‘Do you have some further idea of where you might submit the piece?’
Mrs Edwards sipped at her tea, and James felt the weight of expectation heavy on his shoulders.
‘I had considered the Piccadilly Clubman. I feel that the family magazines will consider this story unsuitable for the female readership and the newspapers are perhaps unready to extend sympathy towards those who have chosen an immoral mode of existence. Immoral as they would see it, anyway.’
Mrs Edwards did not appear pleased with this.
‘The Piccadilly Clubman is not a respectable publication.’
‘It is read by respectable men, though, many of them influential and likely unaware of your work. These women to them are something to be bought and then forgotten. To know otherwise might awaken some consciences.’
‘I would still prefer The Times.’
‘Who knows but that The Times may pick it up if it causes enough of a stir in the Clubman.’
‘Well, perhaps there is something to be said for that argument. Have you finished your tea?’
James nodded his assent and Mrs Edwards led him back into the entrance hall, then up the stairs.
‘Our schoolroom and workshops,’ she said, indicating a number of doors.
The first of these, a back room, was well lit and contained a half dozen of women, all working at some form of tailoring.
‘We aim to teach our residents means of obtaining honest employment once they are ready to return to the world,’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘As you see, they all wear a uniform, and that is what they are making.’
Each woman was indeed identically dressed, in a blue serge frock of exceeding plainness and a white apron. There was some fancy stitching on the apron bibs, no doubt for the purposes of teaching such skills as pintucking and embroidery. Modest white caps covered each woman’s hair and James thought he had never seen such a homely group. Did they not miss their paint and finery?
One of them pricked her finger and exclaimed, holding the wounded spot with its tiny bead of red to her lips.
James stepped forward and offered his handkerchief but the girl stared away from him with glazed eyes and said nothing, even when he urged her to take it.
‘Leave her. They are instructed to have no commerce with gentlemen, under any circumstances,’ said Mrs Edwards. ‘You mean well, but you will do more harm than good. These girls have made excellent progress and do not need to be set back.’
‘How do I set them back if I offer them a kindness?’
Mrs Edwards spoke in a lower voice. ‘They are learning to master their fleshly impulses. Over the course of their licentious careers, a certain kind of response to male attention becomes ingrained in their natures. This must be erased if they are ever to prosper in respectable society.’
‘You think they will want to, to … ply their trade with me?’
Mrs Edwards pinched her lips and gave a sharp nod.
It struck James as unlikely but he put his handkerchief back in his pocket and followed his hostess to the next room, where millinery was in progress.
In the large schoolroom at the front of the building, women sat on forms, as his boy pupils had done. It struck him as inappropriate and a little humiliating for grown women to be treated as schoolgirls and he fought down a rising sense of unease as he watched the mistress, a strict and unsmiling figure, drill her pupils.
‘What do they learn?’ he asked Mrs Edwards.
‘The essentials. Reading, writing, arithmetic. There is only so much we can inculcate into such decayed minds.’
‘Decayed?’
‘Moral atrophy leads to intellectual decay, Mr Stratton. Don’t you think?’
If so, he thought, then I am an idiot.
‘I am not sure of that,’ he demurred. ‘I’m sure plenty of these women are perfectly bright, if given a chance to show it.’
‘They don’t need to be bright, Mr Stratton. They need to be good.’
After leaving the schoolroom, they returned downstairs. They exited the building through a locked back door and crossed a small courtyard hung with washing.
‘Don’t look at the smalls,’ implored Mrs Edwards, chivvying him along to a low shed-like building, one of a complex.
It contained a laundry and a kitchen, the first so powerfully filled with steam that James felt himself quite faint with the heat. Women bent over large coppers, pushing swirls of linen around with wooden tongs.
Next door smelled strongly of boiled cabbage, causing James to put a hand to his mouth lest he should retch. This was what workhouses were like, he thought, or at least, it was how he had come to imagine them, from his reading of Oliver Twist and similar fare.
‘We think it very important that our residents learn household skills,’ she said. ‘Many of them are quite unused to washing their clothes – they come to us riddled with lice – and have existed on oysters from street stands. If they can cook and clean and wash, perhaps there is a chance they might find a husband.’
James kept to himself the observation that, given they could also fuck, they were pretty marriageable already in his view.
‘There is a small infirmary occupying the corner of the yard. Now, the chapel,’ said Mrs Edwards briskly, relieving him of the necessity of inhaling any more cabbage-rotten air, and then crossing the courtyard once more.
It was a balmy day already, but inside the corrugated metal chapel James could almost feel the remnants of winter in the air. How frigid this edifice must be on the coldest days of the year, and how stifling on the warmest.
A dozen women knelt on makeshift hassocks, surely sewn on the premises, prayer books clasped between their folded hands, heads bowed.
‘Everyone must spend one hour of the day in silent prayer and reflection,’ whispered Mrs Edwards. ‘Peace is something many of our girls have never known from birth to the day they arrive here. Their lives have lacked the spiritual dimension – this is our greatest gift to bestow.’
James thought that regular meals and a clean bed were probably bigger inducements.
Crossing the courtyard on the way back to the house, he asked, ‘How long do they typically stay here?’
‘As long as they like. In general, it takes about a year for them to become suitably accomplished to seek employment.’
‘But they are free to leave at any time?’
