by Eden Myles
THE DOLLHOUSE SOCIETY
Volume IV
LUCKY
By
Eden Myles
Copyright © 2012 Eden Myles
Published by Courtesan Press
http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com/
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be distributed, shared, resold, posted online, or reproduced in any electronic or hard copy form.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities between actual persons or events is entirely coincidental. This book contains adult content and is intended for a mature readership. All sexual scenarios depicted in this book occur between consenting adults over 18 years of age.
Cover art design by Courtesan Press
***
CONTENTS
The Rules of Conduct Inside the Dollhouse
Lady Luck
House of Dolls
The Reluctant Bride
A Woman on Top
Bonus Story: Two Hundred and Seven Years Later
***
THE RULES OF CONDUCT INSIDE THE DOLLHOUSE
(Failure to comply with these rules shall result in immediate expulsion from the Dollhouse.)
- No gentleman under the age of thirty shall be permitted to enter the Dollhouse. Gentlemen desiring permanent membership within the Society shall be subject to a trial period lasting no less than one year, after which he will be reviewed for possible permanent inclusion in the Society.
- A gentleman and his courtesan may do anything they wish, so long as it is consensual, tasteful and entertaining. Consensual acts of entertainment within the Dollhouse are hitherto referred to as “plays”.
- “Plays” between a gentleman and his courtesan may not be interrupted in any way or for any reason by a third party. “Play” can only be begun or ended by the parties involved.
- “Plays” shall be conducted only in a designated playroom of the Dollhouse. The only time this rule shall not apply is for a new courtesan’s debutante party, in which “play” shall be conducted in the great room.
- A gentleman is not permitted to touch, address or otherwise acknowledge another gentleman’s courtesan while in the Dollhouse.
- Proper decorum must be observed at all times.
- Courtesans shall not be allowed to imbibe any kind of alcoholic beverages while in the Dollhouse.
- Courtesans shall be shown the utmost respect while in the Dollhouse.
- A new safe word shall be issued at each gathering. When a safe word is used by a gentleman or his courtesan, all “play” shall immediately cease between all the parties involved.
***
LADY LUCK
Smithtown, New York, 1805
My horse Pepper and I lanced through the deep woods surrounding my father’s estate. Up ahead, I could hear the huntsmen cornering the fox near the ravine, their trumpets and the baying of the hounds echoing around the valley. I spurred my horse on and the branches of the old maple and pine began to lash at me as we tore through them. The woods let out to the edge of the ravine, a sheer drop to the sandy edges of the Nissequogue River.
As I came upon the other huntsmen, I saw my cousin Rupert at the head, with a musket rifle drawn. He was sighting down the fox that had eaten dozens of our farmers’ chickens in the village. It was an old, ragged fox, and my heart went out to the creature who was no longer capable of trapping its own prey and had to, instead, feed on hapless chickens. But I also knew that for every chicken that was lost, someone would go that much hungrier this winter. The winters in Smithtown were brutal, and despite being the daughter of one of the bigger landowners, I, too, was facing a meatless winter.
Rupert’s arms shook. “I can’t do it,” he said and gave a nervous, whinnying laugh.
Cousin Rupert had always been a bit of a milksop. Then again, Cousin Rupert was only here because of my father’s funeral. He was going back to the city in just a few days. Then the fox would be no concern of his. I clucked Pepper forward and took the rifle from him. “For heaven’s sake, Rupert!”
“Lucky, have a heart. It’s just an old fox.”
“And old fox that’s making this village go hungry!” I said, my anger brimming over, though what I felt was neither for the fox, nor for poor Cousin Rupert. Instead, it was for my father. He had passed on just the month before, leaving the Van der Meer estate in dire financial peril. I used to think that was a phrase to be used in books of romance—dire peril—but now I knew it intimately. My home, my whole world, was in dire peril because my father couldn’t stay away from the casinos on weekends.
