Chapter One

Warren Street. 1820

The low ceilinged room was a vision of hell. A dim light from smoking lamps and candles mounted on the filthy walls and on the tables shed dancing shadows that made the movements of the crowd even more agitated then they already were. However the naked female flesh that was at the centre of the crowd’s attention was rendered flatteringly smooth and clean in the half-light. Thunderous cheers and bellows from the people crowded into the room made it a deafening as well as a stifling pit. Heavy tobacco smoke rolled among the beams and mixed with the smell of sweat that dripped from the gleaming faces of the men and women gathered around a rough circle in the centre of the room. Fists pumped the air as the crowd exhorted their favourite to greater efforts. And in the centre of the circle two women fought desperately.

They had only their grubby underskirts left on, any garment that might have covered their upper torsos had long ago been torn from them. They fought bare knuckled and weren’t above hair pulling and kneeing. Their hair - one brunette and one blonde - was wild and unkempt and their faces were bleeding from scratches and blows, the blood and sweat ran in streams down across their heaving breasts as they grappled with each other. The fight had been going on for over an hour and still neither girl was tiring, it was the best fight the George Inn near Warren Street had seen for some months. And the crowd was so engrossed that no one paid much attention to the tall, handsome gentleman who lounged against a wall at the back of the room, his height allowing him to see what he needed to.

He smiled and nodded as the two girls slammed together once more, their breasts flattening against each other’s and their hands clawing and punching at each other’s ribs. The dark haired girl suddenly switched her target and landed a clubbing blow to the side of the blonde’s head, making her duck into her opponent to avoid taking another punch but the fist followed her head for another blow to the back of it and the blonde had to push her opponent away. As she stepped back so the dark haired girl followed her again and landed an uppercut to the blonde’s stomach. She doubled over and took another blow to the side of her face which knocked her head sideways and those in the front of the crowd were spattered with blood from her mouth and nose, there were some shrill screams of female excitement as some thought an end was surely near. But there was nearly a year’s wages for a poor girl riding on this and neither combatant was going down easily.

The blonde, still dazed and staggering, managed to totter forwards and grab the brunette around her waist and hang on grimly while the brunette pummelled her back and shoulders and tried to jerk her knee up into her stomach. The crowd bayed even louder, sniffing that the final act was near. But suddenly the blonde reared back with a yell of triumph and there was the sound of tearing cloth. The blonde brandished the laces that had held the brunette’s underskirts up. The heavy material fell to the floor before the girl could stop it but instinctively she bent and groped for them. The cheers turned to laughter as the crowd behind her were treated to the sight of shapely, pale buttocks and the cunny between them, nestling amid its curly down.

Now the blonde roared back to the attack. As the brunette bent forwards, her heavy breasts hung like ripe fruit beneath her chest and either by luck or by chance a scything uppercut caught her left one and sent her screaming and spinning away, lurching up against the front ranks of the crowd who merely pushed her back. The blonde grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked her head back but the brunette dug her elbow backwards into the blonde’s stomach again and in her turn she had to lurch away.

Now stark naked, the brunette suddenly found she had an advantage, she had much greater freedom of movement - and she threw herself bodily onto the blonde’s back, holding onto her around the neck. Her weight took them both to the floor and the action continued down in the filth with undiminished ferocity.

The crowd moved forwards and Alfred Gascoine the ninth Duke of Loughmore, straightened up from his relaxed position against the wall and moved forwards too, craning his head slightly. Fortunately he was reasonably well known and respected in this part of London - a labyrinth of alleys and twitchells that pre-dated the great fire and which provided London with its reservoir of poverty and depravity - and he managed to get far enough forward to see the climax of the fight.

The blonde had gone down face first but had managed to roll onto her back, pinning the brunette beneath her. Now she was jabbing backwards with both elbows and throwing her head back. One such blow now caught the brunette full on the nose which began to bleed in earnest. She screamed and released the clawing grip she had had on the blonde’s scratched breasts.