‘Of course. This is not a prison, Mr Stratton.’
‘It is as highly regulated as one.’
‘These girls need order. They come from chaos. You must know that. What of your friend in the Lock Hospital? It is outrageous that she should be confined there, of course, but in the long run, she is probably better off there than on the streets.’
Privately, James was not sure he believed this. He could hardly picture Annie in a place like this at all. She would rebel, weary of the constant round of labour and the eerie silence. What manner of girl could go from such a tempestuous life to one so regimented?
‘I wonder,’ he said, re-entering the office, ‘if you would grant me some interviews with your inmates? It would be most illuminating, for the purposes of the article.’
‘I’m not sure why. As I understand it, your article will be against the enforcement of the Contagious Diseases Act. I am happy for you to publicise our cause and give an account of our charitable function, but it is window dressing to the main thrust, surely?’
‘I think if people can see how your charity benefits and changes the girls who avail themselves of it, they may be more kindly inclined. It is important to give the girls a human face. It is too easy and too tempting to think of them as mere ciphers, and to thus dismiss their suffering.’
Mrs Edwards contemplated his words, frowning.
‘I take your point,’ she said. ‘However, we have an inviolable rule against mixing of the sexes here.’
‘What about your chaplain?’
‘He is never alone with them.’
‘What about a doctor?’
‘I would always be in attendance at any medical appointment.’
‘What of the Hippocratic oath?’
‘Oh, these girls are not …’
She trailed off. James could have sworn she had been about to say ‘people’. What a peculiar woman she was, campaigning for the rights of prostitutes, and yet seeming to have every bit as much contempt for them as the remainder of society did.
‘They need an advocate,’ she said, less hastily. ‘They are happy for me to be on hand.’
‘Will you not consider my request?’
‘Oh, I don’t know … perhaps if I could be present …’
But James wondered if the women’s accounts would be entirely freely given if their forbidding philanthropist were in earshot.
‘I understand that you are uncomfortable with the idea. Please don’t put yourself to trouble on my account. I am only thinking of what will sway the public’s attitude with the most force.’
‘I know you are. I understand. You must let me ponder the proposition. Come back tomorrow and I will have an answer for you.’
‘Thank you. But may I now ask some questions of you?’
‘For the article?’
‘Of course. What else?’
‘You seemed very interested in whether I knew some female of your acquaintance yesterday. I wondered if you had a more personal agenda in mind.’
‘Ah.’ James looked down at his lap, feeling caught out. ‘Mrs Shaw. You said you did not know her?’
She paused, just a moment too long, before replying, ‘That is right.’
James knew it would be folly to pursue the issue. He interviewed her instead on the subject of the charity’s history and antecedents. Any attempt to delve deeper into her personal life was blocked, graciously but unequivocally.
He left the building knowing a great deal about its bricks and mortar, but almost nothing about the woman who had caused the foundations to be laid.
But it was in a spirit of optimism that he crossed the Bloomsbury streets, thinking of lunch and the work he had to do to meet his next deadline. If Mrs Edwards would not let him interview her inmates, it was of no moment. He had recalled somebody who would do every bit as well.
Thus it was that, some hours later, his hand cramped from scribbling, he found his way through the mews once more to the square of land at the rear of Augusta’s home.
This time he did not enter via an open ballroom window but descended some back steps to a little laundry yard, empty of washing on this late weekday and eerily quiet. He wondered how many staff Augusta employed. Someone to cook, presumably, and a coachman, Paulette and another maid. Was there anyone else? It was a large house for one girl to keep in order.
His question was answered when the unfamiliar face of a young girl, perhaps fifteen or so, appeared around the doorway and screamed.
‘Oh, do not be alarmed, pray,’ he said, moving swiftly forward. ‘I don’t mean to frighten you. I’m looking for Paulette.’
‘Are you?’ She still looked terrified, her plump face bright red and her eyes threatening tears.
‘Yes. Is she in?’
‘She’s upstairs, working. You’ll have to come back later.’ She looked him up and down after brushing a tear from her eye and added, more confidently, ‘Are you following her? She don’t have followers, you know. Mrs Shaw’d kill her.’
‘Well, there’s no need to say anything to Mrs Shaw, is there? And no, I’m not a follower. I’m a distant relative. Look, I’d rather not go away. Do you mind if I wait in the kitchen?’
‘It’s not permitted, sir, to have menfolk below stairs.’
‘Are there no male servants in the household?’
‘Only the coachman, sir, and he lives in the mews with his wife and family.’
‘Paulette did not mention this. It is an unmarried lady that she works for, is it not?’
The girl looked over her shoulder, as if anxious to get back to her labours.
‘That’s the owner of the house, sir. But she don’t give the orders.’
‘Oh?’
‘She’s got a companion, sir, Mrs Shaw. She rules this roost.’
‘Perhaps I should go away now, in case she should catch me.’
‘She’s away, don’t worry.’
‘Then could I not come in and wait?’ He calculated his most appealing look and directed it with earnest intensity at the girl.
She faltered and he knew he had won his way.
‘Just for a moment,’ he said, consolidating his position with a pensive curl of his lip. ‘I shall tell nobody if you do not.’
‘’Cept Paulette … oh, she’s all right. She won’t say anything. Come on then. Lucky Mrs Ringer’s out for the afternoon.’