I was now the Lady of the Van der Meer estate—but I was as penniless as the villagers under my charge. I wouldn’t let a fox take more meat from their mouths—or mine. With a longsuffering sigh, I sighted down the fox and shot it squarely in the head. Quick and merciful.
I knew my own demise was certainly not going to be that.
***
Mr. Smit, my father’s attorney, was waiting for me at my father’s house when I returned from the hunt. I’d hoped I might be able to avoid him, but as I let myself into my father’s once-lavish study (many of the antiques and fine Oriental carpets had been auctioned off in the past few weeks), striking the dirt from my skirts, I found him sitting at my father’s desk, going over his accounts once more. “Mr. Smit, now what are you after?” I cried.
Mr. Smit looked up out of his half moon glasses and said, “Lucky…what have you done to yourself?” He looked appalled by the state of my dress.
“I gave my lady’s maid the day off,” I joked, and he looked at me sadly, knowing I had no lady’s maid anymore. I had let her go two weeks ago, though my nanny, Nellie, had begged to stay on, even though I had no money to pay her for her services. She had been the only mother I had ever known, my own having died in infancy. She was the only remaining servant at our house now, and poor Nellie had resolved herself to attending to household duties that were utterly beneath her station.
“I thought you might like to have an account of your father’s books.”
“Which is to say, you want more money to pay off his debts.” I dropped onto the divan against one wall of the study and just looked at Mr. Smit. “How much this time, Mr. Smit?”
He hmmed and hawed a bit before blurting out, “It looks as though your father may have had financial relations with Mr. Van Tassel.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. Mr. Van Tassel was Father’s direct competitor in the textile business. Father would never have taken money from him. More to the point, Mr. Van Tassel was a salary lender. A disreputable one, at that! “Mr. Van Tassel is a criminal and a gangster. My father would never have stooped that low…”
“Nevertheless…it would seem they had…a relationship.” Mr. Smit sat back in his seat and fiddled with his glasses. Like my poor joke about my missing lady’s maid, Mr. Smit always played with his glasses when he knew he was right but trying to be polite instead.
After I was done ranting, I circled the library where my father had done business for decades, wondering what my mother would say, were she alive. Or maybe she was giving him an earful in Heaven even as we spoke. Finally, I just sighed. “How bad is it, Mr. Smit? How much do you need?”
He glanced down at his ledger and said, “With interest, you owe Mr. Van Tassel approximately sixty thousand dollars.”
I felt the room take a half turn around me. I tottered and Mr. Smit almost sprang to his feet. I he
lp up a hand to stop him. “Mr. Smit… the only thing I own which comes even close to that amount is the Van der Meer house.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I can’t give you my house.”
“I’m aware of that, as well.” He shuffled some papers. “However, I may have a solution.”
“And that is?”
“Have you considered marriage, Miss Van der Meer?”
I guffawed. “Mr. Smit, you know that’s quite beyond me.”
“Miss, we’re in a new century, and there are more and more ladies marrying later in life. Why, I know a lady personally who waited until she was twenty-two before marrying…”
“It’s quite out of the question,” I told him, cutting him off as I stomped in my dirty clothes across the carpetless floor, much to the nose-wrinkling chagrin of Mr. Smit. Only Nellie knew my reasons for avoiding marriage, and I wasn’t about to go into explicit details with Mr. Smit, that was for sure!
“Well, then,” said Mr. Smit, “the only other option I can suggest is that you look toward your father’s partner overseas…Mr. Sloan, I think he’s called? The man from London?”
I shuddered and went to straighten up some books on a shelf. I had sold the crystal that had acted as bookends and now they were in disarray! The last thing I needed was to involve Mr. Tiberius Sloan in anything. He was twice my age, and growing up, he used to frighten me when he visited my father at the house. He was a huge, towering man with a deep, loud voice and a terrible scar he’d received in some rapier duel when he was younger. Ugly and frightening, everyone in the house called him the Ogre when he showed up. I used to have terrible nightmares about him abducting me, and I used to avoid him at all costs when he stayed at the house. Then again, I was living a nightmare now, wasn’t I?
