Wings of the Fallen ((UnHolyPimpHand & Curious_Muse))

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Collaborated Works of Curious_Muse & UnHolyPimpHand​

Inspired by True Events

London, England. 1886

What do we do with the history we want to forget? Do we face it bravely, or do we shun it for existing and try to kill it for being true?​

Lucy tried to ignore the muffled snickers and the stares of the servants. Could they not just leave her alone? Sobbing, she was putting clothes into a suitcase, unsure of what she was packing for. This new grand house, the servants, the plans for her future – all suddenly gone! She heard the whispers, even if she pretended not to. She heard them call her a whore, a strumpet, a liar. Newly married, happy until last night, she was now a fallen woman, utterly alone.

Her husband, a stern and religious man, had told her that he would divorce her, send her back to her parents in disgrace. She still did not really understand how any of this had happened. It had been a match arranged by her father who held a small post at the royal court, and she, the ever obedient daughter, had happily agreed, even if the husband he had chosen for her was much older, and not particularly charming. But Theodore Winterbottom was a royal officer, he was an upstanding and well-known gentleman, he was wealthy and he had asked for her hand in marriage. It had been an honour, and Lucy knew, from her mother, from her sisters, that love often came much later in a marriage, that the most important thing was a good, honest husband.

During their wedding night, Theodore had lectured her that lust was a sin, and intercourse between spouses only performed for procreation, and nothing more. He had covered her entire body with a white linen sheet, so as not to succumb to sinful desire when glimpsing her young, naked flesh. Lucy had never even kissed a man before, and did not know what to expect. Lying shivering with nerves beneath the linen sheet, a piece of embroidered fabric that only left an opening for the husband to take her and consummate the marriage, she had waited for him to do his duty. He had probed her through the opening with his thick fingers, and she had winced in pain, but not dared to protest. Lucy knew that obedience was her first duty as a young wife, and she was determined not to shame her family. He shied away from the blood that would accompany this first act, he explained, and said that deflowering her with his fingers would be cleaner. So she had grit her teeth and shut her eyes while he roughly explored her tight, virginal sex.

But there had been no blood. Irritated and humiliated, Theodore ad added a second, and then a third finger to his operation, and at that point she had cried out in pain, because she simply could not accommodate such girth. He had gotten angry, scolding her for her weakness, and continued to shove his fingers deep inside her until she cried. But the blood had not come. Finally, convinced that he had been fooled and acquired a soiled bride, he had struck her, and called her whore, a harlot, a trollop, and other names she did not care to remember. Her tears only fuelled his anger further.

Lucy had cried even more then, and sworn that she was a virgin, that she had never so much a looked at a man. He did not believe her, the weight of proof so heavy on her. He held up his fingers to her face, furious. “You lied to me! Your father has sold me a besmirched girl! I will not be turned into the laughing stock of London!” For a moment he had towered over her balling his fists, and Lucy had been afraid that he might kill her. An army officer and sportsman, Theodore Winterbottom was strong and imposing, and she knew that he could simply crush her throat in his hands. The sheet had slipped from her, baring her breasts to his gaze, and she could see that his manhood was huge and erect under his thin shift. Theodore had pulled the sheet from her, revealing all of her body to his gaze, and suddenly there had been something else besides his violent fury, something equally primal, and she had been too terrified to move.

For a moment he had kneeled there on the bed, staring at her with an expression of animal hunger, breathing heavily. “How many men have enjoyed this body…,” his voice had trailed off as his hand started to travel up her legs, evidently savouring the feel of her silken skin, the muscles underneath, the slenderness of her limbs. He was short of breath and hoarse, as if the timbre of his voice was no longer his to command. “How many men have touched this naked skin…,” he continued, mesmerised. “These thighs…?” Lucy had held her breath, scared as she was, as his hands started to caress the soft skin of her upper thighs, gently forcing her to open her legs a little, revealing herself to his gaze. She had been mortified, but did not want to deny him, not now, when her marriage and honour were hanging by a thread. “Ah…,” he had groaned, staring at her pussy with intense interest. “And how many men have you accommodated in this sinful, hellish abyss?” Lucy had seen his manhood twitch under the thin fabric, and he had started to rub over the mound of her pussy with his fingers, transfixed.

“Did you pleasure them with your mouth, too?” he asked gruffly, shoving two fingers of his other hand between her full lips. “Did you suck them?” At that, he started to move his fingers into her soft, wet mouth, and to please him, she had not resisted, but wrapped her lips firmly around them, as this seemed to increase his excitement. “Aaaah…did you do it like that, yes?” he had gasped, his other hand slipping between her pussy lips, rubbing gently. Lucy had blushed, avoided his gaze, as she noticed her sex growing wetter under his caresses.

“How many men have you ruined like this, holding them between your thighs, drawing them to you like a siren…?” His breath now came in rugged, short groans as his fingers settled into a steady rhythm in her mouth, his other hand circling the slippery, fleshy nub between her legs. “Did they fuck you together? Did they have your cunt and your mouth at the same time? Did they have your arse?” He sounded angry, but his breath was laboured and Lucy blushed to a deep crimson at his unjust words, but was unable to protest with his fingers thrusting in and out of her mouth. And what he was doing between her legs made her head turn and her legs tremble, she could not do anything against it, could not fight the lust taking a hold of her. “You suck like a practiced whore,” he continued. “How you must love the taste of cock….”

His fingers, covered in her saliva, had slipped from her mouth and under his own nightgown, and there he had begun to handle his stiff manhood with rhythmic strokes of his fist, grunting and groaning as he did, his stare fixed on her sex. ”How wet you are, you little harlot,” he grunted. “How…wet…how…ready…,” his fingers rubbed her pussy, faster and with urgency, while his other first pumped his cock.

“Such…a…little…slut…all…these…men….their…cocks…in…your…cunt…and…up…your…arse…!” Lucy gasped, both at the obscenity of his words and because she could not help but give voice to her own pleasure now. “Yes, you like that, you little whore,” he hissed, his face flushed. “Did you moan like that for them when they fucked you, one after the other? Their cocks filling your holes, making you pant? All…these…men?” And with that, he erupted, groaning as spurt after spurt of his cum soaked his shift and dripped down on her belly from his hand. Eager for her own release now, she arched her back off the bed, seeking his caress, and opening her legs wider, wanting for him to continue. Another small, plaintiff moan escaped her lips.

Still panting, he wiped his hand on her upper thigh, his face a mask of fury and disgust. He withdrew from between her legs as if he had been burned. “You Jezebel, you will not bewitch me! You whore, look what you did!”

He had left her lying on the bed, ashamed and in tears, and she had not seen her husband again after that. This morning, the housekeeper, Mrs. Lancaster, informed her that he ordered her to leave his house at once, and that the marriage had been annulled. Lucy was devastated. She knew that her parents, strict and god-fearing as they were, would never accept her back. A harlot for a daughter! It would shame her father, and possibly end her mother, sickly as she already was. They would not believe her over his word. Her father would be disgraced at court, become the laughing stock of his betters. Lucy thought that she’d rather die than put him through such shame.

And she had done nothing wrong! The stern voice and the icy stare of Mrs. Lancaster demanded her to hurry while she nervously crammed her meagre possessions into the suitcase. She was ruined. She had nowhere to go. There was nobody to help her. After the door would close behind her, she would have nothing, not even a penny to her name. She could simply throw herself in the Thames, it would be easier for everyone if she did, and she would be a burden no longer – not for her poor parents, not for her former husband. Everything turned to black then.

When she woke up, Mrs. Lancaster had kneeled beside her, stroking her hair. “Now, my dear girl, don’t despair,” she whispered softly, suddenly nothing but kind. “I have friends who might be able to help you. They will find you a place. You must not be without hope.”

Lucy, her face streaked with tears, had smiled for the first time. “Thank you, Mrs. Lancaster. I shall not forget your kindness to me.”

Is there a book for the sordid histories? Who will dare tell the story of those who were wronged and never redeemed? Do they live on in a narrative blind spot?

Can anyone ever return home?​

Elena put the coins before her on the table and sighed. With what she had left, she was able to afford one more week in the guesthouse, and not a night longer. And what then? The few shilling would not buy the fare for the journey back home to Smyrna. In fact they would not even get her all the way to the coast. It was hopeless. She bit back the tears that threatened to fall. Crying would not help her now either, and Elena was afraid that once she let desperation take over, she would not manage to shake it off again.

She much rather wanted to be angry.

Angry at the lying, godless bastard of a man who had brought her to this stinking, fog-swallowed place of a city, the man who had promised her love, an estate, and a family, a future in England. How naïve she now felt to have believed him. When the dashing Mr. Wesley Gilmore had proposed to her, she had been ecstatic. A successful businessman and well-read traveller from an upstanding English family – at least that was how he had introduced himself to her then – she had been only too keen to say yes.

Her father, a recently impoverished aristocrat in service of the Ottoman court who had recently lost a lot of money in an unlucky business venture in the silk trade, had very much been in favour of this match. Barely able to afford the dowry, he had nevertheless scraped together enough to throw a lavish wedding for his only daughter, and send her off to her new home in style. As it was the custom in her sunny home city, they had celebrated for three days and three nights. They had danced, and laughed, and she had been so in love with her beautiful Wesley, who adored her and promised to cherish and care for her until the end of his days.

Their wedding night had been wonderful, too. He had showered her with kisses and caresses, soothed her when she had been afraid. “My little Daphne,” he had whispered in her ear while taking her as his wife. “Let me be your Apollo.” She should have taken his love for sad tales of ravishment seriously. Elena frowned when she remembered how he had brought her to ecstasy again and again, and now the tears did well up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. He had taken everything from her, knowing all along that it had been nothing but a lie.

Shortly after their arrival in London, he had lodged her in an exquisite hotel, and told her that he needed to tend to some affairs at his estate to prepare for the arrival of the new lady of the house. She had waited, in blissful anticipation, for his return. But Wesley never came back. At first she had not suspected foul play, but was certain that her beloved husband had been held back for good reason, that he would be back as soon as he was able. Night after night she had waited, and Wesley had not returned. Even when the hotel clerk had kindly inquired after how many nights she intended to stay and, if he might be so bold, how she intended to settle the growing bill, she had not wanted to admit what by then she already knew. Wesley was gone, and had left her behind. It had all been a lie, she had been duped, and been left with nothing.

Now here she was, sitting on the bed of a London guesthouse, unsure of what to do, and desperate for a miracle. Her husband had taken all the money her father had given them, leaving her with nothing but the jewellery she was wearing at the time. She had pawned all of it, and had barely been able to pay the hotel bill, and find some clean lodgings in this rather sombre place.

She did not know anyone in London, and she did not dare to contact her family. Her father would have been horrified, and Elena was simply too ashamed to admit that all of them had been fooled. She was alone in a foreign country, destitute, and dishonoured. How was she to get out of this mess?

Is there a real island for broken toys? Or do we care more for the broken playthings of our fantasies than we do the real dolls that we break with our enthusiasm and tire of, just as enthusiastically?

Where is the refuge for them?​

Nora squinted at the book in front of her. It was late, but she was not tired, and the treatise on the question of germ theory was too fascinating to put down. The idea of small organisms floating through the air and through liquids, making people sick, seemed so outlandish, and yet the author presented too much credible evidence to dismiss it as fantasy.

Mr. John Hammersmith, her employer, was in possession of a vast library at his house, and he was generous enough to let her use it whenever she wished to do so. Nora entertained the idea of studying medicine, one day, at the Medical School for Women, and Mr. Hammersmith had signalled that he might give his approval. As the governess of his two young children – from a second marriage since his first wife had died – she had earned his respect and confidence, and he told her that it was only right for a creature as intelligent as her to pursue a career.

She turned the page. Engrossed in a detailed map of a local cholera outbreak, she did not hear the front door of the house being opened. Voices drifted through the hall, then laughter, and she sat up, slightly alarmed. Mr. Hammersmith had travelled to Manchester and would not be back before the next day, and the male servants were, to her knowledge, all asleep.

“Mr. Hammersmith, I had no idea…,” sounded the hurried, somewhat harassed voice of Mr. Lancy, the butler who had evidently rushed to greet the unexpected guests. “I’m afraid your father is away on urgent business, sir.”

“It’s fine, Lancy, we can see ourselves in, go back to bed.”

It dawned on Nora that this was Alexander Hammersmith, her employer’s oldest son, who dropped in unannounced. She had not expected to encounter any members of the Hammersmith family at this hour, and was sitting at the library desk with her hair let down, and her blouse unbuttoned at the neck. Aware of her slightly dishevelled date, she hurriedly closed the book, wondering if she would make it past the hall and up to her small room under the roof without being discovered. Her question was answered almost immediately.

“What have we here?”

Nora looked up to see an unfamiliar face in the door. Apparently the young Mr. Hammersmith had brought a friend. She stood and curtsied. “Good evening, Sir,” she muttered, trying to smooth her skirt and bashfully tucking strands of her hair behind her ears, blushing that a stranger saw her in such a state. “My apologies, I was just about to leave…”

“Now that would be a pity.” He did not bother to introduce himself, nor did he ask for her name. Instead, he strode over to her desk, a predatory glint in his eyes that made Nora uneasy. Looking down at the book she had been reading, he smirked. “Do you think it wise to fill that pretty head of yours with such nonsense?” She frowned. He was clearly inebriated, and he was being rude. If there was one thing Nora could not abide, it was the condescension of arrogant men.

“Nonsense?” she bristled. “How would you explain the maps that clearly show a connection between the water pump and the cholera outbreak? Bad air?” She did not care that she was being rude, now, too. “There is ample evidence by now that miasma does not sufficiently explain…”

His face broke into a wide smile. “It disputes!” he interrupted her enthusiastic speech, standing much too close. He smelled of pipe smoke, whisky, and expensive lavender water.

“Gustave, are you bothering the governess?”

Relieved, she turned her head towards Alexander who had appeared in the door. He was awkwardly carrying a bottle of whisky and three crystal glasses under his arm.

“My apologies miss,” Gustave whispered. Without taking his eyes off her, he answered over his shoulder: “My mother always hired the most hideous creatures for that position. She was afraid a young woman as pretty and smart as this one would give us…ideas.”

“Good evening, Miss Conrad,” Alexander said, bowing. “What a lucky coincidence to meet you here at this hour. Please excuse our intrusion, but the debate at the club took all night and I thought that my father’s estate would be an easier place to go to…” While speaking he put the three tumblers down on the desk and filled them with the amber liquid. “And please excuse my friend here. The Duke has always had terrible manners, and no willpower in the face of intellect and charm. May we make it up to you with a shared toast? We have reason to celebrate tonight.”

Nora wanted to leave, but did not dare to offend the young Mr. Hammersmith by turning him down. She took the glass offered to her and raised it to toast with the other two men. Gustave downed his drink in one gulp.

“So what is the reason for this celebration?” she asked, taking one small sip of the whiskey. She did not like the taste, and it burned in her throat, making her cough.

“A delicate investment has blossomed into a successful venture,” replied the Duke, exchanging a glance with his host. “I believe it will grant us many…exciting returns.” The way he eyed her – with unveiled hunger – scared her, but she did not know how to get past Gustave who now all but pinned her against the desk with his body.

“I really should leave, Mr. Hammersmith,” she said meekly. “I am tired and lessons will start in a few hours…”

“It must get lonely up there, just you and the children,” Alexander mused, seemingly unaware of his friend’s transgression. She felt Gustave’s hand on her hip, pulling her towards him. “Stay a little and keep us company, Miss Conrad, why don’t you?”

“It’s…Mrs. Hammersmith would not like it,” she managed to whisper. “I am not supposed to…”

To her horror, Alexander went to lock the library door from the inside. “Don’t you worry about a thing.” He winked at his friend in mock complicity. “We won’t tell her if you won’t.”

“I’d rather leave, Mr. Hammersmith,” she managed to whisper, her fear almost choking her. Pinned as she was between the desk and Gustave, she could not move away without the Duke allowing her to, and it was clear that he had no intention to let her go. His hand had moved up to cup one of her breasts through her blouse.

“I will scream,” she said hoarsely.

“Oh please do,” Gustave whispered in her ear, shoving her bodily backwards. She looked at Alexander, horrified. “Mr. Hammersmith, please...!” He had always been perfectly polite towards her. How could he let his friend do this? Surely this was all in jest. Surely they would let her go.

But Alexander’s next words turned her blood to ice.

“It’ll hurt a bit at first, but I promise you’ll enjoy it. The lasses all do eventually. Don’t they, Gustave?”

Everything else was a blur. Greedy fingers tore her blouse and ripped on the corset underneath, roughly exposing her small, firm breasts. Gustave swiped the books off the desk, and they clattered onto the floor. With a rough shove he pushed her back onto the smooth wooden surface, lifting the hem of her skirts over her knees, all the way to where her stockings ended, exposing the creamy skin of her thighs. Nora clawed at him, unaware and uncaring where her fingers found traction. A scratch appeared on his cleanly shaven cheek and he hissed in pain, before backhanding her roughly across the face. “How dare you raise your hand at your betters!” he spat at her, one hand around her throat now, choking her. Her head was ringing from the blow and the sudden lack of oxygen, and she panicked. “Please…please…no,” she croaked, while Alexander pulled her arms back, pinning both of her slender wrists down with one hand.

The Duke loosened his grip to help himself to a feel of her now bare breasts. She was sobbing quietly, unable to hide, unable to stop them. “Please no,” she muttered, realising to her horror that Gustave had no plans of stopping, and that he was instead eager to debase her further as he started to fumble with her underskirt, shoving the fabric up to her hip. “Please…,” she sobbed. “Don’t.”

She wanted to scream, but Alexander clamped his other hand down over her mouth. It was warm, she noticed, and soft, well cared for. His skin smelled of flowers. Nora strained against him, but to no avail. “Stop struggling, Miss Conrad,” he said, painfully tightening his grip around her wrists. “It will be easier on you if you don’t.” The Duke, who was standing between her thighs, ripped at her thin undergarments with one hand while working on his trousers impatiently. The thin linen fabric split under his rough treatment, baring her to his gaze. He spit into his hand and smiled viciously at her while he rubbed the wetness into her pussy. Nora screamed into the hand holding her down as she felt him position his stiff cock at her virginal entrance. “Here it comes, little dove,” he hissed through gritted teeth. Then he pushed his entire length inside her in one savage thrust, making her scream into the muffling hand of his friend. She was livid with pain and humiliation.

“Goddamn!” Gustave pulled her towards him by her hips, keeping her there, his cock buried in her tiny, impossibly tight pussy to the hilt. “This is the best cunt I have had in ages. It fits me like a well-tailored silk glove!” He looked at his friend. “How selfish of you to hide such a treasure from me for so long.”

The Duke started to move in her, bottoming out with each measured, forceful thrust, and she closed her eyes as tight as she could, and tried to shut out his moans of pleasure, and Alexander’s eyes floating above her, watching intently, his face tense with arousal. She tried to shut out the rhythmic creaking of the desk. Fingers grazed over her exposed breasts, squeezed a rosy, stiff nipple. Her body, despite her repulsion, despite her fear and the pain, started to respond to her assailants, and the Duke laughed softly, viciously. Nora did not understand what she was feeling.

“There you are, little dove, that’s it. You’re getting nice and wet for me…,” his hoarse taunts trailed off into another moan. His thrusts came faster, harder now, and the old wood of the reading table groaned under the assault. A finger started to rub against her clit, pinching, flicking it, making her buck against her will. “Look at her go!” The Duke exclaimed. “She has such fire, such potential!” Nora felt a tingling, a rush of heat rising from her feet, a strange, uncontrollable spasm that sent a wave of sensation through her body that made her momentarily lose all control. She moaned against the hand over her mouth, arching her back as the queer feeling slowly subsided. What was wrong with her?

“Yes! How her little cunt is clamping down on me, it’s delicious!” Gustave cried out. Fucking her more forcefully still, he slammed himself inside her a few more times and came, groaning in triumph, his fingers painfully digging into the naked flesh of her thighs. “Get off me, get off, off!” Nora pushed against him uselessly after Alexander released her wrists, while the Duke kept himself buried inside her. She was in shock, hurt and ashamed. “Get off me…!”

He leaned down and whispered in her ear: “I felt you cum on my cock.” With a gentle hand, the Duke brushed a strand of her copper hair from her face and smiled. “I know you liked it.” Nora turned her head away and said nothing. He kissed her cheek. “A virgin in Belgravia! A surprise I truly did not expect.” His proximity disgusted her. “And such a fast learner. If you set your mind to it, you could make a fine harlot. All you need is time, practise, and a little guidance.”

“Please get off,” Nora whispered desperately. What had she done to deserve such violence, and such contempt? And what was she to do now? In a matter of moments, these men had ruined her forever.

When they finally stepped away from her, Nora pushed herself up from the desk, shaking, while the two men laughed. “What a little strumpet,” Alexander said haughtily. “To think that she is supposed to teach my little siblings about manners!”

Nora could feel the Duke’s sticky cum trickle down her thighs. She bit her lip, stifling a sob. Her corset hung lose around her slender frame, her skirts were ripped and soiled. Nevertheless she tried to cover herself, but her trembling fingers made it even more difficult.

“Don’t you want to try her? I am telling you, her cunt is exquisite…” Alexander’s aristocratic friend smirked at her. “And now newly broken in.” The other young man looked at her in disgust. “I am not one for scraps.”

“Your father…he will hear of this,” Nora spat weakly, holding the tatters of her garments closed around her chest.

At that, Alexander threw back his head and laughed. “Indeed he will! He will! You know, you silly little fool, I will tell him myself.” Nora blinked at him, confused. “What! Do you think this happened without his knowledge? He told me himself that you have become…uppity.” The Duke winked at her. “Medical School, is it? Studies?” He poured himself another drink and downed it. “You should be grateful if he keeps you in this house at all.”

Nora stood in the middle of the room, unable to believe what had just happened. The betrayal was so deep, so monstrous, that she was unable to grasp it.

“But I do wish for some fresh cunt. Watching this spectacle has left me wanting for release” Alexander mused, to no one in particular. “And I know just where to find some. Follow me to the servants’ quarters. My father has recently hired a little kitchen maid that will make your eyes water, Gustave. I have always wondered what her lush lips would feel like wrapped around my cock.”

Nora froze. No. No, they would not get Kitty, too. Waiting until both of them had left the library, she started running. Wrapped in the tatters of her clothes, she hurried up to her own small room under the roof, safely away from the servants’ lodgings, where the kitchen maid Kitty was sleeping. The girl, exhausted, did not even stir when she came in. They had become friends immediately when Kitty had come to this house, and they often slept in one bed. Kitty was a fragile creature, easily scared, and she liked to be with Nora, hiding up in the governess’ room from the gossip and the restless, constant chatter of the maids she worked with.

“Kitty, wake up. Wake up!”