‘Who’s Mrs Ringer?’ He sat down at a trestle table and watched the girl pick up a pudding basin and attend to its contents with a hard-working arm.
‘She’s the cook. Since it’s only Her Ladyship in the house tonight, she’s taken herself off to the pub, sir. Left me and Paulette to it.’
‘She drinks?’
‘Gawd, don’t she?’
‘What does Mrs Shaw think of that?’
‘Oh, she don’t know. Not yet. I can’t see it staying secret much longer, mind, the rate she’s been polishing off what’s in the cellar.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘No, only since Easter.’
‘You’re very young. I suppose this is your first place?’
She paused in her pummelling of the pudding bowl and James saw her shoulders tense, though he couldn’t see her face.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’
‘Like Paulette,’ he said, leaving the implication hanging in the floury air for the girl to snatch up or wave away.
‘I don’t know about Paulette,’ she said, taking to the pudding bowl with renewed vigour. ‘I’m just a good girl what wants a quiet life, sir.’
She was a mere child, perhaps something like Annie had been when she first embarked on her debauched career. James felt a brief pang, an ache of the heart, and decided, despite his journalistic curiosity, to leave her be.
Paulette was perhaps ten minutes more and time passed slowly in that dark back kitchen with only the clatter and thump of the maid’s efforts towards cookery breaking the monotony.
‘Oh, heavens, what are you doing here?’ she cried, standing with her back to door as if she feared Mrs Shaw might rush through at any moment and discover them all.
‘I came to see you, Paulette,’ he said, standing and smiling in what he hoped was the manner of a distant but affectionate relative. ‘For it has been such a long time, has it not?’
She frowned, then caught the tendency of his glance towards the other girl and nodded.
‘Oh yes. A long time. Too long.’
‘And I have important family news which I must impart to you in private, if that can be managed.’
‘Yes, yes. Come into the, uh, the pantry. Excuse us, Bess.’
She led James into a large, cool room lined with shelves and dense with the smells of different foods, like a very small grocers shop. She shooed out a couple of flies and shut the door behind them.
‘What is it?’ she hissed. ‘I wonder what on Earth you might want from me?’
‘Today I paid a visit to the Society for the Improvement of Fallen Girls and Women.’
‘You … why?’
‘I am writing a piece for the newspapers. However, Mrs Edwards is reluctant to allow me to interview any of her … her …’ He was not sure how to put it.
‘Prisoners?’ said Paulette with unexpected and explosive bitterness.
‘You know, I think that might just be the word.’
‘I’ll say it is. Food’s better in prison, though, or so I’m told. And your thoughts are your own.’
‘Whereas at Little Ormond Street …?’
‘Every minute had to be accounted for, from getting up at five to going to bed at nine. When we weren’t working we were praying. We weren’t allowed to even chat to each other, in case we talked about our old ways and were tempted back.’
She shivered, though it wasn’t particularly cold in the pantry, just a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house. It was dark, though, the only light coming from a grille high in the wall.
‘Mrs Edwards runs a very orderly house.’
‘No better’n the workhouse. I wish I’d have gone there instead.’
‘But you have this position now, as a result of your time there.’
‘Yes, for what that’s worth.’
‘You aren’t happy here?’
‘Happy? What’s happy got to do with it? I’m off the streets and I’m earning a wage. That’s about as much as a girl like me can hope for.’
James found her matter-of-fact acceptance of a poor lot in life sobering. He wondered if she was ever tempted to get her ribbons back out and head for the Haymarket.
‘Mrs Shaw takes on staff from that refuge because she knows they will know the ways of the world and will not be too shocked by what they see happening here – that’s what you’ve given me to understand.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Does Mrs Edwards know Mrs Shaw has this in mind?’
The question gave Paulette pause.
‘I shouldn’t think so. No. She couldn’t know it, could she? She don’t approve of, what’s that word the clergy use, fornication. I suppose if she knew it was all going on between ladies she’d be twice as horrified.’
‘You suppose. Do you like Mrs Shaw?’
‘No, Lord, no. Why all these questions about her? You aren’t going to write about her, are you?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘And is that … all … you wanted with me?’
Her look now was unmistakably bold and he could picture her up against a wall in the Strand or sitting on a gin palace stool looking over a garish fan.
Come hither.
He would never see that look on Augusta.
It doesn’t matter.
But he was uncomfortably tempted, and felt sweat break on his brow.
‘I don’t know. Paulette … what do you think of things here?’
‘You want to talk about them upstairs,’ she sighed, rolling her eyes. ‘I’ll have to wait a while longer for someone to whisk me away from all this then.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He gave her a rueful smile.
‘Oh, stop it with your doe eyes. Just ’cos we hardly ever see a nice-looking fella around here don’t mean you can play us all like fiddles.’
‘But I am curious. When did you find out how things were here?’
She folded her arms. ‘Well, let me see. Mrs Shaw did drop a few hints in the cab from the Fallen House. She said, “I require a particular class of girl” or something like that. I asked her what she meant, and she said, “A woman of the world, Paulette, who doesn’t shock easily.” You can imagine, that got me interested. Thought I might be going to a high-society brothel or something and she’d pulled the wool over Mrs E’s eyes. I said, “I ain’t going back to prostituting myself, Mrs Shaw, not for no one.” She took umbrage at that but she still didn’t really explain what she meant. It wasn’t till I had to serve tea to Lady Augusta in her bed the next morning that I realised.’
