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I will initially post the first Six chapters here. If the reaction is positive, I will post more. If not, I will accept that this is a piece of shit, and forget it.

To set the scene, Lilias Nichols is the wife of the captain of a merchant captured by a confederate raider, the Chesapeake, in the Indian Ocean during the civil war. The ship actually belongs to her, and in order to keep the confederates from burning it, she has made a bargain with the captain of the confederate warship. She will exchange her sexual favors for the safety of her ship, the Delphine. She has no concept, however, of how much she will regret this bargain:

Lilias

Chapter One

Lilias Nichols sat in her favorite perch on the steam-powered bark Delphine: on the spreader braces above the topgallant cross tree, where the topgallant and royal masts were doubled and held together by two heavy iron bands. Only the royal mast and its sails were above her. The Delphine was her ship, or at least it had been until her marriage to Arthur Nichols, who was now the captain of her ship. Her ship--her dowry--was his to command now, as was she. At the age of twenty-six she was the property of a man twice her age, although she was resourceful enough to ensure that he was never able to exercise his control over her. Still, the bleakness of her situation sometimes bore down on her like a huge rock. It had become even worse after the war began, when insurance rates skyrocketed and the danger of capture by Confederate cruisers was ever present. Because the insurance rates were so high, her father had not insured the Delphine, even though the sleek little steamer was one of the newest ships in his fleet. Instead, he sent it to the Indian Ocean, where he hoped it would be safe from the Confederate raiders until the war ended. Lilias did not know what she would do if she lost the Delphine. The ship and her small , Michael, were all that she lived for.
Little Michael was in a way the cause of the life she now lived, sailing from port to port, almost never seeing her friends and family in Providence. He had been born only five months after the marriage her father had arranged for her when he found out she was pregnant. He weighed almost eight pounds. It was clearly not a premature birth. Her husband knew another man had fathered the baby. He never let her forget it. He had insisted that they live together at sea, where he would never have to see the averted eyes or the hand-held fans concealing the whispered accusations; where he could constantly keep an eye on her. He had hired a maid for her and the boy, but Lilias knew that the young woman was actually his spy. She hardly ever let Lilias out of her sight. Lilias suspected that she was even more than that. She had seen her maid furtively exiting her husband's private cabin late at night on more than one occasion.
Lilias was determined to someday regain possession of the Delphine. Just how she would do it she didn't know. She sat on the spreader braces with her bare, tan legs dangling below her and thought about Cape Town. They had been there only two weeks ago. She had wanted to stay for Christmas, to wait for a cargo of cow hides and animal pelts which their agent had said was due to arrive from the interior any day, but her husband had insisted on leaving immediately for Akyab in ballast to pick up a load of rice. So they had celebrated Christmas at sea four days ago, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Lilias looked down at her bare feet. That was something else her husband didn't like: the snug, calf-length trousers and short blouse she wore to climb the rigging. It was unladylike. He wanted her to wear the hoop skirts that were in fashion in New York. She insisted on wearing dresses without hoops, though she kept a few hoop skirts in her wardrobe to wear ashore. It was impossible to walk anywhere below decks in a hoop skirt, and she loved to prowl around in the narrow passages and crevices of the Delphine.
As she daydreamed about Cape Town, and her first visit there with her mother and father when she was twelve and the three of them lived aboard her father's ship, she scanned the horizon for signs of other ships. She saw something to the west, but the sun was behind it, and she wasn't sure if it was a sail or another of the parade of cumulus clouds that passed endlessly across the vast expanse of the ocean all around her. It was hopeless to try to look into the sun, so she waited for a cloud to cover it so she could get a better look. Naturally, that was the one time that there was a long break in the cloud cavalcade.

(Break in narrative here between new and original beginning. In following paragraphs, need to change Lilias's clothing, her location on the ship and perhaps details about the approaching raider and how it is spotted.)

Lilias heard a boom like a single distant peal of thunder. A second later she saw the mizzen topmast stay sail rip. One moment the sail had been whole and stretched taut by the following wind. In the next instant there was a great hole right in the center, and the canvas began to tear up and down as the wind rushed through it. A spray of water shot up just beyond the rail of the main deck. Lilias turned her head in the direction of the sound. A black-hulled, low slung, three-masted schooner, all sails set and filled, bore down hard straight at the Delphine.
Belatedly, the lookout in the main top cried, “sail ho.” The attacker had used the glare of the sun off the ocean to shield its approach. The lookout never saw it. The breeze carried away a puff of white smoke from amidships of the black ship.
The first thing that occurred to her was that the ship was a pirate. Then she saw the dark-blue and red stars-and-bars on the ensign at the black ship's stern and knew that it must be a confederate raider.
“Sail ho!”
Lilias cursed under her breath. She knew how to curse, though she was too much of a lady to do it in anyone's hearing. It was one of the myriad things about ships and sailing that she had learned from her father, though he had not thought he was teaching her this particular skill. She knew more about handling a ship than any man aboard the Delphine, and certainly enough not to let a pirate conceal itself from sight in the sun's glare.
She ran toward the taffrail and shouted to Higgins, the first mate.
“Steam! We need steam!”
Higgins looked up at her and started toward the hatchway that led to the engine room.
“Mr. Higgins,” the booming voice behind Lilias called out. “Where do you think you are going?”
Higgins stopped and looked at Lilias.
Lilias turned to face the man who had spoken.
“We can outrun them,” she said. “We're wasting time.”
Captain Arthur Nichols stared back at his wife.
“Don't be foolish,” he said. “They can cut us in half with that gun.”
Lilias heard the footfall on the ladder next to her. She turned. Higgins stepped onto the quarterdeck and shaded his eyes as he peered at the fast-closing ship.
“She's got a stack amidships,” he said. “And she has had time to get steam up already. It's too late. She's got us.”
