by Louisa Trent
Alas, he never did.
Not that he was ill mannered or disrespectful, only preoccupied. With something—she had no idea precisely what.
Did Robert ever actually think? Not anything lofty, but did a legitimate thought, regardless of how fleeting, ever cross his mind?
He must think! Indeed, he must. He could not possibly be as self-absorbed and limited as he appeared.
Starting small, she attempted to draw him out, expand his horizons beyond the tip of his own parochial nose. She did so gently, as his enlightenment was bound to be painful. “How was your day?”
He shrugged. “That bastard of a boss O’Reilly gave me bullshit about stealing from a new shipment.” He winked and held open the flap of his coat, revealing a longshoreman’s hook.
And a rich-looking flask no dockworker could afford.
He patted the silver container. “There is more where this comes from. A case of fine Irish whiskey fell off the pier into my arms today.”
Oh dear. Did that brag mean Robert had stolen from the cargo ship he unloaded?
No, she must have misunderstood. Though often contemptuous of his employers, Robert could not have done something so dishonest and disloyal to those who paid his wage. Her father was in the business of importing and exporting, and so she knew losses from theft were ruinous to ship owners.
When Robert rubbed a dirty hand across his chest and blew out a breath, she studiously avoided the fragrant exhale.
“Not a bad haul,” he boasted. “And not a bad day, especially after you see to me.”
See to him?
Of course. See to him.
She gulped. “Here?”
“Why not?” He swatted her most prized possession, her Moleskine notebook, aside. “Hop on board the desk.”
She had yet to be nude in Robert’s company, nor had he been unclothed in hers. To enter her, he merely pushed into the split in her drawers. The first time, her virgin’s blood had flecked the linen, staining the delicate cloth.
An utter disaster if discovered by her maid, as Jeannie kept a calendar on when Veronica’s monthlies were due and would question the stain’s untimely appearance. In avoidance of detection, she’d had to sneak the underclothes into the fireplace and burn the evidence of her lost hymen.
Veronica shivered in lust. “I could remove them.”
“Remove what?”
“My drawers.” Utterly transported by her own erotic daring, she suggested, “I could take them off. I could remove everything. Entirely disrobe for you. Slowly. Dropping each article of clothing at a snail’s pace and…”
Robert drew back. “What indecency is this? You hoity-toity society ladies have no shame.”
Oh dear. Her idea had run amok. For all his swagger, Robert was a bit of a prude. In his opinion, she must have overstepped the bounds of propriety.
“I do apologize,” she offered contritely.
When would she learn?
Hiding her base urges, she bunched up her skirts, hopped on top of the desk, and spread her thighs, schooling herself to look away.
Robert disliked being looked at there. Consequently, she had yet to glimpse his cock.
She rolled the last along her tongue, a lovely word she knew would shock her lover but which highly stimulated her. Seeing his cock would act on her similarly; she just knew it would.
Nevertheless, she clamped down on her improper desire and dutifully closed her eyes.
Chapter Four
Talbot clung to the shadows as he observed the goings on inside the library.
Without question, he should never have looked in on Miss Cooper in the first place. Barring that, he should have simply left his post by the open hallway door as soon as the scraggly dockhand arrived, a gentleman’s retreat in the name of granting the lovebirds privacy.
The problem was, the unfolding situation was anything but simple, and Talbot had never, not by birth nor by temperament, come close to being a gentleman.
He was a publisher, with ink under his nails and print in his blood. As a young apprentice working for the news weeklies, he had in fact given his blood for publishing. The War Between the States had ended twenty-five years earlier, but every time his leg throbbed, the Battle of Gettysburg came rushing back to him. Only a lad of thirteen at the time, he had been shuffling along like an old man ever since.
The point was, he had not retreated from his responsibilities to the printed word then, and neither would he retreat here. For all that Miss Cooper was a silly goose in suffragist guise, she had the makings of an excellent writer, and Talbot meant to safeguard her gift. By all outward indications, her companion was a dock thug, and the lady might call out for a rescue. As her self-appointed protector, he stayed on.