I bit my lip. “Does Mr. Sloan have any controlling interest in my father’s business?”
Mr. Smit looked surprised by my language. He needn’t have been. When it was determined I would become a spinster, naturally my father wanted to know what it was I planned on doing with my life. I had always known in my heart that he’d wanted a son to help him with the family business, because, to put it bluntly, my father was good at making money, but excellent at spending it. Consequently, I had acted as his secretary and conscience for years. Obviously not enough, or I wouldn’t be in this situation now.
When Mr. Smit didn’t immediately answer, I started toward him, but unfortunately, my riding skirts caught on a nail in the shelf, and before I knew it, I’d not only ripped my skirts but shaken the shelf so the books in them started falling down. I held up a hand to forestall Mr. Smit’s aid. Things like this were always happening to me. When I was still a little girl, my father had fired a woman in his employment who was reputed to be a witch. As a result, both he and I had been cursed for life, he with the talent for losing money, I with incessant clumsiness. The only things I could do with any amount of talent were balance my father’s books, ride a horse, and shoot a gun. Unfortunately, none of those skills was likely to take me very far in this world. “I know what controlling interest is, Mr. Smit, so please save your explanations,” I said as I shoveled books back onto the shelf.
Again Mr. Smit consulted his notes. “It doesn’t seem so. I believe your father cut all ties with Mr. Sloan years ago. Still, he may take interest in your plight on a personal, more nostalgic, basis.”
“You’re suggesting I beg to Mr. Sloan based on his previous business relationship with my father.” I played with the locket my father had given me on my sixteenth birthday, a kind of consultation prize when he realized I would never have neither a debutante party, nor a husband. But as I did so, the chain broke and the locket slithered to the floor at my feet.
Mr. Smit nodded as he looked at the locket. “Yes, Miss, perhaps…a personal loan to tide you over?”
I bent to pick up the locket and examine it. Of course, the chain was irrevocably broken.
Mr. Smit cleared his throat. “It is that or you must allow me to prepare the house for auction. Is it your choice, of course. But keep in mind that Mr. Van Tassel won’t wait forever for his money.”
***
“So there, dear, is the Ogre,” my childhood friend Charlotte said, fluttering her ostrich fan in front of her face.
I stood in the doorway of the conservatory and looked on the one man I dreaded more than any other.
Mr. Tiberius Sloan stood at the far end of the room, talking to my cousin Rupert and Charlotte’s husband Darcy, a glass of port in his hands. Darcy, as an attorney, was acting most respectable, though Rupert, who had always had a peculiar predilection for fine looking men, was making a fool of himself, as usual.
As a small girl, I’d thought Mr. Sloan was monstrously huge, like Jack’s giant in the fairy tale. He was big, but not quite as large as I remembered. Not the eight-foot giant I had envisioned. I realized now that Mr. Sloan was around six and a half feet tall, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. I wondered if he wore a girdle under his shirt and waistcoat like so many cavalrymen did these days. It was a fashion that was flowing over from England into the Americas, or so I’d read in the ladies’ magazines, a terrible faux pas I could only blame on the invasion of Napoleonic troops down in the Peninsula. He looked grim and somewhat clerical in his dark suit, though his tapestry waistcoat was quite nice.
Wearing my best court gown, the one Nellie had put me in, I huddled with Charlotte in the doorway. “Oh, he’s simply awful, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t say awful, exactly,” Charlotte drawled, and I could tell that she, too, was contemplating whether Mr. Sloan was taking advantage of a girdle, or if that was simply his own physique.
I hadn’t wanted this welcoming soiree, as modest as it was, but both Mr. Smit and Nellie had advised me to indulge in an effort to soften the edges of my request, as it were. Charlotte, my lifelong confidante, had lent her full support in the matter, of course. She was here with Darcy, and they, along with Darcy’s parents, Mr. Smit, and my cousin Rupert, made up the whole of the dismal affair, though Mr. Sloan seemed to be enjoying the company of Charlotte’s husband, at least superficially.