“She doesn't have us,” Lilias shouted. “I don't see any smoke coming from her stack. Bring her up three points and the next shot will go wide. We'll be on a new tack with steam of our own before she can load for a third shot. We're still out of range of her smaller guns.”
“We can't chance it. She could be using smokeless coal. Bring her about and put her in irons, Mr. Higgins,” Nichols said.
“Aye, Cap'n.”
“Higgins!” Lilias yelled. “Bring her up three points.”
Higgins looked at Lilias, then at Captain Nichols, then at the raider. He leaned over the taffrail and shouted, “bring her about,” to the bosun, who in turn yelled a string of commands to the hands who had come on deck to see what the commotion was about. Some of the men seized the ratlines and swung easily into the rigging, while others disappeared down the hatches to fetch the rest of the crew. Soon the full ship's complement of men was on deck, hauling on the sheets that controlled the yards. Lilias blinked back a tear as she watched the wind spill from the great billowing sails.
Lilias had seen the flag flying from the mizzenmast of the ship that had fired on the Delphine. If she had not seen the confederate flag, she would have thought that it was a pirate. She shook her head. What was a confederate raider doing in the most remote part of the Indian Ocean?
Lilias watched the black ship as it hove to smartly, with a great sounding of boson's whistles and much scrambling about the decks and hauling of lines. The raider coasted to a stop just off the starboard bow of the Delphine. She counted six guns trained on the Delphine's hull, the most menacing of which was a large dull-black pivot gun mounted so that it could rotate and fire in any direction.
“What shall we do now?” she asked her husband, who stood staring at the deck of the raider, as a whaleboat swung out over the side, suspended from a pair of davits.
“Wait for them to board us. What else can we do,” he replied. His face was impassive, but his hands gripped the taffrail so tightly that all the color was gone from his fingers.
“We can try to regain by guile what we have lost from inaction,” Lilias replied, hoping that her choice of words and the tone of her voice did not reveal the disdain that she felt for this weak man that she had chosen to be her husband in response to her father's ultimatum.
“What are you thinking of, Lilias,” her husband asked, his eyes narrowed now into mere slits as he turned his face to her.
“I am thinking that I have been feeling decidedly unwell these past several days, and that the strain of the encounter with this rebel pirate had so unhinged me that I have taken to my bed with a sickness so serious that I cannot be moved from my cabin,” Lilias responded, backing away from the rail and into the shadow of the main stay sail.
Her husband looked at her with the quizzical look that he usually affected when his navigation calculations had come up wrong. She could almost see the wheels moving in his mind as he labored to understand what she was saying.
“You want me to lie to these men,” he asked, looking back apprehensively as one after another a party of sailors, rifles slung over their backs on leather straps, climbed down the landing nets that had been hung over the side of the black ship.
“If you wouldn't mind,” Lilias responded, trying to keep her voice neutral. She reached out and took Captain Nichols' hand and squeezed it with an appearance of fondness that she decidedly did not feel at that moment. “Be brave Arthur,” she said. “For my sake.”
Lilias was dismayed by the look of alarm with which her husband greeted her words. The whaleboat had cast off from the side of the black-hulled ship, however, and she did not dare tarry longer on the open deck. “You can do it,” she said, squeezing his hand once more, then releasing it. Lifting her long skirts and crinoline petticoats above the tops of her black, ankle-high shoes, she ran with short, scurrying steps toward the door to the little cabin that adjoined her husband's larger one.
Once inside her cabin, Lilias unhooked the back of her dress and tugged it off. She quickly loosened the drawstrings on the single crinoline skirt that she wore and tossed both garments into a hamper that lay at the foot of her small bed. She unfastened her corset, slipped it off, and pitched it into the hamper. She hesitated, then stepped out of her bloomers, tossed them after the corset, and slammed the hamper top. Naked now, except for her shoes, she grabbed the maroon silk dressing gown that her husband had purchased for her in Shanghai, and slipped it over her shoulders, sliding her arms into the sleeves and pulling the belt tight around her waist. She looked down at the lapels of the gown, and tugged them apart, so that the crevice between her breasts was clearly visible. Then she pulled back the covers and sat on the bed and unlaced her shoes, sending each one flying across the cabin and into a corner with a kick as the laces loosened. She heard the sound of footsteps outside her door, and reached up with both hands and loosened her hair, shaking her head so that her chestnut-brown tresses fell down over her shoulders. Her breasts shook with the violence of this motion, and the gown opened further. She started to pull it closed when she heard a at the door, and the sound of the latch opening. She swung her legs up onto the bed and under the covers, pulling the sheet and blanket up around her neck and settling her head quickly, so that her hair cascaded across the overstuffed goose-down pillow as the door opened.
Lilias could not see the face of the man who entered her cabin. The glare of the sunlight silhouetted his figure in the doorway, and she could only see that he was as tall as her husband, over six feet in height, but of a much more slender build. The figure removed its hat and ducked its head as it stepped into her cabin and closed the door.
“Your husband informs me that you are unwell, madam,” the soft voice with the Virginia drawl said. “I wish to extend the apologies of the master of the Chesapeake for causing you distress. May I send for our surgeon to attend you?”
“If I can just rest for a few days here in familiar surroundings, I am sure that I will recover quickly,” she responded.
“That may not be possible,” the figure said. “We may have to burn this ship.”
“But you can't burn the Delphine,” Lilias cried, her voice rising. “I can't be moved. I'm too sick.”
As her eyes adjusted from the momentary glare of the sunlight in the doorway, Lilias could see that her interlocutor was a young man dressed in a gray uniform that appeared, apart from its color, to be entirely like those she had been accustomed to seeing worn by officers of the American navy. She looked into his eyes, searching for any sign of disbelief about her illness, and to her relief found only the appearance of concern. He was almost clean-shaven, with only a very trim Van-dyke beard and modest sideburns. She suspected that he was too young to grow any greater amount of facial hair.
Lilias stretched out her arm, and the covers fell away from her shoulders.
