The House of Elyot

“I can’t believe as that can be real, Miss. Surely it must be a hoax?”

“Oh, Molly,” scoffed Florence, “far superior intellects to yours have proven them genuine dinosaur skeletons. If you wish to go and tell the distinguished Professors that they are wrong and a skivvy is right, then you have my blessing to do so.”

Molly pinched her lips and said nothing. Florence had a cruel tongue on her sometimes; it came of being a spoilt madam, she supposed. She had even tentatively suggested as much to Sir Rupert during one of their trysts but he had frowned and rejected the accusation.

“Young ladies are precious things,” he had told her, his hand sliding slyly down past the elastic of her bloomers. “We must treat them as such. Florence has been brought up to expect the very best, and by God, she shall have it. Please excuse my blasphemous language. Oh Molly, what a tight little cunny you have.”

She shook the disquieting memory from her head, concentrating instead on the icthyosaur skull on the plinth before her. Florence could wait for her illicit friends in silence then.

This arrangement suited Florence very well. Her pulse was galloping and she was so nervous she could barely focus on any of the exhibits in the echoing Hall, let alone discuss them with the semblance of erudition. She took yet another turn around the frigid chamber, fists clenched fiercely until she heard skirts swishing towards her and the bell-like voice of her old friend cutting through the rarefied air.

“Flo! How wonderful that you could make it. I have been longing to see you.”

“Jess! How have you been? I have been thinking of you every day.”

The two girls embraced, sizing each other up as they did so. Florence noted that Jessie was most unconventionally dressed again, in some kind of sweeping purple velvet thing underneath several fringed shawls. She looked rather gipsyish and mystical, almost as if she should have a crystal ball stowed away somewhere under all the layers. Jessie, for her part, observed that Florence seemed to have taken even more care than usual with her appearance; her hair was ringletted within an inch of its life and she had apparently relieved the town of Cologne of its entire supply of eau. And furthermore, she was trembling slightly, her proferred cheek icy cold.

“You seem very nervous,” commented Jessie. “Come and sit down.”

They took a viewing bench before an enormous replica of a tyrannosaurus, leaving Molly to wander blithely around the room alone.

“Jessie, will he come?”

“Oh, Florence. Has he captured your heart so quickly?”

Florence looked away. “Of course not. But I do enjoy our…literary discussions.”

“My love, you have met him twice, and one meeting was much too brief even for discussion of the weather, let alone the great works of the English language. He is a handsome and charming young man; I believe he has turned your head.”

“Oh, Jessie…please don’t tease me.” Florence’s voice sounded thick, as if tears were not far away, so her friend allowed the subject to drop.

“Flo, we’re planning a marvellous party for next month. I do hope you’ll be able to come.”

She stared at Jessie vividly. “Is it in the daytime?” she asked tentatively.

“Well…no. It’s an evening party; it will probably go on all night. Do you remember Roland, the young musician you met at Swanson’s?”

Florence nodded, a vague memory of a reed-like dark-haired boy blurring in her memory, once she had squeezed past the enormous totemic presence of Alex there.

“The premiere of his cello concerto is to take place at the new Royal Albert Hall on the sixth. There will be a huge party at Swanson’s to celebrate. Everyone will be there; it will probably go on until dawn. I’m sure Alex would love you to come. He is the host, after all.”

Florence caught her breath. More than anything in the whole world, it was now imperative that she should go to this party. If she had to knot her bedsheets together and climb out of her second floor window, she would be there.

“Oh, if I can be there, Jess, I will, I swear. Papa seems distracted these days; it is a little easier to slip out of the house without his noticing. I’m sure I will soon run out of pretty trinkets to bribe our coachman with though.” She giggled, the life returning to her pale face.

“That’s the spirit, Flo! Freedom, pleasure and love!”

“Freedom, pleasure and love,” echoed Florence faintly, then her heart leapt and a filter of explosive colour seemed to cross her eyes as they processed the entrance of Alex into the chamber. For a moment, he stood beneath the arch, peering around, noticing Molly first and smiling at her before turning to the two confederates and strolling languidly over.

“Ladies,” he opened, making a deep and formal bow. “What an unexpected delight to find you here.”

Jess snorted. “Unexpected my eye,” she mocked.

Alex raised an eyebrow at her. “Have you seen the pterodactyl’s teeth, Jess? They are said to be quite fascinating, and enormously sharp.”

She humphed and took the hint, swishing off over to Molly.

