He paused and seemed to draw a long breath. “You may leave, now, in whatever way you can, but you cannot leave behind your disgrace. That will follow you everywhere.”
With that, he turned on his heel and strode away. A few made to followed him, calling, protesting, but were halted by the police and advised to make good their exit before the press arrived.
Less than half an hour later, the prime minister was led into the mansion by the security man he had detailed to Dr. MacLeod. As they passed along the corridors, through the rooms, he noted the aspect of a school: classrooms, dining hall, gymnasium facilities. Then they passed through what appeared to be a locker room, with showers to one side, and stepped out into a large, high-ceilinged hall with a brightly polished hardwood floor.
The great hall was well lighted. Fully three dozen men and women—more perhaps—were there. All were dressed in loose white garments that revealed necks and shoulders, calves and ankles, in a way he found disturbing in the case of the women. All were neatly seated on the floor, legs crossed, backs straight, heads lifted and attentive. And they were in even rows.
The prime minister glanced toward the front of the room. Two chairs had been placed there. He walked toward them, but, when he reached them, did not sit down. He would stand to address his audience. He always did, without exception. For a moment, he faced them without speaking. Astonishing, it seemed, but these men and women, all prisoners subject to ordeals he still could scarcely credit, were among the most striking—handsome, beautiful, sitting gracefully and at ease—he ever had seem assembled. Above all, perhaps, the prime minister, who had long been expert at discerning the signs of anxiety, intimidation, or outright fear in both opponents and allies, saw faces studying him with a profound and self-contained calm. What should be his tone, his appeal?
He began. “I am the prime minister of these islands, our home. It is my duty, trust, and lifelong concern to use my power and position to protect its people from harm. In this, I have failed you, failed utterly, and, as a consequence, you have endured an ordeal I could not have imagined—never would have imagined—before this”—he gestured about him—”terrible place came to my attention at last. I doubt I ever will recover the attitude and estimate of this realm and its people I once enjoyed.”
They were attentive, posture erect but at ease, hands folded in laps. As he talked, he paced, but never looked away from them. Often, he stopped to face them, punctuating his words. “Now, belatedly, you are free, all free. I must report that the duke, along with the Countess Wittke, perished in a blaze that utterly destroyed his residence.” The faces showed no reaction.
“Tonight, you will stay here. I have asked Dr. MacLeod to assume responsibility for your safety and he will command sufficient officers to ensure that. He also will interview each one of you to identify who you are, where you were kidnapped—for that is what it was, and worse—and how long you have been prisoner. Every facility will be available to you to return home as soon as possible.”
He paused. Now, he must make his appeal, but what? If ever he had contemplated an insinuated threat, some reference to the power of his office, he had abandoned the idea. He seldom had seen faces less susceptible to such an appeal. He reflected that he should not be surprised. What more could they fear to suffer?
He said, “This nation, and my government, have at their discretion the financial resources to try in some small way to compensate you for losses you have suffered—even knowing, as I do, that nothing could compensate for the years, the liberty, and the security that is every citizen’s right, but of which you have been deprived. We will be generous, very generous, in this way and in others.
“I know that it will be your highest concern that your reputation and regard among those to whom you return—and for the rest of your life—be protected from the taint of terrible scandal that hangs over this place. It has been no fault of your own, but we must endeavor to protect your reputations from association with it.”
He paused and looked from face to face. He noticed a woman, slightly older than the rest, with short dark hair and a figure unusually lean and fit-looking even in this company. She had fixed him with large, expressionless eyes. Was she moved by this appeal? He could not tell.
“I pledge my utmost efforts to prevent this scandal from becoming public and so casting a shadow over the remainder of your lives. I cannot demand, only request, only urge in the strongest terms, that all in this room, tonight, consecrate themselves to a policy of confidentiality that will protect themselves and others in this room who have endured far, far more than anyone should be asked to endure.
“I personally will be made aware daily of the progress of your restoration to your homes, your compensation, and your safety. For all your country has failed to do for you, in your need, this is what I am able to offer to make some small amends.
“I will hope in days to come, and as long as I may live, that from here you will go forth to the life that you desire and deserve. My respect to you all, and goodnight.”
The prime minister wondered if ever in his career he had addressed an audience with such personal intensity and at the end heard no applause, no urgent questions, not even whispered discussion. They sat utterly silent. He bowed and turned to the security man who stood waiting for him. Immediately, the white-clad figures rose, silently, and filed out of the room. He watched them go, astounded. Since he entered the room half-an-hour earlier not one had spoken a word.
‘Well,” he said, when he had returned to the first lord’s side, “I have made the best appeal I can to them and I have no idea, none at all, if they were moved or what they will do. I have never in my memory addressed a more attentive and less responsive crowd. What can you possibly make of it?”
