Chapter 21: Another Widow

"There is a woman in town," the old lady said with a tiny smile, "oh, you are going to enjoy this, a woman who has been recently widowed. She has been a fine source of information about the British navy and about Tory enterprises."

I nodded waiting for the ax to fall.

"I want you to go see her and do whatever she wants; comfort her."

"Yes'm," I said, thinking I had better bathe and shave, assuming I was being sent to comfort some mature ladyfriend or dusty crone.

Several hours later I was led into a parlor and told to wait. A few minutes after that the young woman spun into the room in a dress of blue-green silk, her dark hair cascading down her back. I stood, and she came directly into my arms. We kissed, hungrily.

"Welcome," she said, stepping back and looking me up and down, her belly still pressing mine. "I do not wear widow's weeds at home, only in public. How is my old friend, Madam Von R--?"

"Very well," I said, undoing the row of small buttons that ran down the front of her tight-fitting dress. She did not seem to notice.

"She did not tell me she was sending such a large person," she smiled up at me as I concentrated on her buttons and the feel of her lush breasts against my hands.

"I think she enjoys surprising people," I said, peeling her bodice from her and tossing it onto a chair. She had a magnificent body. I popped her right breast free of her stays and bent to nibble its startled nipple. Her ripe globe overfilled my hand.

"Do you plan to serve me right here?" she asked, yanking her quart-sized boob free of my mouth and shrugging her shift's shoulder strap back in place.

"Wherever you say," I told her. "The old lady said I was to do what you asked."

"Well, then," she chuckled, "slow down." She gestured to a chair and sat on the wide sofa, ignoring the fact that she wore no bodice and that I was very obviously hard, hard as her jutting dugs which rose warmly above her lace edging of her stiff corset and then ducked back into their nests as she breathed, presented as if on a decorated platter.

"My husband was a fool, which means that I was also a fool, but then I was barely sixteen, and he was nearly sixty when we wed. He was a Tory, of course, once the revolt began, rich and vile."

I nodded, admiring how straight she sat, her pointed breasts stretching the lace and silk that barely covered them, her long legs primly crossed at the ankle. She raked back her hair with both hands and smiled, raising her white globes still higher. She wore tight and fancy stays, back laced. She sat up very straight, elbows back, breasts jutting forward, mounded and ready to suck.

"He deflowered me, of course, in a vulgar and violent manner, draping the sheet out the window, and then he nearly ignored me except to come to my bed when he was drunk and incapable of doing his duty. He died in another woman's arms, in a, what shall we call it, a baggnio?"

"When was this?" I asked, crossing my legs to conceal my growing hardness. Her stays not only cinched in her narrow waist, they also pushed up her wonderful orbs so that half those lush mounds glowed above the trim of her fancy shift. I could hardly wait to gobble them up. They were the size, I estimated, of 8-pound shot.

"He's been dead two months, no, a bit more, nearly three, dead and buried and unmourned."

"How long were you married?" I asked, not ready to guess her age.

"Six years," she said with a sigh.

"How could you bear it?" I asked, noticing that one of her feet was tapping.

"We traveled; Charleston, the Bermudas, London, Nice, Spain, Portugal, Boston. He was in trade, wine and tea. He visited whores in every city I am sure, came home smelling of them."

"Why? I don't understand," I said.

"I was a decoration, a foolish child. His taste in things sexual was very, what shall I say, very..." She took a deep breath.

I waited, finding nothing to say.

"At first I was faithful, faithful and dutiful as well. But then I began, after the British came to New York, I began entertaining some naval officers."

She smiled and I returned her smile.

"I was very discreet. I did not know he was having me watched. And when he confronted me, I collapsed, surrendered. He beat me, defiled me, debased me. After that he began bringing men home for me to, to, well, you understand. All of them had perversions of one kind or another. I've been whipped, abused, sodomized, tortured, branded." She flipped up her hem and showed me her burned thigh. "He watched it all, enjoyed it."

"And since he died?" I asked, watching her recross her legs, rubbing her thighs together.

"Nothing, but then I am in official mourning and may not receive guests, men especially."

"I am assigned here week by week, '" I told her since it was just about true. "So you can hire me as your driver, stableman, whatever you need."

"What I need right now is that long, hard thing you are hiding between your legs," she said. "Let's go upstairs and we will discuss your employment and your, shall we say, abilities and equipment."

"Wait," I said, as eager as she was at least, "do you trust your servants? Who hired them?"

She resumed her seat and bit her lip, taking a deep breath which nearly unhorsed me as my prong leapt to attention. "You're right." She nodded, lifted and rang a small bell. Then she put her bodice back on and buttoned it halfway up, granting me a small smile.

The black man who had admitted me appeared.

"Ramses," she said to him. "How long have you worked here?"

"Mr. Toll, he hired me 'bout the time he married you, ma'm," the man said with great respect. "Just before."

"Did you tell him about my male visitors?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh yes," he said rather mournfully, "every one of them."

"You are discharged," she said quietly. "I will give you a pound for each year of your service. Is that fair?"

The black man nodded. "I had to do it."

"I understand," she said. "Did the others also report on my behavior, my comings and goings?"

"Oh yes," he said. "We was all a'feared of the master."

She stood, said, "Wait," went to a desk and found a velvet purse. She put several coins in the man's hand. She sighed, "Tell the cook and the maid that I must let them go. Give them each a pound, a silver pound."

The man nodded. "And the stable lad?"

"He spied on me too?"

"Oh yes," the elderly man said. "The master paid him for each tale."

She handed him another coin. "Give him a crown and tell him I do not want to see him again."

"Yes'm," the man said, looking at me from the edge of his eye.

"Will you see to it that they leave?" she asked me. "And leave quickly."

I nodded and followed the butler out of the room.

"She's a fine woman," the gray-haired man said. "He was a bastard."

"Can you be loyal to her?" I asked.

He nodded.

"And ask her pardon, her forgiveness?"

"We had no choice. He made us tell. Threatened the women, said he would sell them to the slave drivers."

"Get rid of the stable boy and hire another as soon as you can. Keep the money. Tell the women it is a gift from their mistress."

He looked at me doubtfully.

"I'll take care of it. You serve the lady well and she will pay you well. I will speak to her about granting you, all of you, your freedom."

He nodded.

I went back to the parlor. "Let's go upstairs," I said, taking her hand.

"What about the servants?" she asked, looking worried.

"I think you can trust them," I told her. "Be wary, guard your privacy, but I think they will serve you properly now that your husband is not around to bully them. You might well consider manumission."

She nodded. "I'm glad, and I have thought of that. Molly's a good cook."

"You will need a new man in the stable," I said as we mounted the long stairway, hand in hand, both eager and tasting it.

"How much do you want?" she asked me as she opened her bedroom door.

"Oh, a shilling and keep," I said with a laugh.

She began undoing her buttons. "And keep?"

"Yes," I said, circling my arms about her and caressing her silk-covered breasts, sucking her neck. "You may be sorry. I'm very hungry."

"Do you intend to eat me?" she asked quietly after wiggling free.

"Indeed," I said. "I've not seen anything as tasty as you in some time."

We undressed quickly, I helped with her stays, and then we stood facing each other, both bare and glowing with desire. She managed to keep her eyes away from my groin where a huge spike rose topped by a carmine mushroom, jumping wildly and pointing up toward her nose; I managed to take in her whole lovely and womanly body with its rich triangle of auburn hair between her mounded thighs and the dark, hard, jutting nipples on her upturned breasts that sagged just slightly from their weight.