Alex took her place on the bench, turning to face Florence, who had lost the power of speech and was staring furiously down at her lace-edged handkerchief, fiddling with its border.

“Vyvyan should be here to paint this,” he said softly. “Such life amidst these old dead carcasses – beauty amid the beasts.”

Florence made a sound that was half-laugh, half-hysterical blurt.

“Sweet Flossie, are you afraid of me? Can you not look at me? Come…look at me.”

Florence was genuinely concerned that she might be blinded by the glaring white light of his presence; the preceding days had seen her build her image of him higher and higher until he seemed like an insurmountable peak of brilliant perfection, surely too divine to be taken in by a dullard like her. She had pestered Molly to buy her a volume of his poetry from the booksellers, and had sighed with awe on reading his voluptuous verse. Alexander Winterton, the author of Villanelles in Violet, a genius of his time. And yet she still knew so little about him on a practical level. Was it enough to know the secrets of his soul, through his golden words?

She felt his fingers lightly on her chin, pulling her face up and towards him.

“But you aren’t pleased to see me?” he lamented. “I have dreamed of this, and now you are going to send me away?”

“No,” stammered Florence. “Please don’t go. I am pleased to see you. I…hardly know how to act…I have never…”

“I understand,” he murmured. “You have never loved before?”

She shook her head, unable to say the biggest of words.

“Nor I,” he assured her, which brought speech stumbling to her lips.

“But your poems…the lady in My Heart is Dry…?”

Alex laughed delightedly. “You have read my poems? Oh, Flossie, now I am mortified. What a foolish milksop you must think me. Ah, well, I will not deny that I have had boyish infatuations. But you, Florence, you are not one of them.”

“How can you say this? You hardly know me at all.”

Alex took one of Florence’s white-gloved hands in his, stroking the flap until his thumb burrowed underneath to her sensitive wrist.

“Love does not require introductions, Flossie. Love does not sit making smalltalk over a glass of sherry, or ask for details of family background and annual income. Love enters like a brigand and throws you over its shoulder, robbing you of your mind and your manners. It takes possession of you, it bends you to its will. It is an unprincipled blackguard, Flossie, and it will have its way.”

Flossie stared at him open-mouthed, flushed at his passionately spoken words and the exquisite touch of his skin on her wrist. The blood was coursing through her, rushing to her head, draining from her face…oh…she was going to…

“Flossie! Angel!” Alex fell to his knees, panicking as his inamorata slid to the floor in a dead faint.

Jessie and Molly rushed over to lend their assistance.

“Here, let me unlace her corset,” offered Molly. “She always makes me pull those stays far too tight, especially today. Sir, if you wouldn’t mind leaving the room for a moment…”

Alex wandered off to the neighbouring gallery while Jessie fetched a screen to conceal the ailing young lady.

“There is sal volatile in her reticule,” Molly advised, working hard on pulling the ribbons through the eyelets in the whaleboned satin beneath Florence’s dress.

Jess rummaged through the little bag, eventually finding the small bottle of smelling salts Molly had mentioned.

“What on earth can Alex have said to bring this on?” she wondered aloud.

“He is a very fine gentleman, ain’t he,” said Molly wistfully. “So kind. And so handsome.”

“Careful, Molly, or you’ll be another slave to his charms,” said Jessie drily.

“Well, I wouldn’t be the only one, would I?” said Molly, with a significant upward flicker of her brown eyes.

Jessie stared, stony-faced. “He is very popular,” she said blandly.

Molly returned to her task of freeing Florence’s constricted ribs from imprisonment, blushing furiously. Jessie wafted the unstoppered vial beneath her childhood friend’s delicate nostrils, waiting for the breath to become less shallow and the peaches return to her cheeks.

Eventually Florence’s eyes burst open and she moaned with mortification at finding herself beached on the cold tiled floor with her gown unbuttoned at the back and her corset quite undone.

“Are you all right, Miss?” asked Molly tentatively. “You fainted.”

“No, oh no, where is Alex? Has he gone?”

“He is just outside, Flo, do you want me to bring him in?” offered Jess.

“Oh no! How can I face him now? Oh dear, oh dear, he must think me quite ridiculous! Please don’t let him come back!”

Jess stroked Florence’s ringlets. “Dearest, he will be devastated. You know how much he has wanted to see you.”

