The Clever Strumpet
Merry Farmer
THE CLEVER STRUMPET
Copyright ©2019 by Merry Farmer
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)
ASIN: B07Q51PNK5
Paperback ISBN: 9781092852111
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Created with Vellum
For Margaret Vickers…
…A wonderful reader and friend.
Rest in Peace.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
London - late 1815
A change had come over the residents of Manchester Square, London in the six weeks since the Chandramukhi Diamond was stolen from the house owned by the East India Company and managed by Mr. Wakas Khan. A change, but not the sort of change Lady Caroline Pepys would have expected.
On the one hand, the dozen or so remaining students attending Miss Dobson’s Finishing School had gone from living lives of aching misery and deprivation, their time spent creating frivolous handiwork to be sold for the benefit of Miss Dobson’s purse, to pursuing knowledge that would be of genuine use in whatever life each student sought to pursue. Caro had gone out of her way to engage tutors in French, German, and Italian for the girls, as well as dancing masters, musicians, and an old family friend who had been a professor of the Classics at Oxford and who had no qualms about teaching Philosophy, Literature, and a touch of Mathematics to young ladies of good breeding but unfortunate circumstances. In a few short weeks, the students of Miss Dobson’s school had transformed from hapless penitents who had been sequestered by their parents due to bad behavior, to genuine scholars with potential for exciting future lives.
On the other hand, the house owned by the East India Company had seen a marked increase in its reputation as a house of ill-repute. Not only had a precious diamond gone completely missing from its walls, the parties and bacchanals hosted by Mr. Khan had gained a reputation for scandal and utter debauchery. Whispers of the carnal pleasures that were to be had within its exotically decorated upper rooms reached through every corner of London and beyond. Stories of utter depravity and sin abounded. Which, of course, meant that invitations to Mr. Khan’s revelries were in highest demand, and barely an evening went by when Khan’s rooms weren’t packed to the rafters with scandalously-dressed sin-seekers and jades of all kinds.
“You’d think we were in the pleasure gardens of Kublai Khan and not the house of Wakas Khan,” Caro said as Lord Rufus Herrington whisked her around the crowded dance floor in a scandalous waltz.
“I believe Wakas is a cousin to the Emperor Kublai,” Rufus told her with an impish wink.
Caro laughed, nestling closer to Rufus as they swept through the close steps of the dangerous new dance. The waltz was the dance she’d been waiting her whole life for. It required partners to embrace each other as they executed the steps—unlike the quadrille or reel or any other country dance—and while debate raged throughout London as to whether the dance was socially acceptable, in Caro’s mind it was decided. Because few other dances allowed one to converse so freely with one’s partner in plain sight without much danger of being overheard.
“I don’t see Mr. Newman tonight,” she told Rufus, glancing around the room at the throng of overexcited revelers.
Men of the aristocracy blended with the newly wealthy but socially inferior. Some had their cravats untied or their waistcoats unbuttoned. One startling gentleman had removed his jacket entirely. Most of them had little care for the bulges in their breeches as they courted and flirted with the ladies in attendance. And with good reason. If the gentlemen were carelessly dressed, the ladies were barely dressed at all. More flesh was exposed to view than any Greek sculpture gallery. A good half of the ladies wore their bodices cut below their breasts and merely laughed when a passing gentleman squeezed or pinched what was on offer. A few wore gowns soaked through that clung to their form, hiding nothing. And the same outrageous beauty who attended all of Khan’s revelries wearing nothing at all, save copious amounts of gold and gems, lay draped over her usual settee in the corner, garnering an inordinate amount of male attention.
Caro was dressed more sensibly, but only by inches. Her diaphanous gown revealed much, but at least her nipples were tucked under the gold lace edging of her bodice. Barely. Rufus stared at them intently as they danced, as if they would pop free at any moment. Caro should have been offended by the intensity of his attention, but she simply wasn’t. She was far too enthralled by the fact that it took so little to hold Rufus completely in her sway and it had since the moment they met, quite by accident, on the night her friend and former pupil at Miss Dobson’s school, Rebecca, had been rescued from her pseudo-captivity by Bow Street Runner, Mr. Nigel Kent.
“I can assure you, Mr. Newman is not hiding between my breasts,” she told Rufus with a wry grin.
Rufus peeked up at her, matching her grin with one of his own. “Are you certain? I should check. It would be irresponsible of me not to check.”
He whirled her to the side of the room, stepping out of the sphere of the waltzing couples, then unapologetically slid his hand into her bodice to caress her breast and play with her nipple. His eyes met hers with a challenging sparkle as he did so. Caro sucked in a breath and gazed back at him with a combination of daring and command. In the last few weeks, she’d come to view Rufus’s hands on her as a delicious treat, no matter how many amorous men and women were crowded into the room with them. Most were engaged in their own wicked play instead of being interested in watching others. Although there were some, like the odious Lord Hazelton, who attended Khan’s events specifically to watch others.