The girl mumbled something, and turned around, unwilling to wake up. Nora started to shake her more roughly. “Kitty, wake up!”

The maid sighed, and sat up on the narrow bed, rubbing her eyes. Her cheeks were rosy with sleep, and she yawned. “What…what is it?” Then her eyes fell onto her friend, the state of her dress. She was suddenly wide awake.

“What happened to you?”

Nora bit back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

“I will explain later, but we need to leave now. Do you hear me? Now!”

“But where will we go? It’s raining, it’s the middle of the night!”

Nora sighed. She knew what she was asking of the orphaned maid, who had been so happy to find a home in the Hammersmith household. But there was no doubt what these men would do to her if they got her hands on her, and she was determined not to let this happen.

“There is a place I have heard of, where they help girls…like us.” Ruined girls, she added inwardly. Kitty was none such, but if she stayed here, she would be. “Trust me, Kitty. It’s not safe here.”

Is anywhere safe for young women in a man’s world? Can anyone be trusted with preserving something as abstract as “innocence”? Or is innocence just a lie to cover up the fact that “mercy” is a lie as well?

Is it just an excuse we make to avoid glimpsing our own guilt?
​

“Ah yes, like that, fuck me like that!”

Alice squeezed the pillow around her ears, trying to muffle the lewd sounds coming from the room next to hers: the rhythmic squeak of the rusty bed springs, Evie’s lusty moans and pants, and the increasingly urgent groans from Thomas Hallington, the valet. There was the distinct sound of a hand slapping taut flesh, which was followed by another loud female moan and a giggle.

“Dear God, Jesus, I will never tire of that tight little cunt of yours!”

Alice blushed, pressing the pillow tighter over her ears, but to no avail. The walls in the servant’s quarters were much too thin. So Thomas, usually so stern and uptight, was not only a fornicator, but a blasphemer, too! Alice wondered if Evie really liked the man – after all, at almost 40 years, he was way past his prime – or if she simply enjoyed the countless precious favours that a liaison with the house’s valet could buy a young housemaid. It really wasn’t fair, she thought, unsuccessfully trying to ignore the pounding next door. She, Alice, had been in the Mayfair household much longer, and yet it was Evie, always Evie, who got away with each missed spot on the silver, each sloppy seam, each transgression.

“Oh Thomas, your cock is killing me…killing me!”

As the valet, Thomas was also able to weasel free days for Evie out of Mrs. Higgins, the housekeeper. Alice yawned, steaming with anger. Now Evie stole the few precious hours of sleep from her, too! It was enough. She had warned the other maid over and over again, but Evie simply did not listen, probably because she thought herself to be better and cleverer than the rest of the Mayfair staff. It had long been time to show this little trollop that she had overstepped.

The next long grunt was interrupted by a curt knock on the door, followed by the sound of the rusty hinges. There was a terrified squeal – Evie – then a curse – Thomas – before the voice of the housekeeper drifted through the wall. “I did not want to believe it. Evie, pack your things at once and leave this house. This is a disgrace.” Alice smiled into her pillow, straining to hear each word. “Mrs. Higgins, I beg you, please don’t turn me out onto the street, I have nowhere to go!” There was a pause, interspersed by soft sobbing. “Be gone before morning.” Thomas mumbled something, but Alice knew that the butler would deal with him. Evie was still crying and pleading as she could hear him slinking out of the room and down the hallway.

She sighed, pleased with herself. Mrs. Higgins would be grateful that Alice had told her. Maybe she would have earned a few favours of her own now.

Then there was a knock at her door. Alice sat up in her bed. “Yes?”

The housekeeper came into her room, looking stern.

“Pack your things, Alice. This house has been through too much to abide little gossips and schemers.”

Who is it that keeps hurting us like this? Is it a god, some devil? Or has it always been us hurting ourselves—trying to convince ourselves that it’s someone else?​

“Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee. Ezekiel 28:17,” the author spoke to a rather densely packed audience of well-dressed society folk, the crowd seemed tense as bible scripture was hardly what they expected to be hearing from the notorious author and controversial philanthropist, “Lucifer, who was the first being ever to fall from grace, did so because his beauty was so great that God Himself was intimidated by it—and ever since that moment of divine insecurity, in the name of piety, holiness and righteousness, we—his faithful creations, have doomed the most beautiful and vulnerable among us to risk the same fate just by existing amongst us.

“If you’re here tonight, in this… intimate performance space, it is because you believe, like I do, that any young woman who loses her honor, should not also lose her chance at a civilized life. It’s becoming far too common for the bloated bodies of our young women—our daughters, our sisters in Christ, to wash up against some corner of the riverbank—among the rest of our unwanted refuse—in some brick corner we choose to forget, even if we see it every day!”

Now the renowned poet was gaining momentum and the crowd—for their part, was likewise getting excited. A well-to-do woman slapping her folded fan against her palm, a custom stitched, leather shoe stomping the hollow sounding floor, a grey bearded man even shouted Here here!

“It is because I know that we all, in our own ways, fall short of the grace of God, that I founded the Caldwell Dawkins Home for at Risk Young Women, where we strive to help so-called ‘Fallen Women’ get back on their feet. Denied by their own families—in some cases even with children, these young women have nowhere to turn and few options for survival. We teach them professional skills—marketable skills, as they learn the intricacies of setting type on our in-house press—or they can polish their housekeeping skills and seek employment as maids or housekeepers while their children are kept safe and looked after.

“The main thing we do at Dawkins’ Home is that we give options to women who are afraid that they’ve run out of options. Without our intervention, too many of our young daughters and sisters are seduced by prostitution, drugs or still worse, self-harm. I would see those days ended and with your help, we may see the unjust persecution of women ended within our lifetimes!”

At this, the crowd cheered, many of the women among the audience rising to their feet.

“So, I hope that each of you may search your hearts and give generously to Dawkins’ House. The more money we raise, the more souls we can help. But enough cup rattling, for now—all of you are here because you’ve given in the past and you understand my vision for this charitable venture. Tonight, in gratitude for your continued patronage, I present a special preview performance of my still unfinished next play, The Soul’s Imperfection. I thank you for your patience and your everlasting generosity…”

With this, the author bowed deeply to a round of applause that seemed grotesquely large for such a small theater. When the lights went down he rushed into the wings, eager to be far from the stage when the performance began.

Caldwell Dawkins was hardly a philanthropist to those who knew him well and this “Charitable Venture” of his was much more venture than charity—as it often earned more money than he spent on it, but that fact was only known to a select few. He tugged up the collar of his long coat as he strode out through the back door of the theater, onto the fog sweated cobblestones. He held his pipe up to his lips and began smoking, making his way over to the Panting Dog Pub where one of his girls was working as a hostess.

He would drink away this travesty of a performance. Caldwell loathed allowing his unfinished work to see the light of day, but his investors were growing impatient as the deadlines sped past and they demanded some proof that he’d set anything to page, for all the stipends they’d sent him—so this preview was something of a “two-birds-one-stone” proposition. But the efficacy of unveiling his work in this raw form did little to soothe his wounded ego at having to present an incomplete play to an elite audience.

“Scotch, neat and a pint of ale,” Caldwell remarked to the bartender, sitting in the back, “and don’t go far, I may want food later.”

Extracting his pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket, Caldwell checked the time. He’d hoped to meet his business partner and favored lover Adelia here. Caldwell considered his time in the pub something like office hours for a professor—he would make himself comfortable and available for those who would seek him out. It was one of the primary ways that young women and opportunities came to him—but he’d become accustomed to Adelia holding council with him. If she wasn’t there, it meant that there was something going on back at the house which required her attention.

Caldwell wasn’t left wondering for long, as Lord Ferdinand Winchester rushed into the pub, almost frantic in his path toward the author’s table. Lord Winchester and Caldwell’s drinks arrived at the same moment.

“You’ve got to do something about that slut!” Winchester hissed, slapping a long, glistening key onto the table, seemingly made entirely of white gold, “there’s no innocence left there, Caldwell—none whatsoever!”

“Lower your voice, you daft cunt! Put that key away this instant. That isn’t supposed to exist, much less be slapped around like an empty stew bowl. You’re making me regret bringing you into my confidence in the first place Lord Winchester,” Caldwell took a slow sip of his Scotch, having gained control of the conversation, “now tell me, quietly and civilly—what seems to be the trouble?”

“That bitch, Violet—for whom I paid over a thousand pounds to gain access to her bedchamber—she’s become useless to me. I have no desire to deal with her any further. I first favored her because of her innocence, but now, she’s little more than a limp fish in the bed. Not at all tight or innocent!”

“Don’t you think that you share some culpability in the girl’s loss of innocence?”

“I do not frequent your establishment to be held culpable. I want a refund on my investment.”

“As you were informed when you made your donation, gifts to the Dawkins House are non-refundable. Furthermore, your waning enthusiasm is a symptom of your own malaise and no fault of me or my wards. You will keep your key and you will keep your mouth shut about our special relationship. I will deal with Violet and by the next time you pay her one of your late night visits, you will find her more to your liking. Doubtless.”

Lord Winchester huffed and pouted for a moment, but he knew better than to cross Caldwell outright—despite his buttoned-up appearance, Caldwell was well known as a brawler when the occasion called for it and he also carried concealed weapons on his person. In truth, Winchester had just wanted to make certain that Violet was made to suffer for disappointing him—which he was now convinced she would.

“Very well, Mister Dawkins. I thank you for your attention in this matter. I’m sure you will deliver more than satisfactory results. I apologize for my earlier outburst.”

“Think nothing of it, old chap. Water under the bridge,” Caldwell nodded as Winchester rose from his seat and returned his top hat to his head, over his shoulder, both men glimpsed Charles Mortimer entering the pub, “just remember—it could be much worse.”

Caldwell indicated Mr. Mortimer with a tilt of his head, Lord Winchester laughed heartily at that.

“I suppose you’re right. Until next time, dear Caldwell.” Winchester took his leave.

“Mister Dawkins, Sir! I had hoped to find my wife with you,” Mortimer proclaimed as he entered the pub, louder than he should have in a public place. Some stranger cleared his throat pointedly while glaring over his shoulder as Mortimer passed, “she hasn’t been home in nearly three days.”

“As you well know, your wife has many charitable duties and responsibilities with Dawkins House. We recently graduated several of our first-generation class to the colonies, which yields opportunity for new candidates. Separating the wheat from the chattle of our candidates is one of your wife’s vital duties to my—excuse me, our organization.”

Mortimer was one of the premier financiers of Dawkins’ House, but it was something of an open secret that his wife, Adelia wore the pants and pulled the purse strings in their relationship. What was more of a closed secret was that Caldwell had been fucking and pimping the coffee merchant’s wife since before the doors of his charitable home opened. In spite of all of that, Caldwell had nothing to fear from Mortimer—because he, in fact, knew all about his wife’s extramarital exploits and even sometimes would watch her being used by other men.

Some part of Mortimer reveled in Adelia’s infidelity. Caldwell knew well how he reveled in it, but if he was now out seeking rebuke and humiliation in public to stimulate himself… This behavior needed to be corrected right away.
“Of course, you’re right, Mr. Dawkins—I—I’m sorry—I—recruitment, of course,” Mortimer was glassy eyed and blushing, he knew where his wife was, he simply wanted to be seen looking for her, “I’m so stupid… Such a foolish, worthless excuse for a—”

“I’m sure that will be all, Charles. Thank you.” Dawkins’ gratitude was laced with venom, he finished his Scotch in one swallow and reached for his hat, “you’ll be hearing from me directly, regarding Adelia’s schedule from now on.”

Mortimer slunk back out of the pub whimpering and hunched, a poor attempt at hiding his erection. Caldwell felt his stomach turn. The public had seen enough of him for one night. The preview would be letting out soon and he had no desire to hear opinions, be they good or ill.

Once Mortimer’s stink had cleared from the doorway, Dawkins made his way out of the pub. He was able to summon a carriage without much trouble and directed the driver toward his namesake building.

For its place in downtown London, the Dawkins’ House was a sprawling manor. High, ivy wrapped walls surrounded a block wide garden that wrapped around three quarters of the lot itself. The garden was immaculately kept by the residents of the house—Violet, in particular, had a green thumb. The locking garden gates opened to streets on both the north and south end. A flower wrapped gazeebo occupied the East garden wall opposite the four-story house that filled the West half of the lot. There was a covered porch that wrapped around the foyer which protruded from the main hall.

On the ground floor there was a vast library, that on its own spanned three stories of the North Wing, with an immaculately maintained office which was overlooked the main hall through etched windows. On the west end of the main hall, behind more etched glass was the dining room, which shared a wall with the kitchen.

On the East end of the main hall, an elaborate and fully stocked parlour, wrapped in supple burgundy leathers, brass fixtures and etched mirrors. A room purely for hosting and entertaining. Along the outskirts of the main hall, two marble strair cases wrapped around the edges of the room, over the top of the office and parlour, fitted with burgundy carpets and brass rods to hold the carpets in place around each step.

The main hall ceiling was domed, at three stories, the main hall was set lower than the four-story west wing. The entire domed ceiling was occupied by a massive chandelier, imported from France with tens of thousands of hand-cut crystals and over a hundred candle sconces. The dome itself was covered in brass sheets, polished to reflect the candlelight and bathe the massive hall in glittering, golden light that reflected off the mosaic, marble floors.

As Caldwell entered, Lucy was on hand to collect his coat, hat and gloves with a respectful bow. It was ironic, her being a fairly recent addition to the house, but she was one of the only girls with whom he did not presently have business.

“Adelia?” Caldwell asked, his tone impassive and he avoided looking into Lucy’s big, pleading, blue eyes.

“She’s in the second floor study… with Violet, Maestro.”

“Very good. Thank you, Lucy. That will be all for tonight.” Caldwell gently caressed the slender girl’s jawline as he passed by her, heading toward the library, “you’re progressing very well within the program. Keep up the good work and you’ll start to enjoy new opportunities.”

Nora, Kitty and Lucy had all joined around the time that the first three graduates were moving out and now there were three more spots to be filled. But those interviews were scheduled for the morrow—and Caldwell had business to attend to tonight.

Caldwell closed and locked the heavy, hand-carved, oak door behind himself and locked it—not wanting the secrets of his house to be known by Lucy, even though she was a resident, she hadn’t yet earned the full privileges of the house.

Caldwell moved to the Western wall of bookshelves and slid his fingertips across the supple, embossed spines of rare, hand-bound and first edition books that filled the library. When his index finger fell on the spine of a red book with the title “BEYOND THE VEIL” embossed in real gold leaf, he pulled the book outward until a loud, sonorous click issued from the bookshelf itself. The shelf swung slowly outward and Caldwell stepped behind the bookshelf and into secret wall passages.

The wall passages were narrow and forced Caldwell to walk with his shoulder canted sideways to avoid brushing the walls. He walked until he reached a wrought-iron, spiral staircase that led him up to the residences of the West Wing. He made a hard left at second floor landing and slipped into the walls of the study where he could hear Adelia reprimanding Violet.

Through the eyes of a portrait, Caldwell gazed into the room to observe what was taking place within…

“That was a poor performance, Violet.”

The girl was standing, hands clutched before her, her eyes downcast. Adelia, wearing nothing more than an expensive pearl necklace, leant back on her chaise, watching the girl squirm.

“Lord Winchester said that he felt like fucking a dead goose.”

Violet did not reply, but glanced up from under lowered lashes, blushing, obviously both wanting and not daring to look at the slender, naked form of her mistress. Adelia did not care. This performance was for him, and him only. She knew that he would be watching them through a peep hole, and she wanted to give him something to see. Her alabaster skin looked like a marvellous piece of art, a beautifully carved marble statue against the burgundy velvet of the chaise.

“He said that next time he’d rather stick his cock in a rotten melon than in your useless mouth.”

At that, the girl gasped, her face turning such a deep crimson that Adelia was afraid she might faint. But how she loved using such casual obscenity with girls like her. The coyest of them could spend a night surrounded or even being the centre of the most debauched orgy, and still be unable to hear the words “cock”, “cunt”, or “fuck” the morning after. It was delicious.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Adelia….,” Violet finally managed to whisper. “I didn’t mean to upset Lord Winchester.”

Adelia laughed softly. “You little idiot. He was not upset, he was left unsatisfied.” The girl stared at her with eyes like an injured doe. A sweet little thing, painfully pretty, but evidently still clinging to outdated ideas of virtue. Adelia knew that Lord Winchester revelled in fucking girls that had not yet lost all of their former innocence, which is why had had received the key to Violet’s room last night. Unfortunately, his fantasy had not quite played out the way he had imagined it, so it was her duty to make sure such a mistake was not going to happen again.

“And when someone as generous as important leaves our house unsatisfied, it will reflect badly on all of us, do you understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Adelia…I am sorry!”

“When you leave a man such as him unsatisfied, it might mean that all the other girls have to go without new dresses, good shoes, or even a warm supper.”

The girl was close to tears now. Violet was such a good-hearted little thing, considerate and compassionate to a fault. Adelia knew that the way to get her to understand her duties in Mr. Dawkins’ house was through her bad conscience and her sense of commitment.

“I did not mean to endanger the working of this house, Mrs. Adelia. I really didn’t! Please believe me!” Violet was pleading, her beautiful breasts rising and falling hectically in the confines of her corset, testimony to her growing distress.

“My darling Violet, I do want to believe you,” Adelia said softly. “But how can I trust your regret to be sincere? How can I be sure that you will not disappoint us again? You know what happens to girls who disappoint us.”

The sweet creature was almost crying now. Her lips quivered and she was trembling all over. “Please, Mrs. Adelia, I will do anything to convince you.”

The other woman smiled. “Go on…,” she whispered, opening her thighs provocatively to the girl’s gaze, gesturing with her eyes for her to come closer. “Show me if you mean it.”

Violet stared at her for a brief moment, but as Adelia questioningly raised one eyebrow, she approached and sank to her knees before the chaise, knowing full well what her mistress demanded of her. She gently caressed her upper thighs, and Adelia smiled, and nodded approvingly. “Go on, I want you to.” Her small pink tongue came darting out between her lips, hesitatingly, tasting the other woman like an unknown, possibly poisonous fruit.

“That’s it, my sweet Violet. Lick me, kiss me…convince me.”

At 27, Adelia Mortimer was older than most of the other women in the house, and unlike them, she did not reside there. She had been introduced to the house’s founder, the playwright and philanthropist Caldwell Dawkins, at a premiere last summer, and immediately fallen for him. Never before had she met a man with such a sharp wit, such a keen sense for literature, such social graces, and such a devious mind. The extravagant pleasures he was able to conjure mesmerised her, and she found that she took great joy in serving his every need. She had become his friend, his confidante, and his willing mistress, and, most important of all, his devoted servant.

Her husband, a rich coffee merchant who had surprisingly little intellect for a man with such business acumen, did not object to her debauchery. He even seemed intrigued by it, and once she had let him watch as Caldwell had fucked her before allowing his other guests a taste of his finest concubine. They had all taken turns, even the uptight Lady Deventer. Charles had watched, slack-jawed, wide-eyed, rubbing his cock through his trousers as they had driven her to ecstasy over and over again, making her moan, scream, beg for more. By the end, she had not been able to walk, and cum had dripped off her face, her aching cunt, her ass, and Charles had been on his knees next to her, worshipping her like a goddess of excess and sin.

Charles Mortimer was devoted to her to the point of obsession, and had convinced himself that he alone would never be able to sate her appetites.

Which was true.

Violet was doing a fine job. She threw her head back and moaned, one hand in the girl’s maroon curls, guiding her, urging her on. “Make me cum, sweetheart, and your ineptitude will be forgotten,” she panted, bucking against Violet’s face. “Fuck me with your tongue, your fingers, make me forget that you failed me last night.”

The girl complied. Her head was bobbing eagerly between her thighs, licking and nibbling, flicking her tongue over her swollen clit with more skill than Adelia had thought possible. Caldwell was probably right when he suspected these shy little minxes of comforting each other in more ways than one.

One of her hands caressed her own firm alabaster breasts, playing with a nipple, pinching it hard, while Violet doubled her efforts and now fucked her with one, then two fingers, desperate to satisfy her mistress.

“That’s it, like that…yes…like that!” She was close now, and her fingers were tightly wrapped around the girls’ hair, hurting her, making her wince, but she did not care. This was not about Violet. She looked up, in the direction where she suspected Caldwell to be, hiding, watching her being serviced. When she came, writhing and panting, she kept her eyes fixed to where she knew the peep hole was, and hoped that she had pleased him.

Caldwell smiled as he slipped silently from his hiding place behind his own portrait—it was quite difficult to stay cross with Adelia. She was so devoted to him and her depravity ran so deep that she might be the perfect woman—if not for her simpering, slug of a husband.

Though her access to his wealth was hardly a negative.

From the study, Caldwell made his way back to the hidden staircase where he climbed to the fourth floor and exited the wall behind the bookcase in his master suite that overlooked the Picadilly Circus.

Caldwell undressed quickly but not in a hurry, slipping into a comfortable burgundy and gold robe that he often wore around the house. He turned a knob on the wall that triggered a series of bells throughout the house. Each girl was assigned to a different sound—this one was a gentle, crystalline tinkling sound that he had given to Adelia—though his intentions for her were less than gentle.

He knew that he could fetch Violet from her room later and would do so. But having Adelia deal with Mortimer was foremost on his mind—as Adelia, unlike Violet, couldn’t be evicted for displeasing him.

Caldwell unlatched his bedroom door and left the heavy, oak door slightly ajar while he packed his pipe with Turkish tobacco.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia did not bother to get dressed when the bell summoned her to Caldwell’s suite on the top floor of the house. She knew that she would not encounter anyone on the way there, at least no one who would be scandalised by her appearance. It was likely, or so she hoped, that Caldwell would have more use for her already naked.

The three new girls had a lot of promise. Lucy had found their way to them via the trusted Mrs. Lancaster, a former procuress who had somehow managed to convince the horridly conservative Theodore Winterbottom that she was an upstanding and respectable housekeeper, a job that nicely covered up her more sinful ventures, such as her cooperation with Caldwell Dawkins. Thanks to her employer the sly crone had access to the higher ranks of London society, and, holding the position that she did in the Winterbottom household, very little gossip and scandal escaped her attention. Lucy, the unlucky divorcee, had been easy prey after the disaster of her wedding night. Adelia was at once taken by the vulnerability of the girl. Her frightened doe eyes, her deep sense of shame, her obvious desire to please and to regain some sense of standing, her fragile innocence...she would make a fine addition to the house, once she had gained her place in it. How clueless the poor creature was! Had Winterbottom not been the wooden stickler that he was, he would have recognised and savoured the potential of his delicious young bride. But alas – his loss was Caldwell’s gain.