“It is impossible! He cannot! You must send him away! Molly, go and tell him so. Oh!” She placed her hand on Molly’s black-clad arm, arresting her flight. “But tell him I do want to come to his party. And to please not think ill of me.”

Jessie helped Florence to recover herself while Molly rushed out to the botanical gallery, where Alex was musing on the life cycle of the acanthus.

“Molly,” he hailed her. “How is she? I am afraid I have said something to offend her!”

“Oh, she will be well,” said Molly, lowering her eyes shyly to the level of the exhibit. “She is very embarrassed, though, at fainting in your presence. She does not want you to stay.”

“Oh!” Alex exclaimed in disappointment. “But when shall I see her?”

“She says she will come to your party next month.”

“But that is weeks away! I must see her before then.”

“I am afraid we are all going away to the country for a short visit. We will not be back until the end of the month.”

“Where? Where will you be?”

“At Lord Hunter-Fox’s residence. Fawkelands; do you know it?”

“Yes,” said Alex slowly. “I know it. Thank you, Molly. You have been a great help.”

He bent to give her hand an impetuous kiss before striding away towards the exit. Molly tittered and held her hand against her breast for a moment or two, before returning to assist her mistress.

“May I take your cloak, Madam?”

For a moment, Molly failed to realise that the obsequious uniformed man to her right was addressing her. ‘Madam?’ She was Miss at best, and more usually ‘Oi, you, girl’.

But then, so caught up was she in the pleasure of masquerade that she hardly took in the surrounding scenes until Sir Rupert extended the crook of his arm once more for her to take, drawing her into the red and gold room with its hum of conversation and the constant clink-clink-clink of coins tossed on to green baize.

Knots of finely-dressed gentlemen huddled around tables, engrossed in games of cards or dice, while tight-bodiced, feather-coiffed ladies fawned at their sides, very clearly a few degrees shy of respectable but none the less glamorous for that.

A gentleman played popular tunes on the piano in the corner while other low-decolletaged women floated about the room with silver salvers of champagne glasses. In darkened booths at the back of the room, private conversations and flirtations were taking place among people whose silhouettes were only just discernable.

Molly’s eye moved away from them and up towards a huge and ornate golden chandelier that bathed shimmering light over the scene. She was used to the opulence of the Smythson home, but she still never failed to be impressed by magnificent surroundings, and she turned to Sir Rupert and beamed excitedly.

“Oh, Sir, what a fine place this is!”

“Hush, Molly, you must call me ‘darling’ while we are here – no standing on ceremony, dear girl. All who patronise this establishment understand the virtue of discretion.”

“Then they will think I’m….your wife?” Molly’s incredulous tone drew a chuckle from her titled lover.

“Oh, I don’t think the people here labour under many illusions, Molly. But they all have exquisite manners and would not dream of voicing any suspicions in the open.”

“Oh.” Molly thought this through, finally realising that her status as Sir Rupert’s mistress would be tacitly understood but never mentioned.

Sir Rupert took a glass of champagne for her and ordered himself a vermouth cocktail before escorting the saucer-eyed servant girl over to one of the more popular tables. Molly had never before seen this manner of game – the men placed coloured discs on a numbered grid before a wheel was set spinning and a ball thrown on to the whirligig, jumping and dancing between the ridged partitions until it slowed and stopped, to the accompaniment of elated shouts or despairing groans.

She watched it curiously for a few minutes, enjoying the fizz of the champagne but noting with a hint of alarm that the ball never seemed to land where Sir Rupert wished it to. Then her attention wandered across the room, back to the shadowy booths, wherein sat mysterious personages….oh. Crossing the room purposefully towards one of the unoccupied sanctuaries were two familiar figures. One was that Jessie’s fella – the painter – such a distinctive man, with his hair so long he had tied it in a black ribbon. With him was Florence’s dreamboat, the Greek Godlike Alex. What were they doing here?

Molly touched Sir Rupert’s elbow. “Begging your pardon, S – darling, I need to powder my nose.”

Sir Rupert waved an impatient hand at her without moving his demented gaze from the roulette wheel, and Molly slipped away, concealing herself behind a Chinese silk screen in the corner of the room, close to where the two young men had taken their seats.

“The strongest liquor you have,” Vyvyan was saying to the waitress who hovered close to them. “I have need of fortification tonight.”

“A whiskey for him and a red wine for me,” clarified Alex, and the waitress swanned away. “Seriously, Stanford, don’t you think you are taking this a little too much to heart?”

