Part 5

He could not hold a thought in his head as he turned and walked away. Away from the tossed and bloody patch of sand where his brother's sweet child lay dead, away from the sound of Hornblower's voice, grating, edged with panic.

The boy would never shoot.

He'd lay odds the truth would never see the light of day. The thought would come that he should let himself be taken, and wouldn't that pox the bastards to have to explain how, for all of these years…

But he could not let her see him hanged. She would be safe and no one could touch her. He had told her only what she must know. What she thought she knew, what she believed she understood, could do her no harm when he was gone. The letter that would have brought her to him had never been sent. It was with him still, sewn safely into the lining of his coat.

He would try to think, and then the thoughts would slide away, and the image he tried to conjure, the picture of her face as only he had ever seen it, rapt and beautiful, transformed by passion, would elude him once more.

He could not think of his pain, the boy, the sword cut across his back, of the laboriousness of walking in the sand, the cool mist that touched his cheeks, the groans of the dying. He could not think of Ireland.

He could only think, my God, how blue, how still, how beautiful and boundless is the sea.

The powder would be damp, the lock all fouled with sand. He thought.

Goddamn you, don't misfire!

*****

The letter was intact, wrapped in a square of oiled canvas, darkly stained, the blood-red seal unbroken. She turned it over and over in her hands, ran her fingertip over her own name, now hardly more than a smudge of black ink. Then, without looking at him, without a word, she crossed the room and dropped it onto the fire.

They stood in that same small, elegantly furnished room where he had first met her. Through the long windows came the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun and beyond them, across the intervening rooftops, there lay a shimmering sliver of sea where tiny ships bobbed sweetly at anchor, their masts and yards like spindly blackened matchsticks.

When he'd told her he'd come on a matter of some delicacy, she'd sent the servant out and bade him close the door. He'd thought he'd remembered how beautiful she was, but to see her again was startling. Even in the plain dark gown, with her undressed hair drawn back in a black ribbon, with shadows under her eyes and cheeks as pale as milk, she was arresting. Perhaps more so than before, shining in her sorrow, like a diamond on a ground of black.

Patiently, she watched the letter burn. He saw the edges catch, turn brown, and the whole begin to curl and be consumed. A single scrap floated apart from the rest, dancing its way in fluttering, rising arcs towards the flue, only to fall, finally, back into the flames.

"Did you kill him?" she asked.

Horatio was taken aback. "No!" he said, suddenly, vehemently. Guiltily.

"No," he said more gently. "My dear Miss Hammond, I assure you your question…confounds me. As stated in my report, Captain Hammond did take his own life. I am sorry. He felt he was responsible…"

"I know." She turned her eyes on him then, and the sleepy, seductive gaze that had so entranced him once was nowhere in evidence. Her look was frank, penetrating. "I know that Captain Hammond was an agent of the French." The corners of her mouth turned up slightly in an ironic smile. "I suppose that makes me complicit in treason, does it not? And I suppose that—" she nodded towards the fire, "Makes you as guilty as I."

"I have no idea of the contents of the letter, Miss Hammond."

She smiled again, mirthlessly. "No idea? Truly, Mr. Hornblower? But should you not have apprised yourself of its contents, sir, under the circumstances?"

 Horatio cleared his throat. "Madam, I do not concede the circumstances to which you refer.  The letter was addressed to you. I meant only to see it delivered safely."

"How kind you are," she said coldly. "To take it upon yourself. And how wise you must be, to always know what is the right thing to do. To know, for instance, when it is necessary to take charge of a ship, and when an unworthy captain must be relieved of his command."

He returned her challenging stare. A tiny flame flickered in her wide, hazel eyes, a reflection of the fire that had now reduced Black Charlie's letter to indiscriminate ash. Her anger made no sense, of course, but he would allow for it, in consideration of her distraught condition, and he made no immediate reply as she went on speaking.

 "I am given to understand," she said, "That by law, in such an event, the value of Captain Hammond's prizes, and a good deal of his property, should his guilt be established, would be forfeit to the Crown. How fortunate am I that this matter too, fell to you to decide, Captain Hornblower! And how grateful, then, must I be to you! Naturally, I do understand that you would not have entrusted the letter to the post or to a messenger; perhaps the only documented evidence to contradict your report. But why bring it to me at all? Why did you not simply destroy it yourself?"

His jaw ached with the effort of restraining his speech until he was able to form an appropriate reply. He considered the possibility of simply taking his leave, and realized with some consternation that he knew not the whereabouts of his hat, which was new. Ah. Given to the manservant at the door. At last he spoke, and he thought his tone was satisfactorily level, cool, and unaffected.