“Come closer,” she said, “I'm burning up. Feel my brow.”
The young man blushed and stood his ground.
Lilias followed his stare and saw that the gown had loosened further, and that one of her breasts was nearly exposed. She pulled the covers quickly up around her neck once more.
“I really should fetch the surgeon,” the young officer said.
Lilias sighed, perhaps a bit too dramatically. “Perhaps you should,” she said.
“Yes, the surgeon,” the young officer replied. He stepped backward, reached behind himself for the door handle, found it, pulled the door open and backed out of the cabin.
The door closed, and Lilias exhaled. This was going to be more difficult than she had imagined.
It was not long before her husband entered her cabin.
“What did you say to that confederate officer,” he asked, his anxiety showing on his face.
“I only agreed that he should fetch the surgeon,” she replied.
“You are going to see the surgeon?” Captain Nichols said, his voice cracking. “How do you propose to convince a doctor that you are bedridden?”
“Why don't you leave that to me,” Lilias said. “The main thing is that we must prevent them from burning the Delphine.”
“Let them burn her,” Nichols replied. “The insurance will cover it.”
“The insurance may not cover it,” she replied, the exasperation now showing in her voice. “Didn't you read the telegram from papa?”
“What telegram?” he said.
“The one that said that we were to take the Delphine into the Indian Ocean, away from danger from confederate raiders, because the insurance rates were so high that he might not be able to renew the coverage.”
“Oh,” Captain Nichols said, the bleak dawn of recollection spreading over his puzzled face.
“Perhaps you had better leave me alone,” Lilias said, struggling to control the anger she felt. “Don't you have to show the ship's papers to the captain of the Chesapeake, or something?”
“No,” Captain Nichols replied. Then he paused, and shook his head. “I mean the officer who was here took them with him.”
Lilias stared at this man she had married, her father's choice for her, a man twice her age with half her brains, and wondered what she could have been thinking to agree to select such a man to be her husband. She drove the thought from her head. There was no time now. She had pondered the subject on endless sea voyages since her father's fatal decision. The answer never changed. Her father, in the end, was a prisoner of his prejudices. He could not make himself believe that his could manage his shipping business in a world of men, so he had arranged for her to marry a man of the sea. A man of experience, he had said. A fool, she had discovered. She shook her head. He was still staring at her, and she realized that he might still be of use.
“Arthur,” she said, “we still have a chance. Go and get the cook to put some hot coals into a warming pan and bring it back to me quickly.”
“A warming pan,” he repeated.
“Yes, now,” she said, “and some more pillows. Lots of pillows. Don't think. Just do it.”
She jumped out of the bed and pushed him out of the door.
“Oh, one more thing,” she said, as the door was closing.
“What is it,” Captain Nichols asked, poking his head back inside the door.
“Some soup, or porridge, or stew . . . lots of it,” Lilias replied.
“Stew,” her husband responded.
“Yes,” Lilias said. “Something I can throw up easily, if I have to.”
When the door had finally closed behind the poor man, Lilias stepped over to her dresser and picked up her hairbrush. She combed her long hair with rough angry strokes and struggled to control her exasperation. Her husband had never understood her attachment to the Delphine. How could he? He had not been there when she had named the ship for the heroine in her favorite novel. She glanced at the small shelf the carpenter had installed above the head of her bunk. The novel, “Delphine,” in the original French, as her mother's aunt had written it, sat on the shelf.
Lilias's anger dissipated. Her brush strokes became more gentle. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her complexion was too flushed to belong to a woman at death's door. She opened a small silver cosmetic box and applied white powder liberally to her face and chest with a small powder puff. Taking a tiny handkerchief, she rubbed the powder into her skin until she was satisfied that she had achieved the requisite deathly pallor. She looked at her eyes in the mirror and wished there was something she could do to lessen the look of perpetual excitement and general cheerfulness that they conveyed. She tried frowning, but she only succeeded in producing a seductive pout. She tried to look forlorn, and only managed to look helpless and appealing. Her beauty had always been her chief asset, distracting attention from her inquisitive mind and quick wit, features that many men found threatening. Now it seemed likely to give her away.
If she couldn't conceal her physical assets, Lilias decided that she would have to make them serve her objectives. She sat on the bed and arranged the gown carefully around her breasts once more, pulling it open further still, and tightening the sash so that it would not come loose again. She looked down at her breasts. They were not so large as to be vulgar, but she knew from the way that men stared when she wore her low-cut gowns that their near-perfect shape and youthful firmness were more than enough to attract attention. She noticed that her nipples stood out embarrassingly under the tightly pulled silk fabric. She blushed as she realized that this must have contributed to the high state of agitation her appearance had apparently produced in the young Confederate naval officer.
Lilias heard footsteps approaching the door to her cabin. She pulled the blanket up around her neck and lay back on the pillow.
“Lilias, are you dressed?” her husband called out. The door opened before she could answer, and Captain Nichols entered, followed by the cook, who carried a warming pan and a bowl of porridge, and the Captain's orderly, carrying an armload of pillows.
“Give me the porridge,” she said to the cook, and put the warming pan at the head of the bed and pile the pillows around it. I'll fix it the way I want it later. And Arthur,” she said to her husband, “go into your cabin,” she nodded to the small door that led to the larger adjoining chamber where her husband slept and attended to the business of the ship. “Make sure that the pitcher and bowl are there. Move them over to the little table in the corner, beyond your desk, on the far side of your cabin. I want the doctor to have to walk to where he can't see me to get them.”
While her husband was in his cabin, Lilias wolfed down the porridge as the cook stared at her in apparent amazement. She handed the empty bowl back to the startled cook as her husband returned.
“The bowl and pitcher are on the table,” her husband said.
“Good,” Lilias replied. “Now please light the candle on the shelf over my bed, and leave me alone. I need to get ready for the doctor.”
Lilias hesitated when she saw the distressed look on her husband's face. She stretched her hand out to him. He obviously needed reassurance, or he was likely to come apart at just the wrong moment. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him softly.