“You didn’t see it,” moaned Vyvyan. “It’s not like Jessie to…do that kind of thing. Yes, she is a hedonist and a sensualist, but only among friends, Alex, you know that. She told me so many times that she only intended to sell her smile and her company, but if you’d seen the look on her face…” Vyvyan paused to shudder. “It was the face of a woman who had sold her soul.”

Alex’s voice cut in, low and assured. “Oh, that’s very poetic, Vyvyan, but shouldn’t you remind yourself why she is doing this. Every farthing she makes from this enterprise is for you – to support you, to keep the fire burning in your grate and the inspiration flowing from your brush. She loves you, Vyvyan, and everything she does is for love of you.”

There was a lull in conversation while the drinks were delivered, and then Vyvyan spoke again, in a broken tone. “You didn’t see her, Alex. If you’d seen her….”

Alex heaved a sigh. “You have had an unpleasant shock; you will recover. Do not go too hard on Jessie. But who is the man concerned? Did he give her a name.”

“Oh yes, he gave her a name,” said Vyvyan, now querulous and spoiling for a fight. “Hi, girl, another whiskey here! But the name was not his. He works on behalf of an Archduke Heinz-Werner from some tinpot Prussian fiefdom. Have you heard of him?”

“Heinz-Werner,” said Alex thoughtfully. “Lower Teutonia, I think.”

“Mmm, yes, I think so. Apparently the exalted Archduke himself merely requires Jessie’s company, but his emissary took it upon himself to…to…sample the goods.” Vyvyan spat out the last words, then took up the glass that had been refilled.

“So the man concerned was a foreigner? Well, you know, perhaps its some filthy germanic custom…”

“No, no,” blurted Vyvyan. “Now you’ve mentioned it, that’s a rather rum thing. He didn’t sound in the least German. He sounded very English.”

“Oh.” Alex absorbed this piece of information before casually remarking, “Jessie’s a spirited girl; if she’s as tigerish in life as she is in bed, she’ll have Heinz-Werner eating out of her hand…what was that?”

It was this sentence that had caused Molly to drop her champagne glass; its tinkling shatter was plainly audible to the young men in the booth, even the by now rather befuddled Vyvyan.

Alex left him to embark on his third double Scotch and leapt up, peering around the screen to find a very abashed and red-faced Molly wringing her hands there.

“Molly? It is Molly, isn’t it? What on earth are you doing here?”

Molly scarcely knew where to look; she was filled with confusion. Could she admit to Alex that she was here with his flame’s father? But if he was sleeping with Jessie, what was he doing with Florence? Should she be angry with him, friendly with him, afraid of him? It was all to much to consider at once.

Alex grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the booth, where Vyvyan was slumped, head on arm, moaning indistinctly into his shirtsleeve.

“Molly, I don’t know what you’ve heard or why you’re here but…I must ask you not to tell Florence anything.”

“Why not? She is my friend. Why would I not tell her such a very important thing?”

“Ah, Molly, but it is not important, not at all. Jessie and I have had a friendly arrangement in the past, but you must understand that my intentions towards Florence are entirely serious. And honourable. Do you believe me?”

Alex’s earnest agitation struck Molly as sincere. She nodded, her brown eyes huge.

“I hope I can trust you, Molly,” he said. “Let me get you a fresh glass of champagne.” He hailed a waitress and replaced Molly’s drink. “Molly, I am a young man about town, and sometimes I have behaved in ways that might shock you. They would certainly shock Florence, I imagine. But I am not a bad person, and now that I have met your mistress, I have resolved to change my ways. I am a reformed character. I mean to make myself worthy of her, Molly. You would not dash a man’s hopes, would you? I sense that you are a kind and gentle girl, Molly. Am I right?”

Molly, still blushing furiously, simpered into the champagne bubbles.

“I hope you mean it, Sir,” she said softly. “Miss Florence’s heart would break if you was toying with her.”

He smiled, a row of perfectly even white teeth dazzling her with their uncommon uniformity.

“I shall make her my wife before the year is out, Molly. But you must swear that you will not speak a word of this to her. We have plans to meet tomorrow and I would prefer that she heard it from me!”

Molly was stunned. Why, they had met twice – could Alex really be considering marriage? Well, he was a poet, she supposed, and they were all for that wild love-at-first-sight malarkey. Still, she could not help feeling a tiny bit envious of Florence, to have such a handsome and passionate man at her feet.

