How to Master Your Marquis (12 page)

“Oh dear,” said Stefanie.

Evidently this Hannah was a kissing cousin.

The clerk who sat next to her, Bumby was his name, delivered her back a hearty thwack. “Look there! Cousin Hannah herself!” he called out.

The mistress of the house appeared in the doorway, not at all the florid female butterball of bawdy house legend. Cousin Hannah was tall and willowy, except for a pair of unnecessarily plump breasts perched atop an unnecessarily snug corset, and at the sight of the company in her crimson parlor, her face of fragile if rather mature loveliness opened up in a welcoming smile. She held out her hands. “Why, Mr. Bumby! Do come and give me a kiss. It’s been ages. A fortnight at least!”

Mr. Bumby obliged with enthusiasm, and then he turned to a pink-faced Stefanie. “This is my young friend Mr. Thomas, Hannah. He likes them fresh, he says. The fresher the better, isn’t that right, Thomas?”

“In fact,” said Stefanie, “I believe that last beer at the Slaughtered Lamb has rather done for me tonight . . .”

“Oh, rubbish, Thomas!” said one of the other clerks. “Why, Hannah’s girls will have your prick standing in no time, never fear. Once I staggered in here at two in the morning, drunk as a dockhand, couldn’t put two words together, couldn’t bloody walk for England, and in two minutes little Camille had me so stiff I could have ground pepper with my . . .”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Humboldt.” Cousin Hannah tilted her head and assessed Stefanie from under her thick black lashes. “But Camille is not for everyone, you know. Are you certain you want someone so young, Mr. Thomas? I think an older girl might suit you better. A girl of experience.”

“Or no girl at all,” said Stefanie, “for I’m really quite . . . shattered. Been an exhausting day, an exhausting few days really, and . . .”

“Oh, that’s balls, Thomas,” said Bumby. “Do go up for a quick one, at least. You can’t just sit about the parlor waiting for us with your doodle hanging down mournfully around your ankles, can you?”

“That’s . . . that’s unlikely, really,” said Stefanie. “In any case, I can find my own way home.”

Cousin Hannah took a step closer. She laid her hand on Stefanie’s arm, light as a silken feather, ladylike and lascivious all at once. “I think I understand your difficulty, Mr. Thomas.”

“I really think you don’t.”

She bent her pretty head to Stefanie’s ear and spoke so softly, Stefanie almost couldn’t hear. “It is your first time, isn’t it? A little nervous, perhaps?” Her breath smelled of chocolate.

“No! No. I mean yes. I mean . . .”

Her hand slipped down Stefanie’s arm to grasp her fingers. “Come with me, Mr. Thomas. I have just the thing for you.” She spoke more loudly now, and the other clerks whooped with gentlemanly approval.

“Go on, Thomas!”

“Up you go, old man!”

“Poke her a good one, Thomas!”

Cousin Hannah tugged her out of the room. Stefanie followed, thinking perhaps this was her chance, she could make a break for it, find a back entrance. But the stairs loomed up immediately, tall and steep and carpeted in plush crimson. Cousin Hannah gripped her wrist like a manacle and yanked her upward, in a gesture quite unlike her ladylike deportment in the parlor.

Stefanie took a few stumbling steps after her and cast a glance back down to the entrance hall, and an enormous beef-armed man glared back up at her, as if to say,
Don’t even think about it, ye posh fragging twit.

Stefanie gulped back a yelp of dismay and continued on in Hannah’s determined wake. Her mind invented and discarded a dozen excuses, and finally settled on disease. Nothing a prostitute dreaded more than disease, wasn’t it? Inconvenience, lost profit, disgruntled customers, that sort of thing. She would make her confession in the privacy of the room itself. Pay the woman a sovereign, or whatever the going rate was, and ask to be excused.

On the other hand, Stefanie found her natural curiosity rather awakened as Cousin Hannah, those corseted hips swaying like lifeboats, dragged her down a hallway lined with doors, all of them shut tight. A bawdy house! A genuine, honest-to-goodness bawdy house! An establishment built for the sole purpose of fornication by the hour. What were the ladies like? What were the customers like? What were the rooms like? Did everybody get down to business straightaway, or was there any sort of farcical courtship first, a few words of affection or at least attraction, a human connection of some kind before the necessary parts made the necessary contact with the inevitable result?

Did they change the sheets between customers?

And what on earth was that oblong object on the hall table?

“Wait a moment,” said Stefanie, rather breathlessly, but Hannah had already reached the room at the end of the hall and turned the knob.

