The Bartered Virgin

by Chevon Gael

  “The ring is part of the set.” He removed it from its velvet bed and placed it on the third finger of her left hand. While she stared at it in speechless admiration, David laced her into her corset and helped her with the hooks on her dress.

  “I’m sorry I can’t do hair, darling,” he apologized as he picked hairpins and combs out of the bedding.

  Winn sat at his dressing table and haphazardly wrapped sections of hair and shoved pins in every which way.

  “Well, it’s not exactly Harper’s but at least it will get you home. I’m going to have the porter escort you to a hack.” He went to the telephone, lifted the receiver off its cradle and cranked the handle. “Front desk? A hack to 365 Park Avenue, please. And charge it to my room.”

  Returning to where Winn sat at the table he placed her shawl around her shoulders. “You must go now, dearest. We can’t let people see you leaving this room with me. The elevator porter who brought you up has been paid to be discreet. He’ll see you to the hack. If your parents say anything about the late hour, tell them we were dancing to the orchestra.”

  “But no one will have seen us.”

  “Trust me, no one of any importance will have stayed very long after we left.”

  “Margaret will have stayed up to wait for me. She always knows when something’s amiss.”

  “Any chance you can shinny up that tree?”

  She shook her head. “Pick me up after luncheon tomorrow and I’ll show you around New York.”

  “Egads, you mean we have to be respectable?”

  “Just for a few more days.”

  He kissed her forehead and turned her around toward the door. “Until tomorrow.”

  They found the porter dozing in a chair at the end of the hall. David whistled softly through his teeth and the young lad woke with a start. He tipped his cap and pressed the elevator button.

  David said nothing in the presence of the porter; he merely smiled at Winn and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Until tomorrow, my love,” he whispered.

  Winn stared at the closed door, a sudden emptiness in her stomach. She reached up and ran her fingertips across the brass number plate. Seven. Her lucky number at Coney Island. Instantly she knew just where she’d take David tomorrow.

  “Miss? The elevator’s here.”

  Winn took one last longing look, turned and hurried into the elevator. She averted her gaze and stared instead at the ring on her finger.

  “Whew!” the porter whistled. “That’s some anchor chain!”

  Winn’s hand automatically went to the jewels at her throat. “Yes,” she replied. “A gift from my fiancé.” Fiancé. It was the first time she’d said the word out loud.

  “So, ya gonna marry lord what’s-his-name, Miss Percy?”

  “Hmm,” she sighed dreamily.

  “Lobby,” he announced a moment later.

  Winn stepped out of the elevator and walked down the deserted hallway and through the front door. The doorman motioned to the hack David had ordered for her. New York was now electric lit and the streetlamps cast eerie shadows around the entrance of the hotel. Winn cautiously looked around to see if she recognized anyone. The streets were deserted. She climbed into the carriage. Once the driver closed the door she relaxed. Winn swiveled around in her seat and looked out the window and stared up at the Fifth Avenue Hotel’s sixth floor, wondering which room was David’s. Then she settled back into the carriage seat for the ride home.

  Chapter Eight

  “Miss Winnifred, somethin’s amiss.” Margaret stood armed with a horsehair brush in one hand and a tortoiseshell comb in the other, tapping her foot.

  Winn yawned. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Please hurry with my hair. Where is Sarah with my coffee?” Dressed in her undergarments and covered from neck to ankles in a flannel dressing gown, Winn fidgeted in her armless boudoir chair, more from impatience than her sore bottom. She smiled.

  “See? That’s what I mean. You come stealing into the ‘ouse in the wee mornin’ hours. Oh, don’t bother to deny it. I seen ya tiptoeing up the stairs. I’m an old puss, Miss Winn, and been round the alley a few times meself. I knows when a cat’s had a lick at the cream.”

  Winn tried to ignore her. “And speaking of cream, where is that coffee?”

  Margaret gave Winn’s hair a hard yank.

  “Ouch!” Winn yelped. “Margaret, you don’t have to snatch me bald!”

