COURTESAN
Louisa Trent
Trent Publishing
www.louisatrent.com
Copyrighted Material
COURTESAN
Louisa Trent
Copyright © Louisa Trent 2011
Published by Trent Publishing at Smashwords
Prologue
New York 1866
When the brass knocker fell for the third time at Clearbrook’s front door, Margaret O’Sullivan left off her beeswax polishing and bustled from the parlor to the marble-floored foyer, her black bombazine skirts crackling with the heaving force of her stride. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, all the saints in Heaven, and Francis the ass in the stable, too. Sure and if ’tisn’t enough I have to do with all the cleaning and the cooking without having to meet and greet the bloody visitors, too.”
Still muttering under her breath, Maggie wrenched the door wide.
A dirty street urchin loitered on the stoop, and she rolled her sharp Irish eyes at the sight of him.
Humph. Another beggar looking for a handout.
“Be you daft coming to the front door?” She shelved her work-worn hands on her ample hips. “Rag collectors use the servants’ entrance ’round back.” With a wag of her double chin, she pointed the way. “Those working the pan handle can get themselves gone from me sight.”
“No rag-picker am I, ma’am. No servant, neither. And I have never begged for anything.”
Though visibly angry, the lad nevertheless removed his scruffy tweed hat, revealing fine manners along with a thick head of coal-black hair. Gorgeous hair ’twas, too.
And more than likely crawling with lice.
To put some space between herself and nit infestation, Maggie took a hasty step backward. From the safety of distance, she continued her once-over of the vagrant.
Imagine the scamp doffing his cap. She snorted. Like he was a gent. Tall and gangly, all limbs and cocky swagger, the boyo could have no more than thirteen years on his spare frame. For all that he comported himself more like a man than a boy, a telling lack of facial hair failed to support the boast. Ah, but put some meat on his bones, give him a nice long soak in a tub, a strenuous delousing with kerosene, and he would charm the drawers right off the colleens, that he would. Why, even ladies-born would eat from this one’s hand.
And go down lower on him, too, if he placed the demand.
But Maggie had gotten ahead of herself. Ladies smacking their lips over his cock was a good deal off in the future yet. Today, he was only a young boy, short of wind from what must have been one hell of a good long run.
But why was he here? If not a panhandler come a-begging or a rag-picker looking for castoffs, why was the filthy mite darkening Clearbrook’s grand front door? Did the lad perchance peddle cheap trinkets, gold sure to turn grass-green in less than a fortnight? Or, perhaps, he was a sweep in search of a sooty chimney?
She grimaced. God forbid he be a tinker, thinking to mend the household’s metal utensils. Everyone knew gypsies would rob a household blind if given half a chance.
Hmm. Maggie tilted her jaw. With that wealth of coal-black hair and those flashing dark eyes, the lad did have the look of the Romany about him.
Dear Lord. Never should she have opened the fockin’ door. A theft in the house, and she would be done for. Her employer, Michael Winslow, would give her the boot. The cruel man needed little enough reason to let his servants go, without severance wages or a note of recommendation either, and here she had given him cause.
“Well, speak up!” Maggie finally said, tapping her toe. “I have not the whole blessed day to stand about dawdling. State your name and tell your business.”
“No disrespect meant, ma’am, but I tell my business to the master of this house, and nobody else.”
With a gasp, Maggie dropped her jaw. Why, would ye look at the arrogance on him! Dressed in rags, still wet behind the ears, and yet the lad’s confident bearing and self-possessed manner belied both his tender years and his lowly station in life.
Impressed, Maggie gave the unlikely toff the benefit of her doubt. “And who shall I say is calling?”
“His son, Sebastian.”
“Son?” Her brogue as thick as clotted cream and dripping with sarcasm, she scoffed, “The master of this domicile has no son. Off with ye now, before I set the authorities on yer bony arse.”
“Set whoever you like on me, ma’am. All the same to me, and neither here nor there. I ain’t leaving ’til I have words with my father.”
He lowered his eyes, and his belly grumbled. “My mother’s last hope rests with Michael Winslow. Right now, all she has left is me.”
Poor lamb! Maggie’s heart went out to the brave lad. His dirty cap in hand, he was trying so hard to stay strong as his empty belly touched his backbone and the spit in his mouth leached dry. He fair choked on pride as he swallowed it down. Love for his ma had prompted this errand of mercy. How could she refuse love?
She never could.
With a sigh of resignation for yet another lost housekeeping position, Maggie stepped aside for the boy to enter. “Wait here in the hall while I ask if Mr. Winslow is at home to his son.”