“One day,” Rufus said, his voice low and rough. “One day soon, I’m going to do more than simply fondle these delectable orbs as a distraction while you scan the room for signs of our diamond thief.”
Caro laughed low and deep in her throat, thrusting her chest toward his teasing touch. “I’m sure you are,” she said in her most tempting voice, casting a glance around the ballroom. “But not today.”
The difficulty with Khan’s reveries becoming so popular was that a vast number of people who had nothing at all to do with the theft of the Chandramukhi Diamond now attended. It was becoming increasingly difficult to track those suspects who had been present the day that the diamond was stolen in an attempt to catch them in some sort of incriminating activity. A month had gone by since the night Caro and Rufus, along with Caro’s friend, Jo, and her new husband, Lord Felix Lichfield, had bungled an attempt to catch the thieves in the middl
e of selling the diamond. It was clear as day to them that a certain Mr. Wallace Newman—an industrialist from the North whose factory was in danger of closing unless he infused it with cash, and soon—was somehow involved in the theft as well as Miss Dobson—who had gone missing that night and hadn’t been heard from since. In addition to those two suspects, Wakas Khan’s son, Saif Khan, was clearly involved in the theft in some way as well. And while those three were the prime suspects in Caro’s estimation, there could easily have been more accomplices on the loose.
“No Newman, eh?” Rufus asked, bending close to kiss Caro’s shoulder and neck while rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
Caro barely swallowed a moan of pleasure before catching her breath and saying, “No. Not a trace of Miss Dobson either. But Saif is holding court with his usual coterie of admirers.”
Rufus straightened, using the excuse of getting a better angle for his attentions to Caro’s person to slip behind her. He slid his hand into her bodice to play with her other breast while nibbling on her ear and gazing across the room at Saif and his company. Caro took the opportunity to indulge in Rufus’s attentions while he took over the work of spying.
She closed her eyes and sighed, reveling in the sweet, pulsing ache in her sex. Truth be told, she would have given up every shred of her remaining virtue—not that there was much left—to Rufus in the blink of an eye. Many were the times in the past month when she had considered taking Rufus’s hand and leading him out of the ballroom—or the refreshment room or any of the numerous downstairs rooms of the East India Company’s house where the public mingled—to whisk him upstairs to a private room so he could have his way with her. Imagining all the ways he might make love to her, all the ways she could offer herself to him, all the positions they could use to fuck until they were both raw and senseless, had inspired her fertile imagination to create once more.
“Have you read the latest? Mrs. Vickers has triumphed once again,” a middle-aged lady with a vast amount of exposed, powdered skin said only a few feet to the side of where Caro and Rufus stood.
Caro opened her eyes and grinned like a cat.
“Yes,” the middle-aged woman’s wigged companion said with an excited gasp. “I do believe The Duke’s Wicked Charge is the best book of hers yet.”
“I could scarcely contain myself as I read it,” the middle-aged woman said. “Every page enflamed the passions.”
“Every word was like fire,” the wigged woman agreed.
“My Arthur was scandalized that I could read such fictions at first, but he stopped complaining when he saw he could reap the benefits of my increased ardor.”
The wigged woman laughed. “Robert was the same way with me. He objected at first, but now he buys me the first copy of each new novel Mrs. Vickers publishes.”
“Half the husbands in London are lining up to buy Mrs. Vickers’s confections,” the middle-aged woman said. “All of London is aflame.”
Caro hummed with pleasure, leaning back into Rufus and reaching behind her to cup his half-erection through his breeches. Nothing made her friskier than knowing the fruit of her pen was being enjoyed properly by those whose literary purchases were lining her pockets. How ironic that the very reason she had been thrown into the prison of Miss Dobson’s school was turning into the means of her salvation and release.
Rufus gasped, then let out a rumbling breath, arching his hips into her hand. He increased the attention he was paying to her breast as well, pinching her nipple with just the right amount of pressure to send waves of pleasure to her sex.
She sucked in a breath, then sighed, “Yes, like that. More.”
For a moment, Rufus followed her commands, teasing her mercilessly. He stopped when she caught her breath and let out a plaintive sigh to ask, “Good heavens, Caro, are you about to come?”
“I might,” she purred. She twisted in his arms to face him, lifting to the tips of her toes to kiss him. Wicked though it made her, hearing people talk about her books excited her.
“Good God,” Rufus growled when she paused their kiss to catch her breath. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were as shameless a strumpet as the women Khan pays to attend his revels.”