“So then, Molly. May I ask what a sweet young thing like you is doing in a….” he lowered his voice to a whisper, blue eyes twinkling, “…gambling den?”

“Oh…well…I, er…I ought to get back to my…friend, begging your pardon.”

Alex homed in on Molly’s discomfiture, following the line of her anxious eyesight to rest on the somewhat dejected figure of Sir Rupert Smythson.

“And is your friend the gentleman over there with the fine waxed moustache?”

Molly was silent, in an agony of shame.

“Molly, surely he is Sir Rupert? Florence’s father?”

“I’ll bid you goodnight, Sir…” Molly made to rise, but Alex halted her, closing her forearm in one strong hand.

“Just a minute, sweetness. Don’t look so frightened. There, now. I mean you no harm. Sit down.”

She sat back down, hiding her face in her hands to conceal the unwanted beginnings of tears in her eyes.

“Molly, Molly.” Alex’s voice was gentle, if a little cajoling. “I fear for you, dear girl. Smythson is a rat; he will let you down. He doesn’t deserve you. Please find yourself a new place, Molly, before he gets the opportunity.”

Molly looked up, her face damp and stunned. “You know him?”

“Most people in London at least know of him,” averred Alex. “A gambling womaniser, Molly. A weak and foolish man who would be in the gutter without the patronage he has benefited from. Find yourself a good, honest man, Molly, and escape his clutches as soon as you can.” Alex reached over, brushed a stray lock of hair from her brow and she suddenly, instinctively grasped his wrist and held on to it as if it were floating debris on a treacherous sea.

“Don’t let him ruin you,” whispered Alex, before unclasping her and watching her scurry back to her illicit lover.

*

“Oh, you’re back,” said Sir Rupert vaguely, his brow furrowed and one eye twitching slightly. “I’m down, Molly. A long way down. I have no more left to wager.”

“Should we go?” she asked shyly, needing to get to bed to turn over that extraordinary conversation in her head.

“Go? Gad, no. It’s not yet midnight. Come over to one of the booths and sit on my knee, eh? I have need of a sweet pair of lips to rest my mind. And yours are the very sweetest I know.”

The compliment knocked the rebellious wind from Molly’s sails and she tripped obediently after the morally bankrupt baronet for a little slap and tickle in the dark.

It was not merely the dagger-sharp frost of the night that pierced Jessie’s skin with coldness on the following Wednesday evening.

A chilling anticipation seemed to whiten the air around her in the Swanson’s attic room. She had never met a ‘gentleman caller’ in a bedchamber before, and even before he had arrived, she was sensible of a jarring impropriety. Thus far, she had not had to do much more than share a meal or a box at the theatre, attend a few parties. There had been some optimistic groping hands in carriages, but nothing she could not handle with a tinkling laugh and a swat of her fan.

But he had promised hard cash; a potential income of forty sovereigns a month, over and above her earnings at the Savoy, if she would grant this gentleman her exclusivity. But what would it entail? She was not entirely sure she would be able to give her body for money, for all her brave words. She had quite shocked even her Bohemian companions on the evening she had professed to admire prostitutes for their unabashed rejection of buttoned-up bourgeois morality – but now it came down to it, she realised that she did not understand one tenth of their desperate motivation.

Over and over again, her eye followed the pattern of the wallpaper – a repetitive stripe of forget-me-nots twisted into a heart shape – until it met a round mirror, over-ornately decorated with ugly brass curlicues. She charged herself to remember that Vyvyan lay beyond that offending glass, and he would hear her scream should anything untoward be threatened. Vyvyan loved her. She was loved.

This comforting thought sustained her, until the doorknob began to turn and she found herself breathing sharply in and thrusting out her chin, wrapping her shawl tightly around her. She was not sure whether to remain seated or to stand, but the way the gentleman raised his hand when she moved indicated that she should stay in her armchair.

He was not as old as she had expected, perhaps forty to forty-five. He was tall, angular of feature, with luxuriant hair and whiskers and a waxed moustache. He was wearing an unfamiliar uniform; perhaps some foreign princeling? However, when he spoke his accent was decidedly English; his voice, though quietly pitched and low, did nothing to reassure her.

“Miss Carter? Please remain seated. Let me get a good look at your face to begin with.”