The blonde scrambled up and, gathering her skirts, began kicking the unfortunate brunette. The only good thing was that the landlord of the George had had the sense to make them take their boots off just in case such a situation did arise. But nevertheless the tone of the crowd’s noise became more of a jeering as the blonde picked her target on the squirming body before her, kicking at the ribs and stamping on thighs and buttocks. But the blonde relaxed just a little too early. The brunette reached out and grabbed an ankle as a kick headed for her breasts and with a snarl of rage she twisted and pulled, bringing the screaming blonde down once more, but this time the blonde fell on a different part of the floor and the brunette launched herself onto her opponent. The blonde’s underskirts rode up her long thighs as she scrabbled with her legs for purchase and the brunette got a knee up between them. Once, twice, three times she was able to pump her thigh up, driving her knee into the blonde’s sex. She shrieked in time to the blows landing and then the brunette was able to sit astride her and rain down blows until the blonde - who by then was more of a strawberry blonde as blood from the brunette’s nose sprayed down onto her - lay still. Slowly the naked girl climbed to her feet while the landlord came across with a wooden pail of water to sluice down the loser who lay, her chest heaving and her breasts quivering with her arms spread wide in helpless defeat.

Alfred Gascoine was well pleased, the fight had surpassed his expectations, and as a bonus he had wagered heavily on the brunette just on a hunch, and he plucked thirty guineas from the reluctant hand of Edward St. John Newby, one of his friends who also dared the narrow streets of the rookeries in pursuit of good sport.

Slowly the crowd drifted back to the bar downstairs and Alfred went across to where the blonde was disconsolately trying to tie together the rags that her clothing had been reduced to. Some of them she was using to staunch the blood from her cuts. It would be a cold and dangerous walk home for her. She barely had enough clothing to preserve any modesty and there were plenty of men around here who wouldn’t bother with negotiating a price for her favours once she was back out in the alleys. She was a pretty enough piece, Alfred noted as he approached. Her waist was quite trim and her breasts rode quite high for their size on her chest and he found their scratched and wounded state only added to their appeal. Her hair had been reduced to a tangled mop but when he bade her a courteous good evening, she brushed it back with a filthy hand and looked up at him, one eye was rapidly closing, the other was a startlingly clear and bright blue.

“What d’you want, Mister?” she asked defensively. Alfred didn’t blame her, she had lost her clothes and her dignity and the prize purse, now any man who approached her could be expected to want only one thing.

“It was a good fight. Take this for your trouble,” he said and handed her the part of his winnings that came in paper money. He knew it was nearly as much as the brunette had won and the girl looked at it with amazement and then with tears starting to her eyes. But suddenly her streetwise senses cut in and she clutched it to her breast and stared at him suspiciously.

“I’ll give you one off the wrist but I ain’t doin’ nuffin’ else, I don’t care how much you give me. I never asked you for nuffin’!”

Alfred laughed. “My dear girl, I have an entire houseful of girls who are cleaner, who are dressed and who are not bloody, and they will do exactly my bidding. I do not require one off the wrist or anything else. You may keep the money, but I will ask you one question.”

As he had been talking, Alfred had seen that the girl had been taking in the cut of his clothes and his relaxed manner and had realised that he was far above the class of man she usually dealt with and her own manner softened a little, while she explored how this could be turned to her advantage.

“Okay, Mister. Ask me.”

“Would you like a chance to claw that bitch’s face off? To punch her tits? To knee her in the cunny and see how she likes it?” Alfred grinned as he saw his choice of language shock her, but he had read her right, the question intrigued her.

“Yes, Mister. I’d like that. If I hadn’t got so cocky when she was down, I’d’ve had her tonight! You going to fix it?”

“I think I might. Where are your lodgings and where do you work? And what is your name, so I can find you when I need to.”

She hesitated for a while at that but eventually decided that she had nothing left to lose and a lot to gain. She was Sally Gaines and worked in a leather maker’s on Goodge Street. She lodged over by Clerkenwell, she told him as she rolled up his note and quickly fumbled it up under her skirts, slipping it where only the most determined of robbers would stand a chance of finding it and left, probably to get a few glasses of gin downstairs from a friend.

