Suzi Love

by Embracing Scandal

  After four hide-thickening years, Justin could retire from the loathsome industry of flesh-peddling and be free to concentrate all his energies on locating his lost family. But he’d expected to be hiring his thirty extra girls tonight and setting them to work practicing their parts in the exotic fantasies he had planned. His annoyance rose once more and he felt ready to erupt, much like the storm threatening to explode in the square outside.

  At least six of the twenty girls parading around his library pretended to earn their daily bread and butter by hawking oranges to theatre patrons around Covent Garden. In truth, their money was earned by enticing well-heeled gents away from their friends and giving them some extra entertainment in the surrounding alleys. It worried him that performing as a group wasn’t their usual field of expertise but with time running out, he’d decided if he couldn’t provide top quality ladybirds for his customers, he’d have the men’s eyes popping out of their heads and their senses overwhelmed with a large quantity of performers.

  Dammit. That meant he couldn’t afford to kick anyone out of his house and back to the street. Perhaps the woman in black truly was a widow. City streets teemed with women left in dire financial straits by men who gambled or drank too much and forced the women to take up streetwalking to feed their family. The cumbersome layers of neck to ankle clothing proved she wasn’t comfortable with flaunting her body like the more seasoned girls were doing.

  He tried for a more encouraging tone this time. “I’m rather short of time, my love, but I need workers, and you need work. Now, let’s remove that repulsive costume so we can see what you’ve been hiding.”

  The woman straightened her shoulders and appeared ready to speak, but instead of words coming out her lace veil sucked into her mouth and she choked and coughed. Justin moved to help but the woman frantically waved her hand to keep him away.

  He turned away to allow her time to recover her breath and spoke to Bart and Thomas, his best friends since their days at Eton when they’d banded together to fight off bullies. Lord Bartholomew Branxton, now the tenth Earl of Brimley and as comfortable in low-class brothels as high-class ballrooms, lay sprawled across an elegant French settee with one long leg dangling over a spindly arm. Thomas, outranking them both since becoming the Duke of Rowbrough after the recent death of his father, balanced his considerable girth in an armchair that was equally unsuited to hold anyone but a petite lady.

  “What the hell am I going to do? Billy used all my spare money to grease the palms of those madams. And all he managed to find me is twenty performers.”

  “Brothel keepers can never be trusted,” Bart said with a grin. “Giving money to your competitors was bound to come back and bite you in the bum.”

  “The alternative was standing on street corners and doing my own procuring.”

  “That would have only earned you a knife in the ribs, not any hirelings.”

  “And,” Thomas said, “it’s far too dangerous for a gentleman to loiter on any street in those seedier districts. Sort of thing only thieves and brothel keepers do.”

  Justin looked at Bart and rolled his eyes. No point reminding Thomas that Justin had owned his own bawdy house for the past four years because Thomas preferred to cover his ears rather than discuss the seedy ways a viscount had been forced to earn his money.

  To some extent, Justin agreed with his friend. Owning a Pleasure House, the haunt of the richest of the upper ten thousand, and catering to a vastly different clientele than a common whorehouse, didn’t make him a brothel keeper … though he’d collected his first real money on his back and servicing the rich and lustful, just as his girls did now.

  Ignoring Thomas’s well-meant but always uncomprehending comments, Justin spoke to Bart. “The three rooms for the Sultan’s Harem require a minimum of twenty slave girls. And the fetish rooms will be open all week.”

  He watched the girls strut around the room’s perimeter, bodices removed or pulled wide to display their bountiful assets, thoroughly enjoying themselves. They played to their audience, only three men this evening, but they flaunted and posed as if the room were filled with eager patrons. Billy had followed his orders to some extent because they all had vibrant coloring and, as prostitutes rarely wore undergarments, each time one bent, lifted, arched, or pointed a leg, they revealed swatches of hair, often dyed in vibrant colors to match their head. But for Justin, pussies — painted, plaited, bald, or plain — had become commonplace.

