Parlor Games

by Jess Michaels

  “Singular tastes.” A bark of laughter escaped him. “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. Only it’s not Mrs. Erskine’s tastes that are singular, but those of her clients. She caters to all sorts here.”

  Her face looked utterly woebegone. “I was hoping she would offer me employment.”

  A tear ran down her cheek. Damn it, but he wanted the girl. Irritated though he was with her refusal, he could not help but pity her as well, she looked so miserable. He picked her up off his lap and set her aside on the sofa to remove temptation from his immediate vicinity. “You’re a beautiful girl. I’m sure she will.”

  Her stance was so rigid she looked like she would break in two. “You do not understand. I am untouched, a virgin. Even if she does offer me employment, it will not be as a scullery maid, but as a whore.” Her voice caught on the words. “I will be nothing more than a whore.”

  He shrugged. Why did women make such a fuss over trifles? He’d been damned glad to get rid of his virginity at the age of fifteen—even though it had been to the no longer terribly youthful landlady of the house where he boarded. “Turn her down then, if your purity is so damn precious to you.” Mrs. Erskine was not the most savory woman of his acquaintance, but as far as he knew she had never stooped to kidnapping unwilling girls to work in her coffee house. Times were hard enough that she didn’t need to.

  “You do not understand.” Her face was wild, like that of a tiny kitten held at bay in a corner by a vicious dog. “She will offer me employment as a whore and I do not know if I will have the strength to refuse.”

  He only half heard her, his mind focused on the click-clack of shoes coming down the corridor. Mrs. Erskine, he had no doubt, coming to check out her latest wares. Damn the woman. Both of them. He could take a thrashing along with the best of them, but he preferred to avoid being beaten senseless when he could.

  He looked wildly around the room, which offered little in the way of hiding places. The only possibility of escaping the house without a sound drubbing was the sofa. He dropped to his knees and felt underneath it. It would be a tight fit, but luckily he was lean enough to be able to squeeze underneath.

  The footsteps were coming closer. He put his finger to his lips. “Shhh, you haven’t seen me,” he said, as he lay facedown on the floor and scooted under the sofa.

  Just in time. No sooner had he wriggled underneath than he heard the door latch open. Footsteps muted by the carpet approached his hiding place, and with an oomph that nearly drove the breath out of his chest, a heavy weight settled on the sofa.

  “You are the girl that wants employment?” It was Mrs. Erskine. He would recognize that gravelly voice anywhere.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You are a virgin?”

  He could not hear the answer to that question, but it must have satisfied Mrs. Erskine.

  “You understand what kind of a house I run here?”

  Silence, then a whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you are still willing to seek employment, knowing that?”

  “I have nothing else, ma’am.”

  “Well then, that’s settled.” To his relief, the weight rose off the sofa and he could breathe again. “Come with me and I will show you to your new quarters.”

  With leaden feet, Sarah followed Mrs. Erskine to a sitting room on the upper floor. The die was cast and there was no going back. She was a whore now. In order to feed her body, she had sold her soul.

  Never again would she be able to see her family—her mother or her sisters. Her existence would bring nothing but shame on them. From now on, she would be as dead to them. Far better for them to think she had died and gone to heaven than for them to discover the awful truth—that she was living in hell.

  A petite woman with a heart-shaped face and violet eyes, dressed in a low-cut gown of deep red, rose from the sofa to greet them with a dazzling smile and a fetching shake of her pale brown ringlets.

  So this, Sarah thought to herself, is what a whore looks like. She would not have thought a common whore could be so elegant.

  Mrs. Erskine gestured Sarah forward. “Polly, this is Sarah, our newest recruit. Show her around, if you please. She can have Angelina’s old room, and what ever dresses we have that can be made to fit her.”

  Polly curtsied, bending forward to show off even more of her cleavage. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Erskine unbent far enough to smile at Polly. “Sarah’s a milliner—if she can make hats, she can alter the dresses herself. I will expect her to be ready for tomorrow’s games. See to it that she is.” And without a further word to either of them, she swept out as majestically as she had entered.

