"I'll leave Pollock a note," Lewrie impatiently stated, nettled again by Jugg's impertinent quibblings. "We're to dine at a place name of… de Russy's," he said, referring to her note, "round one. Plenty of time for Pollock to get here and get caught up. Speaking of… you dawdle much longer, that slave'll be out of sight, Jugg."
"Arrah then, sor, aye aye," Jugg reluctantly responded, as if he wished to dispute being sent on a fool's errand but did put knuckles to his brow in salute before sloping off.
Damn the man! Lewrie fumed to himself; His eye-rollin' impertinence, too, like I don't know what I'm about, and he knows best!
If the Spanish were alerted to their mission, were keeping eyes on him and his people… today he must take a chance and rush things with Charite, press her on her mystifying offer of a ship and get her to introduce him to those rich men she'd boasted of knowing.
Pollock'll have a fit, Lewrie decided as he quickly wrote a note to the man on a torn-out ledger page. Press Charite for her address so lean write her whilst Im gone? Hah! Call on her and her lordly Creole family? Bet that'd make 'em dance a pretty jig!
He warned Pollock that he suspected that he'd been followed… by whom, well, that was the question, was it not? Despite the risks, he felt it necessary to keep his outwardly "innocent" appointment with the girl, with no one to watch his back.
Despite the risk of arrest as a British spy, Lewrie found that he was vibrating with excitement, like to jump out of his skin. There was a tiny frisson of dread, of course, but… the girl was the real lure. Maddeningly outlandish and entrancing, so desirable! Would they have another long afternoon bout of "the needful"?
Lewrie pegged his note where Pollock was sure to find it, then impatiently drew out his pocket watch to check the time. His dinner appointment was two hours off, and the tea leaves had steeped, so he poured himself a fresh, bracing cup and forced himself to sit down and sip it, fretting over just how he would frame his questions, how subtle he'd have to be. If Charite knew the people who financed the piracy, did she know more than she let on about their business, too?
"Damme!" Lewrie muttered of a sudden. "My cundums!"
He'd have to rush back to his set of rooms and fetch them, now they were fresh-washed and lightly oiled, before… with luck…
All dozen? he fretted; I bloody hope so!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He had been forced to pace and stew in front of the restaurant she had named, de Russy's, for Charite had been coquettishly and coyly late, but more than worth the wait once she had turned a corner and had sashayed up to him, her tiny parasol spinning flirtatiously and her blue eyes aglow with both impishness and delight. As intriguing as she was when garbed as a young gentleman, when properly gowned as a young lady, she was a vision of femininity.
Dinner had taken the better part of two hours, with light and mostly innocent and inconsequential conversation, though Lewrie did get a chance to suggest that he wasn't long for New Orleans, if Pollock had his way. She had expressed regrets over that news, but her innuendos promised both a grand send-off on his trading expedition and a hearty welcome upon his swift return. Hidden meanings crossed her features, along with half-lidded girlish innocence, mixed with part sultry seductress, and delayed wanton abandon, making him squirm on his chair.
He trusted to her taste, let her have her head when it came to the menu that Charite almost knew by heart. A thin and tepid celery broth had resulted, just right for a warmish tropical day; then a zesty crabmeat remoulade, followed by a palate-cleansing mixed green salad, fresh from the Lake Pontchartrain garden plots. That had gotten them ready for grilled shrimps as big as his thumbs, and lemony seafood crepes that contained a meaty fish melange and sauce that was heavenly from the first hot bite to the last cooled forkful. Lastly had come a syrupy sweet trifle sort of pudding, lush with local oranges. So many wild oranges grew thereabouts (so he was amusingly told) that the local farmers fed most of them to their hogs… which made for a succulent Sunday ham!
"My last fine meal, aussi, cher Alain," she sadly imparted, "for I must leave the city and go visit my papa and maman upcountry. I hope I do not have to stay as long as Easter, but certainly I should be back about the time you come back from the wild Indians… if they do not scalp you, n 'est-ce pas!"' She giggled, then quickly went serious, reaching her fingertips to touch the back of Lewrie's hand. "I will pray earnestly that they do not… for you have such a fine head of hair, mon cher. And the savages have such horrid habits when it comes to shearing White people… of their hair and their… other things, hein?" she teased with a fetching blush and grin. "I do believe I would miss them all… equally. Oh la, l'addition. Will you take care of it, cher? Then, we shall go for a stroll. It will be good for your liver."
"Nothing wrong with my liver, Charite," Lewrie had said, claiming intimacy with the use of her Christian name in public; to which she made no prim objections.
"Oh, you English… you do not understand how important one's health depends on la digestion and proper care for one's liver!" she teased. "Look at your John Bull… so choleric and pasty-fat… so full of nothing but roast beef and beer\ No wonder he is always so red in the face, hein?"
"A long walk, did you intend, then?" Lewrie had wondered aloud.
"Oh, lazy-bones!" Charite fondly teased him. "If not a long stroll, you have another healthful exercise in mind,peut-etre?"
"Hmmm," he leered.
"Oh, oui!" Charite squealed. "Plus vite, plus fort, mon etalon!" And Lewrie gladly obliged, picking up his pace and slamming his groin against her firm and springy young buttocks. The taut bed-ropes supporting the mattress groaned and skreaked, the wooden bedstead parrot-squawked at its joins, and Lewrie himself groaned, panted, and uttered triumphal steer-like grunts as he thrust as she commanded: harder and faster… certainly not deeper, for he was already sheathed up to the hilt in her upraised, kneeling body. Charite clawed the pillows, the sheets, face pressed into a pillow now and then when her pleasure made her squawl out loud, shudder, then writhe and thrust back against him like a maddened serpent, grunting and lowing like a
heifer being taken by a rutting bull, her grunting a counterpoint to his that increased in fury and urgency 'til…
"Ah-ahh!" she screamed. "I go, I go so… mon Dieu!"
A moment later, it was Lewrie who threw back his head, roaring incoherently as he burst in her like a flaming carcass-shell, jerkily thrusting through the last melting moments 'til he had to rock back on his heels and gasp for air, dragging her back with him, his grasp firm on her soft, sweaty-cool hips. Charite, still sobbing with ecstacy but as if in need of yet even more, shuffled back to him quickly on palms and knees, to half squat, splayed wide across his lap, rocking up and down to either side, petulant-sounding to milk the last frissons of sensation from him, to keep him pressed hard against her innermost flesh. He slid his hands up to cup her breasts from behind, wrap his arms about her, and hold her close to his heaving chest. Her arms took hold of his to keep him there, her head weakly lolling on his chest. Formidable… so formidable, mon amour," she barely croaked.