by Juliana Gray
Stefanie took a few stumbling steps after her and cast a glance back down to the entrance hall, and an enormous beef-armed man glared back up at her, as if to say, Don’t even think about it, ye posh fragging twit.
Stefanie gulped back a yelp of dismay and continued on in Hannah’s determined wake. Her mind invented and discarded a dozen excuses, and finally settled on disease. Nothing a prostitute dreaded more than disease, wasn’t it? Inconvenience, lost profit, disgruntled customers, that sort of thing. She would make her confession in the privacy of the room itself. Pay the woman a sovereign, or whatever the going rate was, and ask to be excused.
On the other hand, Stefanie found her natural curiosity rather awakened as Cousin Hannah, those corseted hips swaying like lifeboats, dragged her down a hallway lined with doors, all of them shut tight. A bawdy house! A genuine, honest-to-goodness bawdy house! An establishment built for the sole purpose of fornication by the hour. What were the ladies like? What were the customers like? What were the rooms like? Did everybody get down to business straightaway, or was there any sort of farcical courtship first, a few words of affection or at least attraction, a human connection of some kind before the necessary parts made the necessary contact with the inevitable result?
Did they change the sheets between customers?
And what on earth was that oblong object on the hall table?
“Wait a moment,” said Stefanie, rather breathlessly, but Hannah had already reached the room at the end of the hall and turned the knob.
“Here we are, sir. All private and lovely.”
Stefanie stumbled across the threshold and caught herself on a lamp table. She gazed around her in astonishment. A torrent of faded crimson wallpaper coated the walls, peeling at the corners and at the chipped baseboards, which had once probably been painted in white, and which were now a sooty gray. Atop a stain on the thick red rug stood a tripod table, on which a half-empty bottle of sherry perched with two smudged glasses. There was a wardrobe in the corner, for what purpose Stefanie could not possibly imagine.
And the bed. Of course, the bed.
Sized for two, made up with gray white sheets and a few thin blankets, dominating the room and made double by a large oblong mirror attached to the wall beside it. The four wooden posts rose up like pillars, nearly touching the slanted ceiling.
“Look here . . .” Stefanie lunged for the doorknob, but Hannah shut it tight and turned the key.
“Now, then,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, my lad. It’s the greatest pleasure in the world, isn’t it? You’ve given yourself pleasure before, haven’t you?”
“I . . . yes, well . . . you see, I . . .”
Hannah smiled beautifully. “Don’t worry. No one will ever know, will they? And I’ll take special care of you. You’ve come to the right place for it, Mr. Thomas. Nobody takes on a new boy like I do. But you knew that right enough, or you wouldn’t have come, would you? Every young fellow knows to come to Cousin Hannah’s for his first poke.”
“But that’s the thing! It’s all a dreadful mistake!” Stefanie said, in desperation.
Hannah wandered to the table in the corner and poured the sherry into one of the glasses. The electric light tried and failed to catch the dirty facets. “Have a little sip, now, Mr. Thomas. It will relax you.”
“I don’t need to relax. I say, do you mean you make a specialty out of this? Deflowering boys?”
Hannah drifted back toward her. Her eyes gleamed the same color as the sherry. “Drink, Mr. Thomas.”
“I can’t possibly. I really must be getting home. I . . . Good God, madam!”
Hannah’s hands, working deftly at her back, had just released the bodice of her dress. She cupped her breasts invitingly atop her corset, not that all that overflowing flesh required much additional upward momentum. “You see, Mr. Thomas? Lovely, aren’t they?”
“I . . . yes, they are, quite lovely indeed, but I really . . .” Stefanie angled her foot toward the door.
Quick as a flash, Hannah interposed herself between Stefanie and the door. “Only a single sovereign, dear boy. One golden sovereign. Imagine sinking your head between these beauties.” She gave her handsome pair another jiggle.
“Yes, quite,” said Stefanie. “But . . .”
Hannah reached behind again, and an instant later the whole dress slid free in a whoosh of silk gown against satin petticoat.