“Stockings,” said Charlotte.
“Excuse me?”
“I wonder if he uses stockings to fill out his breeches. Some men do, you know.”
“Charlotte!”
Charlotte grinned and fluttered her fan. Charlotte was very good at being inappropriate. Father had often said she was a bad influence on me. But the truth was, she and I were very much two halves of the same inappropriate lady. Growing up, I had enjoyed riding, shooting and climbing trees, and Charlotte had enjoyed town gossip and teasing boys. Marriage to Darcy, a junior lawyer at Mr. Smit’s office, had done very little to tame her.
“Oh, no,” Charlotte said in mock horror. “The Ogre has you in his sights!”
I turned and realized that Mr. Sloan had spotted me from across the room. He had arrived that morning on the estate, some three days after I had written him—it turned out that he had been doing business in Boston—but we had not formerly met until now. At least, not as two adults. Nellie had insisted I stay upstairs until the evening soiree so that I might present myself properly to him as the lady of the manor. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very proper or ladylike. I was exhausted from all the auctions that Mr. Smit had arranged this week, and yesterday, while in town to have my locket fixed, the jeweler had taken an interest and offered me ten dollars for it, because of the diamonds. It was so tempting an offer, I’d finally given in, and then spent the rest of the day feeling guilty about it.
I had steeled myself for facing Mr. Sloan, but as he glided across the floor to take my hand in greeting, I was mildly surprised. He wasn’t quite as homely as my child’s mind had painted him. True, he bore that terrible scar—it edged from his hairline in a crescent across the left side of his face to the top of his cheek, and his eye looked quite blind on that side—but the face beneath the scar was pleasant enough, stern, but not without cha
racter, if you liked that surly, remote Briton look. His dark hair was carefully slicked back, very fashionable, and his whiskers were neatly trimmed in a Van Dyke beard. His right eye was a deep, mahogany brown, and his left a pale, sightless grey. His body was sinewy and strong looking, like a lifelong cavalryman. I knew some displaced Britons, like Mr. Sloan, were supporting the Spanish against the invasion of Napoleon’s army in Portugal by lending military expertise and support. Since some of Mr. Sloan’s business of import took him to Portugal, it wouldn’t have surprised me if his military bearing was a result of that, rather than a man’s corset.
“Miss Lucille Van der Meer, it’s good to see you,” Mr. Sloan said, and the floor faintly vibrated with his low, booming baritone. It was still the voice of the Ogre, the voice of a man used to crying out orders over long distances, and I faintly flinched at the sound of it.
“Mr. Sloan, so nice of you to be here…”
“Tiberius, please.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“I insist,” he announced, and brushed his mouth against my gloved hand, though he kept his keen eyes centered on my face. I felt a peculiar skip in my heart in that moment, almost as if Nellie had spiked my morning tea with a drop of arsenic, as she did sometimes when she wished to see more color in my cheeks, usually before an important engagement. I thought how this was a most peculiar reaction to a man I did not like!
“Oh,” I said, “let’s not be too formal.” I smiled. “You shall be Tiberius and I shall be Lucky.”
He looked me over, but not like he used to when I was a child. There was something more to his look now. “I never did understand your father’s predilection for calling you that.”
“I sometimes hunted with him, and I almost always made a perfect shot with a musket ball. As a result, he used to call me his lucky shot.” I grimaced internally only after the words had exited my mouth. I was making a fool of myself already!
“Ah.” He seemed to think about that, and I’m sure he was contemplating how inappropriate and unladylike it all was. “I am so very sorry to hear about your father, Lucky. He was a good friend and associate of mine. A good man,” he said, tactfully changing the subject. “I hope you will consider me at your disposal during this trying time.”