Virgin Enchained (Virgin Series Book 4)

by Louisa Trent

  “We have a respectable association.”

  I spat, “Even your wording sounds dry. Her cunt must be dry as well.”

  “We do not have the sort of association a man has with his whore, if that is what you mean.”

  “My very point. You need more than respectable association from a whore. You have dark impulses only a woman like me can satisfy.”

  He sent me a brooding look. “You are obviously overwrought, for which I am truly sorry. My mistress is a good woman. She in no way deserves a tongue-lashing. Know this…there is no comparison between you and she. None! Now, I must be off. I told her I would be by early afternoon. I dislike keeping her waiting.”

  When he turned away, I placed my hand on his arm to halt him. “She must be very beautiful.”

  “You are very beautiful,” he replied morosely.

  Unsatisfied with that answer, I interrogated him, searching out more cause for him to leave me for her. A reason! He had to have a reason. “She must be a siren when naked.”

  “I have never seen her naked.”

  “What! But you sleep with her.”

  “No. We converse only, mainly about her farm crops and animals. I find the whole subject fascinating. As a boy, I always yearned to live on a farm. Still do.”

  Oh, this was so much worse than I imagined. Not even a physical bond kept those two together? They never even indulged in carnality?

  I could never measure up to a wholesome woman like that. She was not a cheat, after all. No doubt during his visits to her, his married mistress would be respectably dressed and groomed, perhaps even wearing a tidy kitchen apron over her homespun calico gown, her every hair anchored tightly in place. She most likely never wore the animalistic scent of arousal on her person either, as I always did, when he and I were together. I exuded the perfume of sex from my every pore.

  My shoulder slumping in defeat, my peaked nipples finally softening, my arms falling to my sides, the hands unclenched. No use trying to tempt him. In his head, he had already departed. And I had to let him go. “Her husband is ill you said.”

  “Not ill. Dying. With the money I pay her, she is able to hire extra hands to help out. Otherwise, she would lose the place.”

  Still, some of the bite remained on my tongue. “You see this paragon of virtue out of charity?”

  “No. Not charity,” he said patiently. “I like and respect her.”

  As he would never like and respect me, a debased woman who had sold her body to him?

  He would never say such a thing to me. Never would he hurt my feelings that way. Yet, in my despair, that was what I heard. The unexpressed sentiment hung in the air between us.

  Once again, I reached out to him, said dismally, “You could confide me, sir.”

  “I would never wish to burden you like that. And besides, that is not what we – what this – is about,” he said absently while checking his timepiece. “Now I have already said too much. Lest I violate even more of my mistress’s privacy, I shan’t say any more. if you will kindly excuse me? I should have left hours ago.”

  When I dropped my hand from his arm, he rushed off to see his mistress.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning, as I toured the secret garden for what would be my final time, Tim, the barkeep, rushed toward me. “There you are now. I have been looking everywhere for you, Miss.”

  I shrugged. “Just meditating amongst the flowers.”

  “Sorry for the interruption but this just came for you.” He held out a small envelope. “A young lad driving a farm wagon delivered it straight to the door. With that kind of service, I figured it must be something important.”

  “Thank you,” I listlessly replied.

  Not until Tim departed did I even bother to look downward at my hand. Why examine the envelope?

  No doubt it contained a message from Mr. Simmons.

  Keeping to his plans, as I knew he would, he had not returned to me the previous night. I still felt the aftereffects of tossing and turning in bed, going over and over the mistake I had made with him.

  The day before, I had done the unthinkable – I had behaved as a whore with Mr. Simmons. There was no fixing it or escaping it or prettying it up. In doing as I did, I had cheapened what we’d had together.

  It was not the carnal act itself that shamed me so much as the dishonest reason behind my instigating it. I had deliberately set out to seduce Mr. Simmons. And love had not motivated me. Neither did lust. I did what I did only to prevent Mr. Simmons from leaving me.

  Pathetic.

  Right from the very beginning, Mr. Simmons had been a friend to me, and I had certainly not returned the favor yesterday. Instead, I had manipulated the sexual attraction he felt toward me and, by so doing, had undermined all we had in our brief time together. In my selfishness, I had cheapened everything. The memory I might otherwise have taken with me was destroyed now. Maliciously vandalized by my own hand. I would leave here with a bad taste in my mouth. And no one had caused that bad taste but me.

  I had sold my body to a man for personal gain. I had done it as willfully as a common prostitute under a streetlamp out on North Street. The only difference being money had not been the object of my whoring. What I had thought to gain was the enduring love of Mr. Simmons.

  I would have done anything to keep him away from her – his married mistress, my competition for his time and affection. My mistake had been in thinking any carnal act, even one she would never consent to, would have prompted him to choose me over her. Only to have found out that those two only talked. Nothing else, but talked.

  After reading the contents of the message, I realized nothing I could have done would have changed today’s outcome – Mr. Simmons would have been lost to me regardless.

  The husband of his mistress had died. The death had been expected for quite some time. So like the honorable Mr. Simmons to wait for her to be free of her prior obligation before joining her. Because she was now a widow, Mr. Simmons had gone with a clear conscience to the woman he loved. How could I condemn him for wishing to be with her?

