Chapter 80: Erina

(Editor's note : sorry about the repetitions - just sloppy bookkeeping)

The visiting politician was old, perhaps seventy, maybe more, bewigged and pantalooned, accompanied by several servants and his toothsome wife. It was, of course, the wife that immediately caught my eye. She soon had hundreds of eyes on her, perhaps thousands. She was a stirring beauty of, I decided, perhaps twenty, red-headed and white-skinned, with green eyes and lush body that must have made every man in camp hard and randy within minutes. Her rich clothes were quite stylish, low-cut and very tight-fitting to the hips, and her carriage was military straight and highly attractive as she thrust out her conical boobies and firm chin, striding from place to place with confidence born of beauty, presenting her young body for our delight, her mob of red hair bouncing along behind her.

The gentleman, a bit gouty and rheumy-eyed, got about with a cane making his inspection while his plump young wife enjoyed the attentions of every junior officer in miles. Lt. Foster made his play and was rebuffed, much to his men's pleasure, and our eager major got no further than Foster had. She was, they generally decided, nothing but a cold-blooded, gold-digging cock-teaser. But when she walked by, they watched, sucked in their bellies and drooled.

When they left, headed back toward Philadelphia, our company was assigned to see them safely out of camp and far enough south that they could travel with only the old man's entourage which amounted to a wagon, his fancy carriage and a pair of black-skinned outriders dressed as Pennsylvania militia.

All went well that soft day until a group of Hessians sprung a well-conceived trap that cut the carriage off from the others, harried them farther down the road in a hail of lead and then concentrated their fire on the rig of the member of congress himself. I was riding rear guard, and my horse was hit in the first volley. I grabbed my musket, scrambled up on the carriage roof and got off several quick shots before the driver and his assistant were killed and the horses brought to a stop by downing the off-side leader.

I jumped down on the far side, tore open the door and yelled, "Get out!"

The young woman, a fine sight in dark gray velvet, jumped into my arms, losing her silly hat and crying," He's dead." There were blood spots on her face and shoulders.

I grabbed her wrist and ran into the trees just as the victorious Hessians fired another volley into the carriage from their concealment on the other side of the narrow trail. When we came to a small clearing, I stopped to get my breath and the girl leaned against me, gasping, a very pleasant feeling. She moaned and sobbed, "He's dead, dead, dead." I grabbed her and held her close.

"You sure?" I asked her. The firing had stopped back on the roadway. I patted her back and more or less accidentally felt her firm butt, holding her full breasts to my chest.

"Shot right in the head, spattered brains all over his side of the carriage. Poor man." She pushed my hand away from her bottom.

"Let me see your feet," I said.

She looked puzzled but raised her skirt. I grabbed off her shoes one by one, broke off their heels and gave them back to her. "Now you can run faster," I said. "Let's go," and I took off with the woman stumbling along right behind me, crying, "Wait" and "Slow down" from time to time. We ran for ten or fifteen minutes, just about as hard as we could go in rough country. We stopped at a small stream to drink and get our breath. By then her lovely skirt was muddy and tattered about the hem and she had lost several buttons from her waist-cinched jacket. Her long, red hair had come loose and was tangled about her shoulders. She felt at her ears and found both golden rings still in place. She smiled at me, breathing hard.

"They're all I have left," she said when she saw my look.

"Hardly," I said, putting my big hand on her mounded thigh.

"Well, yes," she said, leaving my paw where it was, "we're alive."

"How did you come to join up with the right-honorable mister whatever his name was?" I asked, jerking my thumb back the way we had come.

"Long story," she said. We heard a noise and stopped talking, but it turned out to be just a small knot of deer moving past. She huddled against me, her hand briefly touching my bone-hard member, accidentally I assumed.

I got her up, put my musket across my back, and we started walking, hand in hand just to be secure of each other. "So tell me, since I'm nosy, how a fine young woman could end up under such a gouty old man."

She looked sideways at me. "He wasn't so bad," she said. "He'd known me since I was born I guess, friend of the family, he was."

"So, what are you, twenty, twenty-five?"

"Sixteen," she said, skipping for a step, "Just barely sixteen in fact. My father owed him money, a lot of money. We married when I was fourteen."

I held my peace, ignoring the pictures in my head.

"His wife had died, his third wife in fact. I was number four."

I kept quiet and tried to get my member to behave.

"He needed a hostess in Philadelphia. I was big for my age, had good manners, wore clothes well, did not complain much." She laughed quietly and then sobbed, just once, a shudder.