“Don't worry about anything. I think I can convince the doctor that I am sufficiently sick that I can't be moved, and the pirate captain will have no choice but to spare the Delphine.”
Captain Nichols' face still betrayed his concern, but he seemed much less agitated as he ushered the cook and orderly out of the cabin and closed the door carefully behind him. Just as well, Lilias thought. The doctor will think he is worried about my health.
Lilias rearranged the pillows around the warming pan, so that it was concealed yet easily accessible, and then placed her own goose-down pillow on top of the pile. The heat from the warming pan rose through the pillows and Lilias began to perspire. She looked around the cabin one last time. Satisfied that she had done all she could to give the appearance of illness to the surgeon, and to use what she could not conceal to distract him from too-close an examination of her true condition, Lilias sank back onto her over-sized pillow and tried to relax her breathing.

Chapter Two

A knock at the door startled Lilias. Half dazed, her forehead wet with perspiration from the heat of the warming pan, she realized that she must have dozed while awaiting the surgeon's arrival. She was amazed that she had been able to calm herself to such an extent.
“Come in,” she called out.
The door opened, the sunlight glared into the cabin once more. Then the door closed, and Lilias could make out the figure of another confederate officer, slightly shorter and heavier than the first, carrying a surgeon's bag.
“I am Doctor Gravier, at your service,” the figure said in a resonant baritone with what Lilias thought she recognized as a French Creole accent.
“From Louisiana,” she asked?
“New Orleans,” he replied as he walked the few steps it took to cross the small cabin to her bedside. “How did you know?”
“The accent,” she said. “My mother was French, and I lived in Paris for a time.'
“So did I,” Gravier said, “I studied medicine there, under Dr. Conneau.”
“Dr. Henri Conneau?” Lilias asked.
“You know him?”
“I met him once. I knew his friends, Duc Auguste de Morny and Comte Felix Bacciochi,” Lilias replied, blushing as she thought of the two men who might be the father of her . Both of them had made love to her during her last days in Paris.
“You had some interesting associates,” Gravier said. “Morny was a Minister in the government, and Bacciochi was, ah,” he hesitated.
“The Emperor's cousin and First Chamberlain,” Lilias responded quickly. As she looked into the doctor's eyes, however, she could see that he had been about to use a different term to describe Bacciochi, and she wished that she had not mentioned him.
“I knew some Creoles in Paris who were from New Orleans,” Lilias said, hoping to lead the doctor away from this dangerous subject. “Are you wealthy?
“Am I wealthy?” he repeated, laughing nervously. “Isn't that a strange thing to ask?”
“The Parisians have a saying, 'rich as a Creole,' so I thought all Creoles must be wealthy,” she replied with a tiny smile.
“A distant relative owned a large section of the French Quarter,” he said, laughing again, “but someone sold it, ages ago, and I never saw any of the money.”
The doctor glanced at the bookshelf above the bunk.
“I see you read French as well as having been to Paris,” he said, nodding toward the copy of the novel, “Delphine,” that lay on the shelf.
“Germaine de Staël was my Mother's aunt,” Lilias said.
“Your family must be well connected then,” the doctor commented.
“My mother is,” Lilias replied. “She arranged to have me introduced at the court of Napoleon III.”
“Mr. Overton tells me that you are not well,” Dr. Gravier said, apparently satisfied that his digression into small talk had put Lilias sufficiently at ease. He reached out and took her wrist between his thumb and fingers as he extracted his pocket watch and timed her pulse.
“I have had violent headaches, as if my forehead would explode, and severe nausea,” Lilias lied; describing the symptoms that one of the women of Napoleon III's court had exhibited when suffering from a migraine.
The doctor removed a thermometer from a small cylinder, wiped it with his handkerchief, and held it out toward her mouth.
“Put this under your tongue,” he said.
Lilias opened her mouth and accepted the thermometer, trying to keep from biting it as it slipped sideways.
“I feel nauseous,” Lilias said, holding the thermometer so she could speak without dropping it. “Someone seems to have taken my basin to empty it. Could you look in the next cabin to see if there is one there?”
“Of course,” the doctor said.
As soon as he was out of sight, Lilias pulled the thermometer from her mouth and held it over the candle. She watched the thin thread of mercury carefully as it climbed inside its narrow chamber until it went over 100. Then she stuck the instrument back in her mouth, just before the doctor reentered her cabin carrying the basin.
He removed the thermometer and looked at it and frowned. Then he shook it several times, wiped it again with his handkerchief, looked at the handkerchief, frowned once more, and returned the thermometer to its case. He reached out to touch her forehead, and Lilias began to cough violently. She reached out and grabbed the basin and leaned her head over it, at the same time pulling up the blanket so that her head was covered, in what she hoped the doctor would take as evidence of embarrassment at having to vomit in front of him. With her head concealed by the blanket, Lilias shoved her finger down her throat as far as she could reach. She gagged. She shoved her finger down her throat once more, and the mess of undigested cold porridge came up and into the basin.
With that, she let the blanket drop and disgorged another mass of porridge. The taste in her mouth was awful. Flecks of porridge, and a string of saliva, dangled from her lip into the bowl.
“Water,” she said.
The doctor looked around the cabin and spotted a tin cup on the dresser. He took the pitcher he had brought from the Captain's cabin and poured some water into the cup and handed it to Lilias. She took a sip, swirled it in her mouth, and spat it into the basin. Then she drank several swallows, dabbed her mouth and cheeks with the handkerchief that the doctor offered her, and lay back on the pillow with a sigh that she hoped was not too theatrical. To her relief, the doctor did not resume his effort to check her forehead for signs of fever. Her diversion had worked.
The doctor sat down on the edge of Lilias's bunk and took his stethoscope, a tangle of wooden tubes and carved bone earpieces, out of his bag and inserted the earpieces into his ears.
