by Louisa Trent
“I was not the only one carrying on. And, point of fact, when did the location offend your sensibilities, sir – was it the second or third time you poked me?”
I could have been mistaken, what with the dim light, but it looked to me as if he were tightening his cravat. As if a little twist in the silk was of grave importance to him.
“I was here to meet someone else this evening. A nice lady, referred to me by a friend. Someone I had never seen before. Now this! What am I supposed to do now? How did a prostitute get in here, anyway?” he raged, leaving my question go unanswered. “This is an invitation only affair. What? Did you sneak in through the service entrance?”
“I did nothing of the kind,” I protested, quivering in righteous indignation, my bare and still horribly elongated nipples pointing with my fury, none of which I tried to suppress.
“Christ, but you are stunning.” He reached for me.
When I swatted his hand away from my pointy bosom, he bent me over again – this time over his arm – and spanked my bare bottom. Hard.
I blinked back tears, induced by pain. Induced by something else too.
A return of my carnal excitement.
“If we are to have an association after this evening, never think to deny me,” he snarled, his palm resting on my stinging bottom, circling its roundness, flesh that must already be showing signs of bruising.
Erotic pleasure enveloped me.
“The little peeper craves discipline, does she? Stop looking so downcast about it. Nothing to be ashamed of. Whores have needs too. Just so happens, my specialty is administering to naughty penchants. Settle down while I see to your breasts first.”
He straightened me. “Done there yet?”
My brow puckered, perhaps for the first time in my life. “Done where yet?”
“Your luscious cunt.”
When phrased like that, the vulgarity could pass for something else. Something passably favorable.
“Yes. Done.” In a fit of unaccustomed pique, I tossed the wadded handkerchief on the floor.
He retrieved it, jammed it in his waistcoat pocket. “Hands at the base of your spine.”
Hmm. Which was more arousing – his gentlemanly voice or his ruffian’s growl?
I clasped my hands as directed, and he began a systematic abuse of my nipples, first with his hands, then with his teeth, until I was openly bucking, my hips rocking as if to entice him into a hard and fast…a hard and fast…
Fucking.
What was wrong with me?
Not only was I using unacceptable language in my thoughts, did I or did I not wish this escapade to end?
I was just a tad divided, a woman of two minds, really.
Had I been well-versed in the creative use of profanity, I would have screamed a few lurid phrases in his direction. But all I knew were bad words used by twelve-year old orphan lads, and outhouse language lacked the necessary sophistication to use against this man.
Instead, I whispered, “You, sir, are no gentleman.”
He released his hold on me.
Punishment for my name calling?
“How observant,” he replied. “Though, I always disguise my gutter roots behind a fat bankroll, nice tailoring, and handsome manners, you saw right through me, one of the few who ever have.”
“Even in the dim light, your lack of breeding is obvious,” I lied. “You, sir, are an orphan, a child of the streets. Most likely, you started as a pickpocket and went from there. Perhaps, with your glib tongue, a charm you turn on and off at will, you worked as a con artist at one time. A successful one, I would say.”
“Right you are. And on all counts.” He chuckled. “You sized me up to a T.”
He had not done the same to me. Here was the irony. I was a lady. Up until a few minutes ago, I was the most genteel of spinsters. And a virgin so naïve, I had entered a darkened room with a charmer seeking out his kisses and would leave with him thinking me a whore. How desperately sad I had been to do what I had done. How low I had fallen. And for what?
To feel less lonely for a few brief moments?
Under his close observation, I dressed as best I could, leaving off underclothes and shoving the evidence of my disgrace in my reticule, dropped at some time during my descent into madness. As I gathered together the tatters of my ruined black evening gown, he was done.
Then again, all he needed to do was move aside a flap on his trousers. Pissing and fucking, all the same to him.
I gasped to myself. Dear Lord! Had all my thoughts descended to the same lewd level?
Without a word of goodbye, he left me alone then, the now unlocked door closing softly at his back.
And that was that.
Despite his talk of forming an association with me, I would never see him again.
Life, such as it was, went on.
My bottom protested the weight of my heavy bustle, somewhat askew what with my swift dressing. He had rammed me from the back, and my abused flesh would recall that activity for days to come, as it would his discipline. My tender nipples revolted against the chafing of my stiff bodice, directly in contact with the unpleasant black fabric of my gown now that no chemise in-between acted as a buffer.
I hurt all over.
Outrage over his highhandedness would have told me the experience had left me unchanged. Sadly, I was not remotely outraged. I was changed. He had done that to me, altered me in as yet undefined ways. Already, I felt different. He had introduced me to all sorts of what I could only construe as perversions, and I had not balked once. Instead, I allowed him more of the same. Only allowed because I had yet to learn how to spur him on to greater acts of outrageousness. And in appreciation for my appetites?
He had wrongly thought me a prostitute, a high class one, true, still a woman hardened to the vagaries of male clients. And, rather than stay so I could hurl more accusations at his head, he had fled from my scorn.