I held branches aside for her.

"So, well, there was no dowry." She looked down at her feet and ruined dress.

"Consummated?" I asked, not looking at her.

She snorted and lifted her strong chin. "Not your business, m'lad. He bought me nice clothes, lots and lots, and jewelry too, and sweets."

Clouds started gathering, coming up from the southeast, tumbling over each other. I began thinking about shelter as well as her young body. I had, of course, been thinking about getting between her long legs for more than a week. I ached for her.

"What are you called?" I asked.

"Erina," she said. "Family name was Barren; we're Welsh mostly, a few Irish way back a'ways."

"Who was the redhead?"

"Some Viking I suppose," she said with a happy laugh. "Isn't it awful."

I put my hand into her thick mop of curls. "It is not," I said, pulling her face to mine, tasting her soft lips and then withdrawing quickly, just a friendly peck.

She looked at me askance with her hazel-green eyes. "Looks like rain, a storm," she said calmly, wiping her mouth gently, her lips pouting a bit.

I nodded and we kept walking, her firm breasts bouncing almost out of her lace-trimmed shirt and my foreflap bulging conspicuously.

The tavern we came to was at a sharp curve in the well-worn road that led off southwestward. It was brightly lit in the gathering gloom so I left the girl at the edge of the stable, out of the first drops of rain, and went to the door. The place was all but empty. I went back and got her, and we hurried inside just as the clouds let loose. My purse was reasonably heavy so we ate and drank well, and I then enjoyed a pipe.

"Now what?" she asked, sitting back and pinching her mouth tightly closed, looking more like twelve than twenty from the neck up and a fertility goddess from there down.

"If you feel safe here" I said, gesturing with my pipe stem, "I'll hire a horse and go back to camp, tell them what happened and bring help and a carriage. They may be out looking for us.

"I can ride," she said, mopping her trencher with a crust. She ate voraciously but decorously.

"Astride?"

She nodded, looking out of the top of her eyes at me, drilling me with her dark eyes. "I enjoy feeling a horse between my legs."

"Do you?"

"Indeed," she said with a small smile, "and hasn't it been a while since I've had the pleasure." She wriggled.

"Of riding or being ridden?" I asked her as the graceful movements of her young body stirred my lust.

"Is that all the men in your army thing about?"

"Nearly," I said. "Have you looked in a glass?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, plopping her hands in her lap and taking a deep breath which I enjoyed as much as she did, ripe melons they were with stubby stems stretching the fabric, half free already, rising like sugar loafs in the yeast. She wiggled, just for fun I suspect.

"It means that you are one fine looking young woman and that any man who even glanced at you and did think about to putting you on your back and getting between your legs had something very wrong with him."

"'Sblood," she said quietly, pulling her jacket across her upright breasts with their hard nipples and doing up a button. "At least you're honest." She gave me a smile, an invitation I hoped.

The rain continued in a steady downpour, gushing from the roof at the corners. "No sense going out in this," I said.

"We could stay here, I suppose," she said. "If they have room."

"You might have to share a bed," I told her.

"With you?" she said, sounding a bit worried but granting me a small smile and a lifted eyebrow.

"No, no, with other women. Many of these places have just a room for women and another for men, eight or ten sometimes on a big mattress."

"Do they indeed?" she said.

I nodded as she sat up straight and noticed that two of her buttons were still undone. She fastened them with some effort and grinned at me.

I took that as an invitation, found the inn-keeper and rented his best private room, a crown with breakfast included and a real feather mattress on the bed so he claimed, saying he envied me. I talked him into adding a small bottle of apple brandy and gave him the coin. I returned to the young redhead, took her arm and led her up the stairs that lay along one wall, stones throbbing and cock swelling. The room was under a sloping roof and had no furniture except the bed which nearly filled it. There was a window, dirty and single-paned and a slopjar on the floor in plain view.

"You know," the young woman said, "it's still early, perhaps three or four o'clock, certainly not time for bed."

"Aye," I said, "but perhaps time for a quick canter, just for exercise you understand."

She raised an eyebrow and gave me another smile, looking down at my swelling groin. The rain flailed the window and shook the shutters.

I helped her disrobe, hanging her fine clothes on the end of the bed which was nearly as high as the top. When she got down to her silken shift, she pulled free of my hands, sat to shed her shoes and stockings, both ruined, turned down the quilt and lay on her back, watching me, her dark red hair spread widely across the bolster, her soft belly and high breasts rising and falling slowly.