And what an exquisite pair the two others made. The image of the two of them, clinging to each other, shivering and soaked through from the rain the night they arrived gave Adelia frissons of pleasant anticipation. The redhead, Nora, seemed damaged and lost, defiant even in the face of what she at once seemed to understand was the actual purpose of Caldwell Dawkins Home for At Risk Young Women. There was rage beneath the pain in those pretty eyes. Spite and rebellion against a world stacked against her. Men would pay large sums to toy with her, to provoke her, to tame and break the girl’s spirit even further, men who liked nothing better than to see a beautiful, spirited young woman like her suffer and submit, even if – no, especially if - it was against her will.

And the little maid! Adelia sighed with delight. Innocent, a virgin, ushered to their doorstep by Nora in the hope of saving her friend from the fate she herself had suffered – so many young women employed in the houses of powerful men did – a girl so entirely unsuspecting of the things men, and some women, were capable of doing to helpless creatures like her that it would be a delight to teach her, mould her to the wishes of Caldwell and his friends. Nora likely thought that she would able to shield Kitty against such evils, maybe even at the price of her own modesty. Adelia chuckled to herself. Sweet little lambs. Men would duel each other for the privilege of carrying the keys to their room. She knew that few things were more enticing to men who had everything than corrupting pretty, lost girls like them, uselessly fighting and constantly chafing against the order of class and the sexes.

Such thoughts in mind, trembling in joyful anticipation and her thighs still glistening wet from her earlier climax, she arrived at her lover and master’s suite. The door was ajar, and she did not think it necessary to knock.

“Welcome home, Maestro,” she said softly as she entered the light-filled room. “I hope your performance for the good folk of London was not too tedious?” Adelia stood before him naked, confident, the pearls nestled between her beautiful round breasts. She had always been a woman who revelled in the near perfect form of her young body, and why not? It was silly, no, blasphemous, to hide the beauty she had been blessed with. Displaying it was, in her opinion, the only worship that did the creation of Eve any justice.

“Sir,” she continued, teasingly looking up at him from under lowered lashes. “I hope the chastisement of Violet pleased you.” Adelia sighed, faintly shaking her head as if to express distress of having to discipline the girl in the first place, a notion which Caldwell would recognise as theatre. “I fear her devotion to this house maybe slipping.” Her gaze met his. “Lord Winchester was livid when he left. Violet needs to be reminded of her duties to you, Sir, and of the consequences should she not take them more seriously in the future.” She smiled. “And I apologise if I should have disappointed you, Sir.”


***

Nora looked out of the window of their shared little room, watching Kitty walk through the garden below. It was another grey day, with clouds so thick that the sun never managed to break through them, but the air had started to warm up as if flirting with the idea of early summer. The smell of linden trees hung in the air, and the roses in the garden were all in full bloom. It was a beautiful, peaceful scene, but Nora was unable to enjoy it.

Her body still hurt from what the men back at the Hammersmith house had done to her. She could still smell their perfume on her skin, no matter how often and hard she had tried to scrub it away. Their laughter echoed through her dreams, as did the words the Duke had left her with: “I know you liked it.” The shame of knowing that his taunt was not entirely without truth was worse than the pain. Her body had reacted to him in ways that made her blush even now, and she suspected that Mr. Caldwell, when he looked at her, could see through her as well. She was no longer a governess, or an aspiring student of medicine, not even simply a victim of a rapist’s assault. Her body had welcomed the Duke. All men would see from now on was the fallen woman she was, and the harlot she might yet become. She groaned, burying her face in her hands in agony at the thought.

“Why do you still look so sad?”

Kitty burst through the door, her cheeks rosy from the fresh air outside. She was wearing a light blue linen dress, modestly buttoned up to her neck, and a white apron. She was clutching a bouquet of freshly cut roses. Nora had not told her friend about what had happened that night, and Kitty had not insisted. But she knew that her own morose mood weighed heavy on the blonde girl, who did everything in her power to cheer her up and regain the lively Nora she had come to love in the Hammersmith house.

“Stop being such a sourpuss! There is nobody in all of London with a brighter future than us!” Kitty swirled around in her dress, laughing. “The linen here is so soft!” she exclaimed, spreading her arms and falling back on the bed with a giggle. “Better even than in your old room!” The girl looked up at her red-haired friend. “We are so lucky, aren’t we? What a good man Mr. Dawkins is! So is Mrs. Mortimer. How kind of them to let us lodge here.”

Nora smiled down on Kitty, unable to hide her anxiety. It had indeed been incredibly generous of them to admit them to the Caldwell Dawkins Home for At Risk Young Women, foregoing the strict admission process that usually preceded the acceptance of new lodgers. But Nora had a queer feeling about their generosity. It might well be that the violence she had come to know at the hands of powerful men made her apprehensive and distrustful, but something about Mr. Caldwell gave her chills. The way he looked at Kitty, the way he talked to the other girls in the house. It had only been a couple of weeks, but she sensed that there was more to his business of charity than he let on.

But she did not want Kitty to worry. The girl was so happy here, so stunned at her good fortune and her quick rise from kitchen maid to someone with prospects that Nora could not bring herself to share these thoughts with her. However, she would make sure that Kitty would remain safe, that nobody would hurt her. It almost felt as if protecting her innocence would offer repentance for her own downfall.

“Indeed, “ Nora said softly, lying down next to Kitty, caressing her cheek. “Very lucky.”


***

Lucy was flustered. Caldwell Dawkins had this effect on her. Her blush lingered long after he was gone, and the tingle of his gentle touch on her face remained. Such a fine gentleman he was, so well-spoken, so elegant, so progressive. He did not judge her for the reason that had forced her to beg entry at his door, and not once had he asked her about her former husband.

The days passed quickly at Dawkins Home, and Lucy was a fast learner. She had not balked once at the thought of being serviceable, of performing the duties a footman might have done in her old home. She loved it when Mr. Dawkins flashed her one of his brief, serious smiles, and when he praised her for her eagerness and her obedience. Now she wondered what he could have meant earlier, excitement lighting up her eyes like stars.

New opportunities! What might these be? Would she be allowed to attend the evenings he organised in honour of London society? Countless eligible bachelors passed through the doors of the house, all willing to reach out to the poor young girls befallen by some misfortune. There were rumours that Mr. Dawkins counted nobility amongst his close friends, men with fortunes and influence. Lucy took a deep breath. She might yet go far!

She had written a letter to the old housekeeper, thanking her for this opportunity. What a kind woman she had turned out to be! Mrs. Lancaster had told her all about Caldwell Dawkins, all about his endeavours of charity, his philanthropism, his good nature. She had counted all the successes graduates of the house had gone on to accomplish: gainful employment, good marriages, the chance even of travelling overseas and make a life there! And now Lucy was here, and everyone treated her with such kindness that her sorrows about her brief marriage and the debasement at the hands of her husband were almost forgotten.

There were other girls, some of whom had already advanced in the favour of the master of the house and who therefore had access to parts of the vast estate that Lucy had not yet seen. All of them were well-bred, very pretty, and very polite towards her. Visitors were frequent at the house, and some of the men had eyed her with keen interest, doubtlessly to assess if their investments in the charity project were well-spent. Lucy took great pains to be pleasant and polite towards these gentlemen, eager to convince them that she was worthy of their support. There had been one or two who had struck up conversations, and one gentleman had even tried to convince her to accompany him to the garden, before Mrs. Mortimer ushered him polity but firmly away. It was clear that the morals and respectability of their lodgers was of utmost importance to her.

“Everything will be well,” Lucy whispered to herself while sinking on to a chair in the big library, looking out the window with a blissful smile. “Everything will be well in the end.”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

The corner of Caldwell’s mouth turned up around the mouthpiece of his pipe as Adelia entered, naked and ready—God, but she was a vision. He had to remind himself that he was cross with her for the behavior of her spouse. Her smooth skin held the warmth of candlelight and seemed to magnify and enhance it like a grand brass mirror. Her feminine curves held ideal lines and jiggled playfully with every step or movement.

The author set his pipe aside, canted against the marble ashtray on his bedside table. He rose from his armchair still smiling, but it was not a lighthearted smile. It was a predatory smile. It was a smile of one who knows that he will soon be breaking someone’s heart before they know it. It was a sadistic grin.

“Thank you, Mrs. Mortimer,” Caldwell smiled, addressing her formally and not intimately, “I made my escape before the public got too much opportunity to adore or abhor me. I’m sure we’ll read how well they liked the play tomorrow in the paper.”

As he rose from his seat Caldwell made sure to flash a glance between his thighs where his robe parted, giving her a glimpse of his impressive and statuesque manhood, knowing that it would give rise to her already impressive libido. He wanted her yearning, ready for what she wanted and expecting to be pleased.

“You are never a disappointment to me, Mrs. Mortimer. I was quite impressed with your display in the study. I’ll see to Violet before long and ensure that she not only remembers her duty but is also better prepared to tend to Mr. Winchester’s unique desires. I believe the girl is merely confused as to what her client wants from her. I can help her with that,” as he spoke, Caldwell gently wrapped his strong fingers around Adelia’s slender throat, his thumb and index finger gently tipping her face up toward him as if to kiss her, but his lips stalled just an inch from hers and he continued, “Mr. Winchester came to the pub, he informed me of this issue.”

Just as it seemed inevitable that his lips would claim hers the way that they so often did, he pulled away, pacing around behind her as his fingers drifted lower on her throat. When he was behind her, he took hold of her long string of pearls and slowly pulled the overlapping loops tighter around her throat, until the small, white beads began to halt her breath.

“Yes, I was quite pleased with how you disciplined Violet. So much that I might see fit to reward you. To ravage you in my bed until your hot, wet pussy is overflowing with my cum… Or perhaps to take you down to the basement and bind you tightly while I pound your holes and paddle your ass until you’re red as a beet and limp as a rag…”

As he spoke, the pearls clutched tighter and tighter around her throat, while his other hand moved over her flat stomach and up to her voluptuous chest. Her body was so exquisite—there were few things, the wonder of which outpaced Caldwell’s gift for words but Adelia’s body was one such wonder. It crushed him in some way to tease her like this—but he needed to send a message to Charles and going easy on her might leave open the possibility of another unwelcome encounter in public. That could not be allowed to happen.

Just as her face started to change from deep blush to urgent red, Caldwell let the string of pearls go slack and then gently lifted the overlapping string of pearls over her head. He wrapped the pearls around his index finger and lowered that hand between her legs, slowly rolling the coil of pearls back and forth over the hot, yearning folds of her tight, recently eaten pussy.

“I would relish in all of those endeavors and more beyond them—I would shower you in tender affection until you exploded in climactic pleasure—I would fuck you until you could no longer hold your eyes open—I would—if not for that sniveling, priggish, twit of a husband of yours!” At once Caldwell pulled his hand back from between her legs and uncoiled the pearls from around his fingers, as he delivered the verbal strike of bringing up her husband, he also whipped the string of pearls across her lower back, leaving a line of red circles in a narrow loop around her waist, “aside from Winchester, your husband also approached me at the pub. Approached me in public! He wanted to be seen looking for you—he wanted to feel the eyes of society on him, talking to me about you! His thirst for humiliation has overtaken his reason and now, he’s made you into a liability for me.”

As he chastised her, Caldwell continued whipping Adelia with the string of pearls, across her lower back and across her round ass. Her smooth, light skin held the welts beautifully. As he struck her again and again, her backside began to look like a strike strip on a book of matches.

“I hope you enjoyed your orgasm with Violet, because it’ll likely be your last for some time. Tonight you’ll sleep among your own—go back home to your husband! Make it clear to him that he is not, under any circumstances, to approach me in public! Make it clear to him that his value is purely financial and the less he is seen among his betters, the better off we will all be.”

Again and again, Caldwell thrashed Adelia’s backside, grasping a fistful of her curly, dark hair to keep her upright in the face of his flogging. The pearls had been a gift from Caldwell, which added to the agony of this punishment—even moreso when the final blow landed, the impact great enough to break the chain through the pearls, sending the tiny, round gems loudly scattering in all directions across the elaborate, hardwood floor.

“Now, get dressed and get out of my sight. I can’t stand to look at you for another second. Get out! On the morrow we have interviews but I don’t want to see your face around here until then. Furthermore, for his part, I expect Charles to buy you some new negligee that he will never see you in. Perhaps by tomorrow evening, if I like your new undergarments enough, I’ll be ready to fuck you again. Tonight, however, I want only for you to leave.”

Caldwell left Adelia’s side to throw open the bureau where he retrieved a housecoat that he’d bought for her. He tossed the garment at her in disgust.

“Go on, get back to that worm of a husband of yours. I’ll have Kitty warm my bed tonight.”

With that, Caldwell turned the knob on the wall which corresponded to Kitty's summoning bell. The young maid's bell was metallic but bright. Like the beating of fairy wings.

"You'd better be gone before she gets here." Caldwell commanded.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia’s confident excitement died away as soon as he addressed her with her married name. Caldwell was angry. She sighed as his fingers closed around her throat, bringing her lips so close to his that she could feel the heat radiating off them. Just as she closed her eyes to savour this first, hungry kiss, he pulled away from her. “No…,” she breathed, desperate for his touch. “Come back to me…” However, her eyes flew open in panic as his grip travelled lower and suddenly pulled the string of pearls tight around her throat. “Caldwell…,” she croaked timidly, too intimidated now by his violence to try and fight back. “Please….” The lack of oxygen quickly became urgent, but together with his teasing words, his promises of pleasure at his hands, it only heightened her arousal, sending shivers across her body.

“Yes…,” she moaned, arching her back in his grip as his free hand caressed her naked skin. “Fuck me, please. Fuck me…” Her voice started to falter, and he loosened his tight grip on her pearls. It was almost too much for her to bear to listen to his voice, forming the most exquisite images in her head of her helplessly bound while he fucking her, fucking her senseless…when he rolled the pearls over her clit, she moaned loudly, writhing for him.

Until he brought up her husband.

The shock of his change of tone came like a slap, and Adelia realised that he had toyed with her, that his anger was violent and acute. The first time the string of pearls landed on her skin, she screamed in pain, unprepared as she had been for this assault. “I am sorry, Sir,” she mumbled, trying to turn her head to face him, but she found he would not allow it. “He is a swine, a moron, he is nothing,” she pleaded, as blow after blow now landed on her behind, her back.

Adelia gritted her teeth, wincing in his grip, desperate not to let give him further reason for displeasure. She was on her tiptoes, straining against him, moaning each time the pearls rained down on her skin, not sure herself if the pain was worse, or the promise of unfulfilled pleasure.

“Yes, Sir,” she managed, after his final blow had sent the pearls flying across the room and he had released her. “I promise, Sir.” Adelia took a few deep breaths, unprepared as she had been for his fury. She could feel tears burn behind her eyelids, but angrily blinked them away.

She struggled into the house coat, her skin burning with the humiliation and the pain, her pussy aching with need. It took all her will power not to touch herself now, not to rub her thighs together, only a little bit, because she knew that this was all she would need now to reach her climax. The frustration and need made her groan. Instead, she nodded when he brought up the planned interviews. At least his anger did not ban her from that, too.

But at the mention of Kitty, Adelia could not help but to ask, perplexed: “Her? Tonight?” She immediately covered her lips with her fingers as if to stuff this impertinent question back into her mouth. With Caldwell in such a sour mood, she was in no position to question his intentions, but surely he would not waste little Kitty as a simple outlet for his anger. Any other girl, even Violet, would serve him better at that. They knew his tastes, his preferences, they knew how to placate him without much instruction. How would the little maid deal with a man who surely, in the state he was in, had no patience for coyness, for innocence, and for hesitant fear? Kitty was a jewel, a rare untouched treasure. Was this part of her punishment? Would he take the joy of breaking in the girl from her, just like that? It was an affront that hurt more than all his previous chastising.

She was seething, full of rage against her idiot husband. Her eyes were dark with resentment, not for Caldwell, but for the man that had grown to be nothing but a hindrance, an ugly, useless obstacle between her and her full potential, a worm. He would learn what it meant to cross her so.

“Yes, Maestro,” she whispered finally, her eyes obediently downcast. “I will do everything as you wish.” With that, Adelia left his room, her head filled with murderous thoughts.

***

When the bell rang in their room, Nora sat up. Kitty was still writhing on the bed, laughing breathlessly because her friend had been tickling and teasing her, finally giving in to her own exalted mood. “That was your bell, Kitty,” Nora said softly, but clearly alarmed.

Kitty now sat up, too, trying to smooth her dress and her apron with her hands. Her hair was in disarray and she frantically tried to tame it enough to face the master of the house. It was the first time that he summoned her to his room and now Kitty, too, was nervous. Had she done something wrong? What if he was cross with her for cutting the roses? The bell had stopped ringing, and Nora, smiling, lent the young maid a hand to untangle and comb her hair, leaving it in a neat, thick braid that fell down her back. “There, now you look as pretty as ever,” she said. Kitty stood up and smoothed down the front of her buttoned-up linen dress with her flat hands, shaking out her apron for any stray lint.

Nora, still sitting on the bed, watched her with an indulgent smile, trying to hide her concern. It was almost evening, and Kitty would miss her supper if Mr. Dawkins would keep her long. What could he possibly want of her that late, and alone? Since the horrible night in the Hammersmith household, Nora found that she was unable to trust men, any man, not to foster similar horrid intentions. It made her feel ungrateful and ashamed. Mr. Dawkins had shown nothing but kindness, and without him, they would have ended in the street, or worse. And yet, she could not help but worry for her naïve, trusting friend.

“Will you come with me?”

Kitty’s voice tore her from her musings.

“Will you come with me, Nora? Oh please. I never know how to be in front of fine people, and Mr. Dawkins is such a fine man, he makes me ever so nervous.”

The former governess smiled and nodded. “Of course, Kitty.” She stood up and smoothed down her own simple housedress. One quick look in the mirror convinced her that her hair was in a neat but and that she was ready to go.

The two girls walked along the corridors up and narrow staircase to Mr. Dawkins’ room, holding hands. Nora was glad that her friend had asked her to come. It would send the right message to their benefactor, and lend the pretty maid the confidence she lacked in the face of her betters. The face of Mr. Dawkins’ room was slightly ajar, and she knocked softly, before opening it and stepping inside. Both her and Kitty curtsied, their fingers still interlaced, before they had even caught sight of him. Nora noticed a few stray pearls lying carelessly on the floor, but forced herself not to stare at them.

“Good evening, Mr. Dawkins,” Nora said, and the young maid, parroting her friend, managed to whisper a greeting as well. “You sent for…for us?”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Caldwell was still putting his cock away when the duo of young ladies entered his bedchamber, the realization that both had arrived instead of one threw him briefly, but once his cock was back hidden in his elaborate robe, Caldwell quickly composed himself. When he turned to face the two young ladies he was drawing from his pipe once again. They curtsied with practiced ease, but their voices betrayed their nervousness.

“Actually, I sent for you, singular,” Caldwell pointed at Kitty with the mouthpiece of his smoldering pipe, “not the plural, you. Nonetheless, you’re both here now, so I shall endeavor to find a use for you both. Nora, I’ve had a small accident with Mrs. Adelia’s favourite necklace. I’d like you to find and gather each of those stray pearls. Some may have rolled under things, so please, do be thorough.”

With Nora assigned a task, Caldwell moved over to Kitty who was visibly intimidated and gently grasped the back of her slender neck with his large hand. He led her back to the reading nook of his bedroom. Despite his bluff to Adelia, Caldwell had no intention of violating the young maid’s chastity—but he did require some intimate services.

“How are you finding your time here at Dawkins’ House so far, Kitty? I trust that you have everything you require,” Caldwell sat Kitty down on the edge of his bed before returning to his armchair where he set down his pipe in favor of his glass of Scotch, “I summoned you because you are a unique case for us here at Dawkins’ House—in that, unlike our average tenant, you, my dear, still have your honor in-tact. As such, you could still be eligible for a good marriage to a worthy husband. Is that what you would like? To be wedded to a Lord or perhaps even a Duke—if I can make the right connections for you?”

Caldwell took a long sip from his glass of Scotch before taking his pipe back up and slowly taking a draw of the smoldering tobacco inside. With white smoke slowly seeping from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth, he reached over, gently slipping a stray lock of Kitty’s chestnut hair behind her ear.

“The trouble—you see, is that with your family connections lacking, you’ll need a rather large dowry to attract the eye of such a husband—a dowry that you yourself do not have ready access to. That said, if you’re able to trust in the work we do here and put your trust in myself and Adelia, she and I may be able to provide the funds for your dowry as well as an advantageous pairing.

“All we would need from you is to trust in us and agree to learn what we have to teach you here. We’ll make you a desirable bride for any of several dozen well-to-do suitors who frequent the manor, all without sacrificing your chastity. That said, you may have to sacrifice some of your innocence in favor of maturity… is that a sacrifice you’d be willing to make for the sake of a good marriage?”

At this point, Nora seemed to be finished gathering pearls. Caldwell indicated a small but ornate music box on the dresser for her to leave the pearls within its felt-lined recesses.

“Nora, I realize that this might be difficult, but since you’re here. I’d like you to detail for Kitty and myself the events that occurred on the night that you fled from your previous residence. Spare us no detail, I beg you. I think that Kitty here needs to understand what it is that you’re fleeing so that she may better understand what it is that you’ll both need to do to stay.”

 

[Curious_Muse]

Kitty blushed deeply when Mr. Dawkins pointed out that he had in fact called only her, and not Nora. She nodded, and curtsied again, relieved that her minor transgression did not lead to punishment. Mrs. Hammersmith, the lady of the house at her former position, had been quite tempered and generous with the theatrical sighs, the angry shouts, and other signs of displeasure, often for the most minor complaints.

Mr. Dawkins seemed unfazed. He kindly asked Nora to help him gather the pearls of a destroyed necklace, evidence of which they had noticed immediately upon their entrance into his study. He was a very polite, a very warm-hearted man, Kitty decided again. When his warm and took her gently by the neck, she forced herself not to flinch, and not to show any fear. A man such as Mr. Dawkins deserved nothing but her obedience and complete trust, after all.

She did throw shy, furtive glances at the room around her, marvelling at all the beautiful things in it. The many books! Nora would love it here, she thought contentedly, surrounded by so much knowledge and wisdom.

When he asked her how she liked the house, she beamed at him. “Oh, I like it very much, Mr. Dawkins! It’s such a fine house, and never in my dreams had I imagined to one day live like that!” She blushed deeply at the mention of her condition, and her “honour”, knowing what he referred to and deeply ashamed to have such fine gentleman allude to something so private. She said nothing, but nodded.

While he continued Kitty just stared at him, her mouth open, unable to say a thing. Marry a lord! A duke! Her! Wherever had one heard such things! She was not sure if he was maybe joking, or if this was test. Did he want to see if she was a greedy person? Someone who reached above her station? Or someone gullible? Of low morals?