“I'd like to listen to your breathing,” he said. “Please breathe deeply.”
He placed the instrument on her chest, listened, moved it, listened again. Then he repeated the procedure with her back. He tapped her on the back several times with his fingers, listening carefully as he did. Then he asked her to lie flat, and probed her abdomen cautiously with his hands.
When he was finished, he said, “please lie still and look at the flame of the candle above your bed.”
Lilias stared at the candle flame as the doctor continued to speak to her in a soft, soothing voice. After a while she found that she had difficulty keeping her eyes open, and she was grateful when the doctor told her that she could close her eyes and sleep.
The next sound she heard was the doctor's voice telling her to awaken.
The first thing she saw was that her gown was pulled up above her waist, and that she was lying with her legs spread wide apart, her pubic area completely exposed to the casual gaze of the doctor.
She wanted to reach down and cover herself, but when she tried to move her hand, it did not respond. She looked up into the doctor's eyes, bewildered.
“Was I asleep?” she asked.
“Just for a moment,” the doctor replied, not even glancing at her naked loins. “You seem very determined to protect your husband's ship, Mrs. Nichols,” he continued.
“His ship?” she said contemptuously. “This is not his ship, it is mine, and if I had been in command of it, you would never have taken it.”
“Of course,” Gravier said. “I should have known. The book.” He picked up the novel “Delphine” from the bookshelf and held it in his hand.
“Yes,” Lilias responded. “I named this ship after the heroine of my great aunt's novel when my father gave her to me. It was my dowry. Now my oaf of a husband has lost her to a gang of pirates.”
Lilias felt the tears beginning to form in her eyes, and she blinked them back. The doctor took a fresh handkerchief from his pocket, the one he had used to wipe the thermometer, and she dabbed at her eyes with it. To her alarm, Lilias saw that there was a thin black smudge on the handkerchief, a smudge that had probably come from residue from the candle when the doctor wiped the thermometer. He had stared at the handkerchief. He knew!
“So you sought to keep your ship from the torch with this elaborate deception,” the doctor said.
“You must help me to save my ship,” Lilias pleaded, looking up into his eyes as she took the doctor's hand between both of hers and pressed it against the cloth of her nightgown that covered the soft, firm curve of her upper breast. “Tell your captain that I must speak with him. I have a proposal that he must not refuse.”
“Mrs. Nichols,” the doctor said. “Do not confuse me with Comte Felix Bacciochi. I am not a procurer.”
The doctor's eyes dropped to Lilias's exposed pubis, and she felt her face grow warm. Again she wanted to reach down pull the gown down to cover her pubic mound, but she found that she somehow did not have the strength to even close her legs. All she could do was lie back with her legs spread apart as if welcoming the doctor's unremitting gaze.
“I did not think that you were,” Lilias replied, laughing nervously. “My proposal to your Captain has nothing to do with Comte Felix Bacciochi's services to the Emperor of France, or mine either, for that matter,” she lied. “If you will grant me this favor, however, I would be willing to show you my gratitude in ways that only someone like the Emperor has ever experienced.” She took the doctor's hand that she had been holding against her breast and slipped it down inside her gown until she could feel his fingers touch the nipple of her breast. With her other hand she touched his thigh, then slid her fingers upward until they pressed against the buttons at the front of his trousers. She moved her face toward the place where her fingers rested. “Do you know,” she continued, “what Comte Bacciochi said to me just before I entered the Emperor's chambers for the first time?”
Lilias's fingers began to tug at one of the buttons on the doctor's trousers. She looked up into the doctor's eyes. He swallowed hard and shook his head as the first button pulled loose in her hand.
“He said that I could kiss the Emperor on any part of his person except for his face.”
Lilias pulled the second button loose, then the third. The doctor's penis popped straight out, stiff as a ramrod, and she leaned toward it and parted her pursed lips.

Chapter Three

Lilias Nichols looked out of the small window of her cabin at the approaching whaleboat. An officer in a gray uniform resplendent in gold braid sat erect in the stern. His torso swayed forward and backward easily as the oars rose and fell with the precision of a chorus line. She recognized Dr. Gravier sitting next to him.
The bulk of the two ships blocked some of the breeze in the narrow expanse of water that separated the two ships, leaving the sea in between comparatively calm. Lilias examined the three-masted Confederate raider. It rode low in the water. It's sleek silhouette suggested speed. There was a single funnel, low and streamlined, just astern of the main mast. Auxiliary steam. The largest gun sat on a pivot just ahead of the foremast, so that it could swing in a nearly full circle. A dozen thoughts crowded into her head. All of them demanded her attention, even though all she wanted to think about was what she was going to say to Captain Waddell of the Chesapeake when he entered her cabin.
The whaleboat pulled alongside the confederate raider, and Lilias could no longer see it. She heard the sounds of the boat against the side of the Delphine, and heard the shouts of “make that line fast,” and “step away from that ladder,” as the officer and his men scrambled up the side of the ship. She returned to her bed and prepared for her next encounter with the enemy.
In a moment she heard a knock at the door, and recognized the voice of Dr. Gravier.
“Mrs. Nichols?”
“Come in,” she called back.
The door opened, and her husband, Dr. Gravier and the other officer crowded into the small cabin.
“This is Captain Waddell, Dr. Gravier said, indicating the tall officer who had followed him into the room.
Waddell looked to be a man in his forties, tall and handsome, with neatly trimmed brown hair parted near the center, only the slightest hint of sideburns that did not extend even halfway down his ear, and a mustache that barely covered his upper lip and curled like a wave over the corners of his mouth. The closely spaced row of brass buttons on his gray jacket was open to the waist, and his gray vest was half-unbuttoned as well. He wore a narrow bow tie neatly knotted and his blue eyes were friendly.
“I thank you for your kindness in journeying from your ship to see me, Captain Waddell,” Mrs. Nichols said as Waddell moved to her bedside.