From listening to conversations of married women, I knew this much about men…they hated scenes. Hated a woman’s tears. Hated any reminders of their culpability in causing both. And so men escaped.
I could not escape what he had done to me as easily. He had marked my body, and there was no fleeing those remnants left behind on my skin. And perhaps he had marked me further, beyond those superficial signs…the bruises, the bites, the pinches...during his brief possession of me.
By my estimation, we had been together less than two hours. During the last few minutes of that time, he had spent his seed inside me. For all I knew, I might very well have conceived as a consequence of that one time. I might even now carry the beginnings of his child, the baby of a thief as well as a conman, an all-around dishonorable cad who most likely resided somewhere in the Red-light District.
I hugged myself as a spate of feverish tremors washed over me. Deep in my heart of hearts, I knew this was not how a woman’s first time was supposed to end. I was not supposed to feel shaky and repentant and with a bad taste in my mouth. My overriding emotion was not supposed to be one of abandonment.
On another note… with no one any the wiser, I might be able to leave the mansion tonight with my reputation intact. Only I would ever know what I had done. No one would find me out.
Unless, I carried his child. Save to attend charitable soirees like this one and visit the North Street asylum, I rarely left home these days. Even so, how long could I keep something like that to myself?
And that was not nearly as hypocritical as it would seem at first blush. My good name mattered little to me. However, I had to take care not to offend those who supported my causes. A fall from grace for me would adversely impact the orphans whose charitable causes I represented.
Many highly-placed and well-to-do people were guests here tonight. Owing to my presenting this soiree as the most important Boston event of the year, the turnout had been huge. Guests accepted the invitation to see and be seen by others of equal status in the city.
I was under no delusions. I served only as
the lowly worker bee here. I was known as that reclusive spinster, the nice one always on the outside looking in. No one truly was acquainted with me personally. I stayed behind the curtains, striving to get my charity the attention…and funding…it rightly deserved.
I remained unidentifiable to the majority of the socially prominent. They read the society pages, but there were no photographs of me there…at my insistence. Should folks bump into me leaving the soiree – sneaking, really, down the back stairs conveniently located adjacent to this anteroom – they would not know me as Miss Malone, that nice spinster lady. In my present state of dishabille, my gown not only a crumbled mess but cut to ribbons, there would still be no talk about me. If it was noticed that my foundation garments were not performing the service for which they were intended – namely, holding everything in their proper position, because those unmentionables were among the missing – donations would not stop rolling in. The building fund for a new wing on the cramped North Street Asylum would remain unaffected.
These people not only had deep pockets, they had long memories.
Thanks to a stranger, I was no longer a naïve virgin. All romance in me was now officially dead, killed by an anonymous cad who left me alone to pick up the pieces. Furthermore…
…in the middle of all my hand wringing, the door to the scene of my crime creaked.
My misery did not want company. But what could I do?
Prepared to face the end of my life as I knew it, I spun around.
“Here,” said the cad, reentering the anteroom, then closing the door after his entry. “This should hide most of the damage. I retrieved it from the cloak room.”
“How did you know the cape belonged to me?”
“I told you – I noticed you as soon as you walked in tonight.”
When he handed over my plain, black, terribly depressing cape, I stared at the thing in my hand as if it were a viper.
I loathed that cloak. Why had I not known how much until right now?
My parents never would have wished for me to extend my deep mourning as I had. They wanted only my happiness.
On the morrow, the rag man would get the cloak along with the rest of tonight’s wardrobe, I decided, staring at the floor.
“I see,” he said grimly. “This is how you intend to play it.”
“I am not playing at anything, sir.”
“I would prefer you vent your spleen. Your fine courtesan manners are a painful contrast to my own insurmountable lapse of etiquette.” He raked both hands through his hair. “On the way to the cloak room, I had time to reflect on my behavior, and good judgment now prevails.”
He took a deep breath. “I owe you an apology. Obviously, I misunderstood your intentions. You were not turning a prostitute’s trick, not with me. If you choose to wear widow’s weeds to social events for…professional reasons…that is entirely your choice. You did not rope me into anything, because, for whatever the reason, you expected no money from me at the end. I insulted your generosity when I tried to pay you for your trouble. That misunderstanding would explain why you seemed like a kicked puppy, instead of giving me the bawdy whore laugh I had expected. If I felt like I had been double-crossed on the deal, the blame rests with me, not with you.
“Furthermore, you were in the right to take me down a peg or two. Rather than that tame slap, you should have knocked out my teeth and broken my nose.”
“Had I the strength, I would have done so, sir.”
“I can get someone to do it for you. How does that sound?”
“Perfectly ludicrous. I am also culpable for what happened. I should never have tried to be somebody I was not with you. I led you on and led you astray. Life does strange things to a person.”
“Yes, it does. Something we have in common, eh?”