“How the devil did you do that?” Stefanie asked, incredulous.
“I am very skilled at what I do, Mr. Thomas.” The petticoats were dropping now, one by one, to be kicked aside in turn by Hannah’s adroit satin-slippered feet.
“Yes, but the tapes! The fastenings! Surely there must be some sort of trick to it, because I’ve never . . . Let me examine that bodice . . .” Stefanie bent to retrieve the frock, and a petticoat landed frothily atop her head.
“Do you want me to take off my corset, dear boy?” purred Hannah, from somewhere above.
“Not really. I . . . Good Lord, where does it end?” Stefanie scrabbled at the lace obstructing her vision.
“Just imagine yourself lying atop them, sweetheart. Soft and lovely.”
Stefanie drew away the petticoat at last and found Hannah’s plump white thighs, covered only by stockings and a perilously thin chemise, nearly brushing her nose.
“I assure you, madam, I . . .”
Hannah took her by the shoulders and hoisted her upward. “Come along, now. Don’t be shy.”
“I’m not shy! I’m only . . .” Stefanie’s mind raced. What was that excuse again?
“Right here, dear boy.” Hannah’s hands grasped the back of her head.
“. . . ill!” Stefanie burst out, but the word was muffled by the endless pillow of Hannah’s breasts, scented powerfully with rose.
“What was that?”
Stefanie jerked back her head and gasped for air. “Ill! I’m ill! I . . .”
“Of course you are! Ooh, that’s it, isn’t that lovely, Hannah will make it all better . . .”
“. . . have a . . . disease of some kind . . .”
“. . . ooh, I’ll cure you straightaway, never fear . . .”
“. . . an . . . an itchy sort of thing . . . itches like the devil . . .”
“. . . ooh, scratch me, then . . . ooh, you’re so strong, Mr. Thomas, such a fighter . . .”
“. . . and . . . and pustules, I think . . . yes, great pustules of . . . of pus . . .”
“. . . ooh, don’t fight so, don’t . . . PUS!?”
The door crashed open, just as Hannah thrust Stefanie away with such ferocious energy she tumbled on her back atop the thick red sour-smelling rug.
Stefanie stared at the ceiling, wheezing for breath. Every atom of air seemed saturated with rose water. Her head ached with it, or perhaps that was only the influence of the floorboards beneath.
Really, the evening could not possibly get any worse.
But no sooner had this thought crossed her aching brain, when the voice of the Marquess of Hatherfield broke above her, like an avenging archangel. “Mr. Thomas! What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
She placed her palms against the rug and attempted to rise.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Hatherfield fought to maintain a suitably avenging expression as he surveyed the scene before him. Poor young Thomas, lying on the floor, gasping for breath, his face as red as the rug beneath his head. The prostitute—the rather shapely and bountiful prostitute, it must be said—stuffing her bounty with some difficulty back into its rightful place in her corset, as a housemaid might stuff a few more feathers into a pillow already packed with down.
“Dear me,” he said. “What a scene of corruption. Do sit up, Thomas, and attempt a little dignity.”
“I want him out of my house!” screeched the prostitute. “Him and his diseased parts!”
Hatherfield lifted an eyebrow. “Diseased, Mr. Thomas?”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas stood slowly, a li
ttle dazedly, and cast his shamed eyes down toward the rug. “Quite . . . quite dreadfully diseased, as I informed Mistress Hannah. Not wishing to . . . do her an injury.”
“An injury! Very serious, Thomas. I own myself appalled. We shall have to get you to a doctor instantly and have this problem corrected. In the meantime, I think it best if . . .”
A series of shouts floated through the open door. A rattling crash. Another.
“What the devil?” said the prostitute. She gathered up her petticoats and dress and made for the door.
“May I . . . may I assist you, madam?” Hatherfield inquired, averting his eyes from her bosom.
“It’s the police! Police, by God!” She thrust her legs through her petticoats.
“Police?” said Hatherfield.
“Police!” gasped Mr. Thomas.