To watch.
Sad to say, he was no novice to the activity. Boston’s infamous red-light district was his home away from home. He knew all about the pleasures found on the seamy part of town.
Dancehalls, in particular, drew him. He would spend hours ogling chorus lines of dancers, oftentimes sans drawers beneath their ruffled cancan costumes, their knees lifting and falling in perfect sync like pistons in pumps and compressors or cylinders in engines. The fleeting glimpse of pussy only added to his fascination. Primed and ready to go, he would trot himself off to the North End. Bypassing taverns—drinking hard spirits was not one of his vices—he would duck into one of the many brothels dotting the gaslit streets. One that offered clean linens as a precaution against bedbug bites, healthy whores as a precaution against acquiring the accursed French Disease, and closed-mouthed madams as a precaution against tarnishing his professional reputation.
If the mud press ever got wind of his little hobby, the resultant story could destroy his publishing company. To guard his confidentiality, he paid thousands in hush money all for the privilege of doing nothing.
But look.
Whereas peeping at Miss Cooper with her unkempt companion cost him nothing. Then again, you get what you pay for.
In this case, nothing.
An amount equal to the satisfaction Miss Cooper seemed likely to receive from the dock rat.
The author’s fountain pen had to be wetter than her quim, understandable given the longshoreman’s ineptness. Her lover had yet to touch her, kiss her, or do anything else that warranted her fevered declaration of—
“Oh, Robert, I beg you, enter me. Do! I shall expire if you hold yourself back from me a moment longer.”
Hold himself back?
Talbot must have blinked and missed something. Because never, not in all his voyeuristic days, had he witnessed a more tepid foreplay. And he had viewed a few in his time.
The dock rat had hardly broken a sweat. As to Miss Cooper, her effusive entreaty rang false to Talbot’s ears.
The lady doth gush too much.
In marked contrast to her genuine but sparse writing style in Diary where her prose had been evocative without reliance on flowery constructs. Her innocently candid yearnings had wrung him dry, and he had the stuck-together book pages to prove it.
Rather than falling victim to lust, Miss Cooper appeared to be acting a part, a waste of her thespian skills. Her lazy partner deserved none of her role-playing.
With a heave, the longshoreman made short work of the penetration, Miss Cooper’s pained expression telling Talbot the entry was more an arid poke than a slippery slide. Careless thrusts followed and raced to the finish line, leaving her waiting at the gate for the starting whistle to blow.
Talbot rolled his eyes. A sneeze would have shaken Miss Cooper more. Where was the wild flailing? Her breathless cries? His grunts and groans? Their naked and quivering flesh?
Debauchery this was not. A romantic tryst this was not. What the hell was this?
Definitely not a voyeur’s dream come true. Sunday-morning prayer service at Trinity Church offered more fevered abandon. Had Talbot spent cash for this peep, he would have demanded the return of his good coin.
Miss Cooper had publically pr
oclaimed herself an advocate of free love. Now he knew why. Who would pay for a nonevent like this?
The grand finale, always the best part of the show, swiftly approached. The dockhand was about to climax. His face had grown taut; his expression had darkened—signs of impending ejaculation.
And then…and then…
“Thank you, Robert.”
Out in the hall, Talbot’s mouth gaped.
What? That was it? If that pathetic end to the fuck was the dock rat’s idea of a big finish, what the Christ had she thanked him for?
For that matter, what was Talbot still doing here?
Right. Protecting Miss Cooper from the thug.
Talbot shook his head. Sex had disappointed him before, both doing and watching, but this time took the cake.
Miss Cooper glanced away from her lover. “You were wonderful, Robert.”
Huh?
Talbot stifled his gag so as not to give his presence in the hall away.
She called that wonderful?
