“What can you do?”
“I’m healthy and strong and I’ll turn my hand to any kind of work you wanted done.”
The serving woman bustled over toward the kitchen, Sarah on her heels. “Well, we could do with another girl around the place, but I doubt the work would be to your liking.” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “It wouldn’t be what you were used to.”
Sarah’s heart leaped at the tantalizing prospect of being allowed to stay. “I’m not proud, though I was brought up a curate’s daughter,” she said, trying to quell the desperation in her voice. “I’ll scrub hearths and wash dishes and wait on the rudest gentlemen ever so politely.”
“A milliner is used to earning good money,” the serving woman said doubtfully. “What wages would you be wanting?”
To her horror Sarah found herself weeping. “I wouldn’t ask for any money,” she sobbed. She sank to the floor and clasped her arms around the serving woman’s knees. “Please take me on. You won’t be sorry. I’d work from dawn to dusk for a corner of the kitchen floor to sleep on and a morsel to eat. Anything to keep me off the streets. I’d die there, I know I would.”
The serving woman patted Sarah’s head with a comforting hand. “Now then, dearie, don’t take on so. There’s many a girl who’s had to go on the streets before you and has come out again none the worse for it.”
Sarah sobbed into her shawl, her shoulders heaving with every breath she took. “I couldn’t go on the streets, miss. Not with my father being a curate and all. He’d turn in his grave to see me brought so low.”
“We’ll have to see what we can do about getting you a position here then, won’t we, dearie. Now, come on and dry your eyes and I’ll take you to see Mrs. Erskine. She’s the lady as owns the coffee house and she’ll be the one who says whether you can stay or no.”
Sarah dragged a cotton handkerchief from her skirts and wiped her eyes as she slowly got to her feet. “I didn’t mean to take on so,” she whispered, ashamed of her sudden outburst. “Truly, I didn’t. It’s just that Emma from the milliner’s shop who got laid off just before me got so desperate she went on the streets last week.” She gave a sniffle. “Nobody’s seen her since.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She pushed open a back door that led into a dark corridor and shooed Sarah along. “Now come along sharpish, dearie. You can wait for Mrs. Erskine out back in the sitting room. It’s nice and private there, and you won’t be disturbed.”
The corridor echoed hollowly under her tread. Sarah stumbled quickly after her, hurrying to keep up. “Do you really think Mrs. Erskine might take me on?”
The serving woman gave a little laugh. “Soon as she sees your pretty face, dearie. Soon as she sees your pretty face.”
The door at the far end of the corridor opened, letting through a shaft of dim light. Two women appeared silhouetted in the doorway for a moment, before the door shut behind them. Their footsteps clattered on the bare wooden floor as they came toward him.
Tom shrank back into his corner and stayed as still as a statue. Thanks to the gloom of the corridor, he remained invisible as a ghost.
To his relief they did not come the length of the hallway, but opened a door halfway down, the door that led to the empty salon. He knew it was empty. It had been the first room he’d checked out when looking for the right dishonorable MP for Stoke-on-Trent.
“Wait in here, dearie,” he heard one of them say to the other. “I’ll let Mrs. Erskine know you’re waiting and she’ll be with you presently.”
One of the women went into the salon, and the other tripped her way back along the hallway and through the same door the pair of them had come in by.
As soon as she had gone, Tom came a little ways out of his corner and stretched his cramped limbs. Clearly another pretty little bird was about to be snared in Mrs. Erskine’s nets. He was curious to see her up close to see if she was as attractive as the girls in the other salon. From what he had seen so far today, Mrs. Erskine employed the best-looking girls in London. No other girls could match them.
His hands outstretched, he felt for the tiny peephole he had found earlier. His fingertips found it almost right away, and he crouched down to look through into the salon beyond.
He shook his head at the irony of his position. How his fellows would laugh if they saw him, the Adder of Fleet Street, behaving just like any two-a-penny peeping Tom.
