“It runs in the family, does it? Frequenting brothels?” She didn’t pause for a response to that. “He’s right, though. Do you really mean that you intend for me to . . . sleep?” From her tone of incredulity, he might have asked her to engage in some perversion well past buggery.

He kept his temper with some difficulty.

“You can sing songs or stand on your head, if you prefer, madam,” he said. “I don’t propose to . . . er . . . molest you. Beyond that, your actions are quite up to you.”

She stared at him, a small frown between her brows, and he could see that she didn’t believe him.

“I . . . would go,” he said, feeling awkward again, “but I have some concern that Captain Harkness might be still on the premises, and should he learn that you are alone . . .” And he somehow couldn’t face his own dark, empty room. Not tonight.

“I imagine Ned’s disposed of him,” she said, then cleared her throat. “But don’t go. If you do, Madge will send somebody else up.” She took off her petticoat, with no display of coquetry or artifice in the motion. There was a screen in the corner; she went behind this, and he heard the splash of her using a chamber pot.

She came out, glanced at him, and with a brief wave at the screen said, “Just there. If you—”

“Uh . . . thank you.” He did in fact need to piss fairly badly, but the thought of using her pot, so soon after her own use of it, caused him an unreasonable amount of embarrassment. “I’ll be fine.” He looked round, found a chair, and sat down in it, ostentatiously thrusting out his boots and leaning back in an attitude of relaxation. He closed his eyes—mostly.

Through slitted lids, he saw her observe him closely for a moment, then she leaned over and blew out the candle. Ghostlike in the darkness, she climbed into her bed—the ropes creaked with her weight—and drew up the quilt. A faint sigh came to him over the sounds of the brothel below.

“Er . . . Arabella?” He didn’t expect thanks, exactly, but he did want something from her.

“What?” She sounded resigned, obviously expecting him to say that he’d changed his mind about buggery.

“What’s your real name?”

There was silence for a minute, as she made up her mind. There was nothing tentative about the young woman, though, and when she did reply, it was without reluctance.

“Jane.”

“Oh. Just—the one thing more. My coat—”

“I sold it.”

“Oh. Er . . . good night, then.”

There was a prolonged moment, filled with the unspoken thoughts of two people, then a deep, exasperated sigh.

“Come and get into bed, you idiot.”

* * *

HE COULDN’T GET into bed in full uniform. He did keep his shirt on, with some idea of preserving her modesty and his original intent. He lay quite rigid beside her, trying to envision himself as the tomb figure of a Crusader: a marble monument to noble behavior, sworn to a chastity enforced by his stone embodiment.

Unfortunately, it was a rather small bed and William was rather large. And Arabella–Jane wasn’t trying at all to avoid touching him. Granted, she wasn’t trying to arouse him, either, but her mere presence did that without half trying.

He was intensely aware of every inch of his body and which of them were in contact with hers. He could smell her hair, a faint scent of soap mingled with the sweetness of tobacco smoke. Her breath was sweet, too, with the smell of burnt rum, and he wanted to taste it in her mouth, share the lingering stickiness. He closed his eyes and swallowed.

Only the fact that he needed desperately to pee made it possible to keep his hands off her. He was in that state of drunkenness where he could perceive a problem but could not analyze a solution to it, and sheer inability to think of two things at once prevented him either speaking to her or laying a hand on hers.

“What’s the matter?” she whispered hoarsely. “You’re wiggling like you’ve got tadpoles in your drawers—only you haven’t any drawers on, have you?” She giggled, and her breath tickled his ear. He groaned softly.

“Here, now—” Her voice took on a tone of alarm, and she sat up in bed, twisting round to look at him. “You’re not going to be sick in my bed! Get up! Get up right this minute!” She pushed at him with small, urgent hands, and he stumbled out of bed, swaying and clutching at furniture to keep from falling.

The window gaped before him, open to the night, a lovely sickle moon pale above. Taking this as the celestial invitation it surely was, he raised his shirt, gripped the window frame, and pissed into the night in a majestically arching rush of blinding bliss.

The sense of relief was so intense that he noticed nothing whatever in its wake, until Arabella–Jane seized him by the arm and pulled him away from the window.

“Get out of sight, for God’s sake!” She risked a hasty glance downward, then dodged back, shaking her head. “Oh, well. It’s not as though Captain Harkness was ever going to propose you for membership in his favorite club, is it?”

“Harkness?” William swayed toward the window, blinking. There was a remarkable amount of shouting and abuse coming from below, but he was having trouble in focusing his eyes and perceived nothing save the flicker of red uniforms, redder still in the light from the lantern over the establishment’s door.

“Never mind. He’ll likely think I did it,” Arabella–Jane said, a dark note in her voice.

“You’re a girl,” William pointed out logically. “You couldn’t piss out a window.”

“Not without making a prime spectacle of myself, no,” she agreed. “But ’tisn’t unknown for a whore to throw the contents of her chamber pot out on someone, accidental on purpose. Well.” She shrugged, went behind the screen, and emerged with the aforementioned receptacle, which she promptly upended out the open window. In response to renewed howls from below, she leaned out and shrieked several insults that a regimental sergeant would have been proud to author, before ducking back in and banging the shutters closed.

“May as well be hanged—or buggered—for a sheep as a lamb,” she remarked, taking him by the arm again. “Come back to bed.”