I might have explained then about my lie. I might have told him I mourned not for a dead husband, but for…
Not my parents. I could own up to that now. I mourned for me, for the person I might have been, but was not.
But I gave him no such explanation. Not for anything. This was a mistake. One moved on from one’s mistakes. I had done this to myself. I merely used him as a means. As I had used the death of my parents to avoid changing what I disliked about myself.
He helped me place the dull evening wrap over my shoulders, which were no longer slumped in dejection. The back wool covered me from head to foot.
Disgrace would definitely not be visited upon me tonight. No one would ever know the depths to which I had sunk. The orphans would not pay for my indiscretion. They would not be punished for my reckless foolishness.
“May I have your…business…card, madam? I would like to…check in with you again at a future date.”
“Why?”
“To avail myself of your excellent services. I can tell you are as close to a lady as a whore is likely to get. Nothing cheap or tawdry about you. Certainly you are no cunt for hire on the docks.”
And here I thought he meant to smooth the waters.
I choked back my laughter. Of all the improbable responses I could have made to his little speech was to break into belly whoops. Not that I was given to belly whoops. Far too gauche. Along with belches, scratching, and saying my drawers were wet.
I had already succumbed to one of those unladylike activities. Who knew what else I would do before the night was through?
From shy virgin spinster to being awarded the phrase – cunt for hire on the docks – in the space of an evening! I had outdone the usual social disasters I left in my wake.
“Perhaps we might even work out a weekly schedule if your appointment book permits,” he continued. “The story about the dead husband was very shrewd. You were so refined in manner, I never suspected you were a woman of the evening here to drum up future clients amongst wealthy Boston Brahmins. And you know what lent your story the most credibility?”
Before he even filled in the blank, I knew.
“Your niceness,” he continued. “Your manner seemed so natural. Niceness is a good trait in a whore who specializes in ladylike submission.”
He thought me a whore still, but one with a specialization – submission.
I recalled how still and cooperative I had held for him during the spanking. How I thrust out my bottom toward his descending hand. No shrinking for me! How excitement had taken me over when he locked his hand on me and held me in place.
“You would be safe with me,” he supplied. “Hurting women beyond their pain threshold is not something I ever do, regardless of how much I pay them. I am not that kind.”
And what kind was that?
“I should have stopped, madam.”
The kind who admitted when he was in the wrong.
“You deserved better than a vacant anteroom. I should have rescheduled the fuck for later.”
I was glad he had not.
I bit my tongue against telling him so.
“I have done many terrible things in my life, madam, but not putting our time together off for later is one of the more reprehensible. Having you in that shabby room was unforgiveable. As I said…I do know how these things work. I merely forgot for a few critical minutes with you. So, I shall ask you once again – may I know when and where I might contact you? I am very interested in developing an exclusive relationship with you. I can afford however much you might ask. Name your price.”
I shook my head. “The situation you describe is quite impossible.” Oddly delicious, but still out of the question.
“Nothing is impossible, madam. We would be good together. You would like what I did to you.”
I did laugh then, a polite, ladylike twitter of amusement. “Then why pay me? If I liked it, I should be the one paying you.”
“Your liking it would please me, would make me come too.”
Come? Was that what my carnal release was called?
“I know whores never come, that their screams and cries are all pretense, but you would come for real with me, stronger relea
ses than what you experienced just now. You require pain, madam. I could provide it.”
It was just too much to absorb, all of it. I needed to leave, to sort everything out in the privacy of my bedchamber at home. Much of what he said made little sense…particularly why that spanking he gave me nearly brought me to writhing, and not in a bad way. I sensed there would be no bad way with him. I sensed what he said about my needing pain was true.
“I leave first,” I said, my submission dropping away and taking up the command. My hand already on the knob, I turned it slowly, wanting to escape, but damn me for a fool, not wishing to go.
At that first sliver of light, I braced myself for a return to sanity. “Wait for a bit before taking your own leave, sir.”
Placing his hand on my shoulder, he halted me before ever I stepped outside. “I mean to see you again.”
And I meant to keep an expanded roof over my orphans’ heads. The two were mutually exclusive.
Boston Brahmin were such hypercritical snobs! All of us believed we could do as we pleased…and we could for the most part…so long as no one outside the group caught us at it. No airing our dirty laundering in public!
I reminded myself again that I was responsible for more than only myself. My unconcern for my good name would translate into uncertainty for the North Street Expansion Project. I had been lucky tonight. Others – children – would suffer my future behavior if my outrageousness ever got out.
I had lost my head with this stranger, been completely oblivious of consequences. The orphans could not afford such selfishness from me again.
Would that I had realized this state of affairs earlier – as in before I went off with a complete stranger in the home of a fellow Boston Brahmin. Though it was common knowledge that the host for this evening’s event had kept a string of mistresses through the years, because his reputation remained impeccable, he suffered not at all for this breach of decorum. Then again, he was man. Standards were higher for a woman, the punishment more severe.