Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [1]
John Paul Jones let his eyes range around the opulence of Therese’s boudoir; expensive Chinese hand-woven carpets brought by ship from the Orient, silk drapes, row upon row of bottles containing rare scents and essences that cluttered the surface of the dressing table. Oil paintings adorned the flock papered walls and each item of carefully selected furniture bore an embossed C surrounded by a gold wreath of oak leaves as though dismissing any dispute over the room’s ownership. Although appreciative of luxury, John Paul Jones found the unashamed declaration of wealth overbearing, used as he was to the more spartan furnishings of a captain’s cabin aboard ship.
Had he come across half the oceans of the world, he thought, to become nothing more than a woman’s toy? To come wagging his tail and panting like a puppy every time she crooked a finger, offering solace with a shrug of her tanned shoulders, or promising the heat of her loins with a smoldering glance?
But perhaps a lap dog was the best thing to be right at that moment. His mistress could possibly hold the only solution to his dilemma. Their affaire had begun seven months earlier, when he had first been presented at court in Paris. He had thought her stunning and he wondered how he had known at that first meeting he could be forging an alliance to prove fruitful in months to come. In retrospect, it was almost as if the gods had planned it. How could he have chosen her from the numerous and enticing ladies he had encountered in those early months in Paris, she whose husband had the ear of King Louis XV, serving on the Privy Council, a hand in every pie whose recipe contained the French Navy?
Which was one of the reasons John Paul Jones thought her a bitch. It was a paradox, he admitted reluctantly, considering her a bitch for cuckolding a husband that he respected. Perhaps it alleviated his own guilt.
Sieur de Chaumont had not always been her husband’s name. Born Jacques Donatien le Ray, he had gambled heavily in the East India trade and made his fortune. Now, while serving on the Privy Council and holding other honorary appointments, he owned a fleet of merchant ships and procured vast numbers of supplies for the French Navy. With his current status had come his title and ownership of the mansion where John Paul Jones now lay in bed, the Hotel Valentinois in the western Paris suburb of Passy. Benjamin Franklin also lived at the hotel, a strong link with America during these years of the War of Independence, as America struggled to throw off the stifling yoke England was determined to keep fastened on her fast expanding colonies. Like a mother reluctant to admit her children can fend for themselves, England refused to untie the apron strings.
Right now, without a ship, Therese’s friendship could be the most worthwhile he pursued. She was younger than her husband and had a way of getting what she wanted. If protocol and the power of the infant American Congress could not obtain John Paul Jones a ship, then perhaps Therese tickling her husband’s ear, and through him the ear of King Louis…
He grimaced at the elaborate woven canopy of the four-poster. What if she wanted to keep him in her bed so much she did nothing to procure him a berth, only whispered empty promises as she held him to her soft breasts and clasped him in the warmth of her thighs? It had been two months now since Ranger was taken from him, and now she lay at anchor being refitted and supplied for a voyage back to America.