Though she would rather have bitten him, she had little choice but to obey.
To her surprise, the evening passed quickly in Tom’s company. Although he kept her anchored on his lap, he did not press her to get more intimate with him than that. Content to sit and talk with each other, they passed the evening in remarkably good cheer, paying little attention to the rest of the room. Though Sarah could not help but notice that the games of blindman’s buff got increasingly rowdy and debauched as the evening wore on, Tom’s attention remained on her alone and their corner remained quiet.
The salon had all but emptied when Tom suddenly whispered an invitation in her ear. “Walk with me.”
Sarah looked up at him in astonishment. It was well after midnight, and the streets would be as black as ink. “What did you say?”
“Walk with me,” he repeated.
“Surely you do not want to go for a walk at this hour of the night?” The streets of London, even lit up as they were with gas lamps, were no place for a midnight stroll. There were too many ruffians abroad at that hour, and too many dark alleys where danger lurked. Besides, she was far too warm and comfortable sitting on his lap to want to move.
As if he could read her mind, he hugged her tighter to his chest. “Not now, you goose. Walk with me tomorrow to the park.”
She did not know quite what to read into his demand. While working at the milliner’s, she had been asked many a time by the butcher’s boy in the next street to take a walk with him in the park. The leer with which he’d asked had left her in no doubt as to his intentions. She had not liked his loud voice and his casual cruelty to the young apprentices in the street, whom he lorded over as if he were a king, and had always refused him.
Did Tom mean to court her? He had been so abrupt and unloverlike in his demand that she could not credit it. “Why do you want to walk with me? Do you have something you wish to talk about?”
His hands were wandering across her bodice, but for once she did not slap them away. There was something so comforting about being held like this.
His hands brushed her breasts with tantalizing gentleness. “I don’t particularly. I’d far rather that you took me to your bed.”
“Will you stop asking me that,” she said with some irritation, knowing how desperately close she was to giving in to him. Just the feel of his arms around her as she sat on his lap and the touch of his hand on her breast were enough to make her nipples harden to an uncomfortable tightness and her pussy to weep anew.
After all the games they had played and watched this evening, she was desperate to take him upstairs to her bedroom, to let him undress her and to welcome his thrusting cock into her burning pussy, but she would not do so. Taking him into her bed would be as good as a confession that she was no better than a whore. However much she desired him, however much she melted at his touch, she would not humble herself so far. “You know I will not agree.”
A great sigh escaped him. “I know. Which is why I have hit on the notion of walking with you instead. I am at the sorry stage where I would rather have your company fully dressed than not at all.”
He really was trying to court her. Her insides curled pleasantly at the thought that he liked her company as well as desiring her body. “I do not know if we are allowed out to go walking,” she said doubtfully.
“Pshaw. Tomorrow is Sunday and even the lowliest house maid gets a half-day on a Sunday. Mrs. Erskine would be a brute to refuse you. I will come to call for you at two in the afternoon.”
With that, he set her off his knee, stood up purposefully, and clapped his hat on his head. “I had best be off before Mrs. Erskine sets her porters on me and tosses me out into the street.”
That night Sarah barely slept. Before it was yet dawn, she had risen from her bed and was contemplating her wardrobe in despair. Going walking with Tom was a far cry from walking out with a butcher. What sort of a dress should she wear for a stroll in the park with a real gentleman? She did not want to make him ashamed of her, or regret being seen with her in public.
She did not admit even to herself that she had other, equally pressing, concerns. Which dress would Tom like best to see her in? What color did he fancy above any other?
Polly, seeing her confusion, kindly came to her rescue. “The green dress with the ribbons,” she pronounced almost at once. “It sets off your pretty pale skin, and makes your eyes look even greener. Besides,” she added with a giggle, “it is cut so neat that you will not be able to wear a thing underneath it. Poor Mr. Wilde will be driven to distraction thinking about that for the whole walk.”
Polly helped her to lace herself tightly into the chosen dress. That done, she paced about the floor unable to concentrate on anything, waiting for two o’clock.
To her relief, Tom presented himself at the coffee house at two o’clock on the dot. He offered her his arm and walked her out of the door like any lady into the bright sunshine of a clear afternoon.
“You look as pretty in the afternoon sunshine as you do in the dim light of the gas lamps of an evening,” he remarked, as they picked their way over the cobblestones toward the tiny patch of green at the end of the street that called itself a park.
“Is that meant to be a compliment?” She could not help but think that it was a very poor one.
He shrugged. “Not at all. It was simply the truth.”
The bright sunshine made her feel more daring than usual. “I would think a man who writes for his living would be able to make a prettier speech to a young woman than that,” she teased.
“Do you want pretty speeches? I can make you twenty such if you please, but I rather thought you would prefer me to pay you the compliment of talking honestly with you.”
He was right, of course, though she was more in the mood for compliments this afternoon. “I do prefer your honesty.”
They walked in silence for some moments until Tom broke it again. “I will not marry you, you know.”