“I am sorry, Mr. Dawkins,” she whispered, almost unable to get out the words. “I am afraid I don’t understand. I have no parents, and not a penny to my name. I was just the kitchen maid in the Hammersmith house….”

But he seemed to have taken all that into consideration already. “Of course I will obey you and Mrs. Adelia, Mr. Dawkins,” Kitty said hastily, carefully avoiding the topic of her finding a husband from the London gentry. It was just too droll a thought. She did not understand what he meant when he asked her to “sacrifice some of her innocence”, and did not ask. Surely Mr. Dawkins knew what was best for her and for her friend.

Nora, who was crouched on all fours to look for each of the stray pearls between the cracks of the fine wooden planks of the floor, under carpets and behind bookcases, pricked her ears in order to follow the conversation between Kitty and Mr. Dawkins. It was difficult, they were at the other end of the room and Mr. Dawkins did not speak very loudly. But there were bits and pieces she did understand, and they all worried her.

Was Mr. Dawkins toying with the poor maid? A man of his standing should not confuse a girl’s feeble mind like that, putting ideas of lords and other prospective highborn grooms into her head. And what on earth could he teach Kitty in this house that would make her a suitable match for a duke? Nora shivered when she suddenly remembered that the man responsible for her downfall was one such. A fine duke he had been. Her suspicion of Mr. Dawkins and his intentions only grew, but she forced herself to remain calm.

When she had finally finished and found the last pearl lodged behind the leg of the study table, she stood up and Mr. Dawkins pointed to a small, elegant box where she could deposit all she had gathered. What she had not expected was his next question. She looked at him, feeling suddenly faint. Nora had to lean on the table in order not to fall. The images of that night came rushing back to her, forcing a pitiful groan from her lips. She flinched at the feel of the lacquered wood under her fingertips, suddenly reminded of the desk where the two men had assaulted her so viciously. “My apologies,” she croaked, unable to rid herself of the sensation that hands were grabbing at her, trying to hold her down. Her face had lost all colour, and her lips trembled in an effort to force back her tears.

Kitty felt sorry for her distressed friend. She had never managed to get the details of what had happened to her that fateful night out of Nora, but she had an inkling that it had to do with her “honour”, that, she suspected, had been besmirched against her will. While Kitty was young, and maybe a little naïve, she was not dim-witted. She knew that men, especially powerful men, could do terrible things to girls, things that might ruin them forever. Whispers of back alleys and Whitechapel whorehouses had accompanied years of her orphan life, and Kitty knew quite well that so far, she had mostly been lucky to escape such a fate – even if she had no clear idea of what that meant.

“Mr. Dawkins…,” Nora started, horrified to have been asked this and well aware of the thinly-veiled threat. “I beg you, don’t make me remember that horrible night. Please trust me that both Kitty and me are more than grateful for your charity and generous hospitality, and only too aware that, should we ever lose either, that we would find ourselves in the most terrible predicament.” Inwardly, she promised to try and flee this house with Kitty as soon as possible.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

“Oh my dear word,” Caldwell gasped, somewhat theatrically—but genuinely moved, in fact, by how deeply and profoundly the question had landed with the young redhead. The girl was clearly still quite traumatized by the events which had driven her from her old home and seemed to be using Kitty as a proxy for what was already lost to her, “there’s no need to beg, dear one. Please, be at ease. I apologize for upsetting you. Thank you for tidying those things for me. Do hang back for but a moment.

“Kitty, my dear, I do have a very important task for you…” Caldwell smiled, rising up from the bed and gently guiding Kitty toward the door, his hand respectfully between her shoulder blades as he led her to the door, “tomorrow, Mrs. Adelia will be returning. I was cross with her and I wish to make amends. I would like for you to find the most beautiful rose in the whole garden and cut it for her. Trim it and remove the thorns as well. Please leave it for her in the first floor study, if you would. Thank you my dear. We’ll discuss your marriage options at some more length at another time. Good evening.”

When Kitty was finally excused, Caldwell closed the door after her, turning his keen blue eyes back to Nora. His expression was more stern now, but not at all aggressive. He’d resolved himself to what he had to do.

“As for you,” Caldwell began, not hiding his frustration with Nora as well as he’d hoped he was, “I have a job for you as well.”

Caldwell stepped toward her, his footsteps gentle in his velvet house shoes, but his demeanor was tense. He reached out toward her, only to reach past her to the lacquered, hand-carved curio cabinet that stood on the dresser near the Swiss music box where Nora had deposited the pearls. From a small drawer near the bottom of the elaborate cabinet, Caldwell produced a small, brass turnkey. He held the key out before Nora.

“This is a key to the library wing. It’s yours. I do not wish to make you feel ill at ease in my home or my presence. I fear that I’ve overstepped my intentions by asking you what I did. Please accept this by way of recompense,” Caldwell handed Nora the key and then turned back to the door, placing his hand on the knob, “the job that I have for you is to utilize the library and find for me five specific examples of young women in literature or history who, like yourself, had their innocence most brutally taken from them—but in the end, went on to be more successful and formidable than they may have been otherwise—who were either mightily avenged or eternally remembered because of not what befell them, but of who they became as a result.”

With her job clearly defined for her, Caldwell beckoned—not so bold as to touch her, as he imagined she might still be shy to being touched by men such as himself.

“I want you to know that I want what’s best—both for Kitty and yourself. When I take a girl into my home, my only wish is for their continued and lasting happiness. Both of you have much potential—but you need to stop viewing yourself as a protector to her. You have your own life to author. And for Kitty to rise as high as she is able, you must remove yourself from being in the way of her growing up. Sooner or later, everyone must grow up.”

At this, Caldwell opened his bedroom door again and held it for Nora to take her leave.

“Sweet dreams, dear Nora. I wish you luck with your task. I’ll give you the first one for free, a young woman who was assaulted, hurled into the streets and forced to sell her body in order to survive. The same people who raped her and paid to ravage her, one day decided that they were finished with her and set out to stone her as a whore. The Savior himself saw her and pitied her, he said ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and he saved her life. She was named Mary, like his mother and though the Lord Christ never took her into his bed, he was scarcely seen thereafter without his beloved Mary Magdalene by his side.

“Which leads to the second free answer I’ll offer you—Mary the Madonna. Though she recognized the angel Gabriel for what he was, she’d never met him before and as she was to wed Joseph, never consented to lay with him. Out of that union, the Savior of the world was born. Do please keep that in mind when your mind forces you to recall that night, some tragedies yield great rewards for those who have the strength to bare them.”

When Nora left, Caldwell locked his door and sighed. He briefly considered summoning another girl to tend to him, but instead set out his parchment and inkwell at his desk that overlooked the street. He began to write… which he did until sleep beckoned him to bed. He snuffed his own candles that night.

*-*-*

The fog had settled thick over the cobblestones down the narrow alleyway known to the people of Whitechapel as Buck’s Row. Mary Ann Nichols wraps her dingy lace shawl tighter around her shoulders, searching for warmth where none exists. Near the end of the alley, a dark silhouette, backlit by streetlamps from a more trafficked cross street appeared through the fog. The dark shadow was only distinguishable as human by the corners of its tall hat.

“G’mornin’ there mister,” Mary called toward the shadow, lowering her shawl to showcase her cleavage, propped up by her tight corset, “looking for some company?”

“Mayhaps,” the figure answered, his voice deep but indistinct, unlike his echoing footsteps as he approached, “and what kind of company would you be, Lass?”

“Oh, I’d be right proper company for a big, strong gent’lman like yesself, mister.”

“Right… proper…” the shadow was growing closer now, clear of the fog but still indistinguishable by the hazy backlighting from the flickering street lamps, “I am looking for company, Lass. But the kind of company I hope to keep is neither right, nor proper.”

“Well in that case, mister. I’ll do just about anything you can imagine for a few quid extra.”

“You ought not make assumptions on the imagination of others,” he said this softly, then pounced on her all at once, pinning her roughly against the soot-stained bricks of the factory that shared a wall with Buck’s Row, “you never know what images a foreign mind may conjure.”

Mary opened her mouth to reply, still smiling, but to her surprise no words came forth—only a glut of thick, black blood that choked past her lips before she even realized she’d been cut. Indeed, the razor was so sharp and the cut so swift that she didn’t even feel it until the sheer volume of blood spewing from her open throat wound was too much to possibly not notice. She grasped at her throat, futilely trying to slow the bleeding, but it was like trying to catch the water from a bucket after it has been turned over.

“Don’t worry. I’ll leave a few quid extra,” the shadow taunted as he thrust himself inside her, finding no resistance as he hiked up her skirts and began fucking her as she spewed forth her life’s blood onto her shawl and his suit, “I thank you for your company.”

 

[Curious_Muse]

Standing in front of the smooth wooden doors, Nora looked at the key in her hand. It had been a very generous gesture on Mr. Dawkins part, but would she not put herself even deeper in his debt if she accepted?

There were few things in this world, and now maybe even less, that attracted Nora more than the promise of knowledge. Had he understood that about her in such a short time? With a resigned sigh, she turned the key and opened the door. The familiar smell of polished wood, leather-bound tomes and the lingering whiff of extinguished oil lamps greeted her, and for a brief moment she hesitated, suddenly struggling again against awful memories. Nora frowned. She would not allow these monstrous men to rule over her daily life like that. Opening the door a bit wider, she entered.

It was a beautiful room, spacious and airy, with two large windows allowing for the golden light of the evening to flood the library. A large Persian carpet muffled the visitors’ steps. A broad desk was positioned against one of the windows, so that the reader could enjoy the view of the garden outside, and rows of finely-worked bookshelves lined the walls to both sides of a dormant fireplace. A small mezzanine ran along the high ceiling, and a narrow, wounded wooden staircase led up to the books stacked along this second floor. There was a green velvet armchair in a corner, and an inviting small table carrying a half-filled crystal carafe and small port glasses sat next to it. Oil paintings – as far as Nora could tell, they were all portraits of stern-looking gentlemen – were hung on the wall above the small table, and various oil lamps were placed across the library for those who read well into the night.

Nora was intimidated by the casual air and the intimacy of this room. This was clearly a space that was reserved for people that the owner of the house trusted would appreciate it. That Mr. Dawkins allowed her to use it was a privilege she had not expected. Had she been rash in judging him through the tainted glass of her experiences in the Hammersmith household? Maybe his promises to Kitty had been, as strange as it had seemed, sincere? The girl, unspoilt, sweet, and perfectly pretty, would make a good wife for any man. Maybe even a Duke? Nora decided to wait, maybe a few days more. Her eyes travelled greedily across the rows of books. They were double, maybe even triple the number of those Mr. Hammersmith had called his own! It would have been foolish, and impossible for her, not to take at least some time to explore such a treasure.

But first she would have to set her mind to the strange task given to her by her new benefactor. She was no Madonna, no Mary Magdalene, but his confidence in her flattered her all the same. Maybe Mr. Dawkins really believed that all girls and women, no matter ow low they had fallen, were able to soar? If he believed that Kitty would be able to draw the eye of a lord, maybe he believed that she, too, was capable of greater things than being the victim of young rich men’s appetites?

She walked along the shelves, softly tracing the backs of the books with her finger. Where to start? Nora took book after book – the classics, like Herodotus, Ptolemy, Plutarch whom she had all studied before, a translation of al-Tabari that intrigued her, a weighty tome of an encyclopaedia of modern history, a beautiful book about the works of Italian Renaissance painters and several other books she deemed useful.

With a groan, she set down the last stack on the desk and started working. The list of women who had suffered abuse at the hands of terrible men was long. Nora started with those she already knew about, like Lucretia, whose rape had caused a revolution that led to the fall of Roman tyranny. Her horrible fate at the hands of prince Tarquinius brought an end to a monarchy, but she killed herself – would that count? Sure, she was remembered for what came after her, but had it not all been men killing each other for honour and control over her? Nora looked at the small rendering of Titian’s painting and shivered. She did not look like a woman who had been made stronger by her ordeal. Or Cassandra, the woman forever damned to see future catastrophe but who was ignored by those she tried to warn? Who had spurned Apollo, and had suffered his wrath for it? There were tales of women of who took revenge on their abusers, such as Rogneda, a Norse princess who plotted to kill the man who had raped her in front of her parents and then forced her to wed him. She was exiled – would she count?

Nora stopped, her eyes burning with fatigue. The sun had long set outside, and by now she would have missed dinner. She was hungry, but it did not matter. Turning up the gas light on her desk, she took the next book from the stack and started reading.

Had any of these women been anything else than prey? But there were others, girls who had been ruined in their early life, only to rise to fame and fortune as lovers and courtesans of rich and powerful men. Some of them even became businesswomen, and influential councillors of kings, like Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwyn, Madame du Barry, or the Venetian Veronica Franco. And what about Scheherazade? She outwitted a terrible king at the expense of her virtue, but all she managed to do was to live. What about famous harlots who built their own empires of pleasure right in the heart of London, the ladies of Covent Garden and King’s Square, bawds and harlots who turned the heads and purses of hundreds of gentlemen? The rather distasteful account of a writer she had not heard of before alleged that almost all of them had started their careers as victims of debauched rich men.

Horrified, she remembered what the Duke had told her: that she had the talent of becoming a prized harlot, if only she would receive proper guidance. She remembered the strange flutter, the nervous spasm that his assault had caused and that he had been so disgustingly proud of. Suddenly the room seemed too hot, too narrow. Nora hastily unbuttoned her collar and took a deep breath. What else had he done to her that night?

A small paper booklet slipped from between the pages of the book she had been reading and onto the floor. Nora picked it up, curious. It seemed to be a recent catalogue of sorts, a description of a salon exhibition. And what an exhibition! Copies of the works showed strangely foreign women contorted in the most brazen manner, their legs splayed for men in silk tunics whose giant members pierced their most intimate place. A woman lovingly embracing an octopus whose many legs probed her each and every opening. A colourful illustration of a dark-skinned princess who had her legs wrapped around her lover in a manner Nora doubted to be physically possible.

“Eastern Pleasure Gardens” the title screamed gaily at her, promising a collection of the most outrageous images Eastern lands had to offer. “Live demonstrations” was written underneath.

Nora sat back, barely daring to touch the leaflet again. Why would Mr. Dawkins have such a thing? Surely he did not know, or if he did, he would not want her to see it! She threw another glance at the picture of the woman with her head thrown back in ecstasy while a wild warrior swordsman pinned her down beneath him. Did she enjoy this?

Nervously, she stuffed it back into the book, her heart beating like a drum, her skin humming with agitation. Maybe it was enough for tonight.


***

The carriage rattled over the cobblestones and towards their house. Adelia leant against the side of the vehicle, still humiliated and angry over the scene that had transpired in Caldwell’s study earlier that evening. Her skin was burning with the memory. Her idiot husband, seated across from her and chatting eagerly about the menu he had had the cook prepare for her tonight, had no idea about the catastrophe he had caused with his entry into the pub.

She looked at him from under lowered lashes, wishing for nothing more than an end to his prattle. He adored her, and was so happy to spend an entire evening – and possibly a night – in her presence that he did not notice his wife’s morose mood.

“And peach sorbet, with peaches delivered from France this very morning…,” he went on, counting what other delicacies were waiting for her at home. “And the very best port, Lord Windesham swore that it is the only one he allows into his house…” Adelia smiled vaguely at the mention of Windesham, whose hospitality she and Caldwell had enjoyed on different occasions. She could not remember the port, but she did recall that he had a large, rather skilled cock and a vicious streak she had admired. How distressed that silly little seamstress had been, and how delicious! In the end, she had enjoyed the evening as much as they all had, hadn’t she?

“…it’ll look so beautiful on you, you’ll be a goddess!”

Adelia hated her husband’s eager expression, his doglike longing to please her in everything. He had bought her the most exquisite corset, a French silk and lace creation that sublimely brought out her feminine curves, a fabulous garment that showed nothing, but revealed everything. Caldwell would like it, she knew. If only he would allow her to wear it for him! Adelia burnt with unfulfilled desire for the maestro, and while she knew that he would eventually forgive her, she could not at all be sure that it would be tomorrow, or anytime soon. Sure, she would be there for the interviews, pick the new girls, but there was no guarantee that he would not take that chance to torture her again by withholding his affection.

Little Kitty and her spirited friend would hold his attention if she did not manage to win it back.

“Why don’t we go through Whitechapel, dear?” Adelia said as if on a sudden whim, her eyes shining with menace he was too infatuated to detect. “It’s faster, and maybe we see something we like?” Her husband looked at her with alarm, but, as she had expected, did not dare to protest. “Sure, my love, sure.” She noticed with satisfaction that there was the flutter of fear in his voice. With a smile, she leant back in the carriage, curious if she was going to find what she was looking for.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

It was cold.

Barnes hated the cold with a burning passion, but it was everywhere these days, with no hope of chasing it out. He rubbed his hands together over the barrel fire that he hand several others were gathered around to fend off the frozen fingers of the night fog. He was trembling, but not from the cold. Barnes was nervous.

It had seemed too good to be true, even at the time—some posh piece of ass tipping him off to her own husband. She’d said he could keep whatever he fleeced off him and that she would bring him right to him. Posh folk tended to avoid these parts on purpose, especially when their pockets were fat. Even now, Barnes couldn’t see her angle. Maybe she wanted his money, but why had she insisted on the other part—perhaps to shield her liability? Barnes gave up trying to unfold the mysteries of the minds of well-bred folk. They never did much that made sense.

Barnes heard the carriage before he saw it, the fog guising it in shadow until the very last moment. He turned to the others around the fire barrel.

“Sorry ‘bout this, mates,” Barnes muttered, suddenly grabbing the edge of the barrel and overturning its bounty of smoldering orange embers and still burning bits of timber into the street ahead of the carriage.

The others scattered, recognizing too well what might become of them if they lurked around while trouble was jumping off. The horses startled and reared as they were wont to do in the face of pluming flames and showering embers, jolting the carriage forward and upsetting the coachman from his perch.

Before the startled coachman could right himself, Barnes charged up the narrow metal steps to the coachman’s perch where he bludgeoned the man over the head with a rather substantial cudgel. It was really just a sewn leather pouch filled with metal beads, but when swung overhand as Barnes had done, it was more than sufficient to knock a sturdy man unconscious in one stroke. The coachman was unconscious before he had any opportunity to raise an alarm.

With the coachman dispatched, Barnes leapt back down to the street where he made his way back to the door of the fanciful looking, private carriage.

“Open up now, ye’ rich buggers—or I’ll set fire to the whole litter!” Barnes called into the carriage, “I know you’re in there and I know what you’ve got wit’ ye.”

Barnes’ heart was racing. He’d never truly killed a man before—at least not with intent. He’d broken a man’s skull in a tavern brawl once, that led to his demise—but that hardly made him the killer he’d marketed himself as to that fancy-looking woman who approached him about the murdering of her husband.

When his target timidly opened the carriage door, Barnes grasped the edge of the door and slammed it against the side of the carriage, pushing his way inside. Still gripping the heavy cudgel in his gloved fist, Barnes punched the trembling nobleman in the face, splashing a cloud of his blue blood onto Barnes’ sleeve. It was red, just like his—even this was a lie—and a silly lie at that. Of course the wealthy bled the same blood as the poor.

“Hand over your purse and your jewels,” Barnes commanded of Charles, his crude knife giving off a faint sigh as he cleared it from its leather holster on his belt, “or I’ll open up your throat for ye!”

Charles, for his part was beyond vanquished the moment he’d set eyes on Barnes and could scarcely force his trembling hands to pass over the swollen pouch of coins as fast as he would surrender to this terrifying man. When he was punched, Charles—ill-suited to violence his whole life, pissed his trousers from fright.

When Barnes snatched up Charles’ purse, feeling the weight of it, he realized that this was going to be more difficult for him by being so easy. He’d expected the rich man to struggle over his coin—or at minimum protest. How was he to invent cause to cut him down when he so eagerly submitted himself.

“And the rest,” Barnes lifted his eyes to Adelia, doing a poor job of pretending not to know her already, “out of them jewels now, pre’ey. And let’s loosen up that bodice while you’re at it.”

“P-p-p-please!” Charles at last found his voice, oddly enough finding himself aroused at this traumatic incident, “leave her. Please. You can have the money and the jewels—we’ll never tell a soul!”

“Damn right ye won’t!” Barnes grinned, finally some pushback from the whimpering, little snot, “you’ll never tell a soul!”

The carriage struts creaked as the cabin rocked as Barnes jabbed the crude blade into Charles’ guts—once, twice, thrice! The last time, he left the blade inside of Charles’ body—the hand-hewn handle sticking out from between Charles’ blood streaked fingers. Charles let out a high and pitiful scream as he was stabbed, fainting into unconsciousness almost immediately.

Barnes turned back to Adelia grinning, with tiny spatters of blood stretching across his face and his gloves slick with Charles’ blood.

“There’s the nasty bit sorted,” Barnes smiled, quickly ducking out of his overcoat, “now for the sweet bit…”

Barnes had the courtesy to shed his bloody gloves before reaching out to roughly tear open her bodice and grasp her breasts just as roughly. He latched his gin stinking mouth onto her pale, picturesque neck that so many man coveted, writhing his tongue against her blemishless skin and biting with his crooked, yellow teeth.


*-*-*


In Nature it seems
So clear—
All things flow
As they ought,

So no stranger that you’re
So dear—
You’re the only direction
I’ve got.

Caldwell’s quill made a wide splotch on the page as he pressed too hard making the period at the end of his latest poem. He’d yet to give it a name, but in his heart it was already called after his subject. “Adelia.”

The bell that signaled dinner was ready prevented him from actually laying the title to the page, which he took as a sign that he should wait to gauge her thoughts on the poem before titling it after her. He was lamenting his decision to throw Adelia out already. One seldom appreciates how much they rely on those close to them until they’re forced to do without.

He placed his quill back into the inkwell and stood from his desk. Buttoning his waistcoat back up before retrieving his pipe and lighting it with a fresh match as he departed his bedroom and took the main staircase down to the dining room.

Lucy and Violet had been in charge of preparing dinner—as cooking was one of the various fields of study that the home presumed to educate its tenants in, in the hopes of improving their prospects for a decent marriage or profession despite their shame.

As Kitty was still new, she was charged with setting and clearing the table—though the standards for this practice were no less exacting than those he held for the meal itself. Nora, on the other hand, had perhaps the most scrutinized role as the de facto sommelier. Caldwell expected wine parings for each course and a brandy for afterwards. His tastes were fickle and his cellar was immense. Furthermore, there was the risk that he could overindulge himself and scorn her for the sheer pleasure of making her squirm—the drink paring was a very delicate art at Caldwell house. The upshot of that being that every young woman who graduated from the house was more than equal to even the most particular of palates.

As Caldwell sat at the head of the table, he looked down to see that his oyster fork was touching his soup spoon. Causing him to breathe out his pipe smoke through his nose slowly.