“I understand from the doctor that you have a matter of importance to discuss with me,” Waddell said.
“Yes,” Lilias responded. She turned her face toward her husband and took his hand in hers. “Would you and Dr. Gravier leave me alone with Captain Waddell for a few moments?” she asked.
Waddell turned to Nichols and the doctor and said “then if you will excuse us gentlemen, I will call you when our business is at an end.”
Dr. Gravier bade Mrs. Nichols farewell and took Captain Nichols by the arm, closing the door tightly behind them as they left.
“If you will be brief, Madam,” Captain Waddell said.
“Of course,” Lilias responded, shifting her body upright in the bunk and carefully noting Captain Waddell's reaction as the lapel of her gown fell open slightly. She clutched it closed quickly across her partially exposed breast. “It has always been my belief that a woman should have a little money of her own to get along in this world,” Lilias began. “This ship represents the only chance that I have to achieve that objective.”
“This ship,” Waddell interjected, “will certainly be declared a prize of war when I convene a maritime hearing on board the Chesapeake this afternoon.”
“Of course,” Lilias said. Waddell looked surprised at her response, but said nothing. “You have,” she continued, “alternatives, however, to putting the Delphine to the torch.”
“Such as?”
“You could ransom her.”
“And how would I collect this ransom?”
“I can draw a draft from my father's shipping agent in Melbourne for an appropriate sum,” Lilias responded.
Waddell leaned forward.
“Twenty thousand dollars?” Waddell asked.
“Ten,” Lilias responded.
Waddell hesitated; she could see that he was thinking.
“We can settle the amount later,” he said finally, with a wave of his hand. “How would you propose that we handle the matter of the Delphine until we arrive in Australia, supposing that to be our destination? I cannot leave her crew on board her without a heavy guard, and I cannot spare so many men.”
“If you keep my husband on the Chesapeake, so that he cannot stir the men to mutiny, or become an obstruction to our 'arrangement',” she looked directly into Waddell's eyes as she said this, “and let me stay on the Delphine,” she continued, “I can guarantee the cooperation of my crew.”
“The Delphine would be handy as an auxiliary to the Chesapeake,” Waddell said. “It would be useful to be able to cover a wider swath of ocean as we search for prey.”
“She has speed and steam as well, and can keep up in unfavorable winds,” Lilias said.
“Well that's more than we have at the moment,” Waddell said.
“What do you mean?” Lilias asked.
We haven't been able to use the engine since December 7. The brass band that holds the propeller shaft in place is cracked. We'll have to make sail until we can get it repaired in Melbourne.”
“You mean we could have outrun you if we'd only got up steam?”
Waddell laughed. “Easily,” he said.
It was the last straw. Lilias pounded her fist into her pillow.
“Aaaaggghh!” she screamed. “Those fools. I told them to run.”
Waddell laughed again, and Lilias's anger rose further.
“What's done is done,” he said. “There's no point now in getting angry.”
“I can't help it,” she said through gritted teeth, as she felt the heat rise in her face, “but I don't have to continue to let his fool decisions keep ruining my life.”
Waddell's brow furrowed, but he spoke in a calm voice. “Why,” he asked, returning to Lilias's proposal, “should I let you stay on the Delphine instead of keeping you on the Chesapeake and letting your husband stay here?”
“Because,” she responded, “I need your help, and he doesn't. And,” she continued, tilting her head to one side and lowering her voice conspiratorially, “he might try to recapture the Delphine when your prize crew was off guard.”
Waddell nodded. “And what help do you need from me?”
“To get my ship away from that man forever,” Lilias said, “ideally by making it look like it has sunk with the loss of all hands, including myself. That way, I will have the ship, and can disappear with her, while you have the money, and my husband is set ashore in Australia to mourn my death. My father can claim the insurance for the loss of the ship, and I will be free of this whole sorry arrangement.”
“What sorry arrangement is that, Madam?” Waddell asked.
“A farce of a marriage to a man twice my age with whom I have nothing in common and in which I am a prisoner.” Lilias heard the words with a tingle of excitement. She had never voiced her frustration to any other living person, and now she was pouring out all her anger to this man who held the power of life and death over her hopes and dreams.
“Your proposition is bizarre, but tempting,” Waddell said. “We have not been able to take our prizes into any neutral ports for disposition, and have been forced to burn them instead. A ransom of twenty thousand dollars . . .”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen . . . would be very useful here on the far side of the world.”
“Then you will help me?” Lilias said.
“It will be difficult to accomplish without suspicion,” Waddell said. “But perhaps if you sweeten the bargain.” He hesitated.
Lilias looked into Waddell's face. She recognized the look that greeted her gaze. She had seen it before, even on the face of the Emperor, when Bacciochi had held open the door to his chamber for her and spoken the fateful words 'you may kiss the emperor any place on his person except on his face.'
“What would you have me do?” Lilias asked.
“I will have to think about it,” Lilias heard Waddell say. “Meanwhile the Delphine will continue to swim.”
“Shall we seal our bargain with a drink, Captain,” Lilias said, leaning far forward and stretching out her hand to take a decanter from her dresser. She saw Waddell's eyes stray to the bosom of her gown as it fell open and revealed the nipple of her creamy white breast.
“Of course,” Waddell replied, bending toward her and caressing her breast with his left hand, “and we can discuss 'sweetening' the bargain.”
Lilias's breath caught in her throat as Waddell's other hand rested on her thigh, and his fingers squeezed.
“If you intend to sweeten the bargain in that fashion, Captain,” Lilias said, moving her face closer to Waddell's, so that her cheek nuzzled against his, “the ransom will be no more than ten thousand dollars, and perhaps considerably less, depending upon the amount of sweetening required.”