Only if a travesty was wonderful. Only if a parody was wonderful. Leading Talbot to conclude that her feverish declaration was either a lie or Mad Hatter delusion.
Her darting gaze supported the former. Liars could never look anyone in the face. But to give her the benefit of his doubt, Talbot fixed his sights to the direction of hers.
And wound up at her notebook.
For definite, Miss Cooper had not climaxed. A woman does not go in search of a pad of paper before the afterglow even wears off.
But if not an earth-moving orgasm, what the hell was she in such an all-fired rush to write about in her notebook?
Nothing.
She had nothing to write about in that notebook.
Except the makings of another bestseller.
What others called lying or Mad Hatter delusion, the publishing world called creativity. Veronica Cooper had bushels of it and then some.
And what did that call Talbot?
Amazingly astute for believing the author could spin something book-worthy out of even a nonevent.
His limp pointed to a youth lost, but being right never did grow old. He had known all along Miss Cooper was one hell of a fine writer, and he was contracting her second book regardless of what he had to do to get it.
* * *
Seated atop the desk in the library, Veronica tried not to fidget.
Would Robert never leave?
Of course, she loved him to absolute pieces, but would he just go?
Positively desperate to return to her writing, she hurried him along. “I shan’t keep you. After toiling all day at the pier, you must be famished.”
“I could eat a horse.”
Her nose crinkled.
Ewwww. How perfectly disgusting.
Made more so by the credibility of his statement. Robert could indeed eat a horse.
Was he hung like one?
She dragged her gaze away from her notebook, where a dark moment pleaded to be completed, and looked over at him, a southerly glance.
Alas, to no avail. Her modest lover had already stuffed his member sight unseen back into his trousers.
“Food here, ain’t there?” he asked.
Ignoring his slaughtering of the English language, she considered Robert’s question. Their generous host that evening had provided a lovely buffet, watercress sandwiches, deviled eggs, and such fare.
Tea foods that catered to the delicate palate would never do Robert, a strictly (horse)meat and potatoes man. And he was in work clothes, his breath reeking of whiskey. When had he trimmed his beard last?
His mingling with this esteemed literary group would embarrass her.
Oops! At the slip, Veronica bit her lip. She meant him. Of course, she meant him. In Robert’s present dishabille, mingling would embarrass him. Not her. She absolutely adored him just as he was.
Dim as an unlit candlewick.
And that was just too, too terrible of her to think.
After straightening out her skirts…and her evil grin…she slid both feet to the floor. Though not discomforted nearly as much this time, she longed to go home and bathe. Seminal fluids saturated her pubic hair, which in turn made her drawers cling. Refreshed and with a change of clothing, perhaps then she would be able to return to writing the unfinished dark moment.
First, to rush a certain someone out the door.
“Perhaps, Robert, if I gave you money, you might dine elsewhere…” Though not penniless, her lover was often insolvent. Or, minimally, short of funds. He often accepted loans from her, which she was confident he would repay.
Someday.
She loosened the drawstring on her French reticule, and he promptly extended his hand. He kept it there, midair, palm upward, even after she had emptied the bag’s contents, a few bills, into his clutching fingers.
Her money purse’s metal fastener made a resounding snap as she closed it. “I fear that is the extent of my available money, Robert. My allowance is quite depleted until the first of next month.”
“But you can get more. Right?” Robert stuffed the cash inside his coat alongside the stolen flask of whiskey and then stepped back. “You know, an advance. For the fripperies and whatnots you society ladies buy.”
Robert’s whining tore at her heartstrings. Really it did. But when on earth would he leave?
“I could go begging to Papa for the money,” she suggested. Now scoot, Robert! Scoot.
“See that you do.” He squeezed her bosom.
Uh. Uh. Uh. Oh! It was the first time he or anyone had ever touched her breast, and her breathing stuttered in her throat.
“You like that,” he said and continued to fondle her.