“Kitty, my dear,” Caldwell beckoned her back, just as she was making her way back to help bring out the first course, “come over here please. I want you to look at my setting and tell me what is wrong.”

 

[Curious_Muse]

It was badly done, Adelia thought angrily. The lad she had found after leaving the Dawkins House had seemed much more professional, much more put together than the fumbling fool raging in their carriage now. An impassive spectator of this badly acted theatre, she wondered if her husband would realise that he was nothing but a prop in this play before he died.

Probably not, she thought with a sigh, while her husband begged for mercy. He was too much of a sheltered, simpering idiot to notice anything. Her lips curled as he voluntarily handed over his purse, his watch, anything of value he could find on his own person. Would her plan fail because even now Charles was such a snivelling coward who even now could not find it in himself to fight back? Was even the lowest scum of London too sophisticated a sparring partner?

She scowled at Barnes when he turned towards her, ordering her to hand over her jewellery and her honour. “Never,” she hissed, annoyed that the thief made little effort to pretend that she was nothing but another rich stranger to him. It was then that Charles finally piped up, finally demonstrated that even he possessed a faint sliver of courage. She braced herself, hoping that Barnes would seize this opportunity.

He did. And when his knife sank into Charles’ belly, she did scream, horrified by the sound of the impact, the sickening gurgle her husband emitted, and his screeching screams for help that nobody would heed. “I am sorry,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, averting her eyes while Barnes finished the deed.

Adelia gasped when Barnes ripped at her bodice impatiently. The seamstress would struggle to repair what his calloused fingers destroyed, but it could not be helped. Behind him, she saw that Charles, bleeding profusely, had slipped into unconsciousness. Was he dead? As the thief was grabbing at her pale breasts, pulling at her nipples that were stiff, but not only from the cold, she tried to discern if that oaf was still breathing. After all, it was his death that she was about to pay with giving this scum access to her body. It was a curious thing. Despite her hate for her husband, her disgust for his touch, his voice, she felt a pang of sadness at his passing. And yet, freedom finally beckoned and the thought let her pussy grow wet in anticipation.

“Sure,” she breathed into his ear. “Fuck me, then, claim your reward.” Adelia gathered up her skirts, pulling them over her knees. She was not wearing any underthings except for silk garters to hold up her thick black stockings. If she was to play the back alley whore for the killer of her husband, she wanted to do it right. Caldwell would like this story, she mused. Maybe he would have liked to watch her being taken like this, brutally and in haste, squeezed into the corner of her carriage by the man who had just stabbed her husband to death. “No kisses on my lips,” she said, spreading her thighs for him invitingly. “Fuck me, and make it quick before I freeze to death out here.”

***

Nora stood at the foot of the dining table, her eyes downcast, avoiding Mr. Dawkins’ gaze. Apparently she had not spent as much in the library as she had thought, because she had been summoned to choose the wines with Mr. Dawkins’ dinner. Confused and still somewhat dazed from the many hours she had spent reading, she wondered if Mr. Dawkins knew about the small catalogue she had come across in the library. And if he did, did he know that she had found it, and worse, that she had leafed through it at length?

When Lucy had come to fetch her, the catalogue had already been hidden away again between the thick tomes on the bookshelf, but she felt guilty nevertheless, and, what was worse, she could not deny that the images she had seen had stirred something in her. Nora was afraid that all of these thoughts would be visible on her face, the shame and the guilt, the confusion. And on top of all that, she still could not bring herself to trust their host’s intention, and felt horribly guilty for that as well.

She had chosen a dry sherry for the cream of celery soup that Lucy had made. It was the drink that had always been served at the Hammersmith house with the soup course, and Nora hoped that Mr. Dawkins would follow a similar etiquette. A bottle of a fine Sauternes with the oysters. She was nervous about that, unsure if she should not have chosen the lighter white Burgundy instead, but she simply had no idea what Mr. Dawkins liked, if he preferred a crisp wine, or a rich, sweet one with his hors d’oeuvres.

In the wine cellar, she had been lost between the many casks and bottles, her only help the book of wines that Mr. Dawkins was keeping, neatly listing the wines in stock, their origin and vintage. She had seen such a book in the Hammersmith household, where the butler had jealously lorded over the wine cellar, never allowing any of the other staff near it. Nora suspected that he would have used violence against anyone who would have dared to touch his precious note book, and she had never been allowed to so much as cast a glance into it. Hence the leather-bound little tome she now had was not of much assistance, the numbers and names of no use to her, except for the scant recollections of drinks that had been served in her former house.

A claret with the stuffed roast duck, she had decided. Surely, Mr. Dawkins would approve of such a choice. It was a deep red Bordeaux, it smelled earthy, of wood and berries, but as with all the others, Nora had not dared to have a taste. She would have to trust that her understanding of the book and the order of wines in the cellar would be guidance enough. Why on earth had Mr. Dawkins entrusted her with choosing the wines? It was a butler’s job, a man’s job, and Nora wondered why he had no butler in his employ. Clearly, he was wealthy enough to afford the necessary servants.

But what if, a timid voice in her head whispered, what if he believes that you are capable of a man’s job? What if he is trying to demonstrate his appreciation, his trust? Has he not given you the keys to his library, and permission to make full use of it? Has he not clearly stated that what he wants from you is to rise above the sorry state these horrid monsters put you in? Nora bit her lip, nervous. And what about Kitty? Maybe, just maybe not all men are as dastardly and cruel as the young Mr. Hammersmith and his friend had been. She forced her thoughts back to the dining room.

A bottle of champagne would accompany the dessert. Lucy had said that she had something special in mind that would require nothing less. What decadence! She looked at the array of bottles and decanters, the prices for the contents of which would feed a family on the Eastside for a year.

***

“Have these been sitting out here all that time?” Lucy was staring at the basket of fresh oysters that someone had left next to the stove, now wrapped into an ominous fishy smell. Violet, who had been stirring the soup absent-mindedly, looked up from her task, looking guilty.

“Oh dearie me,” she exclaimed, her large eyes wide with worry. “It was me, I meant to put them away after the kart arrived, I must have forgotten.”

Ay, you must have, Lucy said inwardly, frowning. Oysters had recently shot up in price, after illness had killed off whole harvests all along the coasts. She assumed that if Mr. Dawkins was willing to pay exorbitant sums for them, even if he was to dine alone and without guests, he really wanted to have them for dinner.

“The oysters are all spoilt,” Lucy said plaintively, taking one of the shells between her fingers and wrinkling her nose. “We have to throw them out,” she said sadly, but careful not to antagonise the other girl. Violet had seemed out of sorts all day, and now her eyes were brimming with tears. The older lodgers had all treated Lucy with nothing but kindness, and Lucy certainly did not want to give any of them a reason to dislike her. “It’s…it’s fine, Violet,” she lied, attempting a smile. “Are you sure you are not getting sick?”

Violet shook her head violently, wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “No, no…it’s fine, it’s nothing, just a bit of fatigue, I reckon.” Indeed, the delicate girl looked like she had gotten little sleep lately. “I’ll make you a tisane before bed tonight,” Lucy said soothingly. “It’ll help you to sleep easier, you’ll see.” She tried to look calm, hoping that the girl wold not spoil any other the other dishes. But now there were no oysters, and she had no idea what to serve between the soup and the roast duck with quince.

Lucy was grateful that her mother had insisted on teaching her how to cook and how to run a kitchen, but Mr. Dawkins had insisted that she and Violet do all the cooking themselves. An immense task! Luckily there were two kitchen maids, girls that did not lodge in the house proper, who were charged with all the small preparations, the plucking, the washing and cutting of the vegetables. Dinner was almost done, and a mouth-watering scent of roast duck filled the large kitchen. She added some butter to the green beans on the stove, wondering what on earth she might do about the oysters, when one of the maids piped up that there was foie gras that could be served with the freshly baked loaves instead. Lucy smiled, and nodded. Indeed, that would work well.

A basket filled with juicy, shiny blackberries sat on the large kitchen table. They were wonderfully ripe and aromatic, and Lucy was going to turn them into a crisp sorbet once the dinner was underway. It would all be good, she thought, wiping her hands on her apron. Mr. Dawkins would hopefully be pleased.

***
Kitty nervously looked at the table she had set. The immaculate linen cloth, the expensive porcelain, the crystal glasses, the cutlery. Wanting to please Mr. Dawkins, she had cut more roses, a soft pink this time, and set them in vase on the table, where two silver candleholders had been the only decoration. What a beautiful house he kept, Kitty thought. He had such good taste. At first she had been intimidated by the task set for her, usually reserved for higher staff in the house than the kitchen maid. “But you’re not a kitchen maid anymore,” Nora had gently scolded her. And she was right.

She beamed when Mr. Dawkins sat down, and turned to go to the kitchen to fetch the soup when he called her back. Something was wrong. Her face flushed, she curtsied, and stood next to Mr. Dawkins who pointed at his setting with a slight nod of his head. Her eyes flitted from the plate to the vase to the candleholders, nervously trying to assess what might have caused his displeasure. Was there a stain? Something missing maybe? She was not sure, and with every moment that passed, her nervousness grew.

“I…don’t know, Mr. Dawkins,” the girl said finally, her voice a mere whisper. She was devastated to disappoint him, again. It was at that moment when Lucy came hurrying into the dining room and quickly took the oyster fork from the table. “My apologies,” she muttered. “There won’t be any oysters tonight.”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Barnes’ lips curled back from his ragged teeth, even as his calloused, soot-smeared hands caressed their way up her toned, stockinged thighs. He didn’t like that she wouldn’t kiss him—but her was determined to have a grander victory over this posh whore before it was over. In lieu of her mouth, Barnes licked and sucked at her neck as he worked himself out of his suspenders and slacks, freeing his hard, uncut cock between her legs.

She urged him to make it quick, which suited him just fine. Barnes wasn’t particularly interested in pleasing her, only being through and gone before the bobbies got word of his exploits. Barnes plunged his cock into Adelia with the same frantic intensity as he stabbed the knife into Charles’ torso. As before, the struts of the carriage squealed from the sudden concentration of weight on one side of the cab.

Barnes discovered that there was still some space between Adelia’s back and the carriage wall by slamming her against it with the force of his thrust. Inside of her was so warm… he sighed heavily against her neck as he withdrew and slammed himself inside again. As he was dragging his irregular teeth across her collarbone, one of his hands came up from between her legs to grasp and roughly squeeze her heaving round breast.

This bitch was hot—even for a blue blood. Barnes mused to himself, letting his rough hands explore her flawless, silken skin above and below the mess of her hiked up skirts. As his thrusting gained tempo, the rocking of the carriage became more pronounced and from outside the sound of the horses growing restless reminded Barnes of the need for urgency.

“Fucking bitch—” Barnes panted between deep thrusts, cursing her for no real reason aside from the fact that it turned him on in ways and for reasons he didn’t entirely understand, “fuck your tight cunt—fucking wet bitch!”

The rocking of the carriage became so severe that the struts on the right side of the cab flexed too hard and broke a bolt in half, causing the carriage itself to jolt to one side as the axle snapped loudly in half.

The sudden jolt and pitch of the carriage brought them closer to horizontal and Barnes continued to fuck her vigorously, utilizing the sudden angle of the carriage. He released her body to grasp the curtain rod that spanned across the window on that side of the carriage to slam her even harder, making up for the rocking of the carriage with sheer enthusiasm.

“Oh fuck!” Barnes groaned, realizing that he’d gotten so involved in slamming her as hard as he was able that he was already on the verge of climax, “all up in your guts, bitch!”

Barnes slammed himself to the hilt as his cock began to overflow with thick, hot semen all the way inside of Adelia’s pussy. His hips angled and jerked as his ass cheeks clenched, wringing out the last drops of his thick semen into her.

“Name ‘im after ‘is father,” Barnes sneered, pulling his thick cock out from inside of her body and stuffing it hastily back inside his tattered slacks, “it’s B-A-R-N-E-S—that’s right, I’m lettered.”

The truth was that Barnes didn’t know how to spell anything other than his name, or how to write the letters he was describing—but he felt confident that it was an impressive flex, in spite of Adelia’s expression.

“Help! Help! Murder! Murder! Bloody murder!” the carriage driver came to outside of the now ruined carriage, “steady now!”

Barnes fled all at once as the carriage driver split his attention between crying for help and calming the horses—a delicate balancing act to say the least. Barnes left the door ajar as he gathered his riches and fled out into the fog, leaving Charles and Adelia in ruin more severe than the state of their carriage.

As the bobbies’ whistles could be heard approaching in the distance, Charles erupted in a ragged coughing fit, regaining consciousness as he spat up gluts of blood onto his shirtfront. He grabbed his wrist with his good hand, feeling the pain in his nerve-filled hand beyond that of the anguish of his gut wound—which shock prevented him from feeling fully.

As he held his wounded hand aloft, the dim moonlight glinted off the edge of Barnes’ blade which had apparently broken off inside of Charles’ hand. Only the first stab had penetrated his torso deeply—the crudely made blade had broken off inside Charles’ only defensive wound and the subsequent three to five stabs to his chest and stomach had only penetrated one inch or so.

“He-elp…” Charles managed to croak, reaching out toward Adelia with his wounded hand, still gripping his wrist with his other hand.

By now, his blood was dribbling from the corner of the carriage door on the side where Barnes had broken the axle.

*-*-*

Caldwell flashed stern eyes at Lucy as she cleared the oyster forks from the table without his say-so. She knew better—but he assumed that it was done in defense of her new sister, which wasn’t an impulse he wanted to punish, so he let her clear the forks while he gently placed his warm hand on the back of her neck, gently grasping her from behind.

“Kitty, my darling child. My oyster fork was touching my salad fork,” Caldwell’s voice was warm and supportive, even as his hand on the back of her neck was decidedly possessive, “whether there will or will not be a raw course, it’s vital that you know how to set an immaculate table. If you’re to be wed to a prince or a duke, he’ll expect that you know the proper way to set his table and don’t need protecting from the house staff.”

His eyes moved after Lucy once more but she was gone, clearly busy with her dinner preparations.

“Next time, I want you to be more careful,” Caldwell continued, his tone still reassuring and supportive as he released her neck to lift one of her hands and gently grasp her slender pinky finger, “use this little, gorgeous finger to properly and evenly space the utensils for our guests—and someday, perhaps your guests with your new husband and your new life.”

His corrections finished, Caldwell leaned forward to gently lay a kiss on the top of Kitty’s head before releasing her and letting her retreat to the kitchen to help with serving the first course.

“And on your way, Kitty. Please strike Mrs. Adelia’s place. She will not be joining us tonight.”

Caldwell tried to push down the pang of regret that he felt saying her name. He wished she was there. He missed her. As he allowed Kitty free from his grasp he sat back down at his place at the head of the table. He didn’t like feeling remorseful, it put him on edge.

“Bring in the first course please, Lucy. Nora, you may pour the wine. When everyone is seated, I’ll say grace.”

Caldwell allowed the girls to each see to their individual tasks, setting and serving the soup course, which smelled quite delightful and made Caldwell aware that he was in fact very hungry. He’d had nothing but Scotch, beer and tobacco since breakfast—the premier weighing heavily on his mind, but now he was excited to taste the meal, hopeful that Lucy seemed to be improving in her abilities in the kitchen.

When everyone was finally seated at their places—Lucy moved up to his right hand side in Adelia’s absence and Kitty on his left, Caldwell linked hands gently with the girls on either side of him and began his nightly grace ritual.

“Dear Lord, we thank you for the cherished security and stability of our home, here, together. We give thanks for the opportunity to know one another and in doing so better ourselves. We thank you for the opportunities afforded us by the gifts you’ve granted us in your infinite wisdom. We pray that you continue to show us your favor by allowing us to grow closer to one another and also grow closer to ourselves—without judgment or questioning your will. I pray that you keep these cherished girls reminded that they are guests here in my home and not prisoners,” Caldwell’s eyes went from closed to open as he looked directly at Nora, “and we all pray that the baggage of our past entanglements doesn’t hold us back from the opportunity that is certain to be your will. Amen.”

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia sat in a chair at the fireplace, wrapped in a beautiful dressing gown that she wore over a thin night robe.

After Barnes had fled, events had blurred. The gendarmes, the inspector’s questions, the crowd gathering around the carriage. She remembered the cold air on her naked skin, the gasps, the journey home. A doctor had seen to her, and she had no notion, not yet, of Charles’ condition.

Her maid Rose had poured her a scorching hot bath, had scrubbed her skin, had fussed over the bruises on her chest and neck, but did not dare to ask about them. She knew, as they all knew, what terrible fate had befallen their mistress in a back alley of Whitechapel, but none of them knew that she would have gladly fucked an army of stinking, flea-ridden bandits if only it would have spared her to live another day as Mrs. Mortimer.

“The doctor is here and wishes to speak with you,” the girl said now. “But I can send him away. It is late, and you should rest, Madame…” Adelia was sick of everyone treating her like a damaged doll. She was longing to be with Caldwell now, and could barely stand the presence of all these people who had no notion of what thoughts really tortured her. “No, it’s fine, send him in.”

She was holding a tumbler with scotch and stared absent-mindedly into the crackling flames, and did not hear the doctor enter the room. Only after he softly cleared his throat, mindful of the terror the mistress of the house had lived through this very night, did Adelia look up. “Yes?” she asked weakly.

“Madam, I do not wish you disturb you long on this dreadful night,” the man said hesitatingly. “But I’m afraid there is news I cannot keep from you.” Adelia sat up, hoping against hope that the good doctor might bring a report that would restore her mood, and lift her spirits. Was it possible? When the gendarmes had dragged her and her husband from the carriage, Charles covered in blood, he had had been alive. In pain, yes, and in a terrible state, but yet amongst the living.

“Your husband…,” the doctor began, searching for the right words. Was he trying to soften the blow? Adelia frowned, impatient now. The young man nervously turned his hat in his fingers, trying not to look at her bare feet, not to catch a glimpse of a white calf slipping from between the folds of her robe.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“He will live, Madam.”

She sighed. The doctor misinterpreted her reaction as relief, when all she wanted was to scream.

“He will live, those are the good news,” the doctor continued. “But I fear his injuries are such that it will take a long time for him to recover. Weeks, if not months…” Another pause. “And he might never be restored to his full health at all. He will require care.” She managed a nod, an insincere smile. “Thank you, doctor.”

“I will come back tomorrow to check on you and Mr. Mortimer. Good evening, Madam.” And then he was gone.

Adelia sat in her chair, defeated, tired as she had never been in her life. What mockery was this? What cruel twist? Her plans for the future, for Caldwell, for the house and all that it had yet to offer, were thus thwarted. If Charles was not dead, but no fully alive either, if he was going to be helpless and in her care, forever, how was she to lead the life that she had envisioned for herself? Was this idiot of a man, this boil on her existence, too feeble even to simply die? With a scream of frustration, she threw the crystal tumbler into the fire where it shattered

And another thought occurred to her, this one terrifying, looming large. What if Charles had understood the exchange between the bandit and her? What if he had heard her promise of a “reward”, carelessly uttered because she had believed him dead already? It was in his power, then, to deliver her to the police, and to the gallows.

Adelia needed to make sure that she was, at least, safe from the rope. Taking a deep sip from the bottle of scotch, she went to see her injured husband.

***

Nora poured the sherry, careful not to spill a drop. She hesitated, for a split second only, before pouring the dark liquid into the delicate glass next to Kitty’s plate. The girl sat in her seat, beaming, obviously thrilled to be treated thus and struggling to sit still. Even after almost two weeks she had not yet gotten used to the fineries, the splendour, and the good taste in Caldwell House, and even less so to the fact that she was allowed to enjoy all of it herself. In the household that had employed her as a kitchen maid, she had eaten the scraps and leftovers of the fine meals her employers had enjoyed, and more often than not all the cook had managed to keep for her had been thin stews and stale rinds of bread.

Seated on the left side of Mr. Caldwell, Kitty had already forgotten his kind scolding. She smiled at him, her eyes wide with appreciation as he took her hand gently into his. How soft and well-cared for his hands were, how elegant and slender his fingers. For a moment, Kitty allowed herself the fantasy that he, and not some prince or duke, would one day call her “wife” and entertain their guests around the dinner table. What a fine man he was!

Nora flinched at the sight of her besotted friend, but was careful to conceal her concern from Mr. Caldwell. If only he knew the effect he had on the mind of a girl such as Kitty, and if only she, Nora, knew of a way, to shield her from certain disappointment.

Lucy, on the other hand, displayed all the graces of a young woman who had been born into wealth and standing, and who was at ease being seated next to a gentleman, who knew how to carry herself at a table decked with fine linen, with expensive silver and crystal glasses. Nora wondered how she had come to live in Caldwell House.

Her eyes met those of Mr. Dawkins as he said grace, and she blushed when he looked directly at her during the last line of his unorthodox prayer. Nora put the bottle back and stood, undecided, hopeful that her choice of what to serve to accompany the soup would meet Mr. Dawkins’ approval.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Charles awoke with a gasp back in his own bedroom—but the sudden gasp for breath caused him to choke over the intense dose of ether that the sudden intake caused. The ether mask had been left on his face by the doctor, an attempt to ease the agony of his ruptured guts—but the sudden coughing and choking caused his agony to reignite and several of his wounds to reopen. He reached up feebly to knock the heavy ether mask away from his face and breathe in some fresh air.

“Wah—” Charles croaked feebly, his throat dry like sandpaper and his mouth so dry that his tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth as he tried to coax some saliva into his mouth, “water!”

There came no reply, which told him that for now he was alone in the room. His stomach clenched around another strangled cough. Even through the ether haze, he could feel the squirming of leeches on his stomach all around his wounds making them itch. The heavy iron ether mask tumbled to the floor, that sound beckoning the physician back to his bedroom.

“Mister Mortimer! Please be still!” the doctor called out, rushing over to the bed, “easy now, don’t touch yourself, let the leeches draw out the bad blood.”

“Water!” Charles croaked as the doctor moved his arms down to his sides, “please, I have a thirst. Water.”

“I’m sorry Mister Mortimer, I don’t want to risk thinning out your blood until the leeches have had their fill,” Doctor Klein tried to reassure Charles as he folded down the sheets to reveal a nest of writhing leeches surrounding his stab wounds, “you’ve reopened some of these. I’ll need to stitch them again.”

While the doctor reopened his medical bag to retrieve his tools, Charles tried in vain to moisten his mouth with saliva. Doctor Klein set about stitching the worst of Charles’ wounds closed again and resetting the few leeches that had yet to latch and begin sucking.

“Adelia!” Charles croaked at the sudden realization that his wife was not nearby, “please—oh God, is my wife alright?”

“I—” Dr. Klein hesitated, unsure of how to explain what precisely was the matter with Adelia Mortimer, “she is alright. She is unharmed, I suppose is more accurate. Your wife was not wounded, but the scoundrel who robbed you, he… there is evidence that her honour was wounded more than her body.”