‘What did you see?’
‘You love the dirty stories, don’t you? I’ve heard about you. I know what they sell in that shop of yours.’
‘Yes, quite. So?’
‘I’m not sure I should tell you. Might get you too excited. Don’t want to find myself ravished here amongst the flour and honey … do I?’ She bit her lip coyly.
Oh, the minx! She was like Annie. Annie. Where was she? The thought of her plight dampened his rising ardour and he was able to hold up his hand.
‘All right, perhaps I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Oh, no, I’ll tell you,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Don’t go. I went in there with the tea tray and, oh my goodness, I dropped it, didn’t I? Cups, saucers, hot tea … scalded me ankle.’
‘What did you see?’
‘I saw Mrs Shaw sitting there on the bed with her feet wide apart and in between them there was Her Ladyship’s stern end, bright red it was, bent right over while her face was right in Mrs S’s bush.’
‘I … see.’ The visual accompaniment to this little vignette imprinted itself powerfully in James’ mind, and once again he was plagued with the surge of lust.
‘No, you don’t. But I did. Shocked, I was. Near fainted, poor modest girl that I am.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’ She winked. ‘Plenty of the girls round my part of Lambeth were up to that caper. Not me, but I’ve seen it. Gents will pay extra for a show like that, which is a bit of luck if you don’t feel up to the other.’
‘I daresay it is. So you knew from that moment that there was a Sapphic attachment between your mistress and her companion?’
‘I’ll say. I caught it, too, for breaking the china.’
‘Caught it?’
‘From Mrs S. She caned me.’
‘She does this to you? And to the other girls in the house?’
Paulette was downcast now, her shoulders hunched.
‘What can we do about it, sir? We don’t like it but—’
‘It isn’t on,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have to take it.’
‘No, but we do.’
‘You’d like it if she left, I assume?’
‘I’d hang out the flags. Oh, don’t tell me you’re trying to get rid of her? Oh my life, you’ll have your work cut out but there ain’t nothing I wouldn’t let you do to me if that day ever came.’
He smiled and patted her cheek, buoyed by the flirtation.
‘I’ll bear it in mind. And now I ought to go or our young friend out there will begin to have suspicions—’
‘Oh.’ She put a hand on his sleeve, suddenly uncharacteristically diffident. ‘Before you go … I don’t like to ask but … it gets so lonely here and it’s such a long time since I felt a man’s arms around me … would you mind?’
‘Not at all.’
He let her step into a tight embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head while she burrowed into him with happy little sighing sounds.
He wished there were more he could do for her, and perhaps there could be. He needed only time. That night, on entering Augusta’s chamber, he did not go to join her in her bed but instead shut the door quietly behind him and waited for her to speak.
‘My love?’ she said tentatively, sitting up and drawing the bedclothes around her.
‘Augusta,’ he said, tightening his grip on the rattan cane he had collected from the schoolroom on his way.
She inhaled, a little fearfully.
‘Why do you call me that, sir? Have I displeased you?’
He walked across the room and back, purely for the effect of stringing out her tension with the measured tread of his boots on the wood.
‘I’m afraid you have,’ he said.
The way she swallowed stirred him more than was convenient, but hang convenience. He took a breath, steadied his head.
‘How have I offended, sir?’ she asked, her voice very small now.
‘You allow Mrs Shaw to beat your servants.’
Augusta clearly had not been expecting a real accusation. Perhaps she had thought he would construct some trumped up charge for her to play along with. But her face flooded scarlet and she slumped, her head on her knees.
‘Oh,’ she whispered.
‘Well?’
‘I have delegated matters of staff discipline to her, yes.’
‘Yet you know her to be a sadist who takes pleasure in inflicting pain. Is this the action of a responsible mistress, Augusta? I am disappointed.’
‘You know the roles of mistress and servant are not clear-cut in this house.’
‘I know who is employer and whom employed. You pay her wages.’
In the silence that followed, James lit a candle. He ought to be able to see what he was doing.
‘Then, yes, I should be held accountable,’ said Augusta at length.
‘You should.’
Her eyes followed the sound of his voice and she raised her head towards him in mute query.
In response, he held out the cane until its slender tip pressed against her cheek.
She gasped and reached up to touch it.
‘Stand,’ he said.
Recoiling from the cane, she cast aside her bedcovers and put her feet on the floor. James helped her up, then, with a hand at her elbow, walked with her to the end of the bed. Releasing her, he placed the end of the cane in the small of her back and pushed it very slightly.
‘There is a footstool directly in front of you. Bend and place your hands upon it.’
She obeyed, her nightgown rustling about her legs. Beneath it, James saw the outline of her twin rounds, parted by a crease. They were well delineated but, all the same, the gown would have to be lifted.
But before driving his point home with the rattan, he would make it verbally.
‘You have permitted Mrs Shaw to exert an undue influence upon you,’ he said. ‘An influence that casts its shadow over the entire household.’
‘I have come to depend upon her.’
‘This is weakness, Augusta.’ He swished the cane for emphasis and was rewarded by a flinch. ‘I understand that she has introduced you to pleasures you had only dreamt of but it does not make her your saviour, nor your mistress in fact. But it was easier for you to let her hold sway. It took the burden of decision-making off your shoulders. Am I right?’