The flames had subsided; it was darker, now, much darker, although the security men had lit torches. No one remained but himself, the first lord, his security detail, and one police officer—the rest having been assigned to Dr. MacLeod. The first lord frowned, gazing at the dark wall. The entire section that formed the back of the duke’s residence had collapsed toward the end of the fire. The firemen and police officers who rushed to view the devastation saw an arm thrust from beneath the rubble. With the intensity of the heat, they only could poke away some debris, for now, but it appeared the victim was a guard. It seemed baffling. Had the guard been on sentry duty and trapped by the fire, succumbing to smoke? Or perhaps tried to rush into the building in hope of rescuing its occupants and been overcome while still on the roof of the residence? Whatever the cause, the fire had claimed another victim. The first lord reflected that in the attack earlier in the evening, apparently only one guard has been injured, and that not gravely, but the fire now had claimed at least six victims—the duke, the countess, three of the duke’s personal guard, and now this sentry.
“Well,” said the prime minister, a shade of indignation in his voice, “What do you think, first lord? Or is my question unanswerable?”
“Pardon, Prime Minister, pardon,” said the first lord quickly. “Of the audience you addressed, I only can suggest that all, while still young men and women—scarcely the age of our university sophomores—learned under most dire threat to hold their counsel. Who knows, perhaps that early habit is ineradicable and will undergird your appeal for a silence that must be lifelong.”
The Prime Minister shrugged.. The great face, lined by years and hard lessons in the white-hot crucible of politics and power, gave no hint of hope or doubt. He said, “Well, if that is so, then one of the most improbable and shocking episodes of my career—indeed, of the great Age of Victoria itself—may never be known to history.”
Chapter 34
“David, Are You Here?”
On the worn wooden steps of a cottage in Devon, Hannah Blake sat with two small children on her knees—her youngest brother and youngest sister. She was bouncing them a little, one knee at a time, and they laughed and kept turning to grin into her face. David sat beside her in the gold-tinged li
ght of a late September afternoon. He had been watching Hannah’s mother bend and straighten to pluck the few remaining carrots from the tiny garden. He reflected that she was a remarkably good-looking woman—like the one beside him.
In just two weeks, Hannah’s body had mostly healed, the ferocious lashing administered by the countess had been with a whalebone switch, an instrument that stung to the soul but did not leave scars. When he had seen Hannah in that awful first moment he glanced into the duke’s chambers, she had succumbed to the accumulated load of more than l00 blows, many on her breasts and belly, but also to the horror and shock of watching the flogging of Miranda. Apparently, at that moment, the duke considered Miranda, but not Hannah, dispensable. Interruption by the guard had come while Hannah’s brutal rape was in progress. What would have happened later no one now living could know.
Yes, her body appeared unmarked but, often, in her distant gaze, or brooding, David glimpsed a mind still seeing the duke’s crimson chamber of horrors. He asked her about it, though not often, and she acknowledged her thoughts, “I shall never forget how poor Miranda accepted it so long, only at the end she begged to be killed.” And she would add, her look again inaccessible,, “That is what Maria said I would do, when she offered me the only escape she knew.”
And David, who had broached the subject, suddenly longed to change it. Once, he asked: “Will you ever think about your body, your pleasures, as you did growing up here?” She turned to him, startled, and exclaimed, “Of course not. I don’t want to think that way. Sometimes, I frighten myself, I want so much from you in bed, but I do. I always will have to be alone, mostly alone, with my secrets and my passion. No one would understand as once I would not have understood.”
David nodded. How to disagree? He wished it were not so. He loved the saucy, sensual, openly erotic Hannah Blake. But he recalled a conversation with her father aboard the trawler as it cut the coastal waters racing for London. Hannah had been sleeping on desk, wrapped in blankets; she had refused to be left in a cabin.
Her father had looked down at her sleeping face and his own seemed to David anguished. He said, “She was the most virtuous girl. I never doubted she would make a good marriage, her purity could be seen in her face. Now, that monster has ruined a beautiful, innocent woman.”
David was cautious. “What do you expect for her now, what future?”
He shook his head, still gazing at her. “She will never marry any good man.” He looked up and said vehemently, “It is not her fault and she should not suffer, but there is no help for it. She may remain in my home as long as she wishes—forever—and I will care for her. But can a woman be happy in this life—if she cannot be a woman?”
David nodded and he, too, was looking at Hannah’s sleeping face. One could imagine her untroubled—and unsullied. He said, “Blake, I think you know that I am an officer at Scotland Yard and commissioned, as well, in naval intelligence.”
Blake nodded as though not greatly interested. But David continued, “I was graduated from Cambridge University with firsts in natural science and philosophy; I am an educated man.”
