Chapter 14: Southern Women

On November 12 we reached Mount Vernon where Mrs. Washington was getting ready to travel north to join her husband for another long winter on the Hudson. Later the British came to visit while she was away. It's a fine, big house, even if a bit run down, and was built right on the river as were many of the large plantation homes in Virginia. We enjoyed a good meal, and most of Foster's company, but not the Frenchman, declined the offer of slave girls to warm their beds. Mine was a young mulatto who was mighty frisky and admired my prick shamelessly and almost endlessly. We quit ministering to it about dawn as I recall, and I slept till nearly noon.

We traveled on reasonably good roads through Fredericksburg and got to Richmond on the evening of the sixteenth. Thomas Jefferson, then the governor, managed to round up about thirty wagons for us, a lot more than we had but a lot less than we needed. He did not do as well in producing armed and equipped militiamen to join Greene's little army.

We spent about a week in that small, rude town, during which time everyone who was interested got laid at least once. Many women seemed to think that it was their patriotic duty while others saw it as a means of currying favor or pocketing gold. The widowed F-- sisters, their maiden name, took care of my needs, fully. I've searched my memory and my diaries, but I cannot recall how we met, likely at one of the many welcoming dinners or small dances. They lived together in a large house on a hill above town, both childless and youngish widows, descendants of one of those first families as they regularly informed us.

The older sister, Rebecca, was a stately and stylish woman in her mid-thirties who had already outlived two husbands and now owned scores of slaves and hundreds of acres, all being tenant farmed. I guess you would say she was "handsome" rather than beautiful, but she had a strong body and a lusty, brandy-whetted appetite. She particularly liked to do it standing before a fruitwood-framed, bevel-edged, full-length mirror, but because of the cool weather, we usually ended up on the rug near her iron stove or in her high bed under one or more of the down comforters that some down that way called mattresses. I am sure that her late husbands both died happy. It took a lot to satisfy her, but I generally found ways, given enough time, brandy, rest and red meat.

She had come to my small room the first night I was staying with them, and we found pleasure in each other almost immediately, wordlessly I believe. There was nothing shy about her demands or meager about her needs. She simply stood by my bed, smiled, let her nightdress slither down her body and puddle at her feet and then rolled in beside me.

Her younger sister, Rowena McD--, was in her late twenties, and her husband had only recently perished from dysentery, leaving her sad-eyed but quite "well fixed," as they said. She was still in her widow's "weeds" when we met and a very lovely woman she was with a fine, straight back, tiny and stay-cinched waist, yards of dark hair and high, proud breasts. She caught me coming out of her sister's room after the third or fourth time we had noisily roistered together. It was mid-afternoon, as I recall, and the hall was quite dim when she opened her door and pulled me into her sweet-smelling bedroom with its twelve-foot ceiling. I might have still been panting and sweating. I'm sure I was completely spent.

"I've been listening," she said with a smile, tossing about her mop of dark-brown curls and standing very straight, her shoulders back. It was the first time I had seen her smooth face since she generally went about heavily veiled. She had a slim nose and a full-lipped mouth. Her eyes were very direct and dark, gray-blue.

"Have you been listening? For shame," I said, admiring all the pale chest rising above her low-cut bodice after she disentangled her gray fischu and tossed it aside, inviting my eyes to enjoy themselves. Her melon-sized bubbies rose and fell in steady rhythm as we flirted. A large piece of well-cut black onyx bounced between her swelling orbs. I fingered it with interest. It was warm.

"Um. You seem to have satisfied my poor, widowed sister a time or two." She said, licking her thick lips and taking a deep breath and throwing back her shoulders to jut out toward me, her elbows well behind her, dark nipples emerging briefly.

"Yes," I said, "she appeared to be quite happy when I left her, smiling as I recall."

"Would you like to lie with me?" she asked, ducking her head and touching my shirt buttons, peeking up at me from the tops of her heavy-lashed eyes. "I've also been all alone for some time now."

"I thought you were in mourning," I said, pushing her hair back behind her black-clad shoulders, lifting her chin and looking into her dark eyes, trying to ignore her musky smell and the deep cleft in her swelling bosom which now rested against me. Our mouths almost touched before she pulled away.

"Very true, very true," she said, as her black jewel disappeared into that soft hollow, "but a man who can make my sister whimper and wail like that, well, I can mourn any time, another time." She wiggled her hips. "Tonight, let's say eleven? Quietly, very quietly or we'll cause scandal. And we can't have that."

"As you wish." I bent and kissed her gently, putting one hand on her firm bottom, and she opened her mouth and hung on my neck until we both needed to breathe and pulled our lips apart. I pushed her back toward the bed, but she stopped me with a hand on my chest and a leg between mine. She smiled and said, "Tonight."

The clock in the stairwell was still bonging out the late hour when I left my room, tapped on her door and pushed it open. The only light came from the banked fire. She met me in the middle of the room, wrapped in a soft blanket like some Indian maiden, one arm and shoulder quite bare, her hair free. I was shoeless and wearing only my hunting shirt, ready for action, my shirt tail standing out before me quite impressively.

"Don't let me cry out," she said as I held her, "I don' want my sister to hear, to suspect. She'd be jus' scandalized, I'm sure."

I slid my hand inside her blanket and found warm skin, felt it prickle under my fingers. "She's two rooms away," I said, savoring her mouth. "I think she's snoring."

"But I sometimes yelp pretty loud," she whispered, pulling me toward the high bed and exploring under my shirt tail. "Bertram always said I enjoyed it too much. My, that's certainly hard. And hot too." She stroked gently. "And how long is it? Gracious!"