrible place, then?"

"Pirates, footpads, cut-purses," he described to her. "There're drunken sailors and their whores, reprobates and discourteous rabble; carousing and caterwauling 'til all hours…"

"Like Portsmouth, is it?" she asked, and even in the dark, Alan could almost espy her puckish grin. "Yet you entrust me to this town, half the world away from you. What would be worse about Nassau?"

"Caroline, it's so…" he sighed, his desire for her, and the lust for unknown adventures crossing swords with each other, just as they had before he'd become so quickly engaged.

"I know, I'm being so foolish and missish, Alan," she weakened. "Do but consider it, though, darling? Please, love?"

Her kisses stopped any further objections he could muster.

"Let's sleep on it," she urged sweetly, fluffing up his pillows and guiding him to recline again, so they could snuggle even closer to each other. "I do love you more than life itself, Alan. Goodnight, my dearest love. Goodnight, my darling."

"We're making good progress, even so, sir," Lt. Arthur Ballard told him a few days later as they sat in Alan's now-furnished cabins, sharing their morning tea.

"Still four hands short, even with the West Indians, the debtor landsmen, and the volunteers," Alan sighed over the rim of his mug. "I s'pose it can't be helped. And damme if I'll make the Impress Service any richer than I already have. How are the Marine Society lads?"

"Quite pleasing, considering, sir," Ballard smiled. "They taught them knots, boat-handling, mast drills… they'll work out, sir," he said. "They're eager to please. More than one may say about the men from the debtors' prisons."

Lewrie was pleased with Ballard as well. Arthur Ballard was an inch shorter than he, just a few months younger, but had joined as a cabin servant at nine. He'd served as an Ordinary Seaman and a topman since his fourteenth year, had made midshipman at sixteen, so he was thoroughly seasoned. He'd been third officer in a frigate, rising to second officer before she paid off in late 1785.

He was a neat little fellow, though of a more serious bent than Alan was used to in officers so close to his own age. Ballard was regular and square; squarish head and regular features. His hair was wiry and wavy, set close to his head. His brows were a trifle heavy, thick and dark, shading intelligent brown eyes which regarded the world so soberly and adjudging. His nose was short, straight, and a bit broad. His face ended in a square chin, with a pronounced cleft.

But even at his young age, his mouth bore frown lines to either corner. Betraying his sobriety, though, evincing a passionate nature he wished to contain, were lips full and sensual in a broad mouth, the lower lip quite plump and slightly protruding.

Ballard dressed neatly, but in slightly worn uniforms, like an officer who actually lived on his pay and little else, pulling it off with his sobriety and great care for his person. Those uniforms draped a body neither very broad nor very slim, which gave him stolid solidity without true bulk. Yet within that body was a powerful set of lungs, a deep baritone voice which could carry forward without the use of a speaking trumpet, and a surprise to the unsuspecting person who might meet him and at first dismiss him.

Caged, Alan thought of his first lieutenant. He's like a beast in a cage. Not the pacing kind. He's the sort who sits and waits for his keeper to drop his caution someday before he flees.

"Sail drill in the forenoon," Alan announced at last. "Working parties after the midday meal. Livestock for the manger. And household goods for the Townsleys to be stowed."

"Their goods first, then, sir. No shite on their furniture."

"Aha, very good, Mister Ballard," Alan laughed. "Once loaded, one more day in port for last-minute items and then…" He sobered.

"Off for the Bahamas, sir," Ballard said with a trace of glee.

"All for now, Mister Ballard," Lewrie said, rising carefully so he did not smash his skull on the low overhead, which allowed him only three inches more than his full height, and only between the deck beams. "Oh, there's goods of mine as well to be stowed. Make them first in, last out. And I'll see the ship's carpenter, Mister Stock."

"Aye, aye, sir," Ballard said, mystified.

Alan put his hands in the small of his back and paced aft, ducking each threatening rosy-painted beam, to the sash windows for a view of the harbor as he pondered his most recent decision.

