A Courtesan’s Guide to Getting Your Man

by Celeste Bradley

  Clearly, there was no time for diversion. If she stopped to linger over every provocative phrase and erotically tinged word she encountered in Ophelia’s elegant and fluid handwriting, she’d be standing at the copy machine for the rest of her natural life.

  Piper carefully lifted Volume II from the glass surface and forced herself to concentrate. Though she followed document-handling protocol to mitigate damage, each turn of a page had resulted in some additional injury to the journals, the paper tearing slightly along the hand-sewn spine. It was unavoidable. The pages were brittle with time, pockmarked by insects, and weakened by mold and mildew. Yet it could have been far worse, she knew. The diaries were in surprisingly good condition for their age and had remained mostly legible, thanks to the way they’d been wrapped and stored.

  Ophelia Harrington had meant business when she packed these away in the false bottom of her trunk, a task that she accomplished on or after April 16, 1825, the date on the London Examiner news sheet used to wrap them. Nearly six layers of newsprint had encased each volume.

  In addition, the trunk itself had offered a good deal of protection from humidity and light. Whoever built the travel chest had been a master craftsman, fitting the seams so tightly that the secret compartment and its spring release were invisible even upon close examination. In the three months Piper had been poking around the trunk (along with all of Ophelia Harrington’s belongings), she’d never suspected such a feature. And it would have remained a secret—the diaries lost forever—if Piper hadn’t knocked the trunk on its side when she tripped.

  She cautiously turned the page, lifted the journal, carried it to the glass plate and turned it over for copying. That’s when her eye caught the phrase “my masked lover” and her pulse spiked once more.

  This stuff was addictive! Mind-numbingly erotic! Historical and sexual C-4! And Piper knew if she lost her focus and started reading the diary entries as a woman instead of a scholar, then she’d be in serious trouble. She’d already seen enough to know that Ophelia Harrington had lived a far juicier life than Piper had. Furthermore, she’d done it in an era of limited rights for women, a strict social construct, and before the girl even turned twenty-five!

  Piper, on the other hand, lived in a time where she could be anything and do anything she wished. And what had she done with thirty years of freedom?

  She’d studied. Worked. Read the classics. Traveled when she could. Tried to please her parents. Dated men who weren’t quite right for her, and only occasionally.

  With the discovery of these journals, Piper had to face the fact that compared to Ophelia Harrington, she was in danger of becoming a dried-up, frustrated, bitter, and boring woman.

  The most hurtful event of her life flashed through Piper’s brain—the way it often did in moments of self-pity—and in her mind’s eye, she watched Magnus “Mick” Malloy’s strong and straight back as he walked out her door.

  God, the thought of Mick Malloy still made Piper’s belly clench in shame. She’d followed his superstar career over the years, of course. It would have been hard not to in their line of work. Mick Malloy had become the unofficial cover model for The Curator, Archaeology Today, and Science Magazine. She’d even heard the rumor that Malloy was getting his own cable reality show. And why not? He was made for TV. Sexy. Sun-bronzed. A real-life Indiana Jones with a brilliant mind, a sharp wit, and a devastatingly fine …

  Forget it. It doesn’t matter anymore.

  Piper sighed. The details she wanted to know about Mick weren’t to be found in magazines or TV shows, anyway, and she’d never dare come right out and ask someone.

  Was he happy? Had he ever married? Had a woman ever captured his mind and heart the way archaeology had? If so, who was she? And in how many ways was she the complete opposite of Piper?

  I will not go there.

  Piper straightened her shoulders and carefully executed the task at hand, reminding herself that these journals were not about her or Mick or how she’d blown her chance with him a decade ago. The diaries weren’t some kind of yardstick with which to compare her own adventures—or lack thereof. These journals were a historical treasure with yet unknown repercussions.

  Ophelia’s firsthand accounts of her life as a London courtesan would not only add a fascinating complexity to her role in history, but it could improve understanding of early nineteenth-century underground London economy, its social mores, and the indiscretions of the rich and powerful. This was a serious scholarly matter, not a Cosmo quiz.