Alfred watched her go and made his way across to where the brunette was. It was a very different scene. Some of her winnings were already providing the happy crowd which surrounded her with gin. She had managed to tie up her skirts with some string and was as well covered as one could expect. Like her opposite number one eye was closing and one cheek bone had a lump like an egg on it. Her nose bleed had been staunched but like the blonde, it would take a few weeks before all the scratches and cuts healed.

Alfred waited until he could approach her without causing too much pushing and shoving then he moved forward to congratulate her.

She looked him up and down, the gin and exhaustion making her sway a little already.

“Thanks, Mister,” was all she said, although she did settle the rags of her blouse a little so that some more scratched and bruised breast was visible. Alfred smiled but kept his eyes fixed on her face for now.

“Want a rematch?” he asked.

“How much?” the response came back like a whiplash.

“One hundred guineas to the winner - and there might be opportunities for a good looking girl to earn a bit more into the bargain...”

Just mentioning that amount of money brought an instant hush to the room.

“Watch out, Bessie!” a male voice cried. “Ain’t many toffs really got that type of money!”

“That gent has,” a deep voice growled. “That’s the Duke of Loughmore.”

Alfred bowed slightly to the girl, reached out and took her glass from her suddenly nerveless fingers and ushered her to a table. The deep voice had belonged to Frank Gardner, a male prizefighter who earned a bit on the side by keeping an eye on Alfred when he ventured into this part of town.

The girl’s one good eye was wide and staring at him and she was actually shaking slightly.

“When you’re both recovered, we’ll stage it at Lady Abigail’s house. The winner will take one hundred guineas and for a girl with real energy, there will be plenty of gentlemen willing to pay handsomely to get closer to what they see in the ring.”

The blonde hadn’t needed any sales pitch but he reckoned this one might as she would be feeling bruised and battered but wealthy and that would last until her friends had drunk all her winnings.

“Blimey, Mist - your grace! You don’t hang about do you? Mind you if you can offer money like that, why should you? You can buy whatever you want. Yeah and you can buy me too. I’ll fight the cow again, and like you say, with a few more gentlemen of quality around there should be more to be made. And next time I won’t go easy on the bitch! I’ll fucking flay her!” The last part was addressed to the crowd of her supporters who cheered her on eagerly.

Once again Alfred obtained enough information to allow him to trace the girl and he took his leave, with the hulking figure of Frank at his shoulder. The cane that Alfred carried was a sword stick and he was a first class fencer, but that wouldn’t help him against a blackjack swung from the darkness of an alley entrance, and that was where Frank came in.

They walked back to the inn where he had left his carriage for safety and then, having paid off Frank, he was driven back to Lady Abigail’s house, which was currently London’s favourite whorehouse and which was entirely owned by himself.

Alfred Gascoine, Ninth Duke of Loughmore divided polite society like no other aristocrat, even Lord Byron’s affairs took a back seat compared to the activities of the duke. Possibly this was because despite all his faults, he was successful at everything he turned his hand to. He was vastly wealthy, having increased the size and efficiency of the estates he had inherited before he had bought and staffed Lady Abigail’s house. Lady Abigail Furness herself, the Madam of the house, had been one of his many mistresses even prior to being widowed. The result was that he was reviled by some men, envied by most others and openly lusted after by most of the women - even some of those who openly maintained that they were shocked to the core by his behaviour. The rumours about his sexual practises with the many women he conquered were extreme and lurid, and only those who really knew him, knew that the only thing more lurid and extreme than the rumours was the reality.

Women found him irresistibly attractive and his notoriety only added to his allure for some. For others he was a scandal that the king himself should do something about. And all the time, behind ladies’ fans at tea gatherings the rumours about his prodigious sexual stamina and equipment were spread with delighted and terrified giggles by women who too frequently had been married for purely commercial reasons and whose husbands only used them as brood mares.

Now as he headed back to Lady Abigail’s, Alfred began to firm up his plans for one of the special events for which the brothel was famed. They were euphemistically named Games Nights, and they brought in very large amounts of money.