“For the ransom to fall below fifteen thousand, dear lady,” Waddell replied, sitting next to her on the edge of her bed, “the sweetening will have to be copious, and widely and liberally applied.” He pulled her gown open. She drew a sharp breath as his hand slid down her flat belly and nestled between her legs. Lilias sat up on the edge of the bed, straightening her back and opening her legs to his touch. She felt his finger fondle the edge of the lip of her vulva. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back as his lips moved down from her neck and onto the firm curve of her breast. Then she moved her hand down to his and pulled it away from her.
“Not now,” she whispered huskily. “Come back when my husband has moved to the Chesapeake. We will have time then.”
“I think not,” Waddell responded, rising to his feet and standing in front of her, his groin positioned exactly level with her eyes. As she stared at the seam in the front of the Chesapeake captain's trousers, Lilias wondered if the doctor had told him what she had done to him with her mouth. “I will have a sample of the wares you have on offer now, Madam,” he continued, seizing her hand and pulling it to the front of his trousers, “or you will watch the Delphine burn before the day has ended.”
Lilias drew her breath in sharply. She stared at Waddell's hand, as it held hers tight against his crotch. She felt the man's penis stir at once under her touch. She looked up into the captain's eyes and nodded her head slightly, and he released her hand.
“You can't get into the bed with me,” she said, glancing nervously at the door. “Someone might hear. Let me show you a faster, quieter, safer, way.”
“Safer?”
“A method that doesn't carry the risk of pregnancy.”
Quickly, she tugged at the buttons of his trousers. They pulled loose easily. She reached inside and felt for the fleshy appendage that she could see nestled deep in the folds of cloth. She tugged at it, and it slipped out. She held it lightly in her hand and felt it begin to harden under her touch. Lilias looked up into Waddell's face. He nodded. She pulled back the foreskin of the stiffening organ and stuck out her tongue. She looked up again at Waddell's eyes. He was staring at her as if hypnotized, and she immediately suspected that he had never had a woman allow herself to be taken this way before. Lilias herself felt as if she was not in full control of her actions. She had a strange feeling, as if she were an actress in a bizarre drama, following stage directions from an unseen director. Keeping her eyes locked on Waddell's, she moved her head forward until her tongue touched the soft, silky tip of his penis. A drop of crystal clear liquid oozed from the tiny crevice in the tip of the organ, and she looked down and lapped it into her mouth with her tongue, then looked up provocatively once more into the startled eyes of the Chesapeake's captain. Her eyes still fixed on his; she opened her mouth wide, and nodded her head. He pressed his hips forward, and the organ slid between her lips until almost half of it disappeared from sight. She felt his stiffening shaft press into the back of her mouth, against the insides of her cheeks and onto the soft, uneven surface of her tongue. She closed her mouth, pressing her lips gently against the skin of the man's penis, and began to suck, slowly at first, and then harder and more rapidly, moving her head back and forth as she abruptly quickened the pace of her sucking.
The first spasm of the captain's organ was not long in coming. Lilias continued to suck, harder now, and she felt a second spasm, followed closely by a third. She heard his breathing grow louder, almost as if he were panting. She felt the man's hands on either side of her head, holding her firmly as he began to thrust himself into her mouth. The head of his penis crowded deeper into the opening of her throat, and she struggled to stretch the opening wider, so that she could breathe and accommodate the full length of his organ at the same time. She sucked again, and felt another spasm, stronger this time, then another, and a third, then too many to count, and suddenly her throat, then her mouth, filled with a surge of warm, viscous liquid, and she swallowed, her throat and cheeks constricting against the throbbing organ as it continued to pump more of its contents into her mouth.
Waddell's hips moved, thrusting forward as he squeezed the last drops of his ejaculate into her mouth. He kept moving in this fashion, arching his hips, even after the semen had ceased to flow. Lilias thought that he would release her once he had satisfied himself, but he continued to hold her head between his palms and thrust his organ in and out of her mouth, even though he had ceased to ejaculate. Lilias felt obliged to continue sucking as long as Waddell did not volunteer to withdraw himself from the soft touch of her lips. Again, she had the strange sensation that she was following the directions of someone she could not see. Finally, Waddell drew back from her mouth. His organ dangled, half-stiff, in front of her face. She formed her lips into a pout and kissed the tip of the shaft, then stuck out her tongue and licked it, circling the organ several times and leaving a glistening sheen of saliva on its surface. He reached down and held the appendage out toward her mouth.
“Lick it dry,” he said, grinning broadly. “I don't want to put a wet penis back into my trousers, do I?”
She closed her mouth around the shaft once more and sucked, pulling her head back. Her lips squeezed the last residue of liquid from the organ as it slipped from between them.
Waddell reached down and tucked the now-limp appendage into his trousers and buttoned them.
Lilias closed her gown. She took a small handkerchief from the shelf above her bed and wiped her mouth with it.
“There are a few other considerations we will need to discuss before we finalize our arrangement,” Waddell said as he watched Lilias remove the last vestiges of his invasion from her face.
Lilias looked up at the rebel captain quizzically. He had just sealed their bargain by satisfying himself in her mouth, and now wanted to set more conditions on her degradation? “What considerations?” she asked suspiciously.
“Discipline,” Waddell answered simply.
“What do you mean?” Lilias asked, an image of chains and whips already beginning to form in her mind.
“A woman aboard ship dispensing sexual favors can be a dangerous thing,” Waddell said simply. “Sailors are the most notorious gossips. Even if nothing is happening, the men will spread rumors of sexual orgies. If they suspect that there is sex to be had, they will not only develop the most fantastic stories about it; they will go to any lengths to have it for themselves. We must keep it under control.”
“Under control?” she said, fighting back a vision of sailors lining up at her door as an officer checked their names off of a list.
“Yes. But we cannot resolve that now. I will discuss it with you again once we have gotten you safely established by yourself on board the Delphine.”