As luck would have it, her employer chose that instant to bellow, “Mrs. O’Sullivan! I need you. What keeps you at the door?”
Maggie turned ’round. And gawked.
There in the hall stood the self-important master of Clearbrook, himself. And saints be praised, he was holding a swaddled bundle awkwardly in his arms.
As Mr. Winslow approached, Maggie tried her best to sound coherent, but the words stumbled over each other on the way out of her mouth. “S-someone h-here to see you, sir.”
“I told you, no callers today.” Her employer shook his head. “Will this brat’s mewling never cease?”
As if the wee little thing amounted to nothing but a big nuisance, Michael Winslow shoved the swaddled bundle at Maggie’s matronly bosom.
“Here,” he said. “You take her.”
Straight away, the fretting month-old infant rooted for Maggie’s pendulous breasts. Making sucking noises, the babe tried to latch on to the nipple.
Why, the child was hungry. In need of a hug, too.
Plenty enough hugs remained in Maggie’s beefy arms, but alas, no babe had suckled at her flat teats these past thirty years.
What a sad state of affairs this was, indeed. Michael Winslow had demanded a son. Having received a daughter instead, he would allow no one to forget his bitter disappointment, particularly not his delicate new bride. As Mrs. Winslow had taken to her sickbed after the birth of her daughter, she would produce no heir anytime soon, if ever at all, at all. And so this innocent babe would pay for the mistake of her gender.
Margaret’s Irish temper flared. Fockin’ housekeeper position be dammed! Someone had to speak up to the tyrant, and it looked like the duty fell to her.
She glared at Michael Winslow. “This babe is starved. Without a wet nurse, she will not survive the week.”
“Hire one,” her employer replied.
Arrogant man. As if milk-laden teats grew on trees.
Still, Maggie furrowed her brow and tried to produce a name out of thin air.
Behind her, a voice chimed in as clear as a tolling bell. “There is Mrs. Thompson.”
Hidden away in the corner as he was, the lad had clean slipped her mind. Not saying much but not missing much either -- leastwise, not as far as Maggie could tell -- the boy quietly waited for an interview with his supposed father. Though why the boy would want to lay claim to a monster like Michael Winslow for a papa was beyond her. Better he admitted to being the gypsy get he no doubt was…
Still, at his suggestion, she turned to face the boy. “Mrs. Thompson?”
“A washerwoman on the Bowery. Her baby came too soon and died day before last. She might be able to wet-nurse the babe.”
Hearkening to the dignified lad, Maggie jumped at the proposal. “Tell this Mrs. Thompson to come over today. Otherwise, her milk will likely dry up. This little one’s only chance rests with her.”
“Mrs. O’Sullivan,” Michael Winslow blustered, while pointing to the corner where the lad stood. “Who let that whelp over there in my house?”
Worried over her new charge, Maggie dispensed with pomp and circumstance. “I did. And glad I am now that I did. Your son, Sebastian, is here to see you.”
“Son?” The master of Clearbrook’s face turned florid. “What a preposterous lie. Boy, you are no son of mine. You have not a single drop of my blood in your veins. And what is more, stop spouting filthy slander about me.”
“True, by birth, I am not your son, but when Mother and I lived here, you told me to call you Father.”
The man who paid Margaret O’Sullivan’s salary looked apoplectic. “That woman was little better than a maid in this household.”
“How can you say that? Mother loves you, sir. And now she is sick. Consumption.” Taking two paces forward, Sebastian grabbed hold of Michael Winslow’s morning coat. “Without a visit from you, I fear she will die. Please, come with me now.”
“If your mother has the wasting disease, she has one foot in the grave already. Nothing I can do for her,” Mr. Winslow said with a shrug. “Now leave my sight, you impudent young fellow, before you spread your whore-mother’s putridity.” Turning on his well-shod heel, her employer stormed away.
Outraged, Maggie had all to do not to call after the sod and give him the dressing-down he so richly deserved. This time, the tyrant had gone too far.
Was the man blind?
Resentment shone bright in Sebastian’s jet-black eyes, the kind of resentment that smoldered for years before igniting. Aye, Michael Winslow had made himself an enemy this fine day.
And then Margaret let her righteousness go. In the here and now, she had more immediate concerns than a man’s cold indifference.
As the hungry babe in her arms squalled, Maggie regarded the dejected lad. “Will you still fetch the wet nurse?”
“I said so, ma’am. And I always keep my word.”
He might not lay claim to noble lineage, but Sebastian clearly possessed a gentleman’s honor. God help him, and Michael Winslow, too, if the lad also possessed a long memory.