  “Lovely girls,” Justin said, summoning his most winning smile. “You are all exquisite. Gentlemen attending my gala will be charmed by your beauty.” Their squeals of delight made him laugh. “So yes, you’re all hired. You’ll be given lessons on how to act like harem slaves and taught to dance with veils.” More tittering from the girls. He glanced back at the ghoulishly dressed woman and shuddered. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough performers yet. And it appears my man found the only working girl in London who is too shy to disrobe before a crowd.”

  “My lord! You misunderstand!”

  Her words surprised him. “Ah! Finally. She speaks.” The woman sounded confused and upset, yet she spoke with a cultured voice.

  She hurried forward a few steps to the center of the room. “I’m not one of them.” She waved a hand toward the other girls. “I’m not a pr … pros … ”

  She broke off and looked around the line of girls who stared back at her. Their faces showed a mix of defiance, anger, or amusement but hers showed terror. Her gaze fixed on the wall above the girl’s heads, as if she’d swoon if she focused on their bared chests.

  Sucking in deep breaths, Justin prayed for patience. “Everyone here tonight is auditioning for a role in my theatrical. Slaves for the Sultan’s Palace.” Her eyes went wide and she gasped. For the first time he considered the possibility that she may not be a working girl of any description, experienced or newcomer, and that she may not be one of the endless parade of rich women who tried to sneak into his bed. “Why have you come, if not for that?”

  She appeared to be again searching for words. Uneducated, or merely shy? He circled around her and inspected her figure and face. Whoever she may be, her above average height and long straight neck would make the perfect employee for the discipline room. It never ceased to amaze him how gentlemen who suffered daily haranguing from their wives at home appeared on his doorstep the moment they heard a more ferocious whip-wielding female had been hired. Majestic women he could appreciate. Stern or brutal ones, never.

  Justin’s favorites were like those now being appreciated by his two friends. Or at least, his tastes had run toward large breasted and loud-laughing women in the past. His two friends presently wore identical grins of blissful contentment as their laps overflowed with the ample rear ends and bouncing breasts belonging to four Covent Garden actresses. Though Bart and Thomas were as different as the devil and an angel, both loved having this unique chance of helping Justin cast ladybirds to act in his exotically named Sultan’s Harem.

  Justin studied the woman again, uncaring that his scrutiny seemed to make her uncomfortable. Any female who brazenly pushed her way into a viscount’s residence deserved to suffer the consequences. He’d been forced to reveal his address to several people tonight, knowing his stern and forceful butler usually delighted in evicting any unwanted intruders, but he already regretted breaking his own rule.

  “What do you think?” Justin decided that if the woman weren’t going to reveal her true identity, he’d continue treating her as a prostitute. “She’d make a fine whip-cracker.”

  “Hard to tell,” Bart said. He and Thomas gave the woman an even closer scrutiny. “Not without showing us what sort of body is under that mountain of fabric.”

  With a wave of his hand, Justin said, “If you’re new to the profession, love, there’s no need for modesty. We’ve seen it all before.” He indicated the high flyers that filled his room with cheap perfume, cheap clothing, and hopeful looks. “As these girls know, you’ll earn better coin perfor
ming for me for a short time than a year’s worth of peddling yourself on the streets.” He flicked a glance at the ornate clock, another thing he’d inherited that he didn’t particularly like but that he had, either from apathy or defiance, left in that same position since his mother had been banished by his father years ago. “But please, if you’re staying, get rid of your clothing. If you’re going, leave now.”

  A buxom redhead sat, straddling the arm of his wing chair, and waited for Justin’s return. Naked to the waist, she’d spread her legs wide in a blatant bribe to hire her as one of his dancers. Justin grinned at her, though he spoke to the black-clad woman. “I’ve several pressing matters to attend to.”

  “Pressing matters, indeed,” she said, rolling her eyes and not trying to hide her scorn. “I promise to not take up more than ten minutes of your … valuable time.”