  “There’s no need to look like the devil will come down the chimney any moment now and steal your soul away to hell,” Polly whispered to Sarah with a giggle as soon as Mrs. Erskine had closed the door behind her. “It’s not a brothel. Not really.”

  Sarah stared blankly at her. Surely the gentleman in the sitting room was not mistaken. Besides, everything around her screamed “brothel.” The sitting room had thick wool carpet, patterned wallpaper, red velvet window dressings tied back with tasseled braids, and even a grand piano in one corner. It was grander even than the parson’s house where she had been invited once to have tea, while her father, the curate, was still alive. Not that the parson would have had such shocking paintings on his walls, or such obscene statues with oversized phalluses in the corners.

  “Mrs. Erskine doesn’t make us sleep with the gents if we don’t want to,” Polly went on. “We just have to play games with ’em and tease ’em, and make ’em want it bad. They like that. That’s how she makes her money.” She took Sarah by the hand. “Come and I’ll show you to your room.”

  She led Sarah along a narrow hall, gesturing at the openings hung with velvet curtains of differing colors. “This is where we girls live.” A pair of dark blue curtains was drawn back on one of the openings. Pulling the door behind them open, she gestured Sarah inside. “Here’s Angelina’s old room. It’s yours now. Sarah’s room.”

  Sarah stood in the open doorway and gasped. “This is my room? Just for me?” It was far larger than the bedroom she had shared with all her five sisters in her father’s cottage, and as sumptuous as the sitting room they had just passed through. The floor was covered with dark blue and red Turkish carpets, the bedstead was shiny brass, and the counterpane real silk in a beautiful shade of pale blue. Even the washstand was made of mahogany and had a marble top.

  Not a brothel, indeed. What a foolish taradiddle that was, as transparent as the gauze drapes over the bed. She threw Polly a disbelieving look. “Why do I get such a beautiful bedroom all to myself if I don’t have to bring the gents in here?”

  “We have to tease the gents for Mrs. Erskine, and she gives us food and lodging for it, but not a penny in our hands. Anything else is up to us.” Polly giggled again and danced a few steps on the Turkish rug. “We bring the gents in here if we feel like it and give Mrs. Erskine a cut of the takings. That’s how we makes our money.”

  A faint ray of hope began to shine in Sarah’s breast for the first time since she had sold her soul to Mrs. Erskine for a place to lay her head. Polly’s happiness and cheery welcome had dissipated the worst of her gloomy despair. Maybe being a fallen woman would not be altogether as bad as she had feared. Maybe, just maybe, it might even have a few good points. Polly certainly seemed perfectly content with her lot. “Food and lodging just for teasing gentlemen?” Could she but secure her food and lodging, she would have no need for money.

  Polly leaned her elbows on the dressing table. “It’s enough for some of the girls, but I have ambitions,” she confided. “This sort of life won’t last forever, and when you’re too old to entice the gents, you need some money of your own to fall back on or it’s the streets all over again.”

  “Ambitions?” Her own did not stretch much further than survival. What ambitions could a whore have beyond that? Her father had always taught her that a si
ngle misstep in a woman’s life was irretrievable, and that once a woman became a whore, her die was cast.

  “Some of the girls are looking for a keeper, but I don’t want to be beholden to one man. I want enough money to set myself up in a business all my own. A tavern out in the country where I could grow my own vegetables and keep a few hens.” A dreamy look stole over Polly’s face. “That would be heaven. I’d fuck any number of gentlemen for that.

  “But enough dreaming.” She sat down on the sofa in Sarah’s room with a bounce. “Now to business. Tell me, can you play cards?”

  Cards? Sarah gulped. Mrs. Erskine had not mentioned anything about cards. “Only Go Fish. My papa did not approve of gambling.”

  “So much the better. You will lose quickly and that will make you a popular partner with the gentlemen. You can sew, though?”

  At last something she could be proud of. “I am trained a milliner.” Though she did not like to boast to Polly, she could sew better than most.