She nodded, those shoulders dolefully low.
‘In giving yourself the luxury of irresponsibility, you have brought unhappiness below stairs, Augusta. You may deserve the full force of the rod, but do you think Paulette does?’
‘N-no, sir.’ Her contrition was genuine, he was sure of it.
‘No, sir. She does not. And yet you …’ He hesitated. He’d been about to say ‘turn a blind eye’. ‘You put your hands over your ears and pretend you don’t hear her cries. Paulette is not like you, Augusta. She does not need to be whipped. But you do. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. I do.’ She let out a breath of something like rapture.
‘Then let us proceed.’
He lifted her gown swiftly to her waist. She was unmarked, not having received any form of severe chastisement for over a week. He liked a blank canvas best of all and took a moment to imagine all the different ways in which he could paint it.
‘One day,’ he said, tapping the cane very gently against her thigh, ‘I should like to birch you. I should take you out and make you gather the rods under my supervision. Perhaps I should thrash you then and there, out in the open. What would you think of that?’
‘I never go out of doors any more. I have never been to the country.’
‘Never?’
He retracted the cane, astonishment diverting him from his disciplinary path.
‘No. I have lived always in London. I used to go to the parks, but it has been some time since I went anywhere at all.’
‘Why?’
‘Mrs Shaw frets that I will become lost.’
‘You are lost,’ he said quietly. ‘Very lost.’
He gripped the cane tighter, recalling his resolution.
‘There is something to be discussed once your correction is complete,’ he said. ‘Now brace yourself, I will give you ten. You will count.’
Each stroke raised a glorious welt, straight and true from the broad centre of her bottom to the crease of her thigh. She was brave under the lash but she could not bear it without some protest, hissing and wailing and stamping her feet, first one then the other, in quick succession.
James revelled in the sensuality of his work, the sound of the air whistling as if in fear of the descending rattan, then the smart crack as it met her skin. Her twisting spine, her bending neck, the weal forming into a firm and constant reminder of its presence. She would sit gingerly for a day or so, and remember what had been done to her at his hand. And, oh, the power vested in that hand!
She counted between gritted teeth.
At nine, she declared that she could not bear it.
‘I wonder if Paulette could,’ he said.
‘No, you are right. I deserve this. Lay on the last stroke.’
‘I will make it the hardest.’
He did so, wincing himself as the rod swiped across her bottom, fascinated at Augusta’s capacity for absorbing and embracing the pain.
She burst into tears and sobbed out the ten.
He supported her trembling body straight away, holding her against him, whispering hushes into her hair.
‘I had not realised,’ she said, still weeping, ‘that the servants suffered. I had not given them a thought. I am a poor kind of mistress.’
‘No, you are not. You have been, but no longer, I trust?’
‘No longer.’
‘The lesson is well learned.’ He kissed the tears from her face. ‘And now I cannot be stern with you, as I intended, and make you take your place in the corner. Come and lie on the bed. On your stomach, I think.’
He helped her climb back on to her bed and lie, gown still raised above her striped rear, with her face in the pillows while he rubbed at her shoulders and neck.
Her residual hiccupy sobs soon relaxed into sighs.
‘You care for me so well,’ she whispered. ‘Better than Mrs Shaw.’
Something like fear stilled his hands. Perhaps he should end this. Was it not kinder, after all, to end it now? Yet how could he? How could he leave her? If his body did, his mind and heart would not follow. There was a danger here that he could not quite put his finger on, but of an acuity he had not fully perceived until now.
‘I will fetch some salve,’ he said.
‘There is no need—’
But he was on his way to the medicine cabinet before she could finish. He needed some cool air, something to still his racing thoughts.
He went into the schoolroom and threw up the sash, breathing in great lungfuls of the mild early-summer night. The heat of the day had caused the rubbish in the mews and the kitchen yards to smell rather high. In winter, it would be smoke. One simply exchanged one miasma for another in this town.
He thought of Annie, behind a heavy door in the Lock Hospital. She would think she’d been abandoned. He thought also of another girl, one long absent from his life, of where she might be and what doing and with whom.
But to think of that was useless.
Here he had, in this very house, a lovely and willing woman who adored him, because of his peculiarities in taste rather than despite them. She had asked him here as an arrangement of sorts, but it seemed much more than that now.
Yet it was an impossible situation. There was no question of a more permanent attachment and the spectre of Mrs Shaw loomed above them, no matter how much closer they moved to each other. They deceived themselves if they thought this could ever last. He deceived himself. And she must know it …
He put the window back down and went to the medicine cabinet, selecting the required unguent from its ranks of bottles and jars.
Take your pleasure with her and leave. Do not expect more.
In the bedroom, Augusta lay so quiet and motionless that he thought she might have fallen asleep. When he sat on the edge of the bed, she yawned.
‘I thought you had gone,’ she said, somewhat piteously. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you left me like this.’
He took the lid off the jar and dipped his fingers into cool cream, which he rubbed carefully into the uppermost welt, regardless of her hiss and wriggle.
‘When Mrs Shaw returns,’ she said, ‘she will ask me how I came by these marks.’
‘And what shall you tell her?’
‘Oh, she will guess correctly before I say a word, I’m sure.’
