Yes, but to a troubling dream

Charlotte's eyes closed easily and her breathing slowed. Outside she could hear the familiar sounds of the nighttime at her family home. An owl hooting soulfully in the distance cut through the sound of crickets chirping and the constant peeping of the small green frogs from the water garden. She could also hear the coarse laughter from some of the suitors drift up from the open windows in the gaming room on the first floor.

She considered closing her window to shut out the sound of the revelry she had abandoned, but Charlotte enjoyed the night time symphony of nature's creatures and refused to shut out the peaceful sounds of the estate she loved because of her uneasy guilt at leaving her guests to their own devises. The men didn't mind, she was sure, in fact they probably were having a much better time now that the ladies had retired to their chambers. A great yawn stretched her mouth wide in a most unladylike fashion giving testament to how tired she really was.

She thought over her garden encounter with the dour Lieutenant Easton as she drifted off into sleep. She remembered the warmth of his breath, the way his lips had trembled as they kissed and perhaps most troubling of all, the hardness of his manhood. She should feel shame at the way she had used those gentle kisses and soft caresses to break the earnest reserve of the young officer, but found instead a sense of pride - she was discovering a secret power that she did not even know she possessed. Not that it had been all that hard to bend the Lieutenant to her will. Unlike Jason Worthington, Mr. Easton was no womanizer - he was both honest and modest in his nature and undoubtedly more reliable than Jase or for that matter most men she had met. Certainly more trustworthy than the outlaw Randolph Fuller…

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She is running barefoot through the endless virgin forests of the Americas wearing nothing but a nightgown that flaps immodestly on her thighs. Ahead she sees a musket fire into the woods with a flash of flame and smoke but - as is common for many of her dreams - there is no sound. An arrow strikes the soldier in the throat as he tries to reload his firearm and he slumps to the ground clutching futilely at his bleeding neck.

Her arms are grabbed from both sides and she is pulled away from the scene of the ambush. To her left is Lieutenant Easton, his scarlet uniform is torn and bloodstained but he appears to be unharmed, to her right is Randy Fuller - as tall and handsome as she remembered but dressed in the fringed buckskins of a colonial frontiersman. The three survivors of the slaughter run through the forest until the narrow path reaches a fork, Mr. Fuller pulls her to the right while Lieutenant Easton is arguing silently for the path to the left.

Charlotte is frozen in indecision as each man pulls her by the sleeve and (as can only happen in a dream) her nightgown rips in two leaving Charlotte standing alone at the fork wearing only a tiny scrap of silk around her hips. From behind her a bunch of red skinned warriors led by Jason Worthington and John Basingford are closing rapidly and yet she still cannot move. Not even when the lustful savages encircle her like a pack of hounds and reach for her nude figure.

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Charlotte awoke with a start. Her heart was racing and in her clenched fists were handfuls of bedding.

She recognized the scene from a yellow paged romance she had found hidden in her old nanny’s room. The author of the book (borrowing liberally from Mr. Cooper’s novel of the colonial life) had written a tale about the capture of several young women including the teen-aged daughters of an infantry colonel by raiding Algonquin redskins. Unlike Cooper’s more proper although suggestive narrative, this writer dwelled at length on the treatment of the captured teens by these lustful savages.

Multiple lurid passages detailed the young women’s humiliation at the hands of the vengeful natives; first the captives had been stripped of nearly all their clothing, and as they trekked through the woods the warriors had groped and fondled the soft white flesh of their captives. Charlotte had read and reread these titillating descriptions with a mixture of arousal and horror imagining that it was she who had been taken by those savages. After her experience with Black Brand, she had a better sense of what it would be like to be bound and led through the woods, but Mr. Fuller at least allowed her to march unmolested. The way the Indians examined every inch of the captive's flesh with no regard for propriety made it clear that once they stopped for the night that the four women would be put to an even more shameful purpose.

Only the presence of a French liaison officer had kept the two untouched daughters of the British officer from suffering the fate of their maid and the colonial girl as they camped by the side of a lake that night. The French officer had successfully argued that the officer's daughters were worth far more as hostages than sex-toys, and so unlike the others the pair's thighs were not spread open for the pleasures of the virile warriors. However the sisters were not spared the sights and sounds of their companions ravishment who were taken on the mossy ground just a few feet from where they were tied. Until reading this book, Charlotte had never even considered that two or more men could join with a woman at the same time, but using terms that she could only guess at the author of the book described how each of the other less fortunate captives had been held in place and used in their mouths, vaginas and (if she understood correctly) rectums by trios of red savages. Every one of the warriors took great satisfaction in violating the white daughters of their foes, only the French officer refrained from participating in this depraved orgy that lasted through the night.

This officer however however was not the hero of the book, nor was his motive for preserving their maidenheads at all honourable, for once they reached the summer camp of the Algonquin he showed his true colors. The Frenchman attempted first to charm each of the the sisters into his bed; when he failed to convince the older of the two he then turned his wicked seductive skills onto her tender young sister who also refused him. When his seductive attempts to lure the naive teens into his bed were (just barely) rebuffed by the young Englishwomen, the determined officer became far less charming. He used the crude threat of turning the sisters over to the natives to weaken their resolve. The young heroines were placed in the position of having to choose between the suave but dishonorable French officer and the honest savagery of the native warriors.

The real heroes of this romance had been the unlikely combination of a noble British officer and the colonial tracker of her dream. Despite the differences between the proper English officer and the easy-going woodsman who's determination and spirit made up for his lack of respect, the two men finally managed to rescue the young women just in time.

It was easy to interpret the meaning of the faces of her would be suitors on the greased and painted bodies of the Algonquin raiders. Even during her waking moments Charlotte often felt like the quarry of a fox hunt and the pack of gentlemen seeking her hand and her father's approval behaved no better than red savages.

That her two rescuers were the very two men she had kissed just within the past few days was in a way not totally surprising, but Charlotte was disturbed and confused by the presence of Mr. Fuller in her dream as a hero, a man on equal footing as the worthy Lt. Easton. She would have been far less surprised to have seen him in the dream playing the role of a ravaging warrior or the duplicitous French officer who tried to take advantage of the **** sisters. How had Randolf Fuller slipped into her sub-conscience in the part of a savior?

The sounds of partying from downstairs had finally subsided, but Charlotte lay awake on her bed for nearly an hour unable to quiet her mind enough to fall asleep.