“Here we are, sir. All private and lovely.”

Stefanie stumbled across the threshold and caught herself on a lamp table. She gazed around her in astonishment. A torrent of faded crimson wallpaper coated the walls, peeling at the corners and at the chipped baseboards, which had once probably been painted in white, and which were now a sooty gray. Atop a stain on the thick red rug stood a tripod table, on which a half-empty bottle of sherry perched with two smudged glasses. There was a wardrobe in the corner, for what purpose Stefanie could not possibly imagine.

And the bed. Of course, the bed.

Sized for two, made up with gray white sheets and a few thin blankets, dominating the room and made double by a large oblong mirror attached to the wall beside it. The four wooden posts rose up like pillars, nearly touching the slanted ceiling.

“Look here . . .” Stefanie lunged for the doorknob, but Hannah shut it tight and turned the key.

“Now, then,” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, my lad. It’s the greatest pleasure in the world, isn’t it? You’ve given yourself pleasure before, haven’t you?”

“I . . . yes, well . . . you see, I . . .”

Hannah smiled beautifully. “Don’t worry. No one will ever know, will they? And I’ll take special care of you. You’ve come to the right place for it, Mr. Thomas. Nobody takes on a new boy like I do. But you knew that right enough, or you wouldn’t have come, would you? Every young fellow knows to come to Cousin Hannah’s for his first poke.”

“But that’s the thing! It’s all a dreadful mistake!” Stefanie said, in desperation.

Hannah wandered to the table in the corner and poured the sherry into one of the glasses. The electric light tried and failed to catch the dirty facets. “Have a little sip, now, Mr. Thomas. It will relax you.”

“I don’t need to relax. I say, do you mean you make a specialty out of this? Deflowering boys?”

Hannah drifted back toward her. Her eyes gleamed the same color as the sherry. “Drink, Mr. Thomas.”

“I can’t possibly. I really must be getting home. I . . . Good God, madam!”

Hannah’s hands, working deftly at her back, had just released the bodice of her dress. She cupped her breasts invitingly atop her corset, not that all that overflowing flesh required much additional upward momentum. “You see, Mr. Thomas? Lovely, aren’t they?”

“I . . . yes, they are, quite lovely indeed, but I really . . .” Stefanie angled her foot toward the door.

Quick as a flash, Hannah interposed herself between Stefanie and the door. “Only a single sovereign, dear boy. One golden sovereign. Imagine sinking your head between these beauties.” She gave her handsome pair another jiggle.

“Yes, quite,” said Stefanie. “But . . .”

Hannah reached behind again, and an instant later the whole dress slid free in a whoosh of silk gown against satin petticoat.

“How the devil did you do that?” Stefanie asked, incredulous.

“I am very skilled at what I do, Mr. Thomas.” The petticoats were dropping now, one by one, to be kicked aside in turn by Hannah’s adroit satin-slippered feet.

“Yes, but the tapes! The fastenings! Surely there must be some sort of trick to it, because I’ve never . . . Let me examine that bodice . . .” Stefanie bent to retrieve the frock, and a petticoat landed frothily atop her head.

“Do you want me to take off my corset, dear boy?” purred Hannah, from somewhere above.

“Not really. I . . . Good Lord, where does it end?” Stefanie scrabbled at the lace obstructing her vision.

“Just imagine yourself lying atop them, sweetheart. Soft and lovely.”

Stefanie drew away the petticoat at last and found Hannah’s plump white thighs, covered only by stockings and a perilously thin chemise, nearly brushing her nose.

“I assure you, madam, I . . .”

Hannah took her by the shoulders and hoisted her upward. “Come along, now. Don’t be shy.”

“I’m not shy! I’m only . . .” Stefanie’s mind raced. What was that excuse again?

“Right here, dear boy.” Hannah’s hands grasped the back of her head.

“. . . ill!” Stefanie burst out, but the word was muffled by the endless pillow of Hannah’s breasts, scented powerfully with rose.

“What was that?”

Stefanie jerked back her head and gasped for air. “Ill! I’m ill! I . . .”

“Of course you are! Ooh, that’s it, isn’t that lovely, Hannah will make it all better . . .”

“. . . have a . . . disease of some kind . . .”

“. . . ooh, I’ll cure you straightaway, never fear . . .”

“. . . an . . . an itchy sort of thing . . . itches like the devil . . .”