"Miss Hammond, I will not---I cannot---entertain with you the implications of your remarks. And as to my intentions in coming here, I will insist to you that I did indeed intend a kindness. You and I have had an acquaintance. It was my belief that we had enjoyed one another's company and I meant only to honor that small friendship. I will ask you now to forgive me for disturbing, and for…distressing you."

He made a short bow, and turned to go. Two steps, three, and he could hear the soft rustling of her skirts, and his spine tingled, his back tensed, with the sense that she was directly behind him. His hand was on the door, and then, so was hers. He heard her soft intake of breath, and he dared not look down. She had slipped between the door and himself, and his last involuntary step brought him close enough to feel against his thighs the heat of the fire that had warmed the front her skirts as she stood before it.

"No," she said quietly. "You must forgive me. Captain Hornblower, you are not the first man who has done me the honor of visiting since Captain Hammond's death. Is it not so, sir, that when a man dies at sea, his friends will auction his belongings to the highest bidder among them?"

He nodded slightly, not understanding, and not wanting, still, to look down, nor to step away.

"Forgive me, sir, if I imagined that you too had come to tender your bid."

He looked down at her then. Her expression had softened completely, and she looked impossibly lovely, tragically young. Her mouth was soft, full and pink, and her eyes, drowsy and heavy, their dark, liquid centers deep enough to drown a man. He knew she could not be conscious of her effect on him. Surely not, to look at him so, to stand so near that the scent of her skin, warm and clean and intoxicatingly female, filled his every breath.

"Indeed I have not," he said lowly. "Captain Hammond and I were never friends."

"No," she sighed, and she seemed to relax against the door, to allow her shoulders to slide down almost imperceptibly, and he thought he must be mad, for her posture suddenly seemed almost slatternly, and deliberately provocative, with her hips thrust forward, her chin raised to show him the long, smooth column of her white throat.

"Charlie hated you," she said, the words hissing between her teeth.

Something rose in him then, a kind of lust that was as hot and furious, as keen and overpowering as the sense that possessed him in the midst of a battle. Hammond had been not just his rival, not only the devil that plagued him, but his enemy in the truest sense. And, after all was done, it had been he, Horatio, who had emerged the victor. There had been a time in war when the weapons, the armor, the heaps of gold, all that had been possessed by the vanquished enemy would fall to him; the war horse his to ride before his adversary, to show the usurper what it was to defy the authority of the King. And the woman, too, would be his, to submit like the charger to the victor's will. Victorious war. Beauty ashore. He had an urge to revive the old custom now.

He had the greatest urge.

And again, her remarkable eyes seemed both to invite and to challenge him. His own hand was dark against the white of her throat, and her flesh was softer than he could have dreamed; his thumb slid along the delicate ridge of her jaw, and she let her head fall back as he lowered his mouth to hers. If his kiss was brutal, it seemed to be exactly what she wanted of him, for he felt her surge against him, and the press of bone on bone almost pained him until she gave way and he was inside, his tongue searching the warm, wet cave of her mouth. He let himself lean into her, allowed her to feel the hardness of him jutting against her belly as he pinned her against the door. Let her know what she had roused in him. Let her ask him now to stop. His fingers tangled in the black ribbon at the back of her neck, and impatiently he tore it away, silencing her little squawk of pain with another reckless kiss. There was a frantic rustle of silk as his hands gathered the fabric in great bunches, pulling the skirt up to the tops of her thighs, until he could feel the warm, firm curve of flesh above her lace garters.

In unseemly haste he pushed his hand between her thighs, and yet she opened to him, and the hot, moist, downy soft mound of her sex rested heavy in his palm for a moment before she moved against him, and the folds parted, letting his fingers slip into the wet, fevered depths. She gripped his shoulders and raised her leg to wrap around his thigh. She and made a thick, breathless sound in his ear that made him frantic with desire, and he reached for the buttons of his trousers, wrenching at them, forgetting all but the urgency of burying himself inside her.

"Yes," she whispered hotly. "Come inside me! I want to feel you there!"

Something held him back for a moment, a brief flash of clarity that pierced his agitated brain, and he pulled her hard against his hips, laid his burning cheek to hers as he struggled for his breath. He would have this woman. He had wanted her from the first, and he was too far gone to deny himself now. And damnation, there were too bloody few times in his life when he had ever allowed himself to be ruled by passion, to take the careless pleasures that other men saw as their due. But already he thought he could taste the regret, like the dry, bitter sting of black powder at the back of his throat.

Let him taste it then, but let him taste it well.