  Polly bounced off the sofa again. “Come and take a look at the dresses, then, and see which ones you take a fancy to.”

  She led Sarah to a storage room at the end of the hallway where a dozen dresses of all colors of the rainbow were hanging. On the shelves behind lay a confusion of dainty cotton chemises and drawers trimmed with lace.

  Sarah’s mouth gaped open. Was she meant to wear such fine things? Nothing had touched her skin before but coarse linen in the summer and heavy flannel for the winter. Such fine garments were for rich ladies who owned their own carriage, not for poor girls like her.

  Polly prodded her impatiently. “You’d better get a hurry on and choose a handful. Mrs. Erskine wants you ready by tomorrow.”

  Tom crept through the gloomy hallway to his dark corner once more. He had struggled with his conscience all night, but in the end it had made him return.

  The young woman he had met here yesterday weighed on his mind. She was young and gently bred, the daughter of a curate, and he had left her here in the power of a noted bawd. It would be on his head if her sweet innocence was corrupted and turned to debauchery.

  He should have swept her out of the salon and taken her far away from Mrs. Erskine’s bawdy house. With the contacts he had all over London, he could have helped her to find respectable employment. Sweet and gentle as she looked, she was sure to be a delightful nursemaid, bathing babies and helping little children to spell out their lessons. Even if nothing else could be found, she was pretty enough to stand behind a shop counter and sell ladies’ gloves and other feminine trinkets.

  Such a sweet daisy as she was would surely hold out against the lure of sin for as long as she was able. Her defense would be stout—she would not yet have succumbed to vice.

  Her innocence deserved a white knight to protect it. He would be her white knight—he would find her and rescue her before she fell headlong into the pit of corruption that was Mrs. Erskine’s bawdy house.

  Sarah clutched Polly’s arm with a death grip as she walked into the brightly lit salon with the other coffee house girls. Despite the layers of frothy undergarments she was wearing, she felt horribly exposed. Her satin skirts, cut short to show her ankles, swished around her calves, her bodice dropped so low that her breasts were half falling out of it, and her arms and shoulders were bare. Only the fear of being thrown onto the streets stopped her from turning tail and fleeing back to the safety of her room.

  A group of gentlemen in frock coats stood at the far end by the fire, watching their approach avidly. Some of them, hats in hand, started forward to meet the girls as they entered.

  A shiver went down her spine as the men approached and she stopped dead, clutching Polly’s arm as if it were her lifeline. “Do not leave me,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be a goose,” Polly whispered back, giving her a little pinch on the arm and dragging her forward. “Just remember what I told you. Act like a lady, be nice to the gents, and everything will work out fine.”

  A pair of gentlemen made a beeline for the two girls. One of them took Polly’s arm with a possessive air while the other, a portly gentleman whose waistcoat barely buttoned up over his large belly, made a stiff bow at Sarah. “May I?” he asked, offering her his pudgy arm.

  Polly dropped Sarah’s arm to cling to her partner’s with both hands, and gave the fat gentleman a roguish wink. “This is Sarah. She’s new here tonight.”

  “How new?” he queried anxiously.

  “New to the whole game,” Polly confirmed.

  Sarah’s gent took her arm and placed it in the crook of his. “Then I am glad to be the first to make your acquaintance, Sarah.” His tongue rolled over her name as if it were a sweet treat. “My name is Sir Richard Eddington. You may call me Dickon.”

  He smelled of sweat and small beer. “I am p-pleased to meet you,” she stammered.

  At that moment, Mrs. Erskine stepped into the center of the room. “Welcome to my coffee house, ladies and gentlemen, and to the evening’s entertainment.”

  She gestured to the round tables set up in front of the fire. “Gentlemen, please choose a partner and take your seats at the table of your choice. This evening we will amuse ourselves with a game of cards.”

  There was an instant rush as the men claimed their partners. Amid the hubbub, the portly gentleman led Sarah to one of the tables by the fire. She looked helplessly after Polly as she was led away by her escort to a table on the far side.