  “Hmmph!” The woman snorted through the hairpins in her mouth as she arranged her hair in another gorgeous Gibson coiffure. She pushed in the last of the pins so hard Winn was sure they were going to pierce her skull.

  “Seems to me if anyone’s done the snatchin’ round here, it’s his lordship!”

  “Margaret! That’s quite enough.” Winn snapped.

  “First it’s the money, then it’s the honey. I don’t care how many titles he has, he should wait until he comes back down the aisle, not before.” The maid smacked Winn on the back of her head. “And that goes for you, too. If I had my way I’d have you two chaperoned until the banns have been read and even then some. You was always the strange one, since the day you came into this ‘ouse. It’s as if the wee folk left a changeling child on Miss Mary’s doorstep.” She paused and crossed herself. Then, she collected the silver vanity set for polishing and straightened Winn’s dressing table before opening the closet door and going through the clothes.

  “What you want set out today?” she called from inside the closet. “Not that it matters if ya wears clothes at all now.”

  “Quit mumbling, Margaret. Um…my gray batiste, the five gore, not the seven. A white shirtwaist, suit coat and my straw bicycling hat. I’m taking David on a tour of New York.” It occurred to Winn that it might be the last time she had a chance to wander around her home city. It might be many years before she returned from England, if at all.

  Margaret laid the clothes out on her bed and stood silently by, awaiting Winn’s signal to dress her.

  “That will be all, thank you, Margaret.”

  The maid remained by her post, immobile. Winn turned away from the mirror and clasped the throat of her dressing gown close to her. “I’ll dress myself.” She gestured toward the door.

  Margaret said nothing but her scowl spoke volumes. Finally she left, closing the door and mumbling about proper young ladies.

  Once the footsteps died away, Winn cast off the dressing gown. She studied last night’s damage in the mirror. Her neck still bore the signs of David’s passion. Her breasts were tender and one sported a small bruise near the areola. Her drawers did indeed bear a tiny bloodstain that Winn knew to be proof her virtue now belonged to the man who would soon be her husband. Her husband!

  She opened the top drawer of her boudoir table and unwrapped her treasure. She’d carefully wrapped her engagement set in a silk scarf. Today, for the first time, she’d wear the ring in public, saving the necklace and earrings for a more formal occasion.

  A tap on the door interrupted her imaginings. She quickly rewrapped the set, except for the ring, and closed the drawer.

  “It’s Sarah, miss, with your coffee.”

  “Just a minute.” Winn grabbed the robe and wrapped it around her before calling for Sarah to enter. “Just leave the tray and I’ll tend to it myself.”

  Alone again, Winn sat on the edge of the bed and sipped her coffee. She had to sit ramrod straight as Margaret had laced her with a vengeance, as if taking her displeasure at Winn out on the corset.

  “Damn this corset.” She tugged at it but there was little relief to be found. Suddenly an idea struck her. A terribly, naughty, delicious idea. She looked down at the satin-covered corset and cotton drawers and smiled rebelliously. Although she didn’t have time to look for the book, she remembered a small passage about the art of seduction and decided to put her newfound education to good use.

  She’d give David a tour of something no New Yorker had ever seen.

  “It’s called a hot dog.” Winn handed the ne
wspaper-wrapped bread roll and sausage to David, who eyed it suspiciously. “It’s good with a spoonful of chowchow pickle or yellow mustard sauce.”

  David looked less than enthusiastic as he watched her ladle on the condiments. “How do you eat it? There’s no cutlery, not even a fork. How barbaric.”

  “Like this. Unwrap an end and bite into it while it’s still hot.” She demonstrated and he moved to wipe a drop of mustard sauce off her chin. He licked his finger.

  “At least the sauce has zest. Do you think it will catch on?” She answered him by aiming her bitten end at his lips. He took a doubtful bite. Then smiled.

  “This is good,” he said at last. “Seller. One more, please.” David gave the man a nickel and accepted another hot dog. “I confess that when you said ‘a little bite on the beach’ I assumed you’d drag me off to Ravenhall’s with all the other fashionables.”