He let his slippery finger glide along the stripes, while the cream sank into each hot, hard line.
‘I think she will punish me. She may forbid you from visiting.’
‘She cannot forbid me anything. She is not my mistress. Nor is she yours. If you wish for me to visit, then I will visit.’
He watched the shift of her shoulders as his greased fingers moved lower. More and more cream he applied, until it was thick and shiny on her skin, over the rounds of her buttocks and on the tops of her thighs.
She made no resistance when he dipped his hand between them, indeed, she parted her legs in welcome. He slicked the tender skin until it shone, but took no notice of her subtle attempts to divert his fingers to her nether lips.
He stopped just short each time, his knuckles whispering against the tendrils of wiry hair, but refusing their damp invitation.
When she moaned and pushed her bottom up, he laughed and withdrew his hand entirely.
‘Have you earned such reward, pet?’ he teased.
She muffled her frustration into the pillow.
‘I think not, heedless one,’ he whispered. ‘But I can show you another way.’
And now he dipped each finger, and his thumb too, into the cream and inserted his hand between her still-burning cheeks, plumbing that mysterious depth she had not yet yielded him.
‘Oh.’ Her little quiver of surprise and alarm did nothing to relieve the stiffness in his trousers. He had written of this act so many times that it felt infinitely familiar to him. But he had never done it. No woman had ever granted him that licence.
Would she really …? Could he be close to this?
He put a hand between her shoulder blades and continued his probings, shallowly at first, until she seemed to unbend and breathe again more easily, more heavily.
‘I have told you before,’ he said, ‘that I want to be master of every part of you. Do you recall?’
His forefinger reached the tight pucker it sought and held itself, very gently but with confident intent, against it.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, so quietly and meekly that he almost missed the words.
She was going to let him. He bit down on his lip, hard. He had to keep his head.
‘And do you accept that this will mean my taking you, here.’ He pushed, as against a button, and felt her clench tight.
‘Can it be done?’ she asked, fearful.
‘It can, of course, be done. I gather you may find it uncomfortable, but what’s a little discomfort after a sound thrashing?’
She kicked her feet at that, in a helpless bid to protest.
‘I’m sorry. That sounded unsympathetic. But you will take what I give you, and you will be grateful for it.’
She exhaled and clawed at the sheets. That had been the right thing to say.
‘I will prepare you thoroughly,’ he promised, slightly regretting the necessity. He would be more than happy to take her as she was. But the ground must first be laid. ‘Like … so.’
He pushed again with his forefinger and she flinched and thrashed.
‘No,’ he said, holding her more firmly and straddling her legs so that they could no longer kick. ‘That is not the way it is done, pet. You must unclench and embrace the intrusion. It is much easier.’
Or so my characters always tell the women they seduce. But is it?
‘Now lie still,’ he whispered. He dug down. The tough little ring that had seemed so determined never to open for him yielded a mite.
‘Oh, it is too hard,’ wailed Augusta. ‘My body does not do as it is bidden. It is not natural.’
‘That is what makes it such a prized gift,’ said James. ‘That is what makes it the most precious surrender I could ever desire.’
His words seemed to stir Augusta to greater determination and she pushed her bottom up a little, signifying that she was open to him and his will, whatever it might require of her.
‘For you,’ she said under her breath. ‘No other.’
He forged forwards and his finger popped through that barrier with surprising ease, the cream having its hoped-for effect. Now he was held tight in that dark place, having breached it walls, he was not sure what to do next. He wriggled his finger, exploring the stretch and texture of its environs. Although narrower than her other passage, it was of a similar feel. It would grip him so beautifully.
‘Well,’ he said, twisting himself in to the knuckle. ‘What now, my pet? You have my finger in a very private place, do you not? What does it feel like?’
‘I am a most abandoned creature,’ she moaned.
‘Oh, you are.’ He twisted it again. ‘Does it not hurt?’
‘No, there is no pain as such. It is strange and not entirely comfortable but … as you wish it … I must accept it … I will accept it all …’ The struggle with her breath was due to the insertion of a second finger.
James wondered at the capacity for enlargement such a tiny aperture possessed. Surely then it was possible.
‘And now there is some little pain,’ she said. ‘I am not constituted … for such … activity …’
‘Remain calm,’ he said, far from calm himself but grateful now for his capacity to seem steady and well ordered when his blood and other parts were raging. ‘Open to me. Submit to me.’
Here was where the test would lie.
If she protested once more of pain or fear or any other unpleasant condition of mind, he would stop and leave the subject for another time.
But if she did not …
‘Open,’ he repeated, his voice now very low and supernaturally calm. ‘To me.’
She breathed a sigh and he felt her shoulder blades loosen beneath his hand.
Yes, this could be done. He scissored his fingers as wide as he could and a mild whimper was her only plaint.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘I shall remove these fingers and replace them. You should, I think, kneel up … yes.’
She obeyed straight away.
He watched her maintain that position while he stood and undressed, as quickly as he could to placate a fear that she might change her mind while he was not touching her.
Once naked, he loaded his fingers once more with cream and added to the superabundance already in evidence between her scorched cheeks. For additional ease of transit, he rubbed some also along the length of his erect member, trying not to be too enthusiastic in his manipulations lest he should overstimulate himself and put a premature end to this adventure.