“The dirty bastards! I paid them off, I did! The stinking arseholes!” The room shook with the force of Cousin Hannah’s indignation. No sign now of her ladylike air down below in the parlor. “Pigs. You can’t trust nobody anymore!”
The dress was on, a few petticoats short. Hannah performed some feat of dexterity at her back and darted from the room.
Young Thomas stared after her. Her face was wide and still with shock. She pressed her mustache with her first two fingers. “Quickly, Hatherfield! We’ve got to run!”
“I’m quite certain . . .”
But Thomas had already grasped his hand and was tugging him out the door. “We’ll find a back exit!”
The hall was already full of half-dressed women and men with gaping trousers, stuffing their shirts and swinging their jackets. “This way!” someone shouted, and a stampede ensued toward the back staircase.
“Come along!” Thomas pulled at his arm.
“No! The back exit will be guarded, you fool! That’s how they take everyone!”
“How the devil do you know that?”
“This way. Back in the room.” He turned around and pulled Thomas’s spindly body behind him, back down the hallway.
Thomas yanked himself free. “We’ll be sitting ducks in there! We’ve got to run!”
“Calm down, Mr. Thomas . . .” Hatherfield grasped her wrists.
“Let me go! You don’t understand! They can’t catch me, I can’t be found out . . .”
There was no time to argue with her. Hatherfield bent and gripped Thomas behind the knees with one arm and across the back with the other. With a single giant heave he tossed her flailing body over his shoulder.
Her fists pounded his back. “Put me down at once!”
“Now, Mr. Thomas. Calm yourself. Just trust me.”
“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Back to that room? Are you mad?”
He didn’t dare answer that question. He carried her back down the hall, against the tide of panicked sinners, ducking and staggering and apologizing. “Beg your pardon. Yes, back to the room, certainly not going to—excuse me, madam—dash out into that damned turkey shoot about to take place in the—watch the leg, there!—back courtyard.”
The flailing limbs stilled around him. “Good Lord, Hatherfield. You’re not thinking of shimming us out the window, are you?”
“Nothing to it, Thomas. It’s only the first floor, after all.” He ducked under the doorframe. “And in any case, we’re not simply going to drop right down, into the turkey shoot. That would be foolish.”
“We’re not?”
Hatherfield slung her down in the center of the floor and closed the door behind them. “Of course not. We’re going to lark across a few rooftops first.”
“Across what?”
“The rooftops. Easy enough, really. We’ll drop to earth somewhere around Frith Street, and then . . .” He unlocked the sash and pressed his fingers under the frame. “. . . And then get you . . . get you safely back . . . to the safe . . .”
“What’s the matter?”
He stepped back with a frown. “The window. It’s stuck.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. A big fellow like you.” Thomas marched up next to him and positioned herself underneath the window. “Just put a little . . . a bit of . . . effort . . . like . . . like this . . .”
“Thomas . . .”
“It’s . . . I felt it give a bit . . .”
“It’s nailed shut, Thomas.”
Thomas drew away and stared at the window. “Nailed shut? Why the devil would anyone nail a window shut?”
“To keep the customers inside, I presume.” Hatherfield set his lips in a firm line and turned around. Ominous rattles vibrated the walls. The shouts were growing louder. “They’re coming upstairs.”
“You see! I told you we should head for the back exit! Now we’re stuck here! Like . . . like rats in a trap!” Thomas’s hands thrust into her hair.
“Rubbish.” Hatherfield took her hand, went to the door, and opened it. A hail of shouts met his ears, the faint screeching of trapped humanity. No escape there.
“They’re coming!” said Thomas, in a hiss. “Close the door!”
“No. No, leave it open. Come here.”
“What the devil?”
Hatherfield dragged her to the wardrobe, opened the door, and bundled her inside. An outraged cry emerged, muffled by cloth.
Hatherfield stepped in after her and pulled the door shut.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered in his ear. Literally in his ear, for the wardrobe was tiny, stuffed to the gills with clothing, cheap silk from the feel of it, and Thomas’s lips were so close he felt their warmth brushing his ear.