  Sarah’s partner gave her a predatory smile as he showed her to her chair. “I shall enjoy playing cards with you, my dear.” His lips were fat and they glistened with grease where he had not wiped them properly after dinner.

  The heat from the fire could not stop the goose bumps from forming on her arms. She gave him a tremulous smile back. “Thank you, but I am not very good at cards.”

  His smile widened noticeably, sending a trickle of icy suspicion creeping down the back of her spine. “So much the better.”

  Once they were all seated around the tables, a cry went up from the gentlemen. “What game? What game?”

  Mrs. Erskine hushed them all with a wave of her hands. “Ecarte,” she pronounced.

  There was a general groan of disappointment from the gentlemen and some mutterings about how they may as well have stayed at home. Sarah felt herself relax just a little. There was nothing too scary about playing straight ecarte. Polly had explained the rules to her last night—it was simple enough if she kept her wits about her.

  “We shall be playing not for money, but for forfeits,” Mrs. Erskine amended, with a faint smile on her austere face. “Clothes or kisses or other favors, make them what you please.”

  The groans turned to cheers, her partner joining in the general revelry. “Let us play for clothes, my dear.” He leered greedily at her. “At least at first. Who knows what may happen later.”

  Sarah felt her heart leap into her throat. Polly had warned her that playing for clothes was one of the gents’ favorite games. She had hoped to escape it on her first evening, but it seemed luck was not with her today.

  Mrs. Erskine approached their table, cards in her hand.

  Sarah could hardly manage to give her a civil greeting. Her wits had completely deserted her—her only thought was how to keep all her clothes on her back.

  Mrs. Erskine shuffled the pack and dealt a hand to each of them, leaving the rest of the pack on the table between them. Sarah stared at the cards on the table with grim fascination, silently praying that God would have mercy on her and send her a good hand.

  When she had finished dealing out all the cards, Mrs. Erskine moved to the middle of the room and clapped her hands together. “I will leave you young things to play cards together now. Do not get into mischief as soon as you are unchaperoned. I shall be in the next room if anyone needs me.” And with a brief curtsy to her clients, she left.

  Surreptitiously Sarah wiped her damp palms on her skirts and picked up the cards in front of her. She could do this. Indeed, there was little choi
ce about it—she had to do this.

  The fire was warm on her back, but she was as cold as ice inside. She stared at her cards blankly, wishing with all her might that her father had been less set against all forms of gambling. A sketchy explanation of the rules of the most popular games from Polly the previous night was no substitute for knowing what she was doing.

  Opposite her, Sir Richard was looking at his cards with a frown of concentration on his face. She watched with fascinated disgust as he absentmindedly took a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his sweating forehead. If her partner had been a little less gross and a little less leering, she would feel more comfortable. But Sir Richard? Would she have to undress for this overblown glutton of a man?

  She forced herself to focus on her cards. A pair of sevens. A faint smile crept over her face. A pair of sevens wasn’t so bad. She could win this hand.

  She discarded her odd card. “One, please.”

  Sir Richard dealt her a card and took one for himself.

  Her new card was a disappointment. Her hand still only had a pair of sevens. It was good, but would it be good enough?

  With shaking fingers, she pushed a chip into the center of the table.

  Sir Richard grinned at her and pushed in two chips.

  Her heart pounding with fear, she looked intently at her cards and bit her lower lip. Should she raise the stakes and risk losing the lot? Or play it safe and lose just a little at a time?

  “Will you match me?”

  The eagerness in his voice decided her. Throwing her cards facedown on the table with a grimace, she forfeited the hand. “I fold.”

  His pudgy hands gathered the chips from the table. “You owe me a forfeit. Three forfeits, to be precise.” With a piggish gleam in his eye he studied his prize. “Turn around for me. I will unfasten three buttons from your bodice.”

  Reluctantly she turned her back to him. He leaned over the table and unfastened three buttons of her bodice, his fat fingers lingering unpleasantly on her neck, his whiskery sideburns scratching her skin. She turned back to him as soon as she could, brushing his fingers away.