He took a hold of her hips, deliberately firm, as much to convince himself that this would be well as to persuade her. She could not have confidence in him if he had none in himself.
He had written this scene a dozen times.
Be master of yourself.
He knelt behind her and let his prick slide into the well-oiled cleft, feeling its way until it found that little knot his fingers had already attended to.
‘Mine,’ he said, prodding it with his tip. ‘Mine for the taking. Tell me so, pet.’
‘Yours for the taking,’ she said, but he could hear the nervousness behind the assertion.
‘You must keep that in the forefront of your mind,’ he said.
He moved his thumbs to the centre of her buttocks and used them to draw her cheeks wide, granting him greater ease of access.
He was primed and ready for the push. All it would take was a little nerve. A little faith that he would not damage or overset her. But was he too cruel?
She wriggled, very slightly, but the movement shifted his alignment so that it was perfect. Her assistance gave him heart.
And now, should he make one bold stroke forward, or should it be a slow, creeping sort of thing? Absurdly, Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade popped into his head and he had to stifle a laugh. The valley of death indeed.
Do or die, boy.
He pushed.
She gasped and snuffled and jolted under his hands, but she did not tell him to stop.
Her clamp around him was so gloriously tight. It was the most inexpressibly pleasurable feeling, something he had tried to imagine for so long and now he was doing it, and it was so much better.
‘Oh Lord.’ The words escaped him, strained and quivery.
Augusta pushed back on him, taking that first inch magnificently.
Looking down, he was lightheaded at the sight of his fleshy staff disappearing, slowly and inexorably, into that ever-stretching chamber.
As he reached the halfway point, she twitched violently and showed some signs of distress. He held himself still and asked her, firmly, what was amiss.
‘It hurts now, oh, it is too big.’
He had known this point would be reached, though, and he knew it could be overcome.
‘Push back on me, pet, and I will take you past this. It is but momentary.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You can. You will.’
She did.
The moment of her absolute possession was upon him and he felt he ought to be experiencing some momentous mark of the occasion, like a vision or the sound of angel voices. But no, it was sufficient in itself that he should be in this position, feeling this velvet clamp on his manhood while his testicles rested against the curve of her bottom. Here was the peak of his mountainous sexual ambition. He must plant his flag in it.
‘You know now,’ he whispered, ‘that you are mastered.’
‘Yes, sir.’ She sounded far away, somewhere in a dream.
He put his hands over her breasts, holding them firmly.
‘Wherever you are and whatever you do, you can never forget this moment and what has been done to you.’
‘I know,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, how I know it. I never wish to forget it.’
‘Tell me how it is for you.’
‘It is both uncomfortable and painful and yet I treasure the sensation more than anything. Especially with the sting of the rod still upon my cheeks. Whatever you chose to do to me … whatever … I could never deny you. I am yours.’
He buried his mouth in the tender part of her neck, sucking lusciously. Take my mark. When Mrs Shaw saw it, and the stripes of the cane, and glory knew what else, oh, what sweet uproar there would be.
My message to you, madam. My message to you upon Augusta’s buttocks and her neck and wherever else I may choose to print it. Read it. Take note of it. She is mine now.
His blood surging with this fighting spirit, he commenced the business of using her in earnest. His strokes were slow and gentle to begin with, accustoming her to this strange new brand of pleasuring, until her measure of stretch was sufficient to let him abandon some of his caution and take a more vigorous tack.
She made a deal of noise, the vocalisations similar to those she uttered under the lash. This fired him even more, but at the same time he wondered if she could derive pleasure from what he did. Would she reach her crisis this way? It was surely not nature’s way.
Nature seemed to place no such obstacles in the path of his own heightening excitement, however. This was all too exquisite and could not be held back for long.
The consciousness of what he did, coupled with the unfamiliar and delightful tightness and Augusta’s perfect acquiescence brought him all too quickly to completion.
How sweet to be able to fill her with his seed and know that no unwanted consequence would be borne nine months hence. He held Augusta tight around her middle and thrust hard until every last drop was spilled, filling her to the brim.
‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Stay within me. As long as you can.’
She prised his hand from her breast and moved it lower, across her belly and down.
Oh, so the erotic satisfaction of this act was not his alone. She was wet below and the bud of flesh was beautifully fat.
‘You are a wicked creature,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘I have half a mind to refuse you. But such pleasure … it has mellowed me.’
He rubbed and rubbed at her, pleased at the way his cockstand maintained itself for longer than he would have expected. When she reached her peak, he wanted her to be fully sensible of the length and width of him inside her.
It did not take long to carry her to the edge and when she tipped over it, her exclamations were so passionate and so loud that he feared the servants might hear.
He put a hand swiftly over her mouth and let her pour her raptures into his palm, feeling the honeyed heat of her coat his other, lower-placed fingers.
Now, only now, could he slowly withdraw his semi-tumescent member.
She whined a little as he pulled out, finding it more uncomfortable than the seating, which he had not expected. Indeed, she seemed to clench at him, trying to hold him inside her. A swift unsheathing foiled her in this and he held her hips for a moment, preventing her from falling flat on to the bed.
He wanted to see the void he had inhabited. He particularly wanted to see it glisten and drip with his seed, while the livid streaks of the cane framed it on either side. That called for a daguerreotype, if only he had the equipment to hand.
