Savannah 08

"I'm sure."

"I am, Amanda," he said, watching her breasts vanish under her chemmy.

"Such as?" she asked, fuming at the way he had treated her. Was this really any different a situation to letting Strand have her to get what he wanted?

"Like infiltrating the largest arsenal in the south at Baton Rouge and doctoring the gunpowder they are using in their shells and bullets."

"And what, pray, is that going to do?" she asked, completing her dressing.

"It means that when they are fired they will travel such a short distance they won't kill as many people" he said, reaching out for her.

"Northerners you mean," she said feeling disgusted at him and swerving to avoid his lunge. In seconds, she had walked out, headed down the stairs and was in the waiting carriage going to her home.

*

Adam hadn't seen William since that incredible time at the Tremont hotel, but he had managed to meet with Jayne. The sex with her was good, she was uninhibited and adventurous and had a voracious appetite that Adam simply could not match, but made him appreciate why she needed a young buck like William.

He was travelling down to Savannah to conclude some business and had agreed by telegraph to call on the widow Essington at her apartment in Charlotte.

"Would you like a pipe Adam?" she asked, after they had made love.

"What type of pipe?"

"Tobacco, but I also have more interesting material if you prefer" she said, climbing off the high bed and walking naked over to a large yew wood bureau.

"Interesting, madam? Pray what do you mean by that?"

"Well opium of course my darling, you did say you smoked it didn't you?"

"It has been known," Adam replied watching Jayne's slightly oversized, but nevertheless shapely rear wobbling as she walked and then seemingly enlarging as she bent over.

Without another word, she made up the clay pipes for both of them and brought them together with a tallow to light them back to the bed. It had been some time since Adam had smoked opium and Jayne had never smoked it. Although she'd served him the pipe with the drug, she had only a very mild tobacco in hers.

"Nice?" she asked, leaning back against him where he was sitting propped up against the headboard.

"Mmmm lovely," he murmured as the smoke infiltrated his mind and body. He felt at peace with the world, tranquil in spirit, very relaxed and quite sleepy.

"It has been so good meeting you, Adam," Jayne said, running her fingers lightly along his thigh. She deliberately approached, but not quite touched his flaccid penis, and was pleased to see the slight jerk in his cock as a result of her teasing touch.

Not many knew that Jayne was one of Oliver Strand's spies, as well as one of his many mistresses. Her husband's death had left her near destitute and Strand 'out of the goodness of his heart' had rescued her, although they had been lovers prior to her being widowed. He had used her mainly to gain information about his political and business opponents and enemies, of which there were many, in Georgia. Not only that, it was Strand who had also arranged for her to meet and bed a trusted aide of his, the young, hellishly attractive and totally bisexual, William Ableforce.

He also used her as his plaything, almost his sex slave, and without telling her, it was a sexual ambition of his to have both of them at once.

"Is that better darling?" she said, feigning the very slow and slightly slurred speech that people under the influence of opium have.

"Oh, it's wonderful," Adam replied taking far too deep a suck on his pipe and letting the powerful fumes waft round his lungs and into his blood stream.

"Mmm there's nothing quite like it, is there?" she murmured, her hand this time not stopping as it slid up Adam's inner thigh "Mmmm and that's very nice too," she giggled caressing his semi hard cock. "I do believe that Adam wants some more?" She rolled over so that her face was on his lap. "Oh my, you are becoming such a big boy, aren't you?"

Adam groaned. "That's what you do to me madam Jayne."

"Does she really sir, really?" she continued the game.

"Oh yes," he breathed heavily, reaching down to fondle her breasts.

"You like my breasts do you Adam?" she teased, twisting her body slightly to give him better access.

"Oh yes," he sighed, simultaneously squeezing her breast and taking a deeper draw on the opium pipe.

"Hmmm, your darling sister has got such perfect breasts, too, hasn't she?" she said, drawing him into her spell like a child.

"Oh god, yes," he murmured, caressing Jayne as she stroked his now semi hard cock.

"I would love to have breasts like Amanda's, but then I would love to have a body like hers, and in fact, sir, I would like to be Amanda."

"How do you mean?" he mumbled, feeling very drowsy from the opium fumes, yet at the same highly sexually aroused.

"How can I put it?" she teased, squeezing his hardness. "Let me think. You know how you felt about William and what you told me you would have liked to do with him?"

"Er... yes, of course," he replied, just about recalling the lurid conversation they had after William had left and they lay naked in each other's arms.

Holding his cock up straight, she dipped her head and flicked her tongue across its tip. When he moaned again and said. "Pray Jayne what do you mean?"

She whispered. "I would love to do such things with your sister."