“It’s only in Scotland that they bugger sheep,” William said, obediently following her. “And maybe part of Yorkshire. Northumbria, too, maybe.”

“Oh, really? Is Captain Harkness from one of those places, then?”

“Oh, him?” William sat down on the bed rather suddenly, as the room had begun to revolve in a stately manner round him. “No. I’d say maybe Devon, from his—his . . . speech,” he concluded, pleased to have found the word.

“So they’ve got sheep in Devon, too, then, I suppose.” Arabella–Jane was unbuttoning his shirt. He raised a hand to stop her, wondered why he should, and left the hand hanging in midair.

“Lot of sheep,” he said. “Lot of sheep everywhere in England.”

“God save the Queen, then,” she murmured, intent on her work. The last button came free, and a faint draft of air stirred the hairs on William’s chest.

He remembered then why he should have been stopping her, but she’d put her head inside the open front of his shirt and licked his nipple before he could make his arrested hand complete its motion, and when he did, it merely settled gently on her head, which was surprisingly warm. So was her breath. So was her hand, which had wrapped itself around his prick in a possessive sort of way.

“No,” he said, after what seemed a very long time but could have been no more than seconds. His hand descended and closed—regretfully—over hers where it grasped him. “I . . . I meant it. I won’t bother you.”

She didn’t let go but did sit up and regard him with an air of puzzled impatience, just visible in the lantern light that seeped through the shutters.

“If you bother me, I’ll tell you to stop; how’s that?” she offered.

“No,” he repeated. He was concentrating fiercely now; it seemed exceedingly important that she understand. “Honor. It’s my honor.”

She made a small sound that might have been impatience or amusement.

“Maybe you should have considered your honor before you came to a whorehouse. Or did someone drag you inside against your will?”

“I came with a friend,” he said with dignity. She still hadn’t let go but couldn’t move her hand, not with his clasped tightly around it. “That’s . . . not what I mean. I mean . . .” The words that had come easily a moment before had slipped away again, leaving him blank.

“You could tell me later, once you’ve had a good think,” she suggested, and he was startled to discover that she had two hands and knew what to do with the other one, too.

“Unhand my . . .” Damn, what is the bloody word? “Unhand my testicles if you please, madam.”

“Just as you like,” she replied crisply, and, doing so, put her head back inside his damp, smelly shirt, seized one nipple between her teeth, and sucked so hard that it pulled every last word out of his head.

Matters thereafter were unsettled but largely pleasant, though at one point he found himself rearing above her, sweat dripping from his face onto her breasts, muttering, “I’m a bastard, I’m a bastard, I’m a bastard, don’t you understand?”

She didn’t reply to this but stretched up a long white arm, cupped her hand round the back of his head, and pulled him down again.

“That’s why.” He came gradually to himself, aware that he was talking and evidently had been for some time, in spite of his head being cradled in the curve of her shoulder, his senses aswim in her musk (like a sweating flower, he thought dreamily), and her nipple a dark sweet thing an inch or two from his nose. “The only honor I have left is my word. Have to keep it.” Then tears came suddenly to his eyes, with recollection of the moments just past. “Why did you make me break my word?”

She didn’t answer for a while, and he would have thought she’d fallen asleep, save for the hand that roved over his bare back, gentle as a whisper.

“Ever think that maybe a whore has a sense of honor, too?” she said at last.

Frankly, he hadn’t, and opened his mouth to say so, but once more his words had gone missing. He closed his eyes and fell asleep on her breast.

19

DESPERATE MEASURES

SILVIA HARDMAN STOOD regarding Jamie with a lowered brow, her lips pushed out in concentration. Finally she shook her head, sighed, and drew herself up.

“Thee means it, I suppose?”

“I do, Friend Silvia. I must be in Philadelphia as quickly as may be. And to do that, I must reach the road. I must be able to walk tomorrow morning, however haltingly.”

“Well, then. Patience, fetch me thy father’s special flask. And, Prudence, will thee grind a good measure of mustard seed . . .” She stepped a little closer to the bed, peering nearsightedly at Jamie’s back as though to gauge the acreage. “A good handful—no, make it two; thy hands are small.” She took a digging stick from the shelf near the door but hesitated before opening it. “Do not touch thy eyes or face, Pru—and by no means touch Chastity without washing thy hands first. Let Patience mind her if she cries.”

Chastity was making fretful noises, though freshly fed and changed. Patience, though, had already run out the door, making Jamie wonder where her father’s special flask might be. Hidden, apparently.

“Put the wean beside me,” he suggested. “I can mind her for a bit.”

Silvia did so without hesitation, which pleased him, and he lay face-to-face with wee Chastity, amusing them both by making faces at her. She giggled—and so did Prudence, as the pestle scraped and the hot smell of ground mustard thickened the air. He stuck out his tongue and waggled it; Chastity shook like a small jelly and put out a tiny pink tongue tip in turn, which made him laugh.

“What are you all laughing at?” Patience demanded, opening the door. She frowned censoriously from one sister to the other, making them all laugh harder. When Mrs. Hardman came in a few moments later with a large grubby root in her hand, they had reached the point of laughing at absolutely nothing, and she blinked in bewilderment, but then shook her head and smiled.

“Well, they do say laughter is good medicine,” she remarked, when the hilarity had run its course, leaving the girls pink-faced and Jamie feeling slightly better—to his surprise. “May I borrow thy knife, Friend James? It is more suited to the purpose than mine.”