  “Not me,” she said between bites. “Not after last night. People are so nosy.” She licked her thumb clean of yellow mustard.

  David leaned in close to her. “If we were alone, I’d offer to clean the rest of you the same way.”

  Winn felt her eyes grow round and tried to keep a smirk from her lips. He was far too bold in public. Deep down she enjoyed feeling shocked at his behavior. He was right about one thing, though. Now was not the time to think about that. Winn decided to get him onto a safer topic of conversation. “I think we should get some cold carbonated soda,” she said as she led him down the boardwalk.

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard of this. Tip got me to buy some stock in a cola company when we first went to Harvard. I’ve been ignoring letters from my broker, though I intend to visit him while I’m here. I can’t bear to think I might have lost what little money I had in something so frivolous but your fair-haired sibling got me drunk one evening and talked me into it. Makes you belch like a cow, I understand.”

  Winn giggled. “Only if you drink it down all at once. They’re selling it everywhere. Here,” she paused at another seller. “Two colas, please.”

  “That’ll be a jitney, mac.”

  David looked to Winn for a translation.

  “A jitney is a nickel.”

  “Why didn’t he say so? And why can’t they make up their minds what to call it. The hot dog man wanted a fish-scale. Your Americanisms are another language entirely.” He shook his head in disgust and handed over another coin. “At this rate I’ll be broke before supper,” he mused.

  Winn turned and smiled coyly at him, thinking of his earlier offer. “We’ll eat cheap.”

  “Naughty girl. Later.” He pulled her close and kissed her cheek. The affection earned him a nervous giggle from Winn and some scandalized looks from a few mature matrons passing by.

  “Fast.” They heard one comment.

  “Is it forbidden for a man to kiss his fiancée—” he said the word in a loud, clear voice, “—in public?”

  The matrons turned to each other and nodded approvingly. They smiled back at David and he tipped his cap to them. Winn looped her arm through his elbow. “Time to 23 skiddoo, Lord Charming.” And she pulled him down the boardwalk.

  “Time to what?”

  “23 skiddoo. It’s slang for skedaddle down 23rd Street at Broadway. That’s what all the coppers say to the panhandlers and prostitutes who try to cross the line into the more affluent area of Manhattan,” she explained.

  “Damned if I’ll ever get used to the way Americans massacre the King’s English.” Winn scowled at him but refused to be baited. “Now where are we off to?”

  “Some cheap Yankee entertainment.”

  They joined a group of onlookers who gathered to watch a magician. The man was dressed in a black leotard under what looked like a woman’s leg-of-mutton shirtwaist only it hung open. The man bowed to the crowd then lit a small baton until the end caught fire. He extinguished the fire by inserting it into his open mouth. There was a collective gasp. He waved the smoking baton and bowed to the crowd again. This time the crowd cheered and clapped and threw change into a suitcase propping up a placard that read The Great Bellinni. David parted company with another nickel.

  “Want to see Madame Celina, the fortune-teller? She’s my favorite.”

  “A charlatan, no doubt,” he scolded.

  “Not at all. In fact, she calls me her fairy child just like Margaret.”

  “Ah, that would be the irreverent Margaret of the Emerald Isle who scowls at me with a face like black beer and beady eyes.”

  “Oh, don’t bother with her. She’s just overprotective. It’s her job to look after me, has been ever since I…” She stopped and caught David by his sleeve. “That’s funny, I’ve never thought about it until now but Margaret always refers to Tip as being born but she talks about me being brought to the house as if I arrived from the greengrocer or something.”

  “I shouldn’t worry, my love. If I delved into a serious introspection every time that wrinkled gnome of a woman crossed herself before diving behind a tapestry I wouldn’t sleep for fear of burning in hell.”

  “David! That’s uncharitable.” She was prepared to vex him further when she noticed the corners of his mouth twitch and his eyes dance. Could she ever get used to him teasing her?

  “Hardly. The fact that I’m here proves I’m more than charitable. And speaking of charity, let’s go spread some to your gypsy.” He took her arm and they strolled further along the boardwalk.

