A Girl Called Samson (99)

“You want to learn?”

“Yes. I want you to show me.”

He groaned softly, and I reveled at the sound.

“Do what pleases you,” he whispered.

“I do not know what pleases me,” I said, but he shook his head, rejecting my words, and the caress of his mouth, so soft and light, pleased me greatly.

“Yes, you do,” he countered.

His heat pleased me. His texture. His very presence pleased me, and I touched my tongue to his cupid’s bow to see if that pleased me too. And then he was tasting me the way I tasted him, his lips seeking and supping, and I forgot to tally the wonders and matched him parry for parry.

I am convinced nothing is so intimate as a kiss, not even the joining of flesh or the taking of vows. When mouths commune, there is little that can be hidden, and I had no desire to hide anything any longer. Not from him.

His hands flexed and fisted in my shirt, and his fingers danced beneath it, stroking the smooth skin of my back. He palmed the curve of my hips and the swell of my buttocks and ran his thumbs across the peaks of my unbound breasts, but when I thought perhaps we would sink to our knees and surrender to the ever-intensifying drumming of our flesh, the general dragged his lips from my mouth, wrapped his hands around my wrists, and ground his rough cheek against mine.

“Deborah, please. Please, help me. I cannot do this. I will not do this.”

I nodded immediately and stepped back, aching but obedient, and not at all certain what he could not do. We stood in the sticky darkness, breathing and battling, and when he let go of my wrists, we parted, retiring to our pallets. But when we had settled, our eyes fixed on nothing and our ears keenly attuned to each other, I spoke, my voice pitched lower than the murmur of the camp.

“What can’t you do, sir?”

“Woman,” he pleaded. “Do not call me sir. Not now.”

I swallowed the “yessir” that bubbled on my tongue.

“I will not put you on your back and plow you like a camp trollop,” he vowed, his voice almost inaudible. “That is what I will not do.” He was trying to shock me and to chastise us both, and for a moment it worked.

“There are camp trollops?” I asked.

“There are. You have not been involved in the type of engagements that would allow for it. The march to Yorktown was too fast. And you are light infantry, who lead the army. The trollops trail behind. I am actually worried about what will happen to them when all of this ends. It’s gone on so long that it’s become a way of life. Some of them have children that are now six and seven years old. They trail the army too. They have nothing to go back to.”

“Just like me,” I whispered. “I suppose I am already a camp trollop.”

“Don’t say that.”

We were quiet for a time, but neither of us slept.

“Did you . . . ever have need of their services?” I asked.

“Need? Yes. Partake? No. I would not do that to Elizabeth.”

Guilt swelled and my conscience was pricked. “John?”

“Yes?” He sounded pleased that I had used his name.

“What would Elizabeth think . . . of us?”

“Ah, Samson. Are you fretting over that?”

“Yes, sir,” I confessed.

It was a moment before he said anything more, and when he did his voice was thoughtful and the tension in him had eased.

“Of all the things I torture myself over, that is not one of them. I have not betrayed Elizabeth and neither have you. Elizabeth would approve. She adored you.”

“She adored you. I think I loved you long ago, simply because she did. Her love was in every line and mention, in every letter.”

He did not agree nor argue, but simply waited for me to continue.

“But what if she had not died? What if she were here?” I asked.

“She isn’t.” His voice was gentle. “And she never will be again. Nothing we do—or don’t do—will bring her back.”

I pondered that truth so long, I thought he might have drifted off.

“I should not love you like this, should I?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“I loved Sylvanus. I loved him dearly. And I loved Deacon Thomas, though I didn’t always like him. I loved Nat and Phineas and Jeremiah. I loved—love—them all. I loved them in different amounts. Small piles and great piles. I do not love you the same way. This feeling is new. It is a mountain, and it has fallen on me. I didn’t know it would feel this way to love.”

“It doesn’t,” he whispered. “God forgive me, but it usually doesn’t.”



I was not repulsed by the general’s talk of camp trollops.

I was bewitched.

That he’d used such vulgarity to describe the act probably should have dampened my romantic feelings. I knew it was what he’d intended. Instead, I was strangely affected by it. To be desired in such a way was something I’d never envisioned for myself. And for the general to want me—a man that I loved so desperately—felt miraculous. I could think of nothing else.

The next night, the general walked and I quaked, waiting for him to return. When the flaps parted long after the camp grew quiet, I rose and met him at the door, desperate to touch him and afraid he would leave again as soon as I did.