"Where is your room?" he demanded, his voice sounding harsh to his own ear, and when she did not answer immediately, demanded again, "Where!"

**********

He was beautiful. Like a young god, truly, as foolish and girlish a fancy as that must surely be, it was the only simile her mind could draw as she lay back in her shift and watched him strip the last of his clothing from his lean body. The sun was going, and outside her window the sky was red, as was the soft light that touched him as he moved toward her, all strength and grace and perfect youthful beauty, his contours carved by glow and shadow.

A man could be swept away by beauty, could lose his heart, his mind, to the passion it inspired and think himself blameless. A woman was meant to know better. But when Mary looked on Horatio, as she admired the sculpted perfection of his face, the darkness of his eye, the full, sensuous bow of his mouth, she released herself from blame. All she wished for was to lose herself in him; all she wanted was to be swept away.

He knelt beside her on the bed, moved slowly over her, running his hand lightly along her side, gently raising the hem of her shift to bare her hip and thigh. He caressed her leisurely, watching her eyes, waiting for her. His eyes were beautiful too, so warm, the deep, rich color of horse chestnuts, of brown leaves lying on the bottom of a woodland pool. She reached for him. Where Charlie's body had been rugged and hard, broad and hairy and mapped with scars, Horatio's was slender and supple, resilient, unblemished. His skin was golden, as smooth beneath her hands as tawny velvet.

No, not completely unblemished. She raised herself on her elbow and with her finger, circled the small, round scar that was well healed, the skin gone shiny and silver pink, on his left shoulder. "You've been shot."

"I was in a duel," he said softly, catching her hand and putting the finger between his lips.  "When I was seventeen."

"A duel," she repeated. "Why did you fight a duel?"

He smiled, and reached to caress the side of her cheek, running his fingers around the outside of her ear, and into the soft silk of her hair. "The simple answer is that he accused me of cowardice. And of cheating at cards."

"And now he is dead?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"But you might just as easily have been the one to die. At seventeen." She drew away from him slightly, "What," she asked wistfully, "Makes you men so much more eager to die for a thing such as honor, for an idea, for a king---than to live for the ones who love you?"

His expression was clouded, even a little angry, she thought. Perhaps he was jealous, even now, of a dead man. He said, "I cannot speak for all men. But it is true that for me, honor and duty are all. It is that on which I build my life, and without those things I am nothing."

She shook her head, and the dark hair fell forward over her face like a veil.

"But you see," he said, gently pushing the hair away, and raising her face to his, and she swallowed, knowing her eyes were swimming in the glimmer of unshed tears. "I have no one who loves me."

"Nor I, Horatio," she whispered, closing the gap between them, sliding her arm around his waist. She pressed her face against his smooth chest, feeling the pounding of his heart, hearing the catch of breath as her tongue darted out to taste the dark, flat disk of his nipple. She savored the taste of him, the solid comfort of his body, the incredible softness of his skin, like a child's but laid over firm, masculine muscle. And the smell of him was so familiar, so dear. He smelled of ships.

He buried his hands in her hair as she kissed her way down the length of his lean torso. She had not thought of how men could be so differently made, but it seemed sensible and wonderful that the manly part of Horatio was like the rest of him; long and elegant and spare, arching proudly from it's soft, glossy mat of dark, curly hair, the head large and smooth and shiny, bluish-pink with it's engorgement, and crowned by a single gleaming drop of thick moisture that she bent to claim with a sip before letting her lips slide over the hard knob of hot, pulsing flesh.

"Ah! Mary!" he gasped, and he took her head a little roughly in his hands, putting her away from him.  He laid her back on the bed, coming to lie beside her. His beautiful lips curved in a smile that was a little sheepish.

"Forgive me," he said huskily, with a little laugh. "But it has been a very long time. If you wish this to last, you had best have a care." He kissed her again, and his strong hands caressed the swells of her breasts through the thin fabric of her shift. Then, wanting more, began to work their way inside the neck of the garment, pushing it over her shoulders and arms and down, until he had her naked at last, completely exposed to his exploring, questing fingers, his hot, hungry mouth. She shivered in delight as the tip of his large nose tickled her sensitive skin and his warm breath flowed over her, his soft lips nuzzling and sucking at her, his tongue like a flicker of fire. He washed her body with swirls of the barest touch, the tip of his tongue fluttering against the peaks of her breasts, insinuating between the tickling strands of her own hair. Sighing, she ran her hands through his dark, lustrous curls, as soft and luxuriant as a woman's, and the thick locks coiled themselves around her fingers as if alive.