Blake nodded, not looking at him.
“And my father’s work, a lifetime against great odds, earned for me a competence. I have 1500 pounds of my own.” Blake looked up; the sum was impressive.
“You are a deserving man,” he said.
“It is true that I am a Jew and in England that sets me apart. For my part, I tolerate all religions.”
“As do I,” said Blake. “I have traveled and fought and laughed with too many men, Christian and Jew, Mohammedan and Hindu, to believe one is born better than the other. It is the man, only the man.”
Relief showed in David’s face, though Blake seemed not to notice. David said, “I have said all this to you because it is right for you to know. It is right because I love your daughter, Hannah…”
Blake’s head jerked up, staring at him.
“I never have loved a woman as I love Hannah and I know I never will. I am asking you for her hand in marriage and, if you consent, that we be wed as soon as possible. I want nothing more in this world so much.” He looked down at Hannah.
“And if you consent, your family will be my family and I will care for them and work for their welfare as I will for Hannah’s—and that will be with all my energy and industry and every ability I may possess.”
Blake had risen to his feet. The sailor’s hard face was working to contain the emotion that seemed to shake him. Slowly, he reached out and took David’s hand, looking into his eyes.
David took the hand, and said, “If that is your consent, Edward Blake, then no happier man breathes tonight under these skies.”
“It is my consent,” Blake managed to say hoarsely.
And David turned to kneel on the deck and to lower his face, as though in prayer, until his lips touched Hannah’s. His arm slipped around her, and, for many moments, he did not move.
Then, he felt her stir and raised his head, gazing down. She whispered, “David, are you here?”
“Yes,” was all he said, “yes.”
The end
Writing The Price of Hannah Blake
Posted chapter by chapter, this novel had its first “publication” on the Web site http://www.literotica.com in the second half of 2012. There, first thousands, and then many thousands of readers discovered each chapter. Many made comments that improved the book, but others just cheered me on, chapter by chapter, with expressions of delight, extreme impatience for the next chapter, and compliments on the novel’s plot, characters, and style. To those readers, I am indebted for providing the reassurance that my story ought to reach a wider audience “out in the world” beyond Literotica. Members of Literotica adopt nicknames for their participation in the site so I must thank “LadyParts,” “GoldieWitch,” “KiwiPlum,” “meh4912,” and dozens of others from all over the world for their generosity.
Because of their encouragement, I plan to publish as e-books, and then as paperback books, the three novels I have written and posted on Literotica. The Price of Hannah Blake is the first. This novel is explicitly and graphically erotic in many chapters; that will not be to everyone’s liking. I always have enjoyed reading erotica and have written it just for fun all my adult life, but The Price of Hannah Blake, while it has erotic elements, is not erotica. At least by intention, the novel is a thriller with a genuine heroine, a hero, and a clash of good and evil.
I deliberately imitated the classic Victorian underground novel, but used it as a platform for a thriller set in England at the twilight of the magnificent Victorian era. In this way, I could add, as yet another level of complexity, an evocation of that historical era—its people, its politicians, its conscience. The actions and words that I attribute to historical characters, however, are entirely imaginary; and, of course, there was no duke who was brother to Queen Victoria. Succession to the throne would have gone to the male.
Above all, however, this is the story of how a heroic young woman faces the unimaginable, and, by loyalty to her values, triumphs against those who view their power as invincible and that of “the girl from Devon” as insignificant. For readers who detect in this novel, for all its righteous championing of the good, a salacious enjoyment of all the kinky fantasy—how could I possibly deny that you are right? Erotic fantasy that remains fantasy, strictly among adults able to know their own minds and desires, and absolutely excluding any element of coercion, always will be a welcome accessory to sexual enjoyment.
Many pages could be devoted to thanking individuals who have encouraged my writing career, but this is not the place to thank them.
I do want to mention that my brother, Roger Donway, my best friend and my life’s boon companion, agreed to edit and proofread the draft of this book solely out of desire to help me. His own literary tastes run to Jane Eyre, not such stuff as this book. My wife, Robin, with the same impulse to help, read the draft and made many comments that improved what I wrote.
W
ithout knowing what I intended to write, Robert Bidinotto, the celebrated author of the thriller, Hunter, and a crusader for justice for the victims of crimes, generously helped, again and again, to steer me toward the production and publication of this book. Without him, nothing would have worked.
Readers who share my love for Hannah Blake, and my pleasure in her brave determination to discover her own joy in sexuality--while never forgetting that freedom, in this life, is everything—can help other readers to discover The Price of Hannah Blake, and help me to write and publish more books, by leaving a review (the length and detail do not matter) on my Amazon page.
I love you for understanding.
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