  “Mrrraow.” Piper turned to the yellow demon stare of Miss M., who had draped herself over the back of the Queen Anne chair in dramatic fashion, her tail swishing in the stuffy air as if she were fanning herself.

  “You think I’m enjoying this?” she asked her cat. “I’m exhausted. It’s ninety-four degrees outside. My life is about as fun as one of Mom and Dad’s dinner parties! And this girl—this courtesan chick who ran around calling herself ‘the Blackbird’ and bending over to light men’s cigars so that her mammary glands fell out of her dress—” Piper gestured toward the diary she held above the copier. “My God! What a complete tart that girl was!”

  Miss Meade blinked, then looked away as if offended by the outburst.

  The phone rang, saving Piper from further crazy cat-lady conversation. She eased the journal into its makeshift cradle of organic cotton batting covered by acid-free cloth, and checked the caller ID. Suddenly, chatting with her cat seemed like a perfectly reasonable endeavor. Piper let the call go to automated voice mail, but clicked on the speaker.

  “It’s your mother,” the clipped voice said through the telephone console. “Unless I hear otherwise, I’ll assume you’re not coming for dinner tomorrow. I am concerned about you. We haven’t seen you for going on a month. You haven’t returned my calls. Your father thinks you might be back on dairy and are experiencing symptoms of bloat and/or depression. Are you back on dairy? Are you depressed? Are you bloated? Call me, please.” Click.

  This would be as good a time as any to take a break, Piper decided, heading into her tiny kitchen for some ice cream. The real stuff, too. Häagen-Dazs Vanilla Bean. Five hundred eighty calories and thirty-six grams of fat in a one-cup serving.

  As Piper opened the freezer compartment and stuck her head inside for a quick respite, she thought about how she’d like to answer her mother. If she had the nerve. She might say, “Hell, yes, I’m back on dairy, Mother dearest! And by the way—you seem to have forgotten your only child’s thirtieth fucking birthday!”

  A sudden tingle that went through her had nothing to do with the open freezer. She found it immensely satisfying to speak to her mother like that—especially using the f-word—even if only in her head.

  She smiled to herself. Oh, if her mother only knew …

  Just yesterday, Piper had enjoyed a Polish sausage, fries, and a giant vanilla shake. And three days prior to that she’d gotten completely out of control and had a huge slice of New York cheesecake—the chocolate marble swirl kind.

  Piper was aware that her bingeing on dairy was a classic case of rebellion, the kind she should have experimented with at seventeen. But she hadn’t had the nerve at seventeen. Or eighteen. The truth was, it sucked being the only child of the founders of the Caloric Restriction and Human Longevity Lab at Harvard. They were among the country’s most revered biomedical researchers—and two of the most tightly wound, repressed human beings ever to inhabit the earth.

  Birthdays weren’t celebrated in her family. Her parents said holidays were just an excuse to overdo. For her birthday, Piper could count on a kiss on the cheek and a new book, but never cake and ice cream or a beautifully wrapped gift.

  “Will vanilla work for you?” Piper asked Miss Meade, who was rubbing against her ankle and purring, a sure sign of her improving mood.

  As she scooped out two bowls of the heavenly substance, it suddenly struck Piper as pathetic. Her idea of debauchery in the twenty-first century was a cup of vanilla ice cream. Opheli
a Harrington had spent part of 1813 studying the erotic arts, under the tutelage of a masked man she knew only as “Sir,” who served as her professor of gluttonous depravity for seven days and seven nights.

  There was something wrong with this picture.

  Two

  Thus emboldened, I returned to the witness stand, determined to skewer the hypocrites, all of them.

  “I stand accused of a murder I did not commit. And who are my accusers?” I scanned the packed courtroom and pointed to the offenders.

  “The prosecutor is a man who has unsuccessfully courted me for more than a decade, a man known to grovel at my doorstep, only to burst into sobs when I sent him away. And the man bringing these charges?”

  I took great relish in facing the sullen, vindictive wastrel, wondering how I could have ever found him dashing. “This is the blackguard who tried to sell me into sexual slavery years ago, only to beat me severely when I escaped his control.”