Alive, oh yes, so young and alive, as she was, and she wanted to feel that surge of life within her. She wanted to be filled, to know anything but the terrible emptiness that waited to claim her, to feel anything but the crushing grief, the darkness of her isolation, the hopelessness and the fear.

She cried out in desperation as his hand slipped once more between her thighs and she was shot through with a stroke of searing pleasure, penetrated by his long, sure fingers, She spread her legs wantonly as he drew his fingers in and out with agonizing slowness, stroked long and slow along the centerline of her nether lips, all the way to the very tip of her pleasure, where the faintest touch made her quiver and moan. It was too much to bear but not enough for her still. She reached for his hand, wrenching it from her body, his slickened fingers twining with hers as she rolled against him, hooking her knee around his, to pull him on top of her, arching her hips against his in wordless demand.

His cock felt like a rod of hot iron as it lay heavy and throbbing on her inner thigh. He held himself breathlessly above her, his dark eyes blazing, unknowable, his mouth set in a line. She wrapped her legs around him, ran her heels restlessly down the backs of his thighs and calves. She clutched at his buttocks, seeking to bring him to her, and still he held himself back. He seemed almost to fight her, as if unwilling to consummate the moment she knew, and he must know as well, would never come again.

"Horatio!" she screamed in surprise as he came into her at last like a knife thrust and suddenly he was full and throbbing inside her, buried to the hilt! His arms enclosed her, tightening around her, pulling her snug against him. She arched and cried out, pushing ineffectually at the strong, muscled arms that embraced her. She had never been penetrated so; he was longer than Charlie, and so hard, so deep. It hurt! She gasped for breath, squirming beneath him. He groaned a hot, ragged breath next to her ear, pressing even further into the wet canal. Wildly, he buried his face in the strands of her hair, inhaling her scent, biting the edge of her earlobe right through the tangled tresses.

Horatio was enslaved by his own passion; he surged, strong and deep. Powerful and fast. She began to move with him, and her body to accept his wild invasion. Raising her legs and drawing them back, she gave him more depth into which to plunge. Soon he was lifting to her cadence, her sighs, her cries for more. She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to the whirlwind of pleasure. She could feel the ends of his unbound hair flicking her shoulders as he rode her, his hot, sweet breath on her cheeks. He rose up higher on her, arching his back to grind into her. Again and again.

"God," he moaned, falling on her breast," I can't get far enough inside you! I can't do it hard enough!" He reared back, onto his knees, hauled her legs over his shoulders and came into her again, lancing deep into her belly. He thrust his hips hard against her and ground in. Her nails scored the hard cheeks of his buttocks. His body, this lovemaking, was an explosion of natural force, elemental and raw, like a storm.

The storm broke over her first, and she knew it for what it was. The ecstatic release of her body, wild, passionate, all consuming. But even in the midst of the whirlwind, as her body shuddered and she cried out his name, ravished by the sublime agony of orgasm, the black chasm of her grief yawned before her. Her body responded to Horatio, but the core of her heart was dead and cold, and all the fierce lovemaking in the world could not warm her through; all the beauty he possessed could not carry her away, for her love was gone.

With a raw groan Horatio thrust himself deep inside. His body almost upright, he pounded against her, oblivious, riding the crest of hot desire, higher, harder faster. He yelled his release, pouring himself into her in great wrenching spasms, and finally, gratefully, sinking, shaking, sweat-drenched, into her arms.

*****

When he woke it was full dark. He started; the unfamiliar bed, the sudden awareness that he was not aboard ship took his mind a few moments to reconcile, and in a moment more, he realized he was alone.

"I'm here, Horatio," her lovely voice came to him out of the dark, and with a soft rustling she appeared, bringing a candle to put beside the bed. She was dressed, even her hair, coiled and neatly pinned at the back of her neck. He reached for her hand and while she seemed not to deliberately avoid his touch, she nonetheless skittered away, like a leaf on a breath of wind.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But I think you should go."

He sat up with a groan, running his hand through his hair. "My God, Mary, I---"

"No," she said firmly, as she looked at him in the candle's faint glow. "Do not even begin to reproach yourself. I knew exactly what I was doing."

She was holding his shirt. He took it from her, and felt himself blushing furiously with anger, or with shame. "And what exactly," he asked her, "Was that?"

She smiled, the same sad, ironic smile as when she had accused them both of treason and she shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Taking my revenge? Hoping that Captain Hammond could see us both from Hell."

The admission hurt him more than he cared to admit, for all that he was as guilty of using her as she had used him. He did not love her, had only lusted after her beauty, had wanted to stake his claim to a thing he thought he could never have; the most precious possession of an enemy he had despised.