Sarah sat on the edge of one of the sofas, waiting in trepidation for Mrs. Erskine to appear. Would she be a kindly woman who would give her a chance to live a decent life, or would she be rough and cruel and send her away again, her hopes dashed to the ground? She clenched her fists tightly together to stop herself from trembling. How she hoped that her luck was at last about to change, and that Mrs. Erskine would welcome her into her house hold.
She waited for some time wrapped up in her own thoughts, but Mrs. Erskine did not appear. Eventually she raised her eyes and looked around her, curious at last to see what kind of a house hold Mrs. Erskine ran. Maybe the room held some clues as to her character that would help during the coming interview.
The room was more sumptuous than she had realized on first entering. A large ornate rug covered the floor, while around the walls half a dozen sofas peered into the middle of the room, as if it were a stage.
She rose from the sofa to take a look around. At the far end of the room stood a pair of sideboards. One of them was covered with books and journals, casually resting in untidy piles. The other sideboard held a liberal collection of cut-glass decanters filled with spirits. She was tempted to take a hasty nip to calm her nerves, but she did not want Mrs. Erskine to think her a drunkard or a thief.
Instead, she idly examined the painting on the wall behind. One glance at the subject matter and she let out a gasp of shock before bending her head to look at it more closely—at once shocked and fascinated by the graphic detail. A man and a woman were locked in an intimate embrace. Her clothing, if you could call mere draperies clothing, had fallen largely away, displaying her wanton nakedness. His hands were on her bare stomach, and her naked breasts, artfully framed by the falling draperies, were clearly visible.
She bent her head closer. Even more shockingly, the man’s phallus could just be seen, poised on the brink of entering the woman from behind.
She straightened up, her face burning, and moved hastily backward, not knowing what to think. Mrs. Erskine must be a brave woman of singular tastes to display such a picture in her public sitting room.
Her gaze wandered to safer ground, to the sideboard beside her. Next to a highly polished silver tray holding an intricately detailed crystal decanter was a brass and wooden contraption with lenses at one end, and a place to rest the forehead and an arrangement for holding photographs at the other. A stereoscope viewer, she thought with budding excitement. She had heard tell of these in the milliner’s workroom, but she had never thought she would get the chance to look in one.
She glanced around the room and listened for any sign of Mrs. Erskine’s return. Hearing nothing, she carefully positioned herself so the yellowish gaslight was behind her and placed the viewer to her eyes.
No sooner had she focused on the image than she hastily removed the viewer, thinking her eyes had deceived her. Expecting a picture of Greek ruins or maybe of Tuscan landscapes, instead she had seen a three-dimensional image of two women. Naked women. Women who were entwined in a private embrace.
She put the viewer back up to her eyes, this time gawping openmouthed at the wanton pose of the women. It was more shocking even than the painting on the wall. This picture was real. It was no artist’s fantasy, but a picture of real women, doing real things to each other.
The women’s hands were on each other’s breasts and pussies, caressing each other in the most intimate fashion. What disturbed her most was that they were clearly enjoying themselves, looking intently into each other’s faces with lust-drugged eyes.
She could hardly drag her eyes away fro
m the photograph. What would it be like to have a woman do that to her? The wicked thought caused her own pussy to prickle with heat and a dampness to form under her skirts.
Her face hot with embarrassment mingled with excitement, she was about to replace the viewer on the sideboard when she noticed a prettily inlaid walnut box just the right size for holding the stereoscope photographs. Lifting the lid, she found a number of photographs tidily arrayed inside.
The temptation was more than she could resist. Keeping a nervous ear out for Mrs. Erskine, she pulled the first photograph from the box and placed it in the holder.
The new image was even more shocking than the last one had been. In front of her eyes, as clear as day, was the image of a man standing, his trousers around his knees, while a scantily dressed woman knelt at his feet. Her hands were on his naked buttocks and his member was buried in her mouth.