  The courtroom erupted into gasps and murmurs. Yet I was not done. I stood in the witness box and raised my voice high and clear.

  “This trial is naught but a temper tantrum thrown by enraged and undisciplined little boys, all of whom are in dire need of a good spanking!”

  The alarm had gone off long ago, but Piper remained propped up on her pillows, in the same daze she’d been in all weekend. There was no other way to look at it—Ophelia Harrington had balls. The lady didn’t take crap off anyone—not her guardians, not the arbiters of decorum, not the men who sought out her company and then sought to rule her.

  That chick had the courage to live life to its fullest—in and out of the boudoir.

  It was all very inspiring. And exhausting.

  After spending forty-eight hours in Ophelia’s exotic world of lust, excess, seduction, intrigue, and betrayal, Piper felt overwhelmed. The journals had aroused her and piqued her curiosity in equal measure, but she was far more accustomed to being piqued than being aroused, so, by this time, she was wiped out. Wasted. Hung over on a Monday morning and running late for work.

  The sun sliced through the miniblinds. The window air conditioner hummed and rattled. Miss Meade was curled up at the foot of her double bed. This was where Piper was supposed to rise and dress and pack her brown-bag lunch and get herself to the museum. She had a 9 A.M. staff meeting. She had an afternoon monthly budget session. But how was she supposed to do all that? How was she supposed to drag her sex-dazed self in there and pretend she was the same girl who’d come to work on Friday?

  She wasn’t. And she’d probably never be that girl again, would she? Piper wiped at the tears suddenly running down her cheeks, laughing at her own ridiculousness. She’d made quite the wet mess of herself, hadn’t she?

  Last night, for the first time in years, Piper had touched herself.

  Last night, for the first time in her life, she’d managed to bring herself to orgasm. And not just the standard kind of orgasm. Inspired by the diaries, somehow Piper had charged headlong into a searing, core-rattling, devastating place she’d never visited before. She didn’t go there once. She went four times. And the most shocking part of all of it was that somehow, Mick Malloy had risen from her past and inserted his man-candy self into her orgasmic fantasies, weaving in and out of the jumbled historical sex-stew that had temporarily taken over her brain.

  So now, as Piper sat there propped up against her pillows, it felt as if a dam had burst in her soul, as if the heat of Ophelia and Sir’s two-hundred-year-old sexual liaison had somehow burned down the walls she’d built inside herself.

  And all Piper could think was, Shit. Because the truth was she needed more. And she needed the real thing. Like Ophelia. She wanted all of it—the intense passion, the devotion, the entire arc of a love story for the ages! Unfortunately, these things required an actual man.

  I will not go there.

  She laughed again, so loud she disturbed Miss M. The cat raised her head and opened one eye long enough to pass judgment, then went back to sleep.

  Piper needed to get a grip. She closed her eyes, breathed deep, and concentrated on removing herself from Ophelia’s sensual world. She forced herself to reenter her own mind, her own time and place, her own body.

  She took a moment to notice that the sheets tossed over her legs were practical cotton, not the finest satin. She wore a holey Red Sox T-shirt, not some of Lementeur’s hand-stitched lingerie. Her muddy brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, not loose and glossy and jet black as it fell over her shoulders and onto her bare back.

  Eventually, Piper became aware that her limbs trembled, either from exhaustion or exhilaration, she couldn’t be sure. But it was no mystery why her chest felt tight and heavy—it was the burden she now carried. Piper had become the sole executor of Ophelia Harrington’s secret legacy—every shocking and succulent morsel of it. In less than three months, Piper would have to unveil the Ophelia Harrington exhibit at the annual BMCS Fall Gala. She’d have to stand before the board of trustees, the cranky Claudia Harrington-Howell, and a lobby full of big-money museum donors and Boston muckety-mucks and show them what she’d come up with.

  And here was Piper’s dilemma: would she proceed with her plan and give everyone a technically accurate and thoroughly inoffensive look at Ophelia’s home life and abolitionist work, or would she dare tell the whole story, as she now understood it?