“What if I am?” Caro asked, one eyebrow ached, her heart pounding furiously against her ribs. “Would you cast me aside if it was revealed I’m more of a wanton than a spy or if I stopped caring about catching the diamond thief?”
Rufus stared into her eyes with intense consideration. Caro had come to know him so well over the past few weeks. She knew him well enough to see the heat of lust mingled with a genuine longing and uncertainty in his eyes. His arms tightened around her, like a man clinging to a raft in a storm, and his lips softened as he studied her.
But instead of answering her question, he said, “Saif has barely moved from his spot, and why should he? The Duchess of Andover has her dainty little hand down his breeches while the Countess of Markham is feeding him chocolates. I seriously doubt he’ll make a move regarding the diamond tonight.”
A twist of disappointment curled through Caro, partially because, yet again, the evening seemed to be a waste when it came to hunting down the diamond thief, and partially because Rufus hadn’t given her the answer to the question she longed to have answered.
“I haven’t heard a word whispered about Miss Dobson in weeks,” she sighed, taking a half step back and tracing her finger slowly over Rufus’s lips. “It’s as if she has disappeared entirely. And she is the only person whose identity we are certain of who has played a part in the theft.”
Rufus sent her a sly grin that was half part of their act and half genuine. “There’s still the thief’s birthmark,” he said. Weeks ago, at the very start of Caro’s investigation into the theft of the diamond with her friends, Rebecca and Jo, they had determined that the diamond thief was in possession of a half-moon-shaped birthmark on his backside. “We could always start up a game that requires every gentleman in the room to drop his breeches.”
Where once the idea of a room full of breeches-less men would have titillated Caro, now there was only one bum she longed to see.
“You know,” she said, swaying closer and brushing her fingers through Rufus’s ginger hair, “you still haven’t proven to me that you aren’t the thief.”
“Haven’t I?” He flickered one eyebrow. “Perhaps I should correct that with all due haste.”
Before Caro could give him a flirty answer, he took her hand and tugged her into motion, heading for the doorway that led to the hall. Caro’s heart kicked into an even faster rhythm. She had been teasing him, flirting in the way they had become so used to flirting while waiting for Newman or Miss Dobson or anyone else involved with the diamond to return to the scene of the crime. She knew she’d been playing with fire for weeks now and that the feelings that pulsed between her and Rufus were dangerous and genuine, but she hadn’t expected a moment of truth to come so suddenly.
“Blast,” Rufus said as they neared the crowded hall. “That lech, Hazelton, is following us.”
Caro blew out a frustrated breath. “Why does the man insist on pursuing couples who want nothing to do with his proclivities?”
It further irked her that the man’s very presence dampened the delicious ardor that had been pulsing through her. She still blamed the man, in part, for destroying their chance of catching the thief a month ago. According to Jo’s telling, Lord Hazelton had barged in on what should have been a moment of triumph, when Mr. Newman, Miss Dobson, and Saif Khan had all entered one of the downstairs rooms at the same time. Jo had been convinced the diamond was to be sold that night, but that Lord Hazelton’s untimely entrance as he pursued her and Lord Lichfield with a sordid purpose had caused the sale to be abandoned.
“Hurry,” Caro urged Rufus. “Upstairs. We can lose him in the crush.”
For once, the ungainly amount of party guests worked toward Caro and Rufus’s advantage. They were lithe enough to dodge through flirting couples and a
rguing gentlemen to reach the stairs well before Lord Hazelton. They rushed up, turned the corner and darted up a second set of stairs before Lord Hazelton could mount the first few steps, then dashed into one of the secluded rooms on the second floor. Fortuitously, the room had a lock, which Rufus clicked shut as soon as they were inside.
Caro held her breath, pressing one ear to the door as Rufus did the same, facing her. They listened silently until Lord Hazelton’s call of, “Hello? Rufus, old boy, I know you came this way with that delightful, blonde piece. I’ll give you a guinea to let me watch you fuck her. Two guineas if she sucks my cock while you stick it to her.”
Caro grimaced, feeling sick and praying the horrible man would give up his search. His footsteps traveled to the end of the hall, then back again before descending the stairs once more.
“I don’t know,” Rufus said in a quiet voice, pulling away from the door and crossing the room to flop onto the oversized chaise against the far wall. “We should consider it. I could certainly use the blunt.”
“What?” Caro snapped, a little too loud. She glanced to the door with a scowl before marching across the room toward him. “You wouldn’t really stoop so low.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he answered with a good-natured sigh, patting the spot on the chaise next to him. He suddenly seemed exhausted and miserable rather than dashing and exciting. Caro sank to the chaise, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Money is the root of all evil, though.”
“It is,” she agreed, but said no more.
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