Her own pussy was tingling at the naughty sight. She stroked it through her skirts with one hand, but it only made the tingling more insistent.
With shaking hands, she took out the next photograph, and again peered intently into the eyepiece. It was the same couple, but this time the image showed them in a yet more intimate embrace.
The man, dressed only in his shirttails, was sitting on a sofa looking straight at Sarah. His hands gripped the woman’s waist as she sat astride his cock, his member half buried in her pussy. The woman’s hands caressed her breasts as her eyes stared defiantly at Sarah, as if daring her to find fault with her actions.
Shifting her gaze slightly, she studied the room the couple were in. The rolled-arm sofa and the highly patterned wall looked eerily familiar. Moving the stereoscope viewer away from her eyes, she realized with a start exactly why. She was in that very room she could see in the image.
She looked around uneasily. Right here, right in this very sitting room, men and women fucked each other in front of a camera. Maybe she should not wait for Mrs. Erskine and inquire after employment. This was clearly not a suitable house hold for a curate’s daughter.
Still, her curiosity was stronger than her sense of unease, and the tingling in her pussy was greater than both together. She pulled yet one more photograph from the box and placed it in the viewer.
This image was the most shocking yet. A woman braced herself on the floor, resting on knees and elbows while a man penetrated her from behind. But his cock was not pleasuring her cunt, it was deep in her ass with her gaping pussy clearly visible below. The man rode her as he would a pony, legs astride her waist, his hands entwined around her hair as he bent over her.
What made her gasp with shock, though, was the third person in the act. He had one foot on the floor, with the other on the woman’s back, and his huge member had just entered the other man. It was a picture of a man fucking a man fucking a woman.
This was definitely not a suitable house hold for a curate’s daughter. A bit shakily, Sarah carefully placed the viewer back beside the silver tray and returned the stereoscopic photographs back into their oaken box. She really ought not wait for Mrs. Erskine to come and interview her.
Perched back on the edge of the sofa again, she was caught in the grips of indecision. Was it any of her business if Mrs. Erskine had a boxful of unusual and disturbing images in her sitting room? If her curiosity had not been aroused and she had not peeped at them, she would never have known of their existence.
Besides, Mrs. Erskine held out the tantalizing promise of employment. If she were to leave now, without seeing her, what would she do then? Go on the streets as Emma had done, selling her body for a crust of bread, and never be seen again?
She felt in her pocket, knowing already how little money she would find. She was down to her last few pennies. In only a matter of days she would have no choice—she would have to sell her body or starve.
Better that she work for Mrs. Erskine, however unusual the woman’s tastes were and what ever she had to do to earn her keep, than go on the streets.
Yes, life was still worth living and Mrs. Erskine’s house hold was better than the streets. There was no choice to be made. She had to wait. She sat quietly on the sofa for some time, but Mrs. Erskine still did not appear. Made nervous with idling, eventually she stood up again and moved about the room, seeking something to distract her mind from the coming interview.
Her feet were irresistibly drawn back to the same corner of the room she had been in before. She would not touch the naughty stereoscope again, but there was a pile of journals on the sideboard. Surely Mrs. Erskine would not object to her leafing through one of them while she waited.
She picked up the topmost one, entitled The Oyster, and retired back to the sofa, away from the naughty temptation of the stereoscope.
Her mother had been a governess before she married her father, and had taught Sarah to read. She had learned her lessons well, and could pick out the text with ease.
The story told about a pretty servant girl who had fallen on difficult times in the city and wanted to go back on a steam train to her faithful sweetheart in the country. Fortunately she was alone in the carriage when the guard arrived to take her ticket. Unable to pay, she admired the guard’s uniform, told him what a handsome man he was, then sucked his member till he spent in her mouth.
The guard let her stay on the train, and in the end she was re united with her faithful sweetheart.