"You mean sex?" he asked unnecessarily.

"Yes Adam."

His eyes widened. "You would like to have sex with Amanda?"

"Yes, yes, yes, Adam, I would. I want her like you want William." Leaning forward further, she slipped his cock between her lips. She sucked him for a short while before taking him from her mouth, but provocatively held him against her full bottom lip as she went for the kill. Strand had been explicit in his instructions as to what he wanted to know. "I would like the three of us to make love as you, I and my nephew did."

"You er, you do?"

"Oh, yes, Adam," she said, sucking on one testicle and then the other. "Tell me, do you love your sister Adam?"

"Yes, of course," he dreamily replied.

"I mean really love her Adam, like I am loving you," she persisted sucking his now nearly fully hard cock into her mouth again.

"Yes," he breathlessly told her. With the opium engulfing his brain, and her mouth sending an incredible tingling feeling between his cock and brain, it seemed okay to confess. "Yes I do."

"And have you really loved her?"

"I... I..." Despite the influence of the drug, that seemed a question too far.

She sucked on his cock again before meeting his gaze with those big eyes. "Come on, Adam, you can tell me."

"Yes," he whispered slowly, his voice so low it was difficult to hear his words. "Yes, Jayne, I have."

"You have made love to your sister Amanda?" she said a little more firmly, so that there could be no mistake.

Adam could feel the tears welling up in his eyes as he whispered "Yes."

"Full, wonderful sexual love?"

"Yes," he grunted.

"Oh, good boy," she purred, her long tongue running excitingly from the tip of his cock, down its length, across his balls and onto that patch of such sensitivity between them and his anus. "So you have fucked the gorgeous Amanda, have you darling?" she asked, her big eyes meeting his again. "Was it marvellous?"

He didn't reply for a moment for the opium was slowing his responses, but then he said softly yet positively. "It was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me."

*

"How can we do that?" The Adjutant General asked Fairfax.

"Well there's always Brown."

"John Brown, the madman?"

"Yes."

"Wasn't he involved in that bloody Pottawatomie thing in Kansas?"

"Yes he was the ringleader, he arranged it" Fairfax said, stretching his legs out in front of him and opening them so the roaring fire could warm his loins.

Fairfax hadn't told Cooper or anyone in the government, for he didn't trust politicians, that John Brown worked for him, well as far as an eccentric like him could work for anyone. Brown was an avid abolitionist. He had the right ideas, or so Fairfax thought, but was incredibly hot headed and impatient; he believed in direct force and promoted the idea of getting the slaves to rise up and revolt against the plantation owners.

"That would solve the fucking problem in one go. Get the slaves to kill the bastard owners and it's all done" was Cooper's simple and perhaps, in retrospect many thought, effective solution.

"I can get him to mount an attack on somewhere as though it's simply an uprising of the ordinary people."

"Which you as well as I and even the current President and Lincoln if, sorry, when he gets elected, feel is a good thing."

"Precisely sir."

"And by doing that, Fairfax, what do we actually achieve?" Samuel Cooper the Adjutant General of America enquired, his mind rather garbled by the complications of Lennon's devious and manipulative proposals.

"Well if we arrange it for somewhere in the South, not too deep though" Fairfax said in an almost dreamy tone as his calculating and scheming mind pondered a range of alternatives "Other people will think that there's a groundswell of local opinion building up against slavery."

"And will that help?"

"Yes I think so for you have to remember, sir, that the number of actual slave owners is very small, most folk in the South do not own slaves and more and more do not have work because the owning of slaves severely distorts the labour market."

"Yes I see that, but that keeps the cost of cotton down and thus it helps exports from the South, which in turn helps the ordinary man, doesn't it?"

"Well yes it did, but things are changing and the South is standing still, it has to industrialise more, it cannot continue relying on agriculture in general and king, fucking cotton in particular for its income."

"That's true, for in effect we are subsidizing our Southern brethren."

"And in any case, the British are already buying cotton and expanding plantations in their Empire, particularly India and Egypt. If the South isn't careful those reasons together with Europe's loathing of our labour situation down there will have done with the American cotton trade."

"So we have to do something?"

"Yes, lots of things actually, but an attack on a few plantations or something by honest good living white folk, some good old boys, should be a good starting point."

"Well I can leave that in your capable hands General. I don't need or want to know any details."

"Exactly, maintain total deniability sir."

"Yes Fairfax, I will, good night to you sir."