  “You know, David, the week before I met you she said I’d meet a tall, dark-haired man from a far-off place.”

  “Darling, Pittsburgh is a far-off place according to the Grand Central Depot train schedule.”

  She lightly punched his arm. He obligingly rubbed it. “I mean it. She also said he’d bring me a gift fit for a queen. Don’t you see? The Cleves necklace.”

  He patted the hand she slipped through his elbow. “I see a young lady easily influenced to part with her money, but since I’m flush with five-cent pieces today, we’ll see your fortune-teller.”

  “Oh, but we’ll need a dime!”

  “Ah, I see now. Cross her palm with enough silver and she’ll predict the moon.”

  Winn leaned in close to him. “Is there a moon tonight?”

  David smiled down at her. She was easy to smile at and, goodness knew, she gave him enough reason. And, until a few days ago, he’d had little to smile about. “If there isn’t, I’ll paint one on the ceiling.”

  “Of your hotel room?” she whispered.

  “Of our bedroom,” he whispered back.

  “Here we are,” she announced and led him to a purple awning announcing Madame Celina, Seer of the Future. A middle-aged European woman with a babushka tied around her long black-and-gray hair, stood at the entrance to her kiosk. She wore a white peasant blouse and a long purple-and-gold skirt. Gold bangles adorned the thin, sun-baked ankles above her bare feet. Her attention was turned to a copy of the New York Herald.

  “Enter, young ones,” she commanded in a thick accent without looking up from her newspaper. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Winn squeezed his arm. “See what I mean. She knows everything.”

  Madame Celina looked up at Winn. “Ah, little one. Why did you not bring him here yesterday?” The gypsy pointed at David, causing an odd collection of charms and bracelets to rattle on her bony wrist.

  David heard Winn gasp. “How did you know?”

  David intervened before the woman could answer. “She read the newspaper, darling. She and most of New York can read the list of important passengers who disembarked from the Celtic on Tuesday last.”

  The gypsy laughed. “That would be true, little red mop. Except that Madame Celina cannot read the English words.” She showed him the paper, open to a full-page sketch of fall wool coats for women. “I like the pictures. I learn Cyrillic letters in the old country and then it was many years ago.” She stared at David, her hands propped on her hips. “Does that answer your question, tall dark-haired man whose coming I predicted to this chi
ld?”

  David cleared his throat and played with the tie at his high collar shirt. “Someone could have told her,” he whispered to Winn.

  “But they did not, Englishman. Come in and see what the future holds for you and your bride of gold.”

  Madame ushered them in and told them to sit at a small round table. On the center of the table a large glass ball stood on a red velvet-covered base. The woman drew the curtains closed. The table was barely large enough to fit three people around. David wrinkled his nose as she lit large yellow candles and sconces of pungent incense.

  “To cleanse the room so the spirits will come freely,” she explained. Then she sat between Winn and David.

  “Hands on the table, please. Now, concentrate while I stare into the crystal. Let us see what life has in store for you.”

  David let out a bored sigh and rolled his eyes at Winn, who gazed at the ball, entranced.

  “Hmmm…I see a fortress…a once-great house, its stairs now crumbling, its tapestries bare, its great fireplace mantles cold…”

  Cold. Despite the warm August afternoon, that was exactly how David felt at her accurate description of his once-proud Knightsbriar. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

  “A beautiful woman goes to her grave without holding her son to her bosom. There is much unhappiness for many years.”

  His mother. David swallowed, hard.

  “Ah…I see a feminine light shining through the darkness like a red-and-gold firefly, bringing joy to this house of dead queens. Her smile sparkles like the jewels she wears. This girl is a woman…now. Is it not so?” Madame cast a hard, knowing look directly at David. “Never mind. Your silence and her blush answer my question. You, little red mop,” she turned her gaze on Winnifred. “You will fall hard for this man. Very hard. Beware not to walk with your head in the clouds too long. Your footsteps may falter and more than your heart may break. Life is filled with misfortunes sometimes, no?”