His sudden pronouncement took her aback. There was such a thing as too much honesty. “I never expected you would.” Expectation was one thing, hopes and dreams and wild fantasies were quite another. She could not deny that in her fantasies, Tom had proposed to her on bended knee, but she knew as well as he did that her dream was unthinkable in reality.
“I cannot afford to set you up as my mistress. Though I can support one house hold well enough on my income, I cannot support two in any style. You would make a poor showing as my mistress. You’d be better off as a milliner than depending on me for your bread.”
She pulled her arm out of his, picking her way through the muddy grass of the park without the support of his arm. Did he think because she was poor that she had no pride? “I am not depending on any man for my bread.”
“I have paid Mrs. Erskine for the pleasure of your company for a month, but I really do not know why I am bothering with you.”
A cloud covered the sun, making the afternoon suddenly dull and dreary. “Am I that tedious to spend your time with?” Her words were brave, but he had cut her to the quick. “No doubt Mrs. Erskine would give you a part refund if you complained to her of me.”
“I cannot afford to keep you to myself indefinitely. I was impetuous enough to pay for the first month, but to pay for a second would be sheer folly. I will have to give you up.”
She had never imagined anything different, but still his pronouncement hurt her. “I cannot see what it is to me,” she retorted. “I did not ask you to buy my time. Mrs. Erskine will keep me on whether you pay for me or not. There were plenty of single gentlemen in attendance last night who would no doubt have been glad of my company.”
A park bench stood at the far end of the tiny park. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the seat dry. “That is the problem. There will always be gentlemen glad of your company.”
She sniffed dismissively as she spread her skirts and sat down on the bench. “That is hardly a problem for me.”
“It is, however, a very
large problem for me.”
Her tears threatened to choke her voice. “You do not have to make it so.”
He tipped her head back to look into her eyes. “If I could prevent it, my dear, I would.”
5
Nearly a month of evenings passed. By now Sarah had suffered through twenty-three evenings in a row in which Tom Wilde had teased and tormented her just as much as she had teased and tormented him, if not more so. No longer did he ask her to take him as her lover, and for that she had been grateful. She was not sure that she could live for much longer without giving in to him.
She had started to crave his touch, to live for the moment when she could enter the salon for the evening and he would come forward to take her arm and to claim her as his own.
Twenty-three evenings. It was both too short and too long a time. Too short, for it seemed as if it had been just yesterday when first she met him. Too long, because with every day that passed, one day fewer remained of the time he would spend with her.
Tom tightened his grip on Sarah’s arm as he led her to one of the sofas arranged in front of a large curtain. Mrs. Erskine had just announced that the evening’s entertainment was to be a play—a new variation on their amusements for the past three weeks and more. He could only hope that it would prove less inflaming to his libido than the usual games.
Sarah still belonged to him for another week, if she didn’t kill him first.
He could swear that she had kept him in a state of constant excitement since the day he had first met her, poring over one of Mrs. Erskine’s naughty books and stroking her sweet little pussy.
How she’d blushed and stammered when he had caught her out. He’d thought she would be easy game, that she would fall into his hands like a soft, ripe plum ready for the picking.
Hah. He could laugh at his conceit now. There was nothing soft or ripe about Sarah. She was as hard as any common street urchin and twice as remorseless. No woman with an ounce of kindness in her would have kept him on tenterhooks as she had kept him. One moment she was playing the most delightful games with him, undressing for him down to her thin linen shift, allowing him to view her nearly naked body and put his hands under her skirts, sitting on his lap and letting him kiss her on her cheek, her lips, her neck.
The moment he took one step too far, though, she was gone in a flash. Touching her naked breasts was off limits, though she flaunted them in front of him nearly every night by wearing the lowest-cut bodices he could ever wish for. Though she let him stroke her legs whenever he was lucky enough to win a forfeit of her and asked for her stockings as a prize, she would allow him to go no higher than the top of her garters. Just the once, he had reached higher and stroked her pussy. It was dripping wet and more than ready for his touch, but still she had slapped his hand away and pouted for the rest of the evening. And for all that he demanded, even begged, she would not take him to her room and take him as her lover. Her refusals hurt him so much he had finally stopped asking.
He had a week more in her company and then he would have to give her up. Though he made a good living from his scurrilous pamphlets, he was not so wealthy that he could afford to entertain a high-class mistress like Sarah indefinitely. Especially not at the ruinous rates that Mrs. Erskine charged. It was best that he give her up now before he grew addicted to her presence.
His pretty daisy was no longer a poor milliner but an expensive courtesan and out of his reach. He would have to drum that into his head over the next seven days so that it did not hurt so badly to hand her over to someone whose pockets were deeper than his own.
He glared at the gentlemen crowding around them, jostling for a sofa with a good view. Sir Richard Etheridge had made no secret that he was sniffing around Sarah’s skirts still. The moment he relinquished her, Sir Richard would come forward and claim her. Sir Richard would claim the right of sitting opposite her in their nightly card games, salivating over each morsel of flesh she laid bare as she stripped down to her shift. He would claim the right to pull her onto his lap and kiss her, to put his fat arms around her waist and nuzzle his grizzled red sideburns into her soft neck.