"How I hate him for leaving me, Horatio! I pleaded with him not to go. I begged him to choose me, don't you see?" She stood before the window, half in shadow, and behind her the night was black but for a scattering of ship's lights in the harbor, like the pinpricks of stars.

"I am sorry," he said helplessly.

"But you are just like him, you know. In your way." She turned her back on him. He could not think at the moment what she meant by that, and he would not ask. The rest of his clothing, including his hat, had been laid on the bed and silently he began to dress.

"What will you do?" he said finally. "Have you…enough for your needs?" As if there was anything he could do about it if she had not. Humiliation rose in him, and that regret, bitter as gall.

"I have," she said quietly. "Thanks, I suppose, in no small part to you."

"Will you go back to Ireland?"

"I leave in the morning, for London. That is why I wish you to go now. It wouldn't do for you to be seen, I'm afraid." As he stood to button his trousers, she suddenly came across the room and put her arms around him.

"I am sorry, Horatio. I do not mean to be cruel, or to seem so fickle, sending you away. You are a beautiful lover, and I do not regret what has happened. I am sure I know the sort of woman you have always believed me to be, and now I am afraid you will have your opinion of me confirmed when I tell you the truth."

"The truth?" he could not resist lowering his head to breathe the scent of her hair, to brush his lips against that softness of silk, and he realized with a pang that she smelled of sex, of him.

"Major Fellowes has made me an offer of marriage," she said, drawing away. "And I have accepted him."

Fellowes. The red-coated officer who had been at Hammond's game table on the night he had come to collect his winnings. From the talk in the Long Rooms Horatio knew the young man was rich, the heir to a Gloucestershire estate.

Something in his expression must have amused her, for she began to laugh. "I know! I suppose he was a little over-eager to secure the bargain. I did tell you you were not the first to come, did I not? Nor the second or the third! A mistress on the block! Young and hardly used! Like flies to a honeycomb they came…" her smile faded. "Or to a corpse."

Horatio did not know what to say. He had never been in such a situation, to say the least.

"I suppose you must think me mercenary," she said. "But I am a woman. A mistress, a wife; it is all a matter of commerce, is it not? What is marriage but the lawful exchange of a woman's body for money? I shouldn't talk so. My situation could be far worse. Perhaps I am simply a coward. I do not want to be alone. I wanted---I want a home. I would like to have children. David is a decent man who thinks he is in love, and his offer is far beyond the claims of one such as me. So I do take advantage, and perhaps he will regret his haste but I have been honest." She smiled, lowering her eyes, and the thick lashes shadowed her pale cheeks. "Tonight's activities forever excepted."

She picked up his hat from the bed and put it in his hands. He felt sour, depleted, as awkward as he had the first time he had kissed her hand, and he remembered the mirth in her hazel eyes on that night, Hammond's proprietary hand on her, the scent of vanilla and roses.

"I wish you happiness," he said at last. There was nothing more.

"And I you, Captain Hornblower."

*****
He found himself turning onto Highbury Street as the sun was just coming up, and the sea fog just beginning to clear. Portsmouth was stirring. A fishmonger's barrow rattled past him over the cobbles, piled high with silver-bellied mullet and cod. The smell made his empty belly lurch.

He was hungry; he needed sleep. His head and his body ached as if he'd been on a drunk, and like a drunkard on the morning after the night before, he pitied himself. Miserably he let the thoughts of her turn themselves over and over in his mind, indulging his agony like a pig in a wallow.

"I have no one who loves me," he'd said. He knew it was true, and just now he thought it the sorriest thing in the world.

He stopped before Mrs. Mason's battered door. The boardings had been taken down, rather hastily and disrespectfully he could see, and the thick brown paint of the door was now scarred and in need of repair. He had meant to come yesterday to see that all was well. Would that he had.

Before he could raise his hand to knock, the door flew open and Maria was there, beaming and breathless as if she'd seen him in the street and run all the way down stairs. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkled.

"Mr. Hornblower, sir!" she gushed, fairly bouncing as she stood in the door. "I saw the "Hotspur" in the harbor, sir. I hoped it might signal your return."

"It must be a good thing for you to be home again," he said, coming up the step, ducking his head as he passed through the low door. He smiled at her. She seemed alight with happiness, her plain face made almost pretty by the width of her smile, her blush, her dancing eyes. In all his life, he thought, surely no one had ever been so happy to see him.

"It is, thank you, sir. And also good to see you. Come in!" She turned, and he looked fondly on her bobbing white cap, her round little body moving away.

 He followed.

The End

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