  He gave a small snort of laughter. In response, the strumpet in his chair giggled, an out-of-place girlish sound, cupped both her large breasts, and lifted them higher, to better display her claret nipples. Like lush cherries, they were waiting for a man to open his mouth around them and suck.

  “Justin, old boy,” Bart said, his face split with a grin. “You’d better hustle. Those titties are so ripe they’re about to drop off their stalks. If you don’t come, it’ll be my tongue under there and catching them as they fall.”

  Justin chuckled. The three men trusted each other implicitly, whether it was with their fortunes or their women. They’d combined their talents, their earnings, and had taken enormous risks in the money market until now — though they didn’t advertise this fact, they owned sizeable slices of London property and English factories. Without his friends’ unflagging support over the past three years, Justin would never have had enough coin to employ dozens of investigators to search across England and Scotland for his mother and sisters.

  The woman cleared her throat, loudly, clearly determined to pull Justin’s attention back to her. “My lord, please listen to me. I have a proposal to discuss with you.”

  “Look around, pet.” He waved at the posturing demireps. “Every girl here is offering me something tonight.”

  Desperate for well-paid employment, the girls took their cue and swarmed around Justin, draping themselves suggestively all over him. There was a chorus of cries and entreaties. “Oooh, yes, yes, my lord” or “Pick me, my lord.” Added to these were many highly exaggerated tributes to his manly physique and his awe-inspiring sexual prowess.

  Hearing the outrageous compliments the girls were flinging at him, Bart and Thomas roared with laughter. Above the women’s loud and flattering cries, Justin heard several loud sniggers. Ah ha! His mysterious lady paid attention, even if she declined to reveal herself, or her intentions, quite yet. He smiled inwardly and, as her height was only a couple of inches less than his, looked at her over the tops of several bent female heads. The girls were occupying themselves by licking or kissing every inch of his bare skin they could find. He squirmed, but more from being tickled than from arousal.

  “What makes your offer any different?”

  “In contrast to these … eh … women,” she said, her eyebrows rising to show what she thought of their antics. “My proposal doesn’t involve anyone undressing. Or at least, not tonight. Perhaps later, though I’m not certain about the specifics.”

  It was damned hard to concentrate on the woman’s stumbling explanation, but her insecurities intrigued him. Such a refreshing change from the brazen claims made by many of the titled bitches he’d been forced to deal with. He clasped the hands of the girl intent on unbuttoning the flap of his trousers so he could listen. “I’m offering you an exchange of information and services. One of benefit to us both.”

  He was distracted again by a saucy raven-haired temptress creating a ruckus in the middle of the room, a determined effort to claim his attention. She dragged back a large corner of Persian carpet and stood posed, center stage, until she could catch his gaze with her mesmerizing eyes, the obsidian color found in nomadic gypsy tribes. After raising her bare arms, she began to clap and dance and sing in the wild and passionate rhythm of the Rom, the one the gypsies used for arousal. He shrugged an indifferent shoulder and was amused when the fiery gypsy hissed at him.

  The teasing vixen reached down to drag her gaily ribboned skirts to her waist, lifted her leg, and proffered her toes for him to suck. She struck an eloquent pose and waited for him to acknowledge the sensual heat of her performance, her compelling eyes issuing a blatant invitation to him for her to join him for more intimate acts later. Justin happily obliged her first demand by drawing her toes, one by one, into his mouth and making loud sucking sounds. Her other, unspoken, demand he ignored.

  Muttered but angry-sounding words beside him reminded him it was past time to deal with the black widow, and his throbbing head told him to ignore her proposal, whatever it was, and call a finish to the evening. By now, he should have chosen his line-up of Cyprians and sent them away so he could crawl into bed — alone.

  He addressed his assembly. “I apologize for being out of sorts tonight, but this shall be my pièce de résistance. You’ll form the most exotic group of harem slaves ever seen in England, created to entertain the crème de la crème of our society. I shall then be retiring from the Pleasure House.”