“Be still,” he whispered back, and just to be sure of her obedience, and only to be sure, he wrapped his left arm around her and pulled her right up flush against his body.
She made a tiny yelp and went silent.
The wardrobe was narrow and deep. Hatherfield maneuvered her against the backboard and laid his own body protectively atop her, the blades of his shoulders brushing the door, his arms and shoulders surrounded by displaced silk. He ignored the feel of her limbs against his, her warm breath into his neck. He ignored the tantalizing swell at her chest, covered by wool and cotton and God knew what, but unmistakably softer than muscle. He ignored the scratch of her mustache at his collar, perversely and intensely arousing. He concentrated entirely on the sounds thudding through the wood and plaster, the pattern of footsteps on the stairs and the hall.
Oh, all right. He was doing his best, anyway.
His body had other notions. According to the mounting evidence.
Concentrate. The police were starting from the top of the house, no surprise, but there would certainly be guards posted at every stairway. No more screeching now. Had all the prostitutes and clients left in the first rush?
Bang, bang, bang. Doors opened and slammed shut above him. The police were searching the rooms, then, one by one. Bloody hell. A fitting end to a frustrating day.
And yet.
God, she felt good. She felt delicious. Her rigid muscles were softening now, taking his bones and sinews into the shelter of her, inviting exploration. Her skin smelled like honey. He imagined himself licking the hollow of her throat, tasting her pulse, and the seams of his trousers nearly split in response.
He tried to angle his hips away, but only managed an inch or so before his buttocks nudged the wardrobe door. Would she notice the thickening bulge? Damn it all, of course she would notice. The question was whether she would know what it meant, and he rather thought . . .
Concentrate. Spike the senses, coil the muscles. Ready to strike. He leaned his ear against the wood, the better to hear the progress upstairs, but now his mouth was full of her hair, loosened from its pomade grip, falling silky and scented about her face. A tiny noise escaped her. She moved her hips forward, just slightly, as if . . . God help him.
As if seeking the return of his own.
He flipped his other cheek to the wood, away from her tempting hair and head, trying to listen to the wood and not the beat of his own desperate pulse
, but his traitorous hips could not resist the inviting shift of hers, like the rock of a cradle, and he fit himself against her, a perfect match, good God, brain spinning, thumbs brushing against her shirt, the distant pounding and slamming of impending disaster in his ears. Madness.
“Hatherfield,” she whispered, right into his neck.
Do not kiss her.
A warmth touched his waist, beneath his coat. Her fingers, sliding along the seam where his waistcoat met his trousers.
You sweet thing. Did he say the words, or think them?
“Hatherfield,” she whispered again. “Is it safe?”
“Not yet. Shh.”
That was her heart, he realized, pumping through the layers between them. Thomas’s heart. Her handprint turned hot at his waist, right there in the most sensitive spot. Her thumb nudged past the hem of his waistcoat to find his shirt. His skin, a few linen threads away.
Do not kiss her.
The alarm beat in his brain, danger clanging against the white light of sexual desire, the familiar scorching need that electrified every muscle. He was a satyr, a monster, just as his stepmother had always said. What kind of beast held a young lady’s life in his hands, charged to protect her, and in that same moment pushed his shamefully erect cock into her innocent hips? He had probably maneuvered her into the wardrobe on purpose, if he were honest with himself. Tucked her in his arms and covered her with his body not to shield her, but because he’d been thinking of nothing else but bedding her since he’d met her. He had done this all for his own prurient sexual interest, hadn’t he, when he might have bustled her safely outside with only a little more effort and ingenuity.
Hatherfield turned his head and let his lips hover at her temple. His eyes, adjusting to the darkness, began to pick up the faint shadow of her, not even vision really, more the sense of her, her outline against the black wood.
She tilted her head, ever so slightly, just enough that Hatherfield’s lips met her temple.
Turn away.
But his lips, his guilty lips, stayed there on her skin, and she didn’t move, either. Didn’t jerk away, didn’t gasp in shock.
