His Second Chance by Stephanie Lake

Author:Stephanie Lake [Lake, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, LGBTTQ
Publisher: Loose Id LLC
Published: 2016-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Lack of sleep and the late hour set David to drowsing in the humid confines of the hired hack. His head nodded forward several times, but he caught himself each time before slipping off the cracked leather seat. Finally giving up, he reclined back into the corner. He had a good twenty minutes before arriving and answering Randall’s summons. Might as well catch a few winks.

* * * *

David enjoyed the sound of First Lieutenant Michelson’s laughter. It was a free sound that came from the portly man’s round belly. He was an attractive enough man, if a bit thick around the middle. They had both indulged in a bit too much ale with their lunch, but this was the last day of their two-day and much-too-short shore leave in the Azores. So he let himself enjoy the low thrum of alcohol-induced giddiness as they walked back to the Porcupine.

Michelson wiped sweat from his face and stumbled as he stepped onto the wharf.

David laughed at him. Not very seamanlike, but at the moment, he was too inebriated to care. Laughing felt good. So he threw his head back and guffawed as sweat soaked his uniform. He chuckled, until he noticed the motion off the yardarm.

Two bodies hanged from the sunbaked wood. His heart stopped for a few seconds. He stumbled, then caught himself on a crate and blinked. Then blinked again. The bodies were still there, swinging in the ocean breeze. His mouth went dry. He’d heard nothing about any officers being caught, tried, and found guilty. No, their offence must have been so egregious that the punishment was carried out without trial. Some poor sodomites, then. Some sodomites who had been careless.

Michelson laughed again and clamped him on the back. “Careful there, man; don’t want you falling in and drowning. What are you looking at?” The man looked up. “Well, damn. Damn, damn, damn. Who are they, I wonder?”

David shook his head, dread filling his limbs, making them numb. He kept his steps unhurried; how, he didn’t know. Especially when he got close enough to see the vibrant red hair glistening in the sun. Adam. No. It couldn’t be. Adam had always been a bit rash, but David was his voice of reason; they’d not been together for months, the circumstances making it unsafe.

But after he stumbled off the gangplank and his feet stopped below the corpses, he could no longer deny the man hanging there was his lover. “No!”

Michelson put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, man. I know he was your friend. Did you know about his predilections?”

David shook his head, not in denial of the question, but in denial of the senseless murder.

The sultry breeze slowly rotated the body. Adam’s handsome face turned toward him; his eyes, plucked out by birds, stared at him with black emptiness. Condemning him.

“No!” His entire body fought the image. He fell, hands and knees hitting the polished planking. With painful heaves, he lost everything in his stomach. Fingers clawed, splintering wood, drawing blood, but his stomach would not stop heaving.

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