Jessie’s skin crawled as she was subject to an intense and unblinking scrutiny. What had she expected? Hasty words of passion? A polite request for her society? The offer of a drink? Perhaps, but certainly nothing like this….this cold and dispassionate sizing-up. She was well-used to being the object of an artistic gaze, but this was entirely different, as different as the Mona Lisa was from a fish on a slab.

“Yes,” murmured the gentleman, “my man was right. You have that exact Titian shade we require. The eyes and skin are both perfect. He has done well; I shall reward him.”

Jessie cleared her throat. “Ahem, excuse my curiosity, but…what do you want from me?”

The man sat down in a seat opposite and poured himself some whiskey from a decanter, failing to offer Jessie any.

“Miss Carter, I act on behalf of the Archduke Heinz-Werner of Lower Teutonia. I am his envoy and his personal secretary. While he resides in London as the guest of Her Majesty the Queen, he has need of a lady to be an…escort. Not to the great Balls and Society gatherings, you understand, but for less exalted entertainments, such as gaming houses, music halls, low-class dining establishments, he needs a vivacious and beautiful girl to accompany him. His Royal Highness has a somewhat…voracious interest in the, shall we say, underbelly of this great city. Who better than a chorus girl to show him around?”

“You want me to act as…a tour guide?”

“Of sorts.” The man was running one long, pale finger around the rim of his glass, his expression guarded but ruminative.

“And that is all he wants from me? My company?”

“My master’s tastes are unusual. He will probably not require you to share his bed.”

“Oh, is he queer?”

The man glared at her as if she had uttered an obscenity.

“I don’t mean anything disrespectful!” she gibbered fearfully. “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest – why, some of my best friends are…you know, inclined towards the Greek ways…”

“He is not a homosexual,” stated the intimidating man witheringly.

Oh, thought Jessie, then perhaps he is impotent? But she thought better of saying so this time.

“Indeed,” said the man briskly, setting down his glass and rising to his feet so that he towered above Jessie, “he has asked that I make a thorough examination of you, should he be minded to…sample your wares.”

The sneering tone of his last words caused Jessie to bristle. “I am not a low-class whore,” she exclaimed. “I am clean and free of disease. And I doubt that you are a physician!”

“No, that is not what I meant. Stand up, Miss Carter.”

Fighting an absurd urge to refuse, Jessie rose to her feet. Her velvet draperies swished and brushed the floor. The man seemed unimpressed with the loose fit of the sea-green fabric and curled his lip.

“Take off your clothes.”

Jessie caught her breath, widening her eyes in alarm. “You mean…?”

The man made an impatient clicking noise with his tongue. “I was given to understand that you pose naked for all the impecunious art students of the city. Surely you don’t suffer from false modesty?”

Jessie’s cheeks flamed. She could not deny it – she had displayed her gloriously nude form in front of at least a dozen young men. Why did this seem so horribly different?

She cast her eyes around the room for a screen, but there was none. She looked up again at the man, feeling wildly disadvantaged and powerless before him. His face brooked no resistance. And forty pounds a month…

She untied the loose golden cord around her waist and stepped out of the velvet robe, then shucked the underskirts and camisole over her head until she was left in nothing but woollen pantalettes, her upper torso exposed and goose-pimpling in the draught.

“Everything,” prompted the man, and Jessie bent forward to remove the final vestment, shaking her hair forward over her face in an attempt to deflect the hated watchfulness of her client. She spent longer than she needed neatening the clothes at her feet until the man snapped, “Straighten up. Look straight ahead, shoulders back, please. Feet slightly apart.”

Jessie had not realised that her thighs had been clamped together for dear life until he gave the command. Reluctantly, she parted them a little and shook the hair out of her face, deliberately blurring her vision so as not to have to see the man’s face.

He walked up to her slowly, his boots jingling a little as they trod the floorboards. Soon he was close enough for her to smell him; starch and coal tar soap and a hint of the whiskey he had just drunk. And metal. Cold steel. Looking swiftly down, she noted with alarm that he carried a sword. How had she not noticed that before? His face and form were so mesmeric taken as a whole that one missed the details.

Now he was circling her, three times, excruciatingly slowly until he halted behind her. She flinched slightly, feeling warm breath on her shoulder, then he had taken a handful of her hair and was running fingers through it as if it were material at the dressmakers. He twisted it and pinned it at the top of her head, one finger returning to trace a slow line down the nape of her neck until it rested between her shoulder blades.