Lilias nodded and pulled the bed covers back up to her neck. When she was settled in the bed, Captain Waddell opened the door to her cabin and called to Dr. Gravier and Captain Nichols. She remained silent as Waddell explained that he agreed with Dr. Gravier that Mrs. Nichols' condition was so grave that she should remain on board the Delphine until she recovered. “You, Captain Nichols,” he said, “are another matter.” He then outlined his concerns about the ability of his prize crew to maintain control of the ship with the crew of the Delphine still aboard, his added reluctance to have any of the officers of the Delphine remain on board with their crew because of the danger that they might lead a mutiny, and said that Captain Nichols would in effect be a hostage on board the Chesapeake to guarantee the good behavior of the Delphine's crew.
Captain Nichols' agitation grew as it became clear that he was to be separated from his wife.
“It is an outrage,” he said. “I cannot leave my wife alone with a ship full of enemy sailors.”
“Not enemy sailors,” Waddell said, “your own crew, with one of my officers, plus the surgeon, and some of my marines to ensure control.”
The surgeon. Lilias realized instantly that she would have to accommodate the surgeon as well as Captain Waddell as part of her bargain. She wondered how many other officers would come to share her favors. The officer who would be in command of the Delphine would certainly soon learn of her arrangement from the doctor, and would expect to be included. How many of the marines would also overhear the sounds from her cabin and take advantage of her when she was alone? She remembered the nights she had spent with the Emperor, and the palace gossip that inevitably followed each of his conquests. She knew then that the bulkheads of the ship would hold her secrets no better than the walls of the palace had.
With an effort, Lilias forced the thoughts of the future she faced from her mind and tried to concentrate on what Captain Nichols was saying as he continued to protest. She found herself hoping that her husband would prevail. That his arguments would somehow persuade Captain Waddell to release her from her bargain, to somehow save her ship while sparing her the fate she now saw so clearly.
“Your wife is too ill to be moved,” Waddell said, finally. “I have no choice but to respect her wishes and keep the Delphine afloat, though I would much prefer to put it to the torch,” he lied. Then he spoke the fateful words. “It is your wife's request that she stay aboard the Delphine,” he added with finality, looking straight at Lilias.
There it was, out in the open now. Waddell had laid directly on her the blame for Captain Nichols' banishment to the Chesapeake while she remained on the Delphine.
Lilias glanced at Nichols as the last remark hung in the air. He sat immobile. He shook his head slowly, as if he was trying to clear his thoughts. He turned his gaze to her, and she saw in his face a look that she had she never seen him display before. It seemed to reflect a sense of betrayal as well as something deeper, an emotion akin to hatred. She shuddered. She tried to meet his gaze, but the salty taste of Waddell's semen was still fresh on her tongue, reminding her of the way she had allowed Waddell to use her, and of her bargain with him, and she lowered her eyes, unable to suppress her feelings of guilt. She had become accustomed to her husband's docility, and to her ability to manipulate him. Now she was faced with an aspect of Captain Nichols that she had never seen before. She felt overcome by the knowledge that she had willingly taken the rebel captain's organ between her lips and allowed -- no, stimulated, actually welcomed -- him to ejaculate into her mouth while her husband waited just outside her cabin. She felt her confidence draining away. She tried to fight off the feeling, to raise her eyes. She told herself that Captain Nichols could not know what had happened inside the cabin, that she was only doing what she had to do to save her ship, using the only weapons available to her. Still, she wondered if she had not given in too easily, if Captain Waddell would not ultimately have allowed her to keep the Delphine without exacting her submission in return. For the first time since their marriage, she sat in silence; her head bowed, and endured her husband's unspoken scorn.

Lilias - Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The transfer to the Chesapeake of Captain Nichols, his baggage and several boatloads of the Delphine's stores was completed and the last whaleboat secured by the time the Chesapeake's bells chimed four times, indicating that the hour was two in the afternoon. Lilias looked out from her window in the transom of the Delphine at the activity on the Chesapeake as men moved cargo across the deck and moved about her rigging. She watched the raider's sails unfurl from the yardarms and billow as they filled with the freshening breeze. Then she heard the boson's pipe sound above her head, on the deck of the Delphine, accompanied by shouted orders. The Delphine's crew was for the most part not familiar with the piped signals used on a naval ship, and the sound of the sails falling into place seemed ragged and uncoordinated. She wished that she could go on deck -- that she had not committed herself to this charade of illness -- but she knew she needed to keep up the pretense that she was sick long enough to see how her arrangement with the Captain and the doctor developed.
The Delphine sailed to the lee of the Chesapeake for the rest of the day, and Lilias could not see the raider from her cabin. At dusk, she could hear the sound of a sailor hanging a lantern from the stern rail above her window. In a few moments there was a knock at her door. She scrambled into her bunk.
“Come in,” she called as she straightened the coverlet, and the door opened. Timothy Bottoms, her husband's steward, entered with a small tray of food, his barrel-shaped bulk filling the narrow doorway.
“How's the Cape Horn fever missus?” Bottoms asked, grinning.
“Better, thanks,” she responded, smiling back. Bottoms obviously knew she was feigning illness. “How are things on deck?”
“The barky's still swimmin',” Bottoms replied as he sat the tray on Lilias's lap, “thanks to you missus. But the Rebs keep a pretty close eye on us, and they keep them Thomas rifles pretty close to hand.” He laughed as if the rebel precautions against mutiny were a huge joke, his grin revealing the small, now almost completely filled, gap where a canine tooth had once been. Bottoms looked like a battle-tested alley cat, with small scars dividing his eyebrows, their ridges showing white against his deeply tanned forehead. His ears were swollen and gnarled, souvenirs, Lilias knew, like the scars and missing tooth, of many a waterfront brawl and shipboard boxing match. Though he looked as weathered as an old boot, to Lilias Bottoms' familiar face was reassurance that there was still a measure of comfort, if not security, for her on board the Delphine.
“I haven't seen the officer they put in charge of the Delphine,” she said. “What is he like?”
“Not your usual snotty,” Bottoms responded, using his favorite term for a green officer. “Overton's his name. Still wet behind the ears.”
Lilias smiled. Bottoms' description of every officer