  Would Piper have the guts to commit professional suicide with an exhibit exposing the truth about Ophelia Harrington—that the righteous Yankee matron who demanded the end of American slavery was once a London call girl who gleefully rented herself out for debauchery?

  Piper tossed the copied pages of Volume III to the bedspread and groaned with frustration. Who was she kidding? Even if she possessed balls the size of grapefruits, there was no way she could do justice to Ophelia’s decadent London world on a nonexistent budget. How could she re-create the courtesan’s boudoir, salon, and wardrobe—not to mention the Regency London social scene—without spending a fortune?

  She wasn’t like her best friend. Piper couldn’t go around batting her eyelashes and showing a little cleavage the way Brenna did, getting people to upgrade her to first class or give her the window table.

  Piper swung her legs over the side of the bed and staggered toward the bathroom, her mind reeling with every newly discovered fact about Ophelia Harrington and every corresponding missing piece with which she was now obsessed. For herself. Exhibit aside, she felt compelled to understand Ophelia and her choices. Just for herself.

  How had that woman ever summoned the courage to live life on her own terms? What had that girl had that Piper didn’t?

  She stretched, ripped off the T-shirt, and jumped under the spray. She had time for a lightning-quick shower but wouldn’t even bother with her hair. Who cared what she looked like, anyway? Piper was a scholar, an academic with her master’s in anthropology from Wellesley and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard. She hadn’t been asked out on a date in six months. She operated in a world where her mind was all that mattered, all she needed. The fact that she was a woman in possession of hair and a face and a body was immaterial.

  Piper toweled herself off roughly and grabbed her toothbrush. She caught sight of her reflection and gasped. Her lips were still a ghostly blue from the ink pen disaster. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was terribly pale. Her wavy hair had frizzed in the heat and humidity, defying the rubber band that imprisoned it. Piper reached for her broken glasses and burst out laughing.

  God. No wonder no one had asked her out lately. Her femininity was more than immaterial—it was downright undetectable!

  No wonder Mick Malloy had walked out on her.

  She dug around in her closet for something cool and roomy to wear and some comfy sandals to slip into. She returned the original diaries to her briefcase and shoved her working copy alongside. Piper set out on her Monday-morning commute into downtown Boston—there was no way she’d take the T with the original journals on her person—and arrived a
t the museum with a half hour to spare before her meeting. She would have just enough time to safely store the diaries, and once that was done, she would be able to breathe.

  Piper swung into the first parking spot she found. She jogged to the rear museum entrance, already sweating, and used her employee card key to gain entrance. She scurried down the back hall toward the employee elevator, her glasses askew, rounded the corner …

  And was knocked on her rump, the victim of a full-frontal collision with a person she never saw coming.

  She watched, horrified, as the diaries ejected from her briefcase and went sliding across the linoleum floor, clearly visible through their Mylar storage sleeves. Without wasting a second, Piper scrambled on her hands and knees to collect them, shoving them one by one into the briefcase, hoping beyond hope that no one had seen anything.

  She bolted to a stand, her chest heaving, and glared up into the face of the asshole who’d knocked her over.

  She froze.

  “Piper? Is that you?” The man’s blue eyes widened along with his dazzling white smile. “Hey! I was hoping I’d run into you on my first day here, but not like this!” He laughed. “Are you okay?”

  Oh no. Please. Oh God. Oh holy shit. Any day but today.

  Magnus “Mick” Malloy wrapped his fingers around Piper’s upper arm and leaned in close. He studied her broken glasses and blue lips.

  “Rough weekend?” he asked.

  * * *

  Moments later Piper sat across from Mick in the museum café daintily sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup and trying to appear cheerful while anxiety ripped through her body. Mick had just told her he looked forward to catching up.

  Catching up on what?

  She hadn’t seen him in a decade. The last time she’d spoken to him about anything other than her master’s thesis, her underwear had been down around her ankles, Let’s Get It On was playing on her off-campus apartment CD player, and he was striding out her door, taking with him every morsel of bravado she’d scraped together for just that occasion. Mick Malloy had broken her heart. He’d crushed her self-confidence. Much later, he’d invaded her orgasms. But the point was, Mick was just a stranger.