“Now we can see properly,” he breathed, then he was back in front of her and she yelped when he forced her chin up higher. “Look at me,” he hissed. “We aren’t looking for some coy ingenue, Miss Carter. We want a bold girl, a girl who can look us in the eye.”

Jessie was bemused by the plural – was she to be shared? – but the thought flew out of her mind when his other hand descended to her right breast and took a good squeeze.

She gasped. “That….hurts!”

He shook his head, tutting, and took the other, holding them both as if weighing them, then tracing their outline as if he were a corsetière estimating their size. Jessie continued to look up at the fuzzy cornicing, trying her hardest to imagine herself elsewhere, but this was difficult when a strange and frightening man was pinching and flicking at your erect nipples with the tip of a thumbnail.

“Yes,” he said. “Very nice. Good hips too – on the boyish side but none the worse for it. And as for your arse…”

Jessie was scandalised – such language from a gentleman! – and even more so when he returned to her rear and took both bottom cheeks in his hands, kneading them a little before spreading them apart and massaging the inner sides. “A good handful, my dear. Now, for the last part of our inspection, I think it best if you return to your chair.”

He pointed with a finger – a finger that had touched her intimately enough already – and she subsided back into the chintz armchair she had recently vacated. Her nipples were throbbing and her face still flooded with mortification, but she laid her head back on the antimacassar and awaited the next instruction.

“Spread your legs wide apart and place each of your feet on the arms of the chair.”

Jessie bit her lip – this would leave her completely open to his prying eyes, in a position she had never had to adopt for her artist friends. All the same, she swallowed down her shame and fear and lifted both legs until her heels rested either side of her ears.

The man came to stand between them, staring down at the display for eternal seconds, even minutes, without so much as a flicker of animation crossing his countenance. Then he bent towards the stretched lips of her sex and slowly ran a finger around their outer edge. The circuit was langourous and tormenting, even more so when the finger slipped closer to her centre, its touch phantom-light and yet completely unignorable. Jessie squirmed in her seat, suddenly and shockingly aware of arousal. This man was so clinical, so exacting and yet…his touch was exquisite. Was it the control, the discipline that her ardent boyish lovers lacked? He seemed almost unmoved by the contact, and yet it was making her embarrassingly wet.

His close study ended with a faint but devastating brush against her clitoris, and she bucked forward against her will and judgement, as if her body begged for more without the permission of her head.

“Oh?” he near-whispered, placing his head quizzically on one side. She responded with an animal whimper. “I think we shall have some sport with you, Miss Jessie Carter. Of course, you aren’t a virgin.” Without any warning, he thrust two fingers sharply up inside her. She squealed, then remembered Vyvyan next door, and tried her hardest to muffle the sound. “You are terribly wet, Miss Carter,” he informed her. “Do you find this arousing?” He began to work a third finger inside, then he commenced a languid in-and-out movement which Jessie tried her hardest to speed up by pushing her bottom up to meet the intruding digits. “It seems you do.” His other hand returned to her saturated spread, stroking it with more earnest intent this time. “You enjoy being exposed and stripped bare, do you? You like to have your breasts pinched and your arse squeezed and your cunny fingered by a complete stranger, do you? You like the shame, the humiliation of it, do you? Oh, he is going to love you, you filthy little treasure…take it now!” With a final scissoring plunge into her depths, the man’s fingers flung Jessie into howling completion, her head tossing and her bottom rubbing furiously against a rather scratchy cushion.

She was still panting, exhausted and aghast at herself, when Vyvyan bolted into the room, his face pale and agitated. “What is he doing to you….oh.”

He stopped dead and watched the gentleman unhurriedly putting on a pair of white dress gloves.

“And who the devil, may I ask, are you?”

Jessie was shaking her head and grimacing violently, so Vyvyan coughed and apologised. “Sorry…just took the room next door and thought a lady might have been….hurt…”

“You are quite wrong. Now please get out.”

“I’m sorry.” Vyvyan, his eyes troubled, backed away from the scene, banging the door behind him.

“I shall be in touch, Miss Carter. Please do not take any future commissions from anyone other than the Archduke, if you please. Oh, and Miss Carter…”

He paused in adjusting his sword belt and stared fiercely at the dishevelled naked Venus before him.

“Discretion is completely of the essence. You must not divulge the name of your client to any living soul. Do you understand.”

“Yes,” she panted. “I understand.”

The man left the room and Jessie gave herself up to tears of release. She could not account for what had just happened, nor did she know if Vyvyan could forgive or forget what he had seen.