*

By summer Amanda had settled into life in the capital. Adam hadn't, though, and it seemed to her that he was permanently on the move between Charlotte, Raleigh and Baltimore. Amanda feared that he was rapidly spending his proceeds from the sale and she became resigned to the fact that sooner or later she would have to help him sort out his finances again. Fortunately, with the worst of the recession behind them the value of many of her assets swollen by the payments for the estate meant she was now exceedingly rich and she resolved that if she had to help her brother that was maybe ordained and just how it had to be.

Being single, yet not divorced or widowed could have made her social life rather difficult, but as in London, where there were many women parted from their husbands due to military, diplomatic or other political reasons, Washington had a large number of people in situations similar to hers. Hence, an informal 'matching up' of such ladies with single men for dinner parties or balls had grown up and Amanda found herself in demand.

"So we meet yet again Missus William," James de Bow said, smiling as he bowed deeply and kissed Amanda's hand.

"Indeed we do Mister de Bow."

"And as always" he said, holding her hand longer than etiquette suggested or circumstances required "It is a great pleasure."

"Thank you, sir."

"Not at all madam, it is the total and utter truth, I have been so looking forward to this ball as I heard you were to be here; and it is the only reason I am here I can assure you."

"You flatter me, sir" Amanda said smiling and enjoying the flirtatious flattery.

"That I do not, madam, it is beyond my command of English to find words that flatter you," he went on, flirting outrageously.

They were in Washington at a June ball given by the Prussian Ambassador to America. It was a sumptuous affair for the Prussians were trying very hard to dislodge the British as the favoured trade and commerce partner and were pulling out all the stops.

Amanda had been 'attached to,' as the society hostesses termed the pairing up of single ladies and gentlemen, the Cultural Attache from the British Embassy. He was a man she vaguely knew from when she and Andrew were involved in London society. That made spending time and talking to de Bow rather difficult, for she couldn't abandon her escort and, on top of that, Fairfax had arrived with a group of military people. Although they avoided each other to prevent any unnecessary gossip, she knew that he would watch her every move. After all, he was a spymaster.

She and de Bow got on well. They had hit it off at the first meeting at Strand's and that had continued when they had met in Savannah and when he and the recently divorced Missus de Bow had stayed at Selby. They flirted, but in an easy and unpressurised way. Amanda didn't really take it that seriously and certainly hadn't flirted with James with any intention of it going anywhere for her heart had, until very recently, been completely devoted to Fairfax.

They chatted a little and de Bow confirmed that he was becoming divorced.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Thank you, madam, I regret that we were just not compatible."

They managed to dance, a just about discreet, three times before Amanda said that she had to leave.

"Could I have the pleasure of seeing you again while I am in town?"

"How long are you here?"

"Until Friday."

"Then that would be my pleasure, Mister de Bow."

"Lunch tomorrow?" he asked pausing meaningfully before adding, "Or maybe dinner?"

"I don't think I can do either," Amanda lied, for she didn't wish to be seen to be eager. She almost smiled when she saw the clear disappointment on his face. "Perhaps tea?"

His face brightened. "That would be perfect, may I call on you at four?"

"Of course, I look forward to it," she said, giving him her hand. With an exaggerated bow, he kissed it as he caught and held her glance from the top of his eyes.

It was a little later, as she waited for her carriage, that Fairfax sidled alongside her, whispering. "Be careful Amanda."

She glanced at him. "Pray, why is that sir?"

"He is not what he appears."

"Really," she said, stepping forward as her carriage arrived. "And that is unusual here in Washington is it?"

*

James Dunwoody de Bow was one of the most well connected men in the country. A southerner from New Orleans he published the well-respected and prestigious journal de Bow's Review. That focused on the agriculture and the commercial, economic and industrial development of the South. Although an avowed 'confederate,' a firm believer in seccession and a member of the Fire-Eaters de Bow was not either a hot head or a zealot like many of his colleagues in that society. He was a statistician as well as a competent and renowned writer and had the highly analytical, creative and thoughtful sort of mind that was associated with such professions. This had been recognised by the government appointing him as head of the US Census which took place each four years. It was under de Bow's supervision and direction that the scope and reporting of the census was considerably broadened.

Although on the face of it he was a studious and academic man, underneath and in private de Bow was something of a rake. Married and divorced three times by the time he was thirty eight in eighteen fifty nine he was a terrible flirt and an avid ladies man. He was obsessed with sex and women and indulged himself at high class brothels wherever he lived and on his frequent travels all over the country. He continually had mistresses, up to three at any one time and with those and two of his wives he was involved in orgies and sharing partners.

de Bow was completely smitten with Amanda. This was to a level that he had never experienced with another woman and he became obsessive about her. He vowed not only to bed her as soon as he possibly, but to make her the next Missus de Bow.