“Yes, yes, indeed I quite do,” she uttered haltingly, “And…and…not to worry over my getting the advance from Papa. I shall make up something, a story, about how I need a…a…”
Red-handled cane.
Where had that come from?
Worse still, where had he come from?
As Robert cupped her bosom, plumped above the corset, the staid gentleman from the audience popped into her mind. Her heart slammed against her ribs and her belly knotted, while down below there came a rather odd sensation, an opening, a gnawing…the same sort of wanting she had experienced earlier when fantasizing about what the staring gentleman from the book reading would do to her.
With his red-handled cane.
Goodness! She could easily couple again.
Not with Robert. With the man who had said, “Miss Cooper, a moment of your time, if you please.”
His voice. His voice.
His lovely, deep, melodic, sexual voice had demanded more of her than she could give, and so she had fled, willing herself not to remember the timbre of his voice, to forget that he had ever approached her.
Nothing worked. Not even having relations with Robert had exorcised the memory of the staring gentleman from her thoughts.
What if fear had not gotten in the way and she had consented to speak with him? Would she still be here with Robert now?
“Go on,” she practically shouted at her lover. “Leave.”
He gave her nipple one last hard twist, making it ache, making it burn. Or, was the man with red-handled cane responsible for her reaction?
“When your daddy forks over the sawbuck, come see me down on the pier.”
Ten dollars! How would she convince her father to advance her a full quarter’s allowance?
But…
All right,” she said, relenting, just to get him gone. “When?”
“Next Tuesday night, the alley where the whores congregate,” Robert shot over his shoulder as he left through the open hallway door, a door she could have sworn she had closed.
Carelessness like that might very well spell her undoing. Someone, anyone, a passerby…a gentleman with a red-handled cane…might have observed her through that open hallway door. One thing to write a fictionalized diary account of her life, and quite another to have events acted upon her—witho
ut her expressed desire or consent. To grow into the sort of woman and writer she wished to be, she must open herself up to sexual adventures. Societal restraints must not hem her in. She must not allow fear of the unknown and the possible judgmental condemnation of others to stand in her way. To do so would only lead to stagnation in her personal and professional life. Writers drew from the world around them, after all. And sex was part of that world. But she must retain authorship of those experiences; they must not write her into a corner from which there was no graceful escape. To do that, she must filter those experiences through her own level of comfort. Being seen in the act by a hoard of anonymous strangers was just too, too terribly tawdry for her.
Though—though—with that said, the thought of being observed by the man with the red-handled cane was not entirely objectionable.
As a forgotten man’s semen cooled, then congealed inside her drawers, she shivered uncontrollably.
Chapter Five
In front of Talbot’s desk, Walter Higgins removed his fogged-over spectacles and swiped them across his coat sleeve. “Sir, I just now finished reading this week’s edition of Around Town and in the Know and I thought you should know—”
Talbot nipped the discussion in the bud. “Salacious gossip holds no particular interest for me.”
“This scandal sheet article will interest you, sir.”
“Very well. Go on, Higgins. Spit it out, so we can both return to work.”
“Last week, a man and woman were found in a compromising position on the wharves, sir.”
“Hardly newsworthy journalism, Higgins.”
“No identity on the man, as the reporter never mentioned him specifically by name, but the woman in question was that new author, Miss Veronica Cooper.”
A blast of scorching sexual heat suffused Talbot. “Was it a Tuesday?”
Higgins perched his lenses back atop his narrow nose. “I believe so, sir. I believe it was a Tuesday.”
Rapidly stiffening one place, the starch taken out of him everywhere else, Talbot fell back against his chair.
In Boston literary society, gossip flowed as freely as cheap wine. Especially about promising young talent. Most especially about promising young female talent. Fortunately, gossip was just that—gossip, unsubstantiated innuendo, and rumor motivated by petty jealousy and bitter resentment within the community itself. Having peeped through a library door at the couple under discussion, Talbot understood the scandal sheet article reported the gospel truth.