  I could not. I could only condemn myself for trying to keep him away from her. By offering him a full range of carnality, I had not fought fairly.

  God, how I wished I could be like her. Wholesome and homespun, my sexual appetites non-existent or at least not objectionable.

  I had to face the facts – marriage between those two was inevitable. And the ceremony would most likely take place in the near future. I needed to get myself gone from this place before the man I loved arrived back with his new bride in tow.

  There was nothing to keep me here at the gambling den any longer. I had fulfilled my responsibility to the children’s arts program and Mr. Simmons would no longer need me to warm his bed.

  And so I would leave. Now. While he was still in farm country, I would take the coward’s way out and go.

  Sneaking away was the considerate thing to do…for all three of us. I was very sure his new wife would have had no desire to meet her husband’s past whore. In my opinion, there could be nothing more uncomfortable than us two women having to be polite to one another. Or, at least not rude. And for what? Why put all three of us through all that pain?

  It was not as though I had ever meant anything to Mr. Simmons. From the very beginning, I had thrown myself at him, made it impossible for him to refuse what I offered, which was blatant carnality. That I had been a virgin our first time together was neither here nor there. Nor would he ever find it out. That fact would remain my secret.

  I shivered. Had a sudden chill taken over the weather?

  Alas, no. A dip in temperature had not caused me to rub my arms to stay warm. A terrible upset had caused my chill. Regardless, I had to get through this.

  So I was alone in the world?

  Nothing new there. I had been alone since birth.

  No need to worry, either, about where to go. I was in a much better place now financially than ever before. I had a tidy littl
e nest egg put aside for a rainy day – Mr. Simmons had been frugal with his affection but more than liberal with gifts and salary. He had well compensated me for his use of my body, including a generous bonus tucked in the envelope note he had left for me with my friend Clarissa before his departure. He claimed the money was an advance on a winter hostess wardrobe, in case I wished to try a modiste of my own selection – someone “French” he had written, a wink and a nod to my fixation with France.

  I knew differently. The so-called advance was really a payoff for our scandalous last time together.

  At any rate, the money would go toward housing. The cash would guarantee my finding a nice boarding house this time around, a task I would undertake after my visit with Mr. Claret.

  Prior to receiving the note from Mr. Simmons, I had arranged the meeting with the dance aficionado. After realizing what I done my last time with Mr. Simmons, I had already made up my mind to go.

  With a sigh, I took one more stroll around the garden beds. Should Mr. Claret still want me for his new dance company, I had some packing to do…

  And a goodbye note to write.

  In the course of my letter I would apologize to Mr. Simmons for leaving him without a hostess on such short notice, creating an unexpected hole in the work roster. But even as I wrote the trite words, I knew I was not indispensible to his gambling operation. He would find someone in short order to replace me.

  If he would even bother.

  I still felt Mr. Simmons had created something for me to do as an act of kindness, busywork while I recovered from the blow of my firing from the dancehall.

  Mr. Simmons would certainly do something like that. He was a good man. And I still loved him, still thought the world of him. Not his fault that he loved another and would prefer being with her over me. Affection cannot be forced.

  At any rate, my only regret was my bad behavior during our last time together.

  * * * *

  I packed lightly for my leave-taking. The expensive clothing, those heavily bejeweled brocades and sumptuous velvets, I wore each night for my hostess duties?

  Abandoned. The lovely evening gowns would only weigh me down. And were most likely unnecessary to this new position, as were any clothes at all.

  If I succeeded in pleasing Mr. Claret with my footwork, tutus would be my new everyday wardrobe. Fine by me. And if I found myself wearing less, much less as part of my obligations to the company owner – what then?

  I had yet to decide what I would do. But as part of the dance culture, I understood how these things worked. One hand washed the other in this business.

  Soon I would find out where I stood as far as that went. Today’s meeting would be no ordinary rehearsal. Today, I would be judged on more than my talent. I was sure Mr. Claret would determine if I would go along to get along before ever hiring me.

  Opening a new dance company made for an expensive proposition. Unless Mr. Claret’s pockets were exceptionally deep, he would need financing to get his troupe up on their toes. If the company owner required female dancers to bring in additional revenue through illicit making arrangements with rich patrons, I would have to know this before ever agreeing to tie on ballet slippers.

  And, once again, I had yet to make up my mind what I would do. But if I refused now, it did seem to me that an impoverished woman like myself would eventually end up having to do just that somewhere else, with someone else, somewhere else down the line.

  And not out of love as I had done with Mr. Simmons.

  As thriftiness was part of my nature, I put aside all thoughts of hiring a carriage to take me where I needed to go, which was not exactly uptown, but not within the Red-light District either. I was headed for the fringe area, where legitimate theatre productions peacefully coexisted with less tony forms of entertainment.

  Ballet, considered a cultured art form in most of Europe with numerous patrons to support its productions, remained a mostly unrecognized venue in this country. This meant bringing in outside funding was even more essential here than across the ocean so…

  Before I finished that last thought, an arm snaked around my waist and dragged me into an alleyway.