“. . . ooh, scratch
me
, then . . . ooh, you’re so strong, Mr. Thomas, such a fighter . . .”

“. . . and . . . and pustules, I think . . . yes, great pustules of . . . of pus . . .”

“. . . ooh, don’t fight so, don’t . . .
PUS!?
”

The door crashed open, just as Hannah thrust Stefanie away with such ferocious energy she tumbled on her back atop the thick red sour-smelling rug.

Stefanie stared at the ceiling, wheezing for breath. Every atom of air seemed saturated with rose water. Her head ached with it, or perhaps that was only the influence of the floorboards beneath.

Really, the evening could not possibly get any worse.

But no sooner had this thought crossed her aching brain, when the voice of the Marquess of Hatherfield broke above her, like an avenging archangel. “Mr. Thomas! What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

She placed her palms against the rug and attempted to rise.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

H
atherfield fought to maintain a suitably avenging expression as he surveyed the scene before him. Poor young Thomas, lying on the floor, gasping for breath, his face as red as the rug beneath his head. The prostitute—the rather shapely and bountiful prostitute, it must be said—stuffing her bounty with some difficulty back into its rightful place in her corset, as a housemaid might stuff a few more feathers into a pillow already packed with down.

“Dear me,” he said. “What a scene of corruption. Do sit up, Thomas, and attempt a little dignity.”

“I want him out of my house!” screeched the prostitute. “Him and his diseased parts!”

Hatherfield lifted an eyebrow. “Diseased, Mr. Thomas?”

“Yes, sir.” Thomas stood slowly, a little dazedly, and cast his shamed eyes down toward the rug. “Quite . . . quite dreadfully diseased, as I informed Mistress Hannah. Not wishing to . . . do her an injury.”

“An injury! Very serious, Thomas. I own myself appalled. We shall have to get you to a doctor instantly and have this problem corrected. In the meantime, I think it best if . . .”

A series of shouts floated through the open door. A rattling crash. Another.

“What the devil?” said the prostitute. She gathered up her petticoats and dress and made for the door.

“May I . . . may I assist you, madam?” Hatherfield inquired, averting his eyes from her bosom.

“It’s the police! Police, by God!” She thrust her legs through her petticoats.

“Police?” said Hatherfield.

“Police!” gasped Mr. Thomas.

“The dirty bastards! I paid them off, I did! The stinking arseholes!” The room shook with the force of Cousin Hannah’s indignation. No sign now of her ladylike air down below in the parlor. “Pigs. You can’t trust nobody anymore!”

The dress was on, a few petticoats short. Hannah performed some feat of dexterity at her back and darted from the room.

Young Thomas stared after her. Her face was wide and still with shock. She pressed her mustache with her first two fingers. “Quickly, Hatherfield! We’ve got to run!”

“I’m quite certain . . .”

But Thomas had already grasped his hand and was tugging him out the door. “We’ll find a back exit!”

The hall was already full of half-dressed women and men with gaping trousers, stuffing their shirts and swinging their jackets. “This way!” someone shouted, and a stampede ensued toward the back staircase.

“Come along!” Thomas pulled at his arm.

“No! The back exit will be guarded, you fool! That’s how they take everyone!”

“How the devil do you know that?”

“This way. Back in the room.” He turned around and pulled Thomas’s spindly body behind him, back down the hallway.

Thomas yanked himself free. “We’ll be sitting ducks in there! We’ve got to run!”

“Calm down, Mr. Thomas . . .” Hatherfield grasped her wrists.

“Let me go! You don’t understand! They can’t catch me, I can’t be found out . . .”

There was no time to argue with her. Hatherfield bent and gripped Thomas behind the knees with one arm and across the back with the other. With a single giant heave he tossed her flailing body over his shoulder.

Her fists pounded his back. “Put me down at once!”

“Now, Mr. Thomas. Calm yourself. Just trust me.”

“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Back to that room? Are you mad?”

He didn’t dare answer that question. He carried her back down the hall, against the tide of panicked sinners, ducking and staggering and apologizing. “Beg your pardon. Yes, back to the room, certainly not going to—excuse me, madam—dash out into that damned turkey shoot about to take place in the—watch the leg, there!—back courtyard.”

The flailing limbs stilled around him. “Good Lord, Hatherfield. You’re not thinking of shimming us out the window, are you?”

“Nothing to it, Thomas. It’s only the first floor, after all.” He ducked under the doorframe. “And in any case, we’re not simply going to drop right down, into the turkey shoot. That would be foolish.”