He took it in, committing its particular singularities to memory, for a heartfelt moment. Then he released her and let her lie on her stomach – her only alternative, after what he had dealt her.
When he lay beside her and stroked her cheek, he found that it was wet.
‘You are weeping. Pet, why do you weep? Are you hurt – beyond that which is our custom, I mean to say.’
‘I am more than hurt. I am slain.’
‘Augusta.’ His reproach was gentle and he leant over to kiss her where the salt drops lay.
‘How can I not love you? How can I ever live without you?’
‘Perhaps you will not have to.’
‘How can it be? How? Kinder to me by far if you had never come and I had never known you.’
‘Do not say so.’
‘No, you will not agree, for you have a lovely arrangement, don’t you? A weekly spree with no need to fear that you will be held to any account.’
‘Augusta, you misjudge me.’
‘It is what Mrs Shaw says. She is always right about men. Always.’
‘She is not right about this man. She is quite wrong.’
‘Then prove her so.’
James laid his hand upon her neck and held it between finger and thumb.
‘How?’
‘Be my lover in truth. Not merely twice a week.’
‘What do you mean? What do you want of me?’
She was quiet awhile.
‘No,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps I should not ask it of you. Perhaps I do not dare. For if you say no … then what …?’
‘Augusta, if what you want is within my power, then …’
She drew a deep breath before speaking more.
‘I shall start with an attainable goal. That is sensible, after all. I should like you to take me to the Cremorne Gardens.’
‘The Cremorne?’
‘Yes, that is what I said.’
‘I don’t care for your tone but I shall let it pass this once.’
‘I am very nervous.’
‘I grant you that. Why do you want to go there? Most of its amusements will be sadly lost on you, my love.’
‘Oh, I know I won’t see the lamps or the fireworks. But there is music, isn’t there? And dancing. I should so like to dance with you.’
‘I am rarely called upon to dance. I’m not sure I remember the last occasion.’
‘Come down to the ballroom! We will waltz.’
‘Pet, you are a little feverish, I think …’
‘No, I am quite well! Is it such an outlandish request?’
James lifted his hand from her and sat straight, clearing his thoughts.
No, he supposed it was not. And Augusta had spent too long sequestered. A small expedition might do her constitution the world of good.
‘You should take some air outside these walls,’ he conceded.
‘Yes, air, I want to breathe air. I want to smell things, sweet or rank, I don’t care which. I want to feel the bodies of strangers pressed against mine. I want ladies skirts to brush my hem and gentlemen’s elbows to jab my ribs. And I want to hear their voices – all those conversations, all those lives, everything I’ve been kept away from. Just for one night, dearest James. I may call you James, mayn’t I?’
It seemed a momentous permission to grant.
‘It is my name.’
‘I have always called you sir before.’
‘I know.’
‘Then you do not mind?’
‘You complicate my life, Augusta. I cannot say I don’t mind it. But there is nothing I can do to simplify our circumstances.’
‘You sound cross.’
‘I am serious, that is all. I cannot untangle the threads.’
‘Then do not try. Take me to the ballroom. Dance with me.’
He stood and took her hand, drawing her up on her knees then to her feet.
‘Aren’t you a little stiff for dancing?’ he teased, seeing how the recent caning affected her gait.
‘I do not mind. I shall dance through the sting and the pleasure of being in your arms will be all the keener for it.’
‘Do not expect great expertise. I think yours may be the first ballroom I have entered.’
‘You must have danced before?’
‘At places like Cremorne and the Argyll Rooms. Nowhere you might consider respectable.’
‘Oh, I have heard of the Argyll Rooms. Are they not terribly louche?’
‘Rather.’
They had reached the foot of the stairs now.
Ahead of them, the gilt-edged double doors to the ballroom stood, as if inviting James on.
‘We shall have no music,’ he said, approaching them.
‘We shall hear it in our heads.’
James doubted it, but he found, once he had Augusta in a dancer’s hold and cast off with his right foot, that she was right. There was music in his head, some Viennese waltz he had heard at the Argyll Rooms, and its buoyant rhythm kept him in step as he whirled Augusta around the perimeter of the darkened room.
She melted in his arms, leaning back as if in a swoon, but her feet kept pace with his, belying her appearance. Upon her face, a smile of ecstasy more profound than he had ever seen during the throes of passion. She seemed to be approaching the pleasures of life in a reverse fashion, he thought. While most people progressed from childhood games to dancing, or gaming, or flirtation and only then negotiated the heady delights of physical love, she had taken a backwards route. Did this mean that she found more exquisite satisfaction in the scent of roses on a summer night than in anything he did to her?
Strange, if so, but not altogether beyond comprehension.
He saw, all at once, how pitifully neglected she had been and anger kindled in his breast.
The music in his head came to an abrupt halt, violins suspended in mid-phrase, and he pulled up sharp, so that she cannoned into his chest, laughing great gasps into his face.
‘Is the waltz over so soon?’ she exclaimed.
‘For tonight,’ he said. ‘But at Cremorne, we will waltz all night.’
‘Oh, I look forward to it so!’
‘You should sleep. You will over-exert yourself. Come.’
She followed him, and when they were in bed, she curled into his side, happily.
‘You care for me so well,’ she whispered.
‘It is time somebody did,’ he replied.