He had put this one off quite late; how to make room for both himself, the Townsleys and their servants, in his great-cabins, which would not make a decent set of rooms at the George.

Great, hah! He mused. Only to a mate in a dogbox below!

And make room for Caroline.

She hadn't nagged or harped upon it; yet she had kept the idea of going with him ever in his mind. Daily, she'd worn a little more of his resolve down. First with affection and passion, then with her clear-eyed discussions of Bahamian weather, living conditions, which winds blew all feverish miasmas to leeward to the real Fever Isles…

She'd marshaled support from other senior naval officers and wives staying at the George or other establishments nearby, never at all giving them the slightest hint that she was more than curious as to what her dear husband might face in that particular clime. Slowly, she'd changed his mind. As she had excited his tenderest affections for her that were only half-formed and ill conceived weeks before back in Anglesgreen. Had made herself dearer to him than he had ever hoped to imagine, until he could not picture himself without her for three whole years.

There were, too, his rising fears.

Being loved at all was, to put it mildly, just a tad outside his past experiences. And to be loved and adored so openly, so deeply and enthusiastically was such a blossoming wonder that he found himself waking in the middle of the nights to marvel at the stunning creature who shared his bed, and slept so trustingly and vulnerably in his arms. To watch her dress, brush her hair, enter the public rooms when he sat waiting for her, was a heart-lurching joy. And their converse over a weighty matter or a jest was an absolute delight.

What had he known as love before? Pretty much a spectral semblance-flattery and entendres which passed for wit and talk, followed by ogling, grappling, and frantic coupling on whatever fell to hand.

Never regard, never esteem, fellowship, never… some affection, of course, but nothing of a lasting nature.

On, off, and where the devil'd I drop me shoes, he scoffed!

Granted, it would be bad for his career. But had he not already blighted that by marrying at all so junior an officer? And, once this commission was ended in 1789, would he really shed a tear to spend his life ashore on half pay, no matter how much pride he had at last derived from his growing skill as a Sea Officer?

He could spend that life with Caroline, with enough money to buy land, to live off interest with Coutts Co., some investments in funds.

"Two weeks ago, the idea scared me witless, and now…" Lewrie puzzled, bemused by his eagerness to admit that he was married, and married most damnably well, too, to an absolute gem of a young woman!

Even if it had come about like an unintentional dismasting.

Yet…

Lewrie knew people; admittedly some thoroughly despicable ones. He knew the enthusiasms of "grass widows," and the sort of men who went baying like a pack of hounds in pursuit of abandoned and lonely women; God knows he 'd prospered on them. He could see how other officers and Portsmouth gentlemen regarded her so hungrily when he and Caroline were out and about the town already. Might she… even Caroline… succumb at last, missing lovemaking so much after a brief, glorious introduction, with him away for three years, might she…?

"Christ, I've rattled too many wives and widows," he muttered in gloom. "Ironic justice, that'd be. Maybe innocence and ignorance would be a blessing! God, surely not her!"

So when, the night preceding, Caroline had shyly confessed that she had not actively sought decent lodgings, and begged his forgiveness for scheming to go with him, he had been more than relieved of all his worries, and had surrendered to her will most ecstatically.

There was a rap on the cabin hatchway.

"Ship's carpenter Mister Stock, sir!" the lone seaman on guard called out, filling in for the Marine sentry Alacrity did not have.

"Enter!" Lewrie replied.

"Yew wanted t'see me, Captain, sir?" the youngish Mr. Stock said as he ducked his head to enter and removed his stocking cap.

"Aye, Mister Stock," Lewrie brightened. "I need your expertise to rearrange my cabins to accommodate our passengers. I'd thought you might be able to turn the starboard quarter-gallery into a second 'necessary closet,'/ give our passengers some canvas and deal partitions to provide privacy… oh, about here, say. And their maid needs sleeping space. The manservant will berth below in the stores room."