That was what the Border War had always been about.
Oil, and whatever gold and silver was buried in the mountains of California, not to mention the lumber of the forests of the Oregon Territory and the great natural port of Sammamish, New England’s one Pacific-facing city port. All those things had only ever mattered to the Colonies, not to the great men of Empire back in England – to whom Vancouver and the coasts of British Colombia was gateway enough to the Pacific – which was probably why the Border War with new Spain had never spread beyond the Americas.
If Abe was being cynical about it, the fact that the Colonies voluntarily maintained a large standing army to threaten the Spanish on their south western borders saved the exchequer in England untold millions of pounds ever year in garrisoning costs the British taxpayers probably did not want to pay.
Whatever…
He had no intention of becoming involved in that particular imperial game!
So, they would leave now.
“Good,” his wife whispered.
They shed their clothes in the warm darkness beneath the canvas and squirmed into each other’s arms. Kate giggled and reached down for him as she rolled onto her back.
“We don’t need to be careful anymore,” she sighed in a way that instantly trebled the blood supply to his already engorged member and incited his libido to spontaneously combust.
Careful was a thing they had always been apart from the first time they had coupled. That had been a frantic, needful thing when they had both been only fourteen which had scared the living daylights out of them when the red heat of the moment had passed. They had been very lucky. Thereafter they had been very, very careful; abstaining from penetrative intercourse other than at ultra-safe times of the month – Kate’s aunts were a font of sound advice on such things when she was younger – and Abe, for his part had tried his best to withdraw at the ‘right moment’ although sometimes he got carried away…
In the Crown Colony of New York-Long Island it was illegal to sell condoms to persons under the age of twenty-one; and several religious groups were actively lobbying to ban their sale altogether. So, getting hold of ‘French letters’ had always been problematic. The First Thirteen colonies stuck together on most things but none so righteously as the ‘contraception issue’ and ‘abortion’, meaning that there were an awful lot of illegitimate, unwanted children in orphanages up and down the East Coast.
From Abe’s medical training he knew that the ‘condom problem’ – that is, the restricted availability of the same, was one of the main causes of sexually transmitted diseases in the general population, second only to men either carrying, or suffering from STDs returning from ‘the border’ and from other service with the militia ‘out of colony’.
The trouble was the religious bigots always had the last say whenever anybody put a rational public health case before the Colonial Legislature supporting colony-wide limited ‘birth control’ and rational ‘public sexual health’ measures. It was ridiculous. Back in the old country they had had rigorous legislation in force for over a century mandating health checks on everybody entering the country, and basically, adopted a liberal approach to questions of population demography – a code word for birth control – and the right to life issue, in other words, regulating abortion not banning it outright. Overall public health in the old country was therefore, not unsurprisingly better than it was in new England with average life expectancy in England, if not in Wales and Scotland – being five to six years higher than in the East Coast Colonies.
Anyway, he and Kate had always tried to be very careful.
But they did not have to do that anymore.
She moaned softly as he sank into her.
They kissed, wetly, lazily.
She wrapped herself about him as he rose and fell on her; clung to him when he was spent, gloriously impregnating the woman he loved with every exquisite spasm.
Chapter 16
HMS Lion, Upper Bay, New York
The Governor of the Crown Colonies of the Commonwealth of New England, Edward Philip Cornwallis Sidney, 7th Viscount De L'Isle, who used his full title ‘The Lord De L'Isle, Dudley and Northampton’ in his annual appearances in the House of Lords to make his customary report on the year just completed in the Americas, was still attired in his full ceremonial regalia. Minus his plumed hat which he had thrown down on the table in the King’s stateroom shortly after his arrival onboard thirty minutes ago.
The King had politely detached himself from his travelling court – about a dozen advisers, retainers and ladies in waiting who together formed the Royal couple’s peripatetic ‘kitchen cabinet’ – after having taken general soundings about how the day’s events impacted on tomorrow, and the coming weeks’ engagements.
Decisions needed to be taken.
“Bertie,” the Governor of New England appealed in exasperation, “this is absolute madness. Some bloody ‘patriot’ with a long sniper rifle took several pot shots at you while you were having your morning cigarette on the quarterdeck this morning,” he went on, pacing irascibly.
Fifty-nine-year old De L'Isle still cut a lean, albeit stiff figure of a man in his ceremonial finery; very much the former, athletic sportsman who had rowed victoriously for Oxford in the Boat Races of 1937 and 1938, and served with immense distinction in either three, or four – the King forgot the exact number, and knew his old friend probably had too – small wars with the Grenadier Guards before laying down his sabre and signing up with the Colonial Service.
“Eleanor, can’t you talk some sense into Bertie?”
De L'Isle was not only a life-long friend to the King and Queen, he was family also. He was a second cousin to the King and first cousin to the Queen, whom he had known since they were both very young children.
Eleanor’s parents had been horrified when Philip De L’Isle had married the younger daughter of a General, a mere ‘honourable’, out of ‘love, for goodness sake!’ They had had high hopes of a match between the gallant young cavalry officer who had inherited his father’s ancient titles at the impossibly young age of twenty-two while still unmarried, and Eleanor’s older sister, Antoinette.
De L’Isle’s wife, Elizabeth, by whom he had sired a brood of four sons and two daughters – of whom all bar Henrietta, the baby of the family, were now dispersed across the length and breadth of the Empire, true sons and daughters of Albion – was greatly troubled with arthritis these days and rarely ventured far from Government House in Philadelphia.
Henrietta, the unfairly regarded as the plainest and rightly judged the brightest of the De L’Isle siblings – in Eleanor’s opinion – had largely assumed her mother’s role as hostess for official functions and often accompanied her father on his travels acting officially as his personal secretary, and unofficially, as his ‘fixer’.
Back in Government House in Philadelphia, where Henrietta worked on the staff of Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Governor’s Chief of Staff, De L’Isle’s daughter was often referred to as her father’s ‘road manager’…
The Queen realised she had been wool-gathering.
She met the Governor of New England’s eye.
“Seriously, Philip?” She retorted, softening the question by quirking a wan half-smile. Although she was determined to hide it she was still more than a little bit shaken by the events of the afternoon. Like her husband she felt awful about being spirited away when so many people were injured.