“God no…” Charles groaned, wincing away from the words as tears spilled from the corners of his eyes, “I couldn’t protect her. I’m so pathetic and worthless… a sad excuse for a man…”

“Nonsense, you were attacked!” Dr. Klein was quick to interrupt Charles’ self-loathing, “she seems to be holding herself together quite well. I’ll send her in as soon as I’m finished.”

Dr. Klein finished his work and replaced the sheet over the crudely stitched wounds and sucking leeches. He set the ether mask on Charles’ bedside table next to a full bottle of Laudanum for the pain. He gave a sympathetic squeeze to Charles’ shoulder before departing.

“Mrs. Mortimer. Your husband is asking for you,” Klein smiled as he passed through the parlor on his way out, “try to limit his fluids until she stops bleeding. I’ve left some Laudanum for the pain and plenty of ether if he has trouble sleeping. There’s also a patch for his chest to help with his cough. Send for me if you need me. Let the leeches continue feeding until they fall off on their own—but be sure to burn them once they do. We don’t want his bad humors spreading.”

With that, the doctor left Charles and Adelia in the care of his trusted leeches.

*-*-*

“The soup is under salted,” Caldwell remarked dryly before taking a sip of the Sherry, “but the wine pairs well. The sweetness pairs well with the celery and cuts through the richness of the cream. Ordinarily Sherry is more of a dessert wine or an aperitif—but this pairing was well done. Good work Nora.”

Caldwell broke off a piece of the still steaming bread before passing it off to Kitty. He used a liberal spread of fresh butter to counter the lack of salt in the soup and dipped the bread, using it like an edible spoon. He made a faint noise of satisfaction at the way that his bread and butter mix made the flavors of the soup express themselves.

“So, Violet. I understand that you had some difficulty with Mister Winchester last night,” Caldwell remarked, his tone gentle, even as his eyes sought her out sharply, “is there anything that you’d like to say about it? Or is it more of an after dinner conversation?”

As Caldwell was putting Violet on the spot, there came a ring of the chime that indicated someone was at the gate. Though he was dismayed at being disturbed during dinner—the thought that Adelia may have returned brought him suddenly to his feet.

“Who would disturb us during dinner?” Caldwell wondered aloud, trying to disguise his hopeful feelings that it might be his paramour returning, “Lucy, you may clear my soup and serve the next course when everyone else is finished.”

With the girls all occupied with their meal, Caldwell made his way into the courtyard to answer his own gate—typically the job of a servant, but in Caldwell house, the servants and residents were one and the same.

To Caldwell’s disappointment, Adelia wasn’t waiting outside the garden gate—instead it was one of the street children that Caldwell occasionally paid to bring him the latest gossip. The boy’s Christian name was lost along with his parents who’d abandoned him, but he was known to most as Bootstrap Billy, from his primary career as a shoe-shine boy. His hands—as ever—were smeared with boot black and several spots on his face were also smeared with black.

“Billy!” Caldwell called to him, sliding open the iron gate into the garden, “it’s dinner time, what are you doing here?”

“M’sorry to interrup’ Mister Dawkins—but there’s been a development. I didn’t want you to have to read about it in the papers tomorrow,” Billy removed his cloth hat and wrung it between his hands nervously, “there’s been a crime spree in Whitechapel. A street walker was murthered and a carriage robbed. It was Mister and Missus Mortimer who were robbed. He was stabbed and I’ve heard rumors that she was ravaged…”

“Adelia?”

“Yessir.”

“You’ve done well, Billy. Thank you,” Caldwell handed the boy a pouch of coins—more than he usually paid for information, “run along now. I need to go over there. Stay safe tonight, Billy. Spend some of that on a proper bed.”

“Thank you, Mister Dawkins. Thank you so much.”

Caldwell let Billy back out to the street and locked the gate behind him before making his way back inside.

“Ladies, I regret that I must depart before we finish our meal. The rest of you, please enjoy yourselves. Violet, I’m sorry to trouble you from your meal, but I need you to help me saddle my horse. Come.”

The stable was accessible only through the main house and out the back. The stable gates opened straight out to the street with only the Master Suite above. Caldwell’s black stallion “Bard’s Song” was quickly blanketed, brushed and saddled with Violet’s help. Caldwell stepped into the saddle and let Violet open the gate onto the street.

“I’ll be back soon. When I get back, I’ll discuss your troubles with Mister Winchester in more depth. Don’t worry though—I intend only to help you deal with him better in the future, not to reprimand you.”

He gave Violet’s cheek a gentle caress from the saddle before giving Bard a kick and steering the reigns toward the Mortimer estate.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia had to pause a moment, her hand on the doorknob, to make sure that her posture, the worry in her eyes, and her movements all expressed the level of caring distress the doctor and certainly her husband would expect of her now. Forcing her facial features into a concerned smile, she entered the room.

It smelled like the penetrating aroma of ether, and the sickly odour of blood and decay. Adelia had to put a hand on her mouth not to gag. Her husband lay in his bed, looking weaker and more pathetic than usual, helpless like an upturned beetle. She sat down on the chair next to his bed and put one hand gently on his shoulder.

“My dear husband, how are you? The good doctor tells me that you will recover.” She leaned over him and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. “What a relief this is. Now all you need to do is recover your strength.”

She knew about the leeches, and forced herself not to focus on his stomach, where the creatures were writhing under the blanket. Never had she been as repulsed by her husband as she was now.

Her gaze strayed to the bottle of laudanum. It would be so easy, would it not? It would take a couple of tea spoons for a man as unused to the drug as her husband. Adelia picked up the bottle, removed the glass stopper, and sniffed. It would be too dangerous, the risk of discovery was almost certain, but for a moment she let the sweet thought of poisoning Charles linger in her mind, before she put the bottle back down.

Then there was a knock, and Rose peeked into the bedroom. “Sir…Madam…you have a visitor.” Adelia looked up, irritated. “Tell them that we are indisposed, girl. You can see that we are in no position to welcome anyone now.”

“It’s Mr. Dawkins, Madam.”

Adelia sat up. Caldwell had come, and so swiftly! What a good man. And obviously he had already heard, otherwise he would not have come at such an hour, not after the scene earlier. There was no one in the world that she longed to see now more than him. But she was hesitant, as she could not guess at her husband’s mood.

“Charles, did you hear? Mr. Dawkins is here. Are you willing to see him, or should I tell him to come back on another day, when you feel better?”

***

Nora ranged the bottled away, while Kitty and Lucy carried the dishes back into the kitchen. Lucy fussed over her ruined dinner, over the waste of food and effort, but did not dare to really complain, lest any of them would carry her words back to Mr. Dawkins. Kitty was happily chatting as she balanced the plates back into the kitchen, were the scullery maid had set to scrubbing and washing. The goose that Mr. Dawkins had missed had been prepared to perfection, and Kitty could not stop praising Lucy for it, who smiled gratefully but who so obviously would have preferred the praise of Mr. Dawkins.

Violet mopped up the last of soup with the bread, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. She had come back from the stables even quieter than before, a shade paler maybe, and while the others had finished their meals, she had stirred her cold soup, staring at the wall. Nora wondered about her. The girl was a beauty, but she looked delicate and fragile, like a doll that would easily break if mishandled. Watching as Violet sat back with a sigh, she felt sorry for the girl.

“Here, have one of these,” Nora said, pushing a fresh glass with brandy towards her. “It’ll make you feel better, whatever it is that is bothering you.”

Violet looked up at her and smiled sadly, but lifted the glass to take a sip. “Thank you.”

Nora sat down on the chair next to her and poured herself a brandy as well. Had Mr. Caldwell not expressly told them to enjoy themselves? And maybe, Nora thought not without a pang of guilt over her self-interest, Violet could help her understand who Mr. Caldwell Dawkins was, and what his intentions were.

“So…who is Mister Winchester?” She made her question sound as casual as possible, but Violet flinched at the name. For a moment, Nora worried that she had been too brusque, and that the conversation would end there. But then the girl spoke up.

“He’s….a friend of the house. He donates large sums of money to make the charity extended to us by Mr. Dawkins and Mrs. Mortimer possible.”

Nora bit her lip. This rehearsed answer did not leave her any smarter. “Has he been…unkind to you?”

Violet looked up at Nora with sad doe eyes that lent her face an almost ethereal air. “Oh…no. He is a learned man, a very well-bred gentleman. It is me who was unkind to him, but I will make it right.” She was a shy, fearful girl, but she was smart enough to know not to reveal the secrets of Dawkins House to the yet uninitiated. Nora was new, and inquisitive, and Violet sensed that she did not trust their benefactor. It was not her place to explain to her what was expected of them, she would learn in due time.

“He is a medical scholar, you see, a scientist, a researcher,” she continued, more lively now. “A man on the cusp of a great career, the president of an exclusive club of medical doctors, a man who draws crowds to his lectures, and all that at his young age!” Nora looked confused, but did not interrupt her. “He offered me…knowledge that I was too fearful at the time to appreciate, but I shall not make that mistake again.” Violet nodded to herself, and smiled at Nora. “But I hear that you are interested in the medical arts? I am sure Mr. Dawkins would introduce you to Mr. Winchester, if you ask him to.”

Nora emptied her own glass. “Maybe,” she whispered. It was clear that she would not learn anything of note from Violet, not tonight. But maybe the library would enlighten her? If this Winchester was such a celebrity, surely his name would be found there.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Caldwell reigned Bard toward the stable hand who reached out for his reigns as the stallion slowed to a trot. Caldwell was out of the saddle and into his own trot as soon as he passed the reigns off to the young man. Removing his supple, leather riding gloves, Caldwell made his way to the front door and pushed it open—fear for Adelia’s safety overriding his ordinarily impeccable manners.

Rose, Adelia’s personal maid sought to stop him from approaching any further, making excuses and apologies—which she might have done, had he not glimpsed Adelia entering the foyer from the study. Looking past the maid, Caldwell simply handed her his gloves and all but ran to her—a great relief washing over him that the reports of a murdered woman in Whitechapel was separate from the harm that had befallen her husband.

When he reached her, Caldwell embraced her in his arms with the desperation of a man who believed that his most cherished lover may have been lost and gone forever. His lips claimed hers—paying no mind to the maid who was still well within sight of the overly-affectionate greeting.

Just as his staff and the girls in his care were privy to the true relationship that the two of them shared, it was also an open secret among her house staff that the lady of the house served others than just the lord of the manor. It was a breach of etiquette, to be sure, thrusting such scandal right before the eyes of a maid—but Rose had proven herself loyal to Adelia and trustworthy.

Caldwell moaned softly into the kiss, like a drowned man groans over his first taste of air after coughing water free from his lungs. Even in her elaborate robe, Caldwell could feel the shape and softness of her flesh underneath.

“I worried that I’d lost you,” Caldwell sighed at last when the kiss had broken, “they said there was a murder. A young woman slain… when I heard that you and Charles were mugged…”

Caldwell trailed off for a moment, looking up into her expressive brown eyes with his clear blues before repeating himself, something he seldom did, “I worried that I’d lost you.”

With his urgency and oversight of decorum explained to some satisfaction, Caldwell kissed her again, less desperately this time—but more filled with lust than before.

For his part, Charles was less than thrilled with the idea of entertaining his wife’s lover in the state he was in. His wife had made it abundantly clear to him some months prior that she favored her… special friend, Caldwell, above her husband even in the best of times, but Charles still clung to the faint hope that this was merely some phase and that if he could better provide for her, if he could woo her more effectively, her relationship with the author would eventually burn out. Then he, Charles, could return to the light of her favor.

Though some vile perversion or flaw in his character made him excited by the idea of his wife enthusiastically bedding other men—it shamed him and was hardly something he liked to envision as a part of his future.

“Is that my dear friend Caldwell I hear,” Charles called out from the study, when the tense silence, broken only by the rustling of clothes and the faint smacking of lips became too long to ignore, “come to check on London’s latest invalid.”

Charles struggled for a moment to prop himself up on his elbows, but even moving his arms caused him such agony that he quickly abandoned the notion as folly and laid back.

“I’d come greet you myself but as you have perhaps perceived, I’m at less than my full potency at present.”

After another long silence, Caldwell and Adelia came into the study, still very much entangled with one another. As they approached, Caldwell removed his arm from Charles’ wife and offered it to her instead, letting her link arms with him rather than linking bodies as they were before.

“Charles, you poor, poor man—what this scoundrel has done to you…” Caldwell finally released Adelia altogether to kneel beside Charles’ bedside and place a reassuring hand on his shoulder, “my God, but your lips are chapping! Here, let me give you some water.”

“No, dear friend, I’m afraid the physician has advised against it. I’m not to do anything that might thin my blood until the leeches are finished…”

“They’ve done more than their share by half, Charles—here, drink,” Caldwell replied, paying no heed to Charles’ half-hearted objection and raising a glass of cool water to his lips.

Caldwell believed in the medical sciences as much as anyone, but in his circles, the general knowledge about the human body and the humors that possessed it were growing all the time. There were even some, like Mr. Winchester who believed that the science of the humors was little more than superstition and that bleeding the recently injured or ill did more harm than good. While he wouldn’t openly oppose the will of Charles’ chosen physician, Caldwell was scarcely inclined to let the man thirst himself into delirium over the density of blood that the leeches were sucking from him.

It wasn’t until the liquid touched his lips that Charles fully realized how dehydrated he was. His lips and throat set about slurping the water down intensely at a rate that was beyond his control—as though his body itself was taking over, having felt something that it truly needed. In three loud swallows the water was gone and Charles came up gasping for air. Without a word, Caldwell filled the glass again from a nearby carafe.

“So help me, Charles. I’ll find the man who did this to you—I swear it. And when I do, they’ll wish it was the law that had caught them.”

Caldwell had not yet considered that Charles’ present condition may have been caused by someone other than a man.

“Thanks be to God that it wasn’t worse. Lord only knows what would become of the rest of us if you were to be wounded beyond help.”

With Charles sufficiently mourned and lamented over, Caldwell’s eyes quickly leapt to Adelia’s while Charles was still slurping down his second glass of water. His glance then moved to the stairs, indicating for her to find an excuse to pull him away so that they could be well and truly alone. The idea of fucking her in Charles’ bed while he was wounded and unable to scale the steps appealed to him in that moment.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia managed a sour smile when Caldwell promised to take revenge in her husband’s name. Would he be angry with her for what she had done? His relief seemed genuine. For the first time, Adelia considered the consequences of what would have happened to Dawkins House if Barnes had made her a widow.

She nodded faintly at Caldwell as he glanced towards the stairs. She, too, could not wait to be alone with him.

“Sweet Charles, you need to rest. We will importune you no longer, or the good doctor shall be cross with us for spoiling your recovery.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it sympathetically. “You can ring for Rose if you need anything, my poor darling.”

And without waiting for her husband to object, which he was wont to do, she
offered her arm to Caldwell. “Let’s retire, my dear friend, and leave poor Charles to himself. All this chatter and excitement is detrimental to his health. You know how weak he is…” She felt a shiver of satisfaction at her husband’s hurt grimace. He had always felt inferior to Caldwell, always threatened by him. If he did not do her the favour of dying, she would make sure that he wished he had.

Adelia almost pulled Caldwell out of the room, impatient to be able to leave this horrible chamber. They made their way up the stairs. “Caldwell…I…,” she began, not quite sure how to explain herself. “It was idiocy, rash, but I did it because I wanted to be rid of him, because I want to be yours entirely.” The words started tumbling from her lips. “Promise me that you will not seek the man who did this. Because if you do…you will ruin me, too.”

They had reached the marital bedchamber. Rose curtsied as they entered before closing the door from the outside. She did not say, or ask, a thing. She knew better than to importune her mistress and her lover at such a moment with silly questions. Rose knew what was expected of her.

Adelia turned to Caldwell and pulled him into a kiss, starved for his lips. Would he forgive her for the trouble her failed plan had caused? She shrugged off the gown, leaving her in a thin silken night robe that threatened to slide off her shoulders.

Adelia was aware of the nasty bruises on her neck and chest where Barnes had left his mark. Her inner thighs, too, were disfigured by his rough fingers. But Caldwell had seen her covered in worse injuries than those.

“I missed you so…,” she whispered as she broke the kiss. Her fingers in his hair, she pulled him close with one hand, while the other snaked down his back, tugging on his shirt. “And I have never wanted…needed you more.”

***

Nora perused the shelves for clues of a Dr. Winchester, but she did not know where to start. Mr. Dawkins’ library was vast, and while it was well-organised, she did not know where to start looking for tomes that might contain the information she was seeking. There were several books on medical issues, research, books on science. Was the good doctor hiding there?

Her eyes fell on a big, leather-bound book that had the curious title “An unusual gathering – protocols of the London Society of Knowledgeable Gentlemen”. She opened it. And indeed, there he was: A collection by Dr. Andrew James Winchester. What a curious chance! Nora carried it over to the reading table and opened it.

It did look, at first glance, like a collection of medical engravings of the kind she had often seen in illustrations of surgery and illness. But that was not what this was. Nora felt like she was trespassing, like she was committing an illicit act. She hastily turned the pages, her eyes flying over the text without taking anything in. “Submission” was the caption printed on a blank page. Others read “Ravishment”, “Obsession”, “Pain”, “Prey”, and “Pleasure.” Her eyes came to rest on the first full-page picture.

It was troubling. There was a woman, standing on her tiptoes with her wrists tied and attached to a meat hook on the ceiling. She was entirely naked, and only her eyes were tied with a cloth, while then men standing around her were dressed in gentlemen’s coats and top hats. They were inspecting her with a cool indifference one might expect at a livestock auction. None of them were touching her, but one seemed to tap her thighs lightly with his walking cane, as if testing the suppleness of her flesh. Nora turned the page.

This engraving, as artfully executed as the last, showed a woman was bent over a wooden post, her hands tied behind her back. She, too, was naked, while the gentleman, his shirt sleeves rolled up but otherwise fully clothed, was fucking her from behind in front of a male audience, arranged in the way spectators were in anatomical theatres. Their faces were impassive, but watchful as they looked on, while the woman was crying out in what could have been passion, or agony.

The next illustration was similar, and showed a woman who sat on a stool, her knees parted, while the man standing next to her seemed to use his gloved hand to play with her sex, forcing her to sit upright with his other, his fingers in her hair. Others showed scenes of women being whipped, fucked in different poses, forced onto their knees to suck a man’s cock. And each time this played out in front of an all-male audience, wealthy, learned men who watched the young women being debased as they would watch a surgeon dissect a corpse in front of them, for them to learn.

It was obvious that this was indeed a work of science, of research, of study. But a study of what? Of debauchery? Of the liberties wealthy men took with women? Of perversion? Was this the medical society Violet had talked about? Did she know about this? Did she find out and had mentioned something to Winchester, was that why he had been vexed? If Mr. Dawkins had ranged this book among his library, he would know the interest that man’s club pursued. Did he approve? Or was this just another curiosity, like the exhibition catalogue had surely been.

Her eyes strayed to a final picture, a grainy photograph that was glued to the last page of the tome. It showed a group of smiling men that must be the members of the society. Between them, like exhausted prey, lay a girl, naked as on the day she was born. She looked utterly spoilt, with what looked like bruises on her thighs, her wrists, her ankles. There was a collar around her slender throat, and one of the men, kneeling next to her, held a leash attached to it, as one would a dog. The men looked straight into the camera, confident, while the girl’s eyes were closed. Then Nora’s gaze fell on two men to the right of the young woman, and her heart dropped. She felt faint. There were names beneath the photograph, too, and she found them immediately. Alexander Charles Hammersmith. Gustave Theodore, 11th Duke of St. Albans. She would never forget that face again.

Nora threw the book shut as if the pages had burned her fingers. Her skin was humming. It felt odd, wrong, disturbing to not be disgusted by what she had seen. To not be outraged, frightened even. What was wrong with her? She remembered that night again, that fateful, horrible night. The shivers she had experienced, the wild tremor these men had caused. Right now she felt a similar, troubling tickle. Arousal, despite herself. Part of her wanted to know what it was, what they had done to her. Wanted to know if it could be undone. Part of her wanted to forget. And there was a part of her that thirsted for revenge, thirsted for an opportunity to be near them again, have them at her reach. She tried to convince herself that the curious arousal she was feeling was nothing but her lust for retribution.

If Mr. Dawkins knew Winchester, if he knew about this society, he would know how to find them, too. Nora took a deep breath. There was only one way to find out.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

“Well, I—” Charles tried to interject, but it was clear that Adelia’s mind was already made up, so there was nothing left for Charles to do but accept her will, “very well, my darling. Caldwell, dear friend, it was good of you to stop by. Before you retire, though, if you please. Might I trouble you for one more small sip of water.”

“Of course you may, Charles. It is no trouble at all,” Caldwell smiled, refilling the small glass and placing it gently in between Charles’ hands, just before lending his arm to Adelia and allowing himself to be ushered from the room, “and take comfort, dear friend—that this injustice will not stand. I’ll see you avenged, you have my word.”

Caldwell’s word was not something that he gave lightly, but the injustice of what had befallen Charles and indeed Adelia as well—it defied all logic. Such an attack on the upper class was not something that could be allowed to go unpunished. Some greedy oaf running around town, boasting about his conquest of an upper-class lady and her shirking husband was something almost painful to imagine for Caldwell.

It was easy to dismiss those thoughts with Adelia so close at hand, not to mention sacred privacy just meters away, Caldwell could feel his cock becoming rigid in his riding slacks as they grew closer to the marital bedchamber.

When Adelia leveled the fact that she had been the author of this terrible fate that befell her and her husband, Caldwell nearly stumbled over the last step on the staircase. Foolish, idiotic and rash didn’t even begin to cover what this was—this was a conspiracy that could undo them all if the wrong person or persons came into knowledge of this scheme. Had she knowingly given herself to some blunt-fisted cutpurse?

This question weighed heavy on Caldwell’s mind, even as she kissed him and slid out of her robe like a cascade of water sliding off of a duck’s back—though he showed none of this hesitation in the passion with which he kissed her back. A great many emotions were at war with one another inside Caldwell’s mind, but he’d learned his lesson about acting in the haste of anger with Adelia—in a sense, this was all recompense for being too harsh with her earlier in the evening. Instead, Caldwell resolved to discuss the great many questions and indeed, deserved reprimands that were on the tip of his tongue until after they had renewed their bond of the flesh in Charles’ bed while he lay below incapacitated.

With their tongues still desperately intertwined, Caldwell shed his riding coat and began working on the closures of his trousers, unbuttoning the tails of his shirt from them before impatiently shedding the garments as quickly as he was able. His underclothes were considerably easier to shed, and within moments he was completely nude.