  No,no,no! This could not be happening to a street-savvy person such as myself. Only, it was happening. Not to some naïve tourist visiting from out-of-town but to a jaded resident of the Red-light District. And I could pinpoint exactly how it had happened:

  My thoughts had been occupied. Consequently, I had not heeded where I was going. All the usual landmarks that should have warned me off had failed to register on my distracted attention. When I came abreast of one of the many notoriously dangerous intersections in the area, I had practically bumped into a waiting assailant with open arms.

  I should have smelled him before ever seeing him. Tobacco and sweat and a generalized and not easily identifiable sour stink withered my nostrils. Naturally, I fought back against my odiferous attacker, but he soon strong-armed me into a terrified passivity.

  “Dump the contents of your reticule on the ground, missy.”

  Rather than following his instructions, I came out fighting, beating him about the skull with my bag. “Fuck off, scurvy knave.”

  All things considered, I had packed light. Still, everything I owned was inside that reticule, not a great deal, but it was mine, and he was not getting his filthy hands on it. Down to the bricks was where this crook was going.

  He got a taste of my bitterness upon his arrival under my boot.

  In the art of the cancan, I was known as a high-stepper, with a dancer’s muscled legs to prove it. I kicked the bejesus out of my assailant with my pointy-cobbled toes, and I kept right on kicking until he cried out for mercy.

  Had he ever made a mistake in picking on me! Wrong day. Wrong person. I was not in the mood.

  “Leave a little something for me and the boyos to finish off, would ye, me bonnie colleen?” a lilting brogue admonished. “Otherwise your darlin’ will be draggin’ me poor Irish arse all over town.”

  Charley McDougal. None other.

  “For your information, Mr. Simmons is not my darlin’.”

  “ ‘Tis sad I am to hear it. You managed to pry the stick out of Matt’s arse when no one else could. ‘Tis a fine influence ye were on him.” So saying, the gang leader tossed me a clean rag.

  I used it to wipe the blood off my shoes, then handed the rag back. “I no longer work at the gambling den.”

  “Altogether too bad. Matt must be devastated by yer leaving.”

  “He has yet to find out. His mistress called him and away he went to her.”

  “I see. Ah, well. He will be sorry to have lost ye. Mad in love with ye, he is.”

  “Fucking funny way he had of showing it, if he did love me, which he decidedly does not,” I pronounced with a laugh.

  “He hides his feelings. Bottles ‘em up, he does. He grew up in a place worse than the Red-light District, with a mother who whored hard and died young owing to it.”

  “How sad.”

  He nodded. “Matt swore then, when he was only a lad of ten or so, to do better for women in similar straits. After her death, he ran off.”

  “I heard he joined that circus.”

  “That he did. A position as a strong man. A good fit when taking into account the bloody huge size of him. Fists like hams, and knows how to use ‘em. He was only an overgrown lad, though. He had to toughen up fast. They treated him like a caged animal there at that fuckin’ circus. Never ye tell him I said so. Or any the rest of this tale. He will have me head if he finds out I spoke out of turn. He is not the sort to look for pity. I only got as much as I did out of him after he drained a good bottle of Irish Whisky with me on the anniversary of his mother’s death.

  “I tell ye, his upbringing left a crater-sized hole in him. He lived on the edge for a while, tried opium, but even that never took the bad memories away. So, he stopped.”

  My chortling had long since stopped and the tears began afresh. I lowered my head to hid
e the evidence of my heartbreak. It was then that I wished him well of his mistress. She seemed to have given him some peace, more than I had done.

  “I must be off, Charley. My thanks for rescuing me from a murder charge.”

  With a faked jaunty wave and a pretend bounce in my step, I set off for my new life. I’d had to start over many a time before. But beginnings never got easier.

  After ringing the front door bell, I was shown me into the vestibule. A very short delay, telling me Mr. Claret was as anxious to see me as I was to see him.

  My future hinged on getting this position. As to Mr. Claret – I had a fairly good idea of what motivated his excitement over seeing me and it had nothing to do with either my plies or high kicks.

  Nevertheless, I was prepared for any and all eventualities. But when he laid his lips to the underside of my wrist and his eyes twinkled over my fingers like a modern day Casanova, I knew no amount of preparation would be sufficient for this rogue.

  “I am so glad to see you, my dear. I thought nothing would tear you away from Matthews Simmons.”

  “The end of our relationship was on mutually agreeable terms, Mr. Claret,” I fibbed.

  “I must say I am surprised. I thought Matt would wish to keep you all for himself.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Later that same day we met, I told him I was comfortable sharing you – I am not territorial – and he informed me the choice was yours, not his. Generous of him, I thought at the time.”

  Seething inside at what Mr. Claret perceived as Mr. Simmons’s magnanimousness, I grew clearer in my thoughts. Suddenly my mind was made up. That so-called generosity of Mr. Simmons gave me me the incentive I needed to step out from behind a man and make my own decisions.

  I did not need anyone’s permission to do what I saw fit. I was my own person. I alone held ownership over my body and would make that known to this rascal immediately.

  “Mr. Claret, those kinds of personal choices are indeed up to me. Not Mr. Simmons. And certainly not you.”