Chapter 75: Making Choices

The note arrived nearly a month later. I was amazed the courier had found me, but he said he had been well paid and that the girl was so pretty, he felt he had no choice. I gave him a coin, one of the few I had left after some long sessions with another man's cards. I popped the wax seal and read. "Come quickly, Julie" was all it said in a childish, poorly-blotted scrawl. I showed the note to Foster and he gave me a pass and a sour look. I cooked some rations and was on my way through British lines before nightfall and back on the farm two days later.

Julie met me with open arms and took me to her bed. After we had pleased each other a time or two, using the protection she demanded, she told me what was going on. Her mother had married one of her late husband's partners and gone off to London with him, ignoring the conventions of mourning. She had kept half the estate, now her new husband's of course, and appointed the girl's uncle as her guardian for the other half. She was now a very rich young woman as well as one of the best lays in the province.

"I have three tenant farms and twelve adult slaves," Julie said as she lay facing me, my soft cock in her small hand. "Lord knows how many black and brown children. My income is about a hundred and fifty a year, hard money, and I have a dowry of a thousand pounds in gold. I am a real prize." She scratched it gently with her finger nails, stroking the thick passage on its underside.

"That you are," I said, rolling her to her back, lifting her buttocks and ramming my pole into her waiting passage. "But why have you sent for me."

"To do this," she said, raising her hips against my thrusts and wrapping her legs about me. When we finally stopped, she said that three men were seeking her hand, had approached her uncle for permission, and that she needed help making a choice. "I want to marry," she said, kissing my mouth. "Now go to sleep so morning will come and you can show me that wonderful thing, that brass-bound flagpole of yours."

By the time we got down to breakfast, the sun was well up and both sets of the girl's lips were sore and pouting. I felt wonderful, spent but wonderful.

Off we went to visit the uncle who proved to be a bluff man with more than his share of problems. "Be happy to have a another man take her," he said with a smile. "You want her? She's comes with a thousand, y'know."

I declined, made sure I understood the rules of the game, and both of us were pleased that the uncle said he would approve whatever choice the girl made. We hurried back to the farm house and her bed. After supper, we did some planning and she sent out invitations to all of her suitors while I visited the local tavern and hired the resident trollop, a woman of some years and much experience. The three men arrived, all but panting and glowering at each other, the next afternoon, after I had installed my frowzy doxy in a small bedroom and told her what her job was to be.

"Don' you want a sample?" she asked, lifting a plump boobie up to me, its brown nipple as big as a Spanish dollar.

I declined. She may not have been poxed, but she certainly had been around the barn a few hundred times.

The oldest, and perhaps most handsome of the three by the usual standards of the time, was a British lieutenant of fusiliers, a tall and sinewy man who claimed to have a sound income and two homes in the Dorchester area. He might have been thirty or so, perhaps thirty-five, and he looked like he understood the world. He also looked married.

The youngest, and by far the prettiest, was a younger son of the local minister, cow-eyed and hopeful; he nearly drooled over Julie and made apologies for his dark suit, tattered linen and scuffed shoes. He was completely loyal to King George he assured us all.

The third man was a farmer, the oldest son of a local landowner with a Dutch sort of name who appeared to be in his mid-twenties and said he had served in the loyal militia for the first year of the conflict before his father fell ill and called him home. I must admit that I liked him almost at once. His grip was firm and his eyes trusting.

While Julie and I poured wine and apple jack into them, I sent them off, one at a time of course, to visit the brothel I had created with instructions to do their very best. When each man returned, adjusting his clothes and a bit red in the face, I sent out another until all three had visited the woman's bed and done whatever they could manage under the circumstances.

When the cook announced that dinner was ready, I saw the whore to the back door, paid her and got her assessment of the suitors.

"Soldier's not wurf tup'pence," she said, "a dam'd rabbit, that one. Only innerested in pleasing hisself. The lad's too timid and came 'fore he was well mounted, begging my pardon, if you can believe it. The las' one, that shitkicker, he done it right and done it twict, second time better'n the first, brought me up, he did. He's the one, I'd say, well hung, too. " I gave her an extra crown, patted her rump, and had Julie's driver take her back to the tavern. Then I joined the table and ate my meal.

When the conversation lagged, I turned to the lieutenant and said, as blandly as I could, "How many children do you have, sir?"

"I've sired eight," he replied, "six sons, but only two of them and the two girls lived, more's the pity."