While one hand remained at the small of Adelia’s arched back, his other hand came up to caress her idyllic breasts, first one, then the other—letting the sheer, silken material of her nightshift slide over her similarly silken skin. His cock was rigid as a post as he leaned forward to deposit her on the bed.

“Did he do this as well?” Caldwell asked softly, his hand moving from the small of her back to her pale, slender throat, now dotted with ugly bruises, “did that animal hurt you?”

Vengeance for Charles was hardly as much of a priority as Caldwell had led on, but knowing that this… street urchin, had laid violent hands on Adelia made Caldwell’s blood quicken with genuine hate. No, he would not reprimand her for this, she was still so fragile—he could feel it. But the one who had done this… he would pay. If for no reason other than to make certain that no one ever knew that his soot-stained fingers had touched Adelia’s flawless flesh.

As his fingertips gently traced the bruises on Adelia’s throat, Caldwell was positioning his cock with his other hand, moving the turgid head between her warm, leaking lips. He was as impatient to be inside her as she was to have him so. For this reason, he didn’t hesitate and drove himself into her with enough force to cause the carved, wooden headboard to strike the wall loud enough to be heard in any part of the house.

“I’m still going to find him, the man who did this to you. If for no reason than to keep him silent. If I could find him, which I can, someone else might find him as well. I doubt very much that you can trust him to keep a secret like this. Especially since he’s prone to being bribed,” Caldwell relented from his oath to kiss her again, this time a little less desperate and more tenderly, when the kiss broke, the headboard struck the wall again and he continued, “when I do, I’ll try to wring the truth out of him. If he keeps silent, I may yet let him escape with no more than a thorough beating, but if he betrays your trust—as I assume he may, I’ll cut him until his blood flows through the gutters like rain water.”

This time the headboard struck the wall several times in succession.

 

[Curious_Muse]

“He did,” Adelia whispered in answer to Caldwell’s question if it had been Barnes who had left the marks on her throat and chest. His genuine concern for her was both touching and intoxicating. After the scene in Dawkins House earlier that day she was thrilled to see how deeply he cared about her. “He is a thug, a common cutthroat I picked up on my way from the house…,” she said softly, purring under the soft caress of his fingertips on her throat. “I was helpless to deny him what he was always going to take in exchange for his…service.”

Lifting herself up on her elbows, she marvelled at her lover, now naked before her, his fine cock rigid as a blade made from steel. Adelia never tired to look at him, and she was impatient to feel him inside her. She arched her back in anticipation of his first thrust, her skin humming with desire. But she winced when he pushed himself inside her, her nether regions still tender from the brutal assault in the carriage. And yet nothing felt better than feeling his cock fill her so completely, and when he drove himself into her again, she moaned loudly and without concern who might hear. In fact, she hoped that Charles would lay downstairs to witness this new betrayal.

“You’re very gallant,” she panted, as Caldwell swore he would find, and punish, her attacker. “And you are right…” Her voice trailed off into another moan as his thrusts followed in quicker, and more forceful, succession. “He is not a man we can trust, and should the police find him first, I am certain he will betray me.” Her right hand wrapped around his neck, the other on his buttocks, she urged him on. “It was dumb of me, please forgive me…I was out of my mind with anger and desperation to be rid of Charles…his presence has become quite intolerable to me…”

She let out a small scream as he drove his big cock into her in another long, forceful stroke, sure that every person in the house must have heard her this time. “Oh, Caldwell,” she moaned, obviously enjoying saying his name out loud while he was fucking her in her marital bed, “I have missed you so.”

Her climax was fast approaching, but she did not want to give in to it yet. It was too delicious, imagining poor Charles, invalid as he was and bound to his sickbed, forced to listen to his wife fucking her lover. Adelia started grinding her hips into his, lost in her pleasure, adding some force to the rhythmic squeak of the bedstead. “Fuck me…make me scream and forget this dreadful day!”

***

Rose held her breath. The keyhole, small as it was, still allowed her to glimpse some of what was happening in the bed chamber. And the sounds coming from inside filled in all that she was unable to see. It was a delicious scene. It was not the first time that the maid spied on her mistress and Mr. Caldwell, and she felt the familiar pang of guilt as she did so again now. What a man Mr. Caldwell was! More than once Rose lay awake at night, caressing herself to a breathless climax while imagining him on top of her, fucking her as skilfully as he did her beautiful mistress.

A lustful tingle spread over her skin as she watched him deposit Mrs. Mortimer on the large bed. And then, that first moan as he drove his cock deep into her mistress’ cunt…Rose had to clasp her hand over her mouth in order not to make a sound and betray her presence. What she would have done for a cock up her own cunny now! Rose pressed her thighs together, desperate for some friction, as she watched through the keyhole.

The curious conversation was lost on her, as she only heard bits of what was being said. And besides, her mind was elsewhere. Her hand slid under her apron to caress a stiffening nipple through her blouse. Did she hear steps behind her? Rose froze and turned over her shoulder, her face flush with embarrassment. But nobody was there. Relieved, she turned her attention back to the scene inside, even though any of the other maidservants, or worse, and of the male staff might pass by at any minute.

Mr. Dawkins was fucking her mistress with abandon now, while Mrs. Mortimer shamelessly screamed under him like a trollop. Rose suppressed a soft moan. Her hand slid under the thin fabric of her blouse, softly squeezing her breast and imagined that it was that of a man. If only…!

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

The sounds coming from upstairs left little to the imagination as Charles lay helpless in the study, directly below the bedroom where his wife was… entertaining their guest. Her bawdy moans and lustful screams seemed to barely be muffled whatsoever by the floor boards or the support beams overhead. The sound of the headboard striking the wall was even more clearly heard through the floor as the impact resonated through the support beams and floor boards each and every time Caldwell thrust himself into Charles’ wife.

It was humiliating and cruel beyond reason—but in spite of all the rage and jealousy Charles was feeling (or perhaps largely because of the jealousy and rage), his cock was becoming rigid under his heavy sick blanket. He saw no reason to resist touching it underneath the bedclothes, though it did cause his wounds some distress when he moved his arms.

What was it about Caldwell that made him such an irresistible Lothario among the women of London’s society circles? What was it that he, Charles, was so lacking that despite his sincere feelings and most earnest efforts, Adelia was endlessly drawn to this puffed up author who seemed to feel nothing aside from a nonspecific desire to bed all women.

It pained Charles worse than his knife wounds to think that his dearest wife was little more than a conquest to Caldwell—which somehow, increased his arousal at the sounds of their bedroom antics.

After a particularly aggressive strike of the headboard against the wall, Charles could hear the joints of the sturdy wooden bedframe groaning—then with the next strike of the headboard against the wall, a small expulsion of dust came raining down onto his chest from the ceiling. Dear Lord, was he trying to kill her.

As Charles began stroking himself, as if to deny him any satisfaction from this most shameless insult, the noises abruptly stopped, giving way to just the faintest murmur of voices and the rustling of sheets. If it was someone other than Caldwell, Charles might have dared to hope they were finished—but more than likely they were just changing positions to allow him to fuck her deeper.

*-*-*

Caldwell smiled at Adelia’s plea to fuck her, make her scream and forget. He’d been enjoying this tender reunion they were having, the sort of sweet but mundane emotional sex that she probably could have been having with Charles, were she not so adamantly inclined against such a notion—albeit largely through Caldwell’s influence. But she was right, this wasn’t them—this wasn’t the sex they had.

“If it’s Maestro you wanted, you needed only to call for Him,” Caldwell pushed his impressive length inside of her, pushing and stretching her from inside, pressing his chest against her, trying to lay himself against her in such a way that every inch of their bodies were pressed against the other, his lips brushed her ear as he suddenly withdrew and slammed himself back to that depth, “Maestro knows all the movements and the score. Maestro will make sure that everything stays in proper rhythm.”

One more quick, deep thrust and their bodies parted again, he lifted himself off of her and leaned over the side of the bed, retrieving the long, embroidered sash from the discarded bundle of her robes. He placed his muscular arm down beside her face as he began fixing a knot in the end of the sash to the crossed planks of the headboard, the act of leaning over her like this pushed him deeper still, the unconsciousness of the intrusion causing it to be slightly more intense than his deliberate deep penetrations.

Truthfully, Caldwell was slightly distracted, something had been off when he reached over to retrieve the sash, some bit of light that ought to have penetrated the room but didn’t quite. Caldwell grasped Adelia’s right thigh with his left hand, turning her over onto her hands and knees. When he lifted her slender wrists, one then the other, he pressed her hands into the planks of the headboard, near the knot in the sash, tying a series of figure-eights around her slender wrists, until her knees shins and feet were the only thing touching the bed. Even as he wrapped the sash in a single loop around her throat.

As Caldwell wrapped the final length of the sash around his forearm it occurred to him, just in the moment that he pulled the whole length taught, yanking Adelia back into a forceful thrust of his hips to return his cock to its home inside her wet pussy.

His head whipped suddenly back to the door as he used the sash like a long leash to continuously pull Adelia back into his forceful thrusts, each pull made the wood groan out against its long-set iron nails—each thrust sent the headboard slamming into the wall hard enough to cut into the loose plaster of the wall until the white dust started spilling over onto Adelia’s hands. The light from the hall, which ought to have been a single, solid line beneath the door was interrupted and the keyhole was completely obscured—they were being watched.

For the briefest of moments, the thought of Charles occurred to Caldwell, he did enjoy watching when he could, but unless Charles was more accomplished of a liar than Caldwell gave him credit for, there was no way he could have climbed those steps in his condition. It must have been the maid, Rose.

He’d never really thought of her much, aside from her ability to keep secrets and tend to Adelia’s needs—but she was pretty, he was just coming to realize. It wasn’t until his cold blue eyes locked with her single blue sapphire that he even noticed the color of her eyes before—perhaps she’d never had the nerve to meet his gaze directly until just then, with the door between them, when she thought he couldn’t see.

Distracted as he was, Caldwell—or perhaps Maestro, was thoroughly brutalizing poor neglected Adelia. Thinking about the fresh conquest of his mistress’ maid was exciting him, tempting him to move his hips faster and tug harder and harder on his end of the sash which wound around her slender throat and bound her wrists to the headboard.

The racket of the headstand slamming the wall could likely be heard from the street by now as the groaning of the worn timbers was giving way to percussive cracks and snaps as the joints of the bed began cracking and breaking along the vulnerable unions where nails attempted to join boards together in spite of this constant battering.

In this position, Adelia almost looked as if she was praying.

Caldwell fed her some slack, allowing her to breathe again, his hand that was wound up in the sash grasping her curly silken hair for leverage instead of the sash. She had his undivided attention as he clutched her to himself and ground his hips against her in slow, deep circles, challenging the idea of letting her catch her breath.

After kissing the back of her neck, Caldwell smacked her ass hard before rising back up, pulling the sash taught again and returning to his rhythm of slamming her against the headboard and the headboard against the wall. He turned back toward the door, smiling. He raised his hand that had spanked Adelia, beckoning the watcher into the room.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia arched her body towards him when he leant down to retrieve her robe’s sash. How she had missed him! Her legs spread wide, she enjoyed the feeling of his cock sinking even deeper into her. But indeed, she had missed not only Caldwell, though his tender attention was welcome, but more so his alter ego, the man she adored even more, feared even more. “Maestro…,” she purred as he fixed the soft strip of fabric onto the headboard, shivering in anticipation. Adelia was only too willing to let him tie her wrists, rendering her helpless and vulnerable to his lust. “Let me be your servant again….”

Her tight pussy stretched deliciously around him when he took her from behind, wet and ready as she was, as she always had been. Adelia rocked back against him as far as her constraints allowed, her taut ass grinding into his hips.

Her back arched, all she could do was endure his violent thrusts, gasping and moaning, his helpless plaything. Each time he slammed himself into her she felt as if his cock was going to rip her apart. Each time he withdrew, it felt as if his impressive length would drag her insides with it, before he rammed it back again. She would have screamed, if she could have, but all she managed were muffled, strangled mews of utmost pleasure. It was a pity, truly, that Charles was not able to see her now.

However, something was different this time. Caldwell, Maestro – he often dragged them to the abyss, explored new, ever darker depths during sex. He hurt her, marked her, abused her. Sometimes his deviant imagination, seemingly without boundaries, even frightened her. But now it seemed as if he had forgotten where he was, and that it was her, Adelia, he was so brutally fucking, and not some lifeless piece of meat. It was as if the persona of Maestro had taken over so completely that the human being beneath it was gone. With each ferocious thrust, she was propelled forward into a tight chokehold, adding to her terror and her pleasure.

She could not breathe, and her throat burnt with the need to suck in air and failing. Adelia would have tried to claw at the sash that was so tightly wrapped around her throat, but her wrists were tied, there was no escape. She tried to protest but could not force more than a tiny gasp from her lips. Meanwhile he kept on ramming himself into her without any regard for her pain or comfort, her slim frame barely able to sustain his brute passion.

Her slender body started bucking against Caldwell, desperate for oxygen, when he finally loosened the hold on her and she slackened in his grip, greedily drinking in gulps of air. But even then he did not allow for respite. His now deliberately slow, deep thrusts were as delicious as they were cruel, and they left her as breathless as his brutal assault had moments earlier. “You are killing me…,” she whispered in a small voice, half-faint with both desire for him and the fear of what he was capable of. And yet Adelia was aware that she did not actually care if she would die impaled on his cock. The hard smack on her ass tore her from that reverie.

It was when he pulled on the sash again, his onslaught now coming hard and fast, that Adelia could not do anything but surrender to her pleasure, and with a strangled scream, she came. Her wet, impossibly tight pussy clamped down on him as she succumbed, helplessly, to her climax, pulling against her constraints and gasping for air, but in vain. Dark spots danced in front of her eyes as her slender body was wracked by wave after wave of an intense orgasm, and Adelia desperately pulled against the sash around her wrists. “Maestro…,” she croaked, her voice fading, while her body tensed in his grip, her legs involuntarily kicking back against him like those of a wild foal, and she would have collapsed had it not been for his hold on her.

Now only dimly aware of her surroundings, she did not realise that Rose had entered the room. She did hear, from far away, a whisper, a voice, that sounded familiar, before consciousness was about to slip from her.


***

Oh, but he was going to kill her! Rose watched as Mr. Dawkins tied her poor mistress’ wrists with her robe’s sash, before wrapping the strip of silk fabric around her slender throat, too. Rose’s throat went dry. What new depravity was this? Unable to look away, she watched transfixed as he eased himself into Mrs. Adelia’s cunny, forcing another lewd moan from her mistress’ lips. The poor maid had to clasp a hand over her mouth not to mirror the sound from behind the door as she watched Mr. Dawkins thrust his thick cock into her mistress while holding the sash like a dog’s leash, forcing the slender body before him to move against him each time, at his pleasure.

Her pussy was burning with need as the spectacle unfolded before her. Mrs. Adelia was being taken like a bitch in heat, and she behaved like one, too. Bucking and moaning against her lover, the young woman had given up all sense of propriety or pretence. She was being fucked so savagely that Rose feared the bedstand might give out beneath the pair, while it was obvious that her mistress, too, started to suffer from the ferocious attack on her person. Her face had turned scarlet, and her lips opened and closed with the growing lack of air.

For a moment, Rose wondered if she should intervene before that beautiful beast that had been unleashed inside would kill her mistress, but she was unable to move. One hand rested against the polished wood of the door, her fingers curling against the cool surface as her own arousal became almost too much to bear. Her other hand was buried in the folds of her apron and skirts between her legs, desperate to quell the yearning spreading from her core through her whole body.

The poor girl was entirely captivated by the sight before her, by the way Mr. Dawkins’ body moved, the play of his muscles, the way his buttocks clenched each time he rammed himself into Mrs. Adelia whose slender body was barely able to contain his attack. Her breasts quivered violently with each thrust. Tied as she was, she had the appearance of a corrupted Madonna who had succumbed to the devil. What did that feel like?

It was then that he looked up.

Rose, incredulous, froze. Mr. Dawkins seemed to look directly at her, as if there was no door separating them, beckoning her to enter the room while he continued to fuck her mistress. Could it be? She didn’t dare to move a muscle, horrified at the possibility of having been discovered. How could he know? She had been so careful not to make a sound! And was it even her he expected to see if she now opened the door? For the length of one heartbeat she contemplated the embarrassment to find that his invitation had not been directed at her at all. She could also just turn and run, and neither of them would be any the wiser. After all, she was not the only staff in the house, and Rose knew for fact that several of the other maids were at least as curious about their mistress’ escapades as her, if not more so. Who was to say which one of them had spied on the pair in the bedroom?

But she knew that she would not be able to do any of these things. Like Mrs. Adelia, she was under his spell now.

She nervously tugged at her apron and her skirt, trying to give her garments some semblance of order, knowing full well the futility of that. He knew that she had been watching, and if she entered the room now, it would be confession enough of her transgression. Rose’s hand was shaking as she pressed down the handle of the heavy door, pushing it open without a sound.

The girl was unable to look at Mr. Dawkins when she entered, closing the door behind her immediately and pressing herself against it for leverage. A deep blush spread over her face as she curtsied, her heart racing. Her hair and blouse were still in visible disarray. What would he do? Would she be punished for her horrid behaviour?

“Sir…,” she whispered hoarsely, her throat dry with embarrassment and apprehension. And, even fainter: “Madam…”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

When Adelia’s body began spasming and kicking below him, Caldwell unwound his forearm from the sash and let the garment go slack, reaching around her body to cup and caress her round, dangling breasts, holding her body tenderly against his own. Perhaps he’d been too cruel with her, perhaps negligent, but he was trying to make a point.

As the sash fell away from around her picturesque throat, the marks from Barnes’ fingers were completely erased from Adelia’s skin, replaced and overshadowed by the newer, full ring of bruised flesh that completely encircled her throat. Caldwell lowered his face next to Adelia’s ear, relishing the feeling of her silken curls surrounding his face.

“Do you suppose the hangman would be more gentle with you?” Caldwell’s voice was cold and judgmental, even as his breath and caresses were warm and reassuring. He wanted to teach her a lesson but being rash and overly cruel with her was what set this debacle in motion, “if you intend to be mine, you need to place a higher value on yourself. You’ve no business dirtying your hands with such filth as your husband—your only concern should be pleasing me. If and when the time comes that Charles continued existence does not please me, I will deal with making him cease to exist. You understand? You are far too precious to me to risk your life on such a minor figure as your husband.”

After he was finished having his intimate moment with Adelia, Caldwell reached one arm out from under her and grasped the outer edge of the headboard, while continuing to caress her chest with his other hand. He turned back to rose and drove again with his hips, this time pulling the outer frame of the headboard toward himself, quite deliberately snapping the narrow crossbeams to which Adelia’s wrists were still bound. His thrust pushed her through the headboard and forward, knocking her knuckles against the wall as she was left holding two pieces of broken wood, while the other pieces tumbled onto the ground.

“You were watching us, weren’t you?” Caldwell asked of Rose, his tone making it clear that he already knew the answer, he just wanted to hear her say so, “while you were watching, did it turn you on? Did watching me fuck your Mistress make you wet?”

With the crossbeams of the headboard now shattered into planks, Adelia was essentially unbound and Caldwell wanted to involve her in this delightful little interaction he was having with her nosy maid. He tossed her arms up over his head, draping her around his neck with all the casual complacency of tossing on a scarf against the cold. If she’d wanted to, she could have easily slid her wrists from the now slackened sash.

Tenderly gripping Adelia’s hips, Caldwell turned their joined bodies to face Rose, their faces now side by side as he continued fucking her from behind, causing her breasts to jiggle and bounce in an even lewder way than they had when she was bent over.

“Were you touching yourself? Did you play with that wet, little pussy while you watched us, holding your breath, hoping not to be noticed?” Caldwell was fucking Adelia faster now, his playful interrogation of the maid causing him to increase the speed with which his hips were pounding his mistress’ eager little twat, “show me. Show your Mistress and I, her Maestro, what you were doing when you thought no one could see you.”

While Caldwell waited for Rose to comply with his demands of her, he drove his face back into the fragrant jungle of Adelia’s hair, dragging his teeth slowly over one corner of her new bruise, his tongue lavishing attention ahead of his dragging teeth.

“Oh come on, get that floppy thing out of the way. Strip yourself naked. If you’re going to show me something, then show me! Otherwise I’ll have you flogged for spying,” the threat was paper-thin but Caldwell was turned on by the sincere fear in Rose’s eyes, “yes, show me how wet you are—spread your legs wider, yes. Good girl.”

Unhindered now by the sash, Adelia was free to make as much noise as she wanted and Caldwell was increasingly delighted with the uproar they were creating. He was enjoying himself so much that he realized he was growing close to his own climax.

“Now, I want you to slap your Mistress in the face as hard as you can. Demonstrate to me that you are more than your position and slap her,” Caldwell was grinning at her but the look in his eyes made it clear that he was not joking, “she endangered herself and by proxy you and I as well. Show her that her actions have consequences.”

Caldwell was reaching his finishing strokes and resolved then and there that he would finish inside of Adelia. If she were to become with child, at least there would be a chance that it was his and not the bastard of a soon-to-be-dead cutpurse.

 

[Curious_Muse]

Adelia took long, greedy breaths and squirmed in his grip, biting back tears at her own stupidity. “You’re right…,” she panted. “You’re right…please forgive me. I was not myself…” Again, her husband had almost succeeded in destroying the precious bond between Caldwell and her. She was precious to him! It was all she wanted to hear. All she needed to hear. She purred under his caresses, leaning her head against his shoulder. She had forgotten about Rose.

When the headboard came apart, both women emitted surprised gasps. Just for a moment, the maid considered a quick retreat, fearing that it had been her spying that had made Mr. Dawkins so mad. But before she could decide, he addressed her.

Rose blushed to a deep crimson at his blunt question, but her apprehension and her curiosity to see where this would lead did not allow for an evasive answer. “I did watch, Sir…,” she whispered, barely lifting her gaze to his. “I watched, and it stirred feelings in me…pleasure….” The girl was obviously at a loss for the appropriate words. “I was unable to look away…” Of course, it had made her wet, too, and even now she was barely able to stand while she watched him fuck her mistress from behind, pulling her body into his with each thrust, making her scream. It made her wonder what it felt like, having a cock stuffed so completely up one’s quim that it made one lose all inhibitions.

Despite the lewd act he was engaged in he did not let up with his interrogation. Rose hesitated at his next question, looking from Mr. Dawkins to her mistress, who raised her eyebrows at her encouragingly.

“I was touching myself…Sir,” she said half-coquettishly, mesmerised by the way her mistress’ round breasts bounced under his onslaught, by the sound of flesh on flesh, and Mrs. Adelia’s increasing moans. Her hands slipped between her thighs, dragging up the coarse fabric of her skirts against her aching pussy, rubbing it slowly. “I did it like this, Sir…,” she sighed, caressing herself through the layers of linen.