The illustrations that accompanied the story were as saucy as the words, and the prickling in her pussy had returned tenfold. Listening closely to make sure that she was quite alone, she pulled her skirts up to her knees, let her knees fall wide apart, and slipped her hand in between her thighs.
Her pussy was wet and slippery and her fingers felt so good that she had to slide them up and down over herself.
As she looked at the etching of the young girl on her knees in the railway carriage with the guard’s member in her mouth, she rubbed herself gently, imagining that she was the girl in the railway carriage and sucking on a handsome railway guard’s cock.
Her eyes drifted shut as she indulged in her naughty daydream.
“You like the book?”
Her eyes flew open and with a gasp of horror she took her hand out from under her skirts and closed her legs tightly together. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. She was so horrified at being caught touching herself that she was nearly in tears.
The man standing in front of her seemed not in the least perturbed. “You don’t have to answer me. I can see that you did.” He picked the book from her hands and studied the illustration she had been looking at. “You like the idea of sucking a man’s cock?” He came closer to her, his groin on a level with her mouth. “Tom Wilde at your ser vice. I am all yours. Please indulge your fantasies.”
“Go away.” Blinking furiously to hold back her tears, she pushed him away so he stumbled and nearly fell. “Go away and leave me alone.”
He sat down on the sofa beside her, and took hold of her hand so she could not get free of him. “Never fear, I shall pay you well.” Capturing her hand, he laid it on his groin. His erect member was obvious even through his trousers. “See what you have done to me already? I’m more than ready for your mouth and tongue.”
She snatched her hand away as if he had put them on hot coals. Her fingers were wet from where she had been stroking her pussy and she wiped them surreptitiously on her skirts. “That is disgusting,” she said, rising hastily from the sofa to escape him. “I will not listen to such filthy talk. You are not a gentleman to proposition me in such a dirty manner.”
He gave a humph of disbelief as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back down and onto his lap. “Come now, sweetheart, you did not think those pictures were so disgusting just a few moments ago, did you?” He ran his hands over her breasts, making her nipples tingle under his touch. “This is hardly the place for you to have a crisis of conscience.”
His free manner shocked and frightened her. All the men at the milliner’s shop had treated her with the respect due t
o a curate’s daughter. They would never have laid violent hands on her, or kissed her bare neck, or stroked her legs through her petticoats as he was doing. “Let me go,” she cried, struggling to get free again. “Take your hands off me.”
In answer to her entreaties he only pulled her closer into his lap until she was sitting astride him, his member pressing into the cleft between her buttocks. “I have offered to pay you well. What else do you want? Do not think you can bamboozle me with tales of your innocence,” he added in a warning tone. “Mrs. Erskine’s establishment is hardly a place where one would find a genuine shrinking violet, and I have no time for your teasing.”
She stopped struggling and looked at him, the knowledge of what sort of establishment Mrs. Erskine ran only now beginning to dawn on her. “I don’t understand you,” she said desperately, hoping against hope that her sudden suspicions were unfounded. “What kind of a place is this?”
2
Tom shook his head. It was hard to believe such naïveté in this day and age. Did she think he was a fool? “What do you think it is? It’s a brothel. An elegant brothel a cut above most of the others in London, but still a brothel. A place,” he added brutally, “where men come and have their cocks sucked by willing young women like you.”
Her eyes widened at his brutal words and she gave a gasp of horror. “No, it can’t be. You’re lying.”
He gestured around him at the paintings on the walls, at the book of explicit drawings that she had been poring over so eagerly. “Look around you. What respectable establishment has paintings of naked people cavorting on the walls, or picture books of men and women copulating in every position you could imagine, and a few you’d never thought of before? Where else could you see stereoscopic images of actual men and women fucking each other senseless? What else could it possibly be?”
She had huddled into herself, her shawl pulled tightly across her shoulders, withdrawing from his touch as if it were poison. “I thought…I thought maybe the salon was owned by a lady with…with singular tastes.”
Parlor Games Page 9