But, by God, if Sir Richard ever claimed the right to take Sarah upstairs and strip her naked on the bed, there would be trouble. If he ever tried to plaster his gross body on top of hers, to suckle on her white breasts, and to thrust into her pussy with his fat hairy cock, then, by God, he would kill the bastard. If he couldn’t fuck Sarah, then no one else would either.
He took possession of a sofa close to the curtain, pulling Sarah down close beside him. The rest of the sofa was quickly taken by a pretty dark-haired girl whom Sarah addressed in a friendly tone as Polly, and her partner, a stiff-necked older gentleman in a morning suit.
The lights were put out and the room became quite dark. He took advantage of the darkness to pull Sarah onto his lap. Judging by the rustling and giggling going on in the gloom behind him, every other gentleman was doing the same.
A light came on from behind the curtain, illuminating the area beyond it. Behind the curtain two shapes appeared with the light behind them, their silhouettes clearly visible as black shadows on the curtains.
At the other end of the sofa Polly, also sitting on her partner’s lap by now, clapped her hands together. “A shadow play. Oh, what fun.”
The shadows behind the curtain revealed themselves as a man and a woman: the man by the shape of his top hat and walking cane, and the woman by her voluminous skirts. Together they began to strike poses behind the curtain, the gentleman doffing his hat and bowing to the lady, and kissing her hand, and the lady curtsying back in her turn.
Tom yawned and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. Polly had been a mite too hopeful. So far the shadow play seemed interminably dull to him.
He focused on the woman sitting in his lap. Despite her hard-hearted ways, she was quite delightful. He did not feel the need to put on a show for her or to act as if he were anything other than himself. Early in their acquaintance she had told him quite firmly that she would rather have the truth from him than any foolish lies. He had taken her at her word, and she repaid him in kind. Truth to tell, he had not had such an honest relationship with a woman since his old nurse—who knew all his faults and foibles and every misdeed he had been guilty of as a child—had died.
The shadow couple behind the screen was getting more animated now. The man was kneeling to the woman, his hand on his heart, clearly professing his ardor for her. In short order she was swooning into his arms.
He shook his head at the silliness of it, and surreptitiously adjusted Sarah’s skirts so he could put his hand on her stockinged knee. He half expected her to push him away again, but to his good fortune she seemed too enthralled by the silly antics of the shadow people to pay him any mind.
Pushing his luck, he moved his hand a little farther up her leg to caress her thigh. She made no complaint but gave a little shiver and pressed herself more firmly into his lap. Though it was small consolation for the pain he had been in for the past three weeks and more, he hoped she was getting as frustrated as he was. Given that she was inflicting the pain on him, it was only just that she should share in it.
His cock started to rise at the feel of her bottom wriggling against his groin, and he shifted her slightly on his lap so it had room to expand. Before the end of the night his cock would be standing to attention as stiff and as proud as any soldier in the Queen’s army. Sarah’s teasing ways always had that effect on him.
The actions of the shadow people had changed again. The shadow gentleman, if he was not mistaken, was now engaged in divesting the shadow woman of her clothes, silhouettes of skirts and petticoats appearing behind the screen, only to be tossed to one side. He began to give the shadows on the curtain decidedly more attention. The shadow play was turning out to be more interesting than he had thought.
Garment by garment, the shadow man undressed the shadow woman, to the cheers and shouts of the audience on the sofas, until she was quite naked be
hind the curtain. The complete outline of her shape was visible, down to the peaking of her nipples at the ends of her pert breasts, and the patch of hair between her legs.
Now she began to take the most suggestive poses, bending over to show off her breasts and rump and opening her legs wide to suggest a sight of what lay between them.
Tom began to stroke Sarah under her skirts, running his hands over her silky smooth stockings. His cock was already getting hard in his trousers. By God, he’d give half of what he owned to have Sarah posing like that for him, to have her naked in front of him displaying her pussy to his sight. No shadow woman could be half as enticing as the hard-hearted woman wriggling on his lap.
Meanwhile, the shadow man was stripping off his own clothes behind the curtain, tossing away his top hat and cane, his jacket, his shirt, his trousers. In a few moments he, too, stood behind the curtain as naked as the day he was born, the silhouette of his erect cock clearly standing up proud and stiff against the light.
Tom could feel Sarah’s shock at the sight. She held herself tense in his arms, not moving a muscle, except that a little gasp escaped her.
He hugged her closely to him, his own cock stiffening further under her, until it was nestled firmly between her buttocks. “This shadow play is more entertaining than I first thought,” he whispered in her ear.
“It is truly shocking,” Sarah mouthed back, but she did not take her eyes from the stage.
He slipped his hand farther up her leg, until he reached the top of her stocking, and then farther again, until his fingers rested against her bare thigh. Her muff was so close he could feel her hairs brush against his fingers, but he did not dare caress her there. Not yet. He did not dare provoke another attack of the pouts.
Parlor Games Page 14