She did not hesitate to follow his next command. Why pretend any longer that this was not what she wanted? Though no servant had ever been flogged in this house, which, Rose thought, was a pity, his threat sounded frightening. “Yes, Sir,” she simply stuttered, while already fidgeting with the sash of her apron. She quickly discarded the obstructive garment before loosening the buttons of her blouse. Underneath she only wore a thin linen undershirt that did not conceal her lovely figure. Rose quickly undid her skirt and the material pooled at her feet, leaving her in nothing but the shirt that barely reached to her thighs.

Adelia thoroughly enjoyed this. “Everything, Rose,” she said, before her voice trailed off in a long, throaty moan as Caldwell rammed himself back into her pussy. The girl was a picture, standing there like a trapped foal, her thighs shaking with anticipation and need. “Yes, Madame,” she said, and even managed a small curtsy, which only added to Adelia’s delight.

The maid lifted the thin linen over her head. Now entirely nude, she was not sure what to do next. Her mistress motioned to the chair that faced the bed. Rose sat down, shivering with the desire to touch herself again, but she did not dare to. But when Mr. Dawkins demanded that she opened her legs for them, she did, blushing deeply. Her little pussy was throbbing as she continued watching the pair on the bed.

It was such an enticing sight, the slender girl seated across from them, her rosebud lips slightly parted as she watched Caldwell fucking her, each thrust causing her to cry out while her eyes were glued to that of her maid. She wanted to climax like that, watching Rose grow half-faint with desire. And she was close, so close. Grinding her ass against Caldwell, urging him on, Adelia arched her back, chasing her orgasm. Her eyes fell to half-lids, and she moaned uninhibitedly, feeling the sweet pressure build inside her again. “Yes…oh dear god, Caldwell…yes!”

The slap came as a shock, pulling her back from the brink. It had not been very hard, but she now stared at Rose who was standing right in front of her, looking both intrigued and terrified. Through the haze of her arousal, she had not really listened to Caldwell’s request to Rose, but now the words came back to her. The girl looked at her open hand as if in surprise, and then back at Caldwell and her. After her first astonishment had dissipated, Adelia smiled at her maid. “Is that really all?” she whispered. “All you want to do?”

Rose did not answer at once. There were so many things she wanted to do. “No, Madame,” she finally said, before slapping her mistress again, hard this time, while looking at Mr. Dawkins as if searching for his approval. Her hand had left a pink mark on Mrs. Adelia’s cheek this time. The woman on the bed had flinched but did not protest.

Adelia knew she deserved this, and more. “I am sorry,” she whispered excitedly, while continuing the illicit dance with her lover, but seemingly addressing both Caldwell and Rose. “Forgive me…”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

It’s your soul you must defend at dawn

The first slap made Caldwell scoff—it was a half-hearted slap at best, hardly satisfying for what Caldwell was anticipating. He thought for a moment to demand an encore, but his beloved Adelia beat him to it. She knew instinctively what he wanted and soon after Rose delivered, which only encouraged Caldwell to renew his enthusiasm at fucking Adelia in her marital bed. By now, the structural integrity of the bed was practically nil, but it didn’t stop him from pounding the deepest parts of his lover with his long, shapely cock.

“Yes, that’s a good girl, Rose,” Caldwell grinned, leaning toward her with Adelia’s arms still slung around his neck, her lovely breasts dangling between her and her maid as she was tipped forward, “did it feel good? To slap your better? To strike her face with the force of intention? I’ve so often fantasized about striking someone above my station, but the stakes are so much higher at my level.”

With Adelia dangling from his body like the muse on the bow of a great ship, Caldwell reached out to grasp the side of Rose’s face, pulling her aggressively into a deep and passionately lewd kiss while his other hand wrapped around to caress and squeeze one of Adelia’s breasts. With this surfeit of sensations, it wasn’t long before Caldwell was burying himself inside her to full bore and unloading the first glut of his thick, hot semen—still pent up from their disagreement earlier in the night.

With his tongue, Caldwell urged Rose to join him in his climax while his hand urged the same from Adelia. He thrust his hips forward again, dumping still more of his thick seed into her, the motion causing the side runner of the bed to snap and fold in half, dropping the side of the bed that they were occupying to the ground, sending the bedposts on that side crashing to the ground with force.

The sudden and unexpected change in the angle of the mattress sent Caldwell and Adelia tumbling forward, tackling Rose into the awkward tumbling of nude limbs all in their own phase of climactic clenching. If not for the plump landing pad of Rose’s dense uniform, someone might have been injured, but as it happened everyone just kind of rolled up together and then managed to lay out on top of one another.

Caldwell broke out into loud and hearty laughter as their bodies came to rest in a heap.

“Adelia, my darling love, you are forgiven. Rose, you are far more fun than I had even expected, please, be my guest at Caldwell House next evening. I would very much like to get to know you better,” Caldwell held each young woman’s cheek in his palms, both arms extended, “I’ll leave you with some Marks to buy a dress. I’m sure your mistress can recommend a stylist.”

“Charles, on the other hand, can buy himself a new bed,” Caldwell smirked, rising from the floor and shrugging back into his underclothes, “help me to dress.”

Caldwell left it ambiguous whom his request was directed toward, still relishing the sight of the two women tangled up in their nakedness. Some of his cum had spilled over onto Rose’s leg from within Adelia when they’d fallen.

He still had much to do before dawn.

*-*-*

What a vile retch Charles felt, his face contorted in agony as he used the entirety of his strength to furiously pull at his rock-hard cock under the soiled linens laid across his body. His right hand was useless from the sever knife wound and every one of his stab wounds ached from reaching across himself with his left—but he was helpless to resist the sound of his cherished wife crying out in exquisite bliss as she was fucked by Caldwell Dawkins.

The dust from the ceiling stung his eyes and filled his nose as the cacophonous racket from above split his head into a thousand jagged fragments. He recognized Rose’s gentle voice, even among his wife’s wails of pleasure—was no one safe from the sexual enticement of this author? Charles didn’t dare interrupt what was taking place upstairs, even though he could have very much desired Rose’s assistance. Aside from the ever growing blanket of dust, several of Charles’ leeches had fed to their satisfaction and rolled off of him, leaving him writhing in a shallow pool of slime and his own blood.

When the sudden collapse of the bedposts rained enough shale and dust to make Charles choke, he felt several of his wounds reopen and at that moment, he came. His cum soaked outward into the bedsheets, joining the filth of his sickbed.

Some moments later, Caldwell emerged from upstairs to make his farewells from the door, dressed as immaculately as he had been when he first entered. Despite his kind words, Caldwell didn’t come over to check on Charles, instead he let himself out to retrieve his mount.

“Rose!” Charles called out, his voice shaky with both emotion and arousal, “I think I need my dressings changed.”

*-*-*

The highest parts of the sky were lightening blue by the time Caldwell found Barnes, the rosy fingers of auburn dawn clinging to the underside of the clouds on the horizon. It wasn’t much of a shock to find him in a Whitechapel pub, passed-out-drunk in the remains of more food than he could stomach.

The dullard had spent most of the night boasting about his grand conquest, drunkenly buying drinks for eager strangers and bragging about how grateful the high-born woman had been to take his cock. It had taken some work to roust the drunken man from his stupor, but flashing some bills, Caldwell was able to lure him out of the pub and onto the empty streets.

Just now, Caldwell was grabbing Barnes by the lapel of his threadbare coat, straightening him up against the cobblestone wall of the bridge that crossed over the Thames, the water still clinging to the blackness of night below them.

“Ge’r offa me, bastard!” Barnes slurred, swiping the other man’s hands away and leaning back on the low wall, “talk fast, I’ve got a whore and a bath waiting for me back there…”

“I won’t keep you long from your bath,” Caldwell remarked, reaching into his overcoat to retrieve what resembled a leather bib that he draped over his chest, “this woman who hired you. Do you remember her name?”

“Amelia… Adeline… something like that. No, wait! It was Adelia! Yes! Adelia Mortimer! That’s the bitch…” Barnes grinned, proud of himself for his recollection and confident that he’d soon be rewarded with more cash for his memory.

“I thought so,” Caldwell sighed, reaching back into his coat, “I suppose it’s time for your bath now.”

In a flash, a single practiced motion, Caldwell whipped a small, handheld hatchet from inside his coat and planted the weighted blade firmly in the middle of Barnes’ chest. The axe severed his lungs before Barnes had a chance to scream, so what came out was more of a gurgling retch. Caldwell extracted the blade with some effort, letting Barnes tumble over the edge of the bridge, landing with a mighty splash in the fast-moving water below.

Caldwell removed the now splattered piece of leather from around his neck and used it to wrap the bloodied hatchet before stuffing it back into a leather pocket in his overcoat. He turned his leather riding gloves inside out as he removed them and tossed them in to join Barnes in the river. He used his pocket square to wipe his face and neck, brushing at his overcoat to try and chase away any remnants of blood that avoided his leather shield.

Just as he began to think what a delightfully effortless murder Barnes had made, Caldwell was startled by a voice coming from within the dawn fog, just the faintest silhouette indicating another person.

“Caldwell!” the disembodied voice was that of a man, familiar—even jovial—how long had he been watching? “genius author, voice of our times Caldwell Dawkins, is that really you?”

Inside of his coat, Caldwell gripped the handle of his hatchet—would he need to kill again?

A sigh escaped the author as one familiar to him strode forth from the tendrils of damp fog. It was Mr. Winchester, a common patron and key-holding investor in Dawkins house. A man who already shared close secrets with Caldwell, someone he felt he could trust.

“By God’s big toe, Winchester! You had me fearing for my life!”

“Only darker hours stalk a man’s life. It’s your soul you must defend at dawn.”

Caldwell grit his teeth, it was a sort of sport for Winchester that Caldwell inwardly despised. Winchester made a point of seemingly speaking in verse around Caldwell, a sort of jab at his profession and by association, his humble roots. Winchester was born well, inheriting titles, fortune, power beyond constraint, for education he’d earned a medical degree and was published almost as often as Caldwell in medical journals. By contrast, Caldwell was more the sort who’d had greatness thrust upon him. Winchester always spoke this way, speaking volumes with fewer words, proving that his intellect surpassed Caldwell’s. When Caldwell fantasized about striking his betters, it was Winchester he dreamed of hitting.

Yet, so long as Winchester would pay for the services of Caldwell’s foundlings, he was still a mark, and in so being, had to be catered to.

“My soul seems to be intact, aside from that moment when you frightened it out of me,” Caldwell chuckled, admitting defeat, catering the client, “how does dawn find your soul, old friend?”

Winchester approached gratefully, reaching out to grasp Caldwell’s bare hand in a hearty handshake. Winchester’s gloves were supple rabbit’s leather, Caldwell could feel the seeping oils against his bare palm.

“Fortunate your soul wasn’t frozen out of you, going without gloves in this brutal chill,” Winchester gushed, enclosing both of Caldwell’s hands inside his dual gloved hands, “please, take my gloves.”

“Nonsense, I left my gloves with my mount. I just came to the river to listen to the sound. I’m working on a poem, you see,” Caldwell just wished to be gone from this place, down the street, near where Bard’s Song was awaiting his return, some whore could be heard calling after Barnes, “the hour has gotten away from me, I must be getting home.”

“Of course, you are hosting tonight, after all,” Winchester grinned, stepping wide to block Caldwell’s escape, “New Arrivals’ Ball. Isn’t it so?”

“Indeed, I’ll need to conduct interviews later this morning.”

“Your commitment to your craft is enviable, Caldwell,” Winchester remarked, making a show of looking away, as if in shame, “poetry at dawn and charity into the next morning. What an inspiration you are.”

“You’re too kind, sir.”

“But what’s this?” Winchester placed his palms on Caldwell’s shoulders, swiping his index finger over the fold in Caldwell’s collar, he brought the finger under his nose and smiled, “bloody deeds before dawn, is it Dawkins?”

“Oh, I cut myself shaving.”

This flimsy excuse sent Winchester into a fit of laughter. Winchester ran his gloved index finger slowly up Caldwell’s cheek. It made a sound, the oily leather against his stubble.

“I think you may have missed a spot. Do not despair, I’ll detain thee no longer. I wish to know your girl Nora better. I fear you might be coddling her. I know you intend the maid to be wed, but the other… she ought to see a client before you admit new arrivals, don’t you think?”

“Of course, you’re right. I’ll have her ready,” Caldwell tipped his cap, passing Winchester to return to his mount, “see you tonight.”

“Barnes! Where are ye, you drunk fuck?” the whore was missing her left front tooth, her eyes mad with opium sickness, “you still owe for that handjob! You were supposed to come back!”

Caldwell rode back to Dawkins’ House at a full gallop, the cold biting his knuckles white as he went.

 

[Curious_Muse]

As the knocks on the library door became louder, Nora woke with a start. Momentarily confused, she looked around. Morning light was pouring through the high windows. She had been here all night! Nora had tried to stay awake until the return of Mr. Dawkins but had evidently fallen asleep on the small pile of books on the reading desk.

“Nora? Are you in there?” Lucy quietly opened the door and stuck her head inside. “Why don’t you answer? I have been trying to find you everywhere.”

“Sorry…I must have fallen asleep last night while reading…” She stretched. Her whole body was stiff and aching. And slowly, the memory of last night’s research came back to her. Alarmed, she realised that the book she had rested her head on was the curious tome published by Dr. Andrew James Winchester and his London Society of Knowledgeable Gentlemen, and even though nothing on the outside of the leather-bound volume gave away its immoral contents, Nora felt caught.

The other girl entered the library and looked around. “You’ve been in here all night?” Lucy tried to peer at the books Nora was now covering with her arms. “Doing what?”

“Nothing,” Nora said hastily, getting up. She tried to hide the pile of books on the desk with her body. “Has Mr. Dawkins returned?”

Lucy looked annoyed by Nora’s refusal to explain herself. She had always found the redhaired girl somewhat peculiar, and, if she was honest, she was jealous by the trust Mr. Dawkins put in her, allowing her the use of his private library, when she, Lucy, did not receive half the attention this Nora did. And now she was clearly abusing his trust by sniffing around books that were not meant for her eyes. “He has indeed, and he expects us all to welcome the new girls that will arrive today for their interviews.” She looked at Nora and her crinkled dress in obvious disapproval. “I suggest you...clean up first.”

“Yes, I will, sure,” Nora replied distractedly. She took care to usher Lucy out of the room before her before locking the library door again from the outside. All she wanted was to speak to Mr. Dawkins. But first she needed to make herself more presentable, and pleasing to the eye, since the favour she had to ask of her benefactor was not a small one. An introduction to Mr. Winchester was, she assumed, something only accomplished debutantes at Dawkins House were granted, but she would try her luck anyway. And maybe, just maybe, she would finally get the chance at revenge.

***

Kitty was kneeling on a bench in front of the large salon window. “She’s so pretty,” she mused to no one in particular, watching an elegant, slender woman descend from a carriage and open the front gate of the garden. The young woman looked distinctly foreign. Her dark eyes had a haunted expression as she looked up towards the windows. Kitty assumed that she, like so many of the women that found their way to Dawkins House, had been befallen by some misfortune that forced her to seek shelter here.

“Maybe she’s like…a princess!” Kitty could not stop looking at the woman who now rang the bell at the main entrance downstairs. “She sure looks like one. Like a princess from a fairy tale, from a land far from here.”

“Don’t be an idiot. What would a princess come here for?” Violet peeked over Kitty’s shoulder and shrugged. “And she’s a bit skinny, if you ask me,” she quipped. “Not used to work either, probably.” Kitty sighed. “I hope Mr. Dawkins will admit her to the house, and I do hope that we will become good friends.”

***

Elena again checked the address that the owner of the guesthouse had given her. This was it. He had assured her that she would be very welcome at Dawkins House and that the charity’s kind patron, Mr. Caldwell Dawkins, would assist her in any way possible. Maybe he could even help her to find her way back to Smyrna? She turned to the coach driver and waved, before picking up the two suitcases. They were all she had left after her husband had abandoned her in London, and after paying the driver she did not have a single penny left. If Mr. Dawkins turned her away, she would be out on the street.

But Elena would not beg. Taking a deep breath, she walked along the path towards the main door of the house, pretending not to notice the two girls watching her from the window. What kind of establishment was this? The guesthouse owner had said that Dawkins House was a “place for women like you,” and given her one of his sad, kind smiles, without explaining what he meant exactly. But now, standing in front of it, Elena felt more confident. The garden was well-groomed and tasteful, the façade of the building beautiful and open. It was not the kind of house that gave rise to suspicion. The neighbourhood, too, was of a certain standing and reminded her of her childhood.

Maybe it was time to forget her false husband, and trust that not all men were as deceitful as he had proved to be. Standing up straight, she rang the doorbell.

***

Evie dragged her battered suitcase along the garden path. “What a fine house, don’t you think Alice? Better even than the gloomy Mayfair estate.” The blonde girl turned around to her and grinned. “You should thank me for bringing you here!”

Alice frowned. How could this stupid girl be so happy, after all that had happened? How did she have the gall to demand gratefulness for this disgrace? She had been gainfully employed at the Mayfair house, a dutiful and quiet housemaid, and until that fateful night, she had never given cause for complaint. And even then! Alice was still livid with the unfairness of it all. It was Evie, always Evie, who had to ruin everything. And not once had she apologised for her frivolous behaviour, on the contrary. During their days at the shabby guest house they had had to spend their last pennies on, the little whore had gone on and on about Thomas, and Benjamin, the footman, and Louis, the coach driver, and all the other men she had wrapped around her finger in exchange for various favours, all of them utterly scandalous.

How could a girl have so little shame? How could put so little value on her virtue? Evie insisted that a girl had to enjoy the pleasures her young body was capable of as long as she could, and before old age or marriage would cause them to wither away forever, but who did she think would marry a trollop such as her? Night after night the little strumpet had told her in minute detail the things she had done, in the pantry, the stables, behind the garden pavilion. Alice cursed her fate. Now she would have to beg entry in a house that catered to fallen girls, even though she herself was none such, and only because no other household would ever employ her. The Mayfair housekeeper had made sure of that.

Meanwhile, Evie plucked a rose from one of the bushes lining the well-kept path and stuck it in her hair. “Look!” she cried out, twirling around. “Such a pretty garden! Nothing like the boring hedges the old gardener Mr. Finsley would keep!” Alice said nothing. Ringing the doorbell, she hoped that Mr. Dawkins would recognise her potential, and that he would see what kind of girl Evie really was. Maybe that would finally set her world to rights.

***

Adelia looked down at her husband. Rose had changed his dressings and the spoiled bedsheets, but not without telling her mistress about the pitiable state he had been in. Of course, the disgusting fool had heard (and likely, imagined) the tryst she had enjoyed with her lover in their marriage bed, and Adelia was not surprised to hear that he had been unable to restrain himself. The fact that he did no mention it to her, that he had not protested at any point, convinced her that she was safe from any kind of retribution, and that he in fact had no idea about what she had tried to do.

“Charles, I am going to pay a visit to my dear friend Caldwell,” she said, smiling down at him. “There are several interviews scheduled for this morning, and in the evening, we will hold the New Arrivals’ Ball, as you know.” His pained facial expression was delicious. “So please don’t wait up for me. Rose will accompany me, but I instructed the rest of the staff to tend to your every need.”

She turned to leave, but then stopped, as if she remembered a trivial detail. “Oh, and please do get a new bed. The old one broke last night.”

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

It was some time after dawn when Caldwell arrived back at Dawkins’ House. After stabling the horse and changing out of his riding clothes (with the exception of his leather riding gloves), he had scarcely an hour to rest his body before the work of preparing for the new arrivals would begin in earnest. It may have been prudent for him to give up on the prospect of slumber and just get an early start on things, but the weight of his exhaustion dragged him down into bed. He was so tired that he only spared a single thought to how cold and oversized the bed felt without Adelia to share it with him…

The sounds of tittering girls and clattering of plates woke Caldwell from his deep slumber. For a moment, a rush of panic washed over him, not knowing the hour, that he might have delayed the interviews with the prospective new residents. After rushing into the hallway, Caldwell surmised that he wasn’t quite as late as he’d previously feared. He checked the hall clock and found himself much relieved that it was not yet nine.

“Lucy!” Caldwell called out from the top of the grand staircase, a vantage from whence his powerful voice could reach all parts of the house, “I need a shave and then I’ll need to dress. Bring someone to help you if you need it.”

Without waiting for a reply, Caldwell rushed over to his wide, wood-paneled dressing room. He selected his jacket and slacks first, laying them carefully out on the wide, granite island at the center of his dressing room. Next he selected a tie, deep black with just the faintest red stripes—and followed that with the selection of his newest, bright crimson waistcoat, embroidered with gold threads in diamond patterns which made the plush fabric itself seem textured.

With his outfit selected, Caldwell unbuttoned his long underclothes, extricating his torso from the sleeves and shoulders until the long, dingy garment seemed likely to fall from his waist around his ankles. He was naked from the waist up as he sat back in the barber’s chair, waiting for Lucy to arrive with his shaving kit and some help.

“I’m sorry to say, we don’t have hot water,” Caldwell admitted, leaning his head back as the girls arrived, “but a nice, cold lather might help me to cling to wakefulness.”

There was still much to do, but Winchester’s taunting the night before was reason enough to prioritize a close shave… Despite being in a rush, he knew better than to try to rush the girls who would be scraping his neck with a razor. There came a sound from downstairs, some of the girls were arriving.

“Someone show them that you know how to answer a door at least!” Caldwell shouted down, barking past his present company, “let them wait in the parlour. Get them whatever they require. Kitty, that rose had better be ready for Mrs. Adelia.”

*-*-*

Some time later, when Caldwell was sufficiently shaven and styled, he made his way downstairs, eager to get things underway. When he spotted Adelia, he embraced her lovingly and kissed her on the lips—somewhere past familiar, but over before it veered close to scandalous. Caldwell pulled out the chair for Adelia, behind the place set with a single red rose and a string of recently restrung pearls along with the handwritten original of the poem he’d written for her the night before, after their fight.

“Good work girls,” Caldwell nodded, to Lucy specifically, but generally to everyone, for their work in preparing the Great Room to host interviews. “Who have we first? Violet, please introduce our first candidate.”

A large, sturdy table had been brought in and laid with a flat, black tablecloth. Armchairs from the study were placed on opposite sides of the table and a small pile of papers was arranged between Caldwell and Adelia. Opposite them and their papers, a single armchair sat at the middle of the table, with nothing on either side.

“Coffee,” Caldwell instructed Nora when she passed his eye, “perhaps Mrs. Adelia would like some as well.”

There was a slight edge to his voice, implying that Nora should have taken it upon herself to ask. While he and his lover were a step behind, with good reason, he expected the girls under his care to be at their best. No one’s spot was secure.

“Welcome to Dawkins’ House, Miss…” Caldwell began, beckoning the first candidate over.