  “Dammit, Justin, I wish you would reconsider selling the club.” Bart lifted his blond head and fixed him with piercing blue eyes. “I do so enjoy our evenings at the house.”

  Justin turned to the woman and gave a half-bow. “So you see, madam, I really don’t care who you are, or what you have to offer. My time in this noble profession is about to come to an end. It appears that you like to watch, though. Stay until we are finished, if it entertains you. Otherwise, my butler will show you out.”

  At that moment, Justin pitied his intruder. There was something in her eyes, a weariness that matched his own, and for a split second she’d looked as weighed down with worry as he felt. As if, despite her head making a decision to leave, her body hadn’t agreed and kept her feet nailed to his floor. A lion cub hovering near the shelter of its den while it summoned up the courage to venture into the unknown. Nevertheless, her standoffish attitude had far out- lasted his small store of patience.

  He stepped closer and in reaction she moved back. As if remembering her reasons for coming, she shook her head and moved that same pace forward. Not as close as before, yet near enough to appear fearless.

  He sighed, and rubbed a fist across his aching eyes. “I’m fatigued, out of sorts, and my friends and I have business to conduct. Either join in, or leave.”

  He waved toward the door, hoping she’d walk out and leave him in peace, but also hoping, ridiculously, that she’d unveil, undress, and stay. Because something about this particular woman was different. Something about her stirred his first true sexual interest in many months.

  He smiled a little. “I’d still like to see a little more of you. I can’t even see the color of your hair.” He pointed toward her groin. “Top or bottom. Here, let me unbutton you,” he said, his fingers set to work on her top button, brushing the soft skin of her nape as he did so.

  She flinched and held tight to the gaping neck of her dress with clenched fists. “Please. Listen to me. I’m not seeking employment.”

  “Ah, then you’re simply a bitch in heat like all the others. Wanting a lusty tale to recount to your upper-class friends over tea and cake. Perhaps compare notes on Viscount Hawkesbury’s infamous prowess.”

  Her quick series of breaths hissed and sizzled like water spitting on hot coals. He heard the girls tut-tutting nearby, but taunting, teasing, and arousing the lioness who’d dared brave his den so late at night had proved too delicious a temptation to resist. Only one more jest at her expense and then he’d summon the butler and a couple of strong footmen, and bid her farewell.

  He turned, slowly and deliberately, and spoke to his two friends. “Gentlemen, which of you is capable of keeping your prick upright
long enough to provide such a lusty lady with the thrill she so clearly came to my house seeking?”

  Justin knew that in their heightened state of inebriation, neither Bart nor Thomas would be capable of servicing any girl tonight. And the Virile Viscount had given up such jaunts. The only business he involved himself in now was the palace and even then he kept a very low profile. By next month, he’d no longer own that either. His pleasuring days were finished. Investing in the rapidly expanding railway tracks and steam engines was far more profitable, and respectable, for a man who hoped to bring his mother and sisters home to live with him.

  Thomas, red-faced, lurched to his feet. “I say, Justin, she seems like a lady.”

  “Thomas, you should know by now, on the outside they’re all ladies. However, underneath they all seek the same thing.”

  The woman flinched. Justin yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth, and then collapsed back into his armchair. Leaning his head back on the headrest, he laughed.

  “My love, if you’ve better to show me than them, do as I’ve asked. Undress!”

  She muttered something that sounded like, “Rude swine.”

  He laughed and indicated the empty space on the chaise longue beside Bart. “If you’re suffering personal timidity, at least take a seat and watch. Give the girls your opinion on what tricks attract gentlemen the fastest. What do you do to entice a man?”

  Her hands fisted at her sides but she stood her ground. “I realize you’re amusing yourself at my expense, but I give you fair warning, my lord. If you continue with these childish taunts and force me to leave without letting me speak to you, in private, you’ll regret it later.”

  He pointed to the door. “And I’m also issuing a warning. Join in or leave. Perkins will show you out. I’ve run out of patience with the so-called weaker sex and the schemes and lies that women seem to delight in bringing to my door.”