Saying a silent prayer to the Virgin for the wisdom to accept what defied change, Maggie reached into the pocket of her apron. Pulling out a coin, she pressed the gold piece into the grubby lad’s palm. “For yer troubles.”
To Maggie’s astonishment, the lad refused the alms with a shake of his shaggy head.
And then she knew. ’Twas as bright as the self-respect shining on the lad’s too-thin face. There would be no beggarly soliciting for young Sebastian. No accepting of handouts, neither. And none of this asking for charity nonsense. He might not have come into life with a silver spoon stuck in his mouth, but he would find his rightful place all on his own.
Even if he had to steal it.
“Go on with ye now,” she urged. “Pride is all well and good, but it makes for a poor meal. Take the coin for the sake of yer ma.”
Peering down at the swaddling blanket, the dying woman’s son accepted the money.
“Does the baby have a name?” Sebastian asked.
Maggie nodded. “Aye. That she does. ’Tis Miss Sarah.”
“Sarah,” the lad softly repeated.
Like a miracle, the babe’s fretful wailing stopped. The infant fastened her big blue eyes on the boyo’s grieving face.
“Not too close,” Maggie said, setting things straight. “The likes of you are not meant for the likes of her.”
Her warning came too late. Gurgling and cooing, Miss Sarah had already reached out her tiny baby hand from its blanket cocoon to take the lad’s grubby palm.
Incredulous, the housekeeper watched what ensued. The boy tried all manner of maneuvers to break free of the infant’s fierce hold. He twisted. Squirmed. Even tried prying the babe’s dainty fingers off, one by one. Nothing worked.
No matter what Sebastian did to free himself, Sarah obstinately refused to let him go.
Chapter One
New York 1884
Sebastian Turner stretched out, belly-down, on the velvet settee located in his office. After propping his forehead on top of his bent arms, he said, “Do your worst, Chelle.”
“So tense,” Michelle Beauvais complained from behind him. To emphasize her words, she slapped his bare ass. “Every muscle in your long, lean body is strung bow-tight.”
“Ooo-la-la, Chelle! I do love how you scold me,” Seb teased the masseuse.
“Mais oui! I scold you, for you are a bad boy.” A rubdown that had started off fit for a mule suddenly changed to a kittenish caress. “Mmm,” the masseuse purred. “A very bad boy.”
Seb smiled in wry amusement at the change in Chelle’s tone. Gone was the reprimanding nag and its place was seduction.
“Keep bullying me, honey,” he drawled. Unless he concentrated, his Western twang slipped into his speech no matter how hard he tried to keep it out. “Your Frenchie accent drives me plumb wild.”
“Alors! You are one big, hard knot.”
Not everywhere. A disappointing circumstance Chelle was bound to discover should he roll to his back.
Hoping to keep his boredom to himself, Seb sank deeper into the plush gold pillows. Chelle was the real sensitive type, with feelings quick to hurt. The last thing he looked to do was insult her. But hell and tarnation. A man had to be in the mood for humping, and he just was not. No how, no way.
“Allow Michelle to work her magic, eh?”
“Honey, I think…”
“Non. Non. You must not think. Thinking eez the very thing you must avoid,” Chelle said, and swung a limber leg up and over his hips. “Too much mind deliberation and not enough cock stimulation eez the root of the problem. One moment, s’il vous plait. I must make -- How do you say? -- a minor adjustment.”
A black satin wrap fluttered past Seb’s nose en route to his office floor.
Dang. Now he was in for it. Chelle meant well. And with neither the energy nor the inclination to rebuff her advances, Seb stoically suffered them in silence. Offering not a word of reproach, he allowed the Frenchie masseuse to work on him even though he felt not a tickle in his pickle, and was not likely to, regardless of what she did. Not even when the sneaky female tunneled a hand under his flat stomach, went for his groin, and closed her fingers around…
“Mon Dieu!”
Shit. Chelle had found him out. Now there would be all Almighty hell to pay.
She squeezed his limp pride and joy. “What has happened to you?”
Hoping to ward off an imminent tantrum, Seb ducked his head further into his folded arms. “Sorry.”
“Eemposseeble,” Chelle said, all Frenchie-like. Pummeling, rubbing, stroking, she ran both her palms up and down, and all over his length, on the hunt for his trigger.
“Honey, I appreciate the effort, I really do, but not even gifted fingers like yours can fire my pistol today.”
“This will never do! Always before, you are full of vigor. Indomitable in bed. When did one of the girls last see to your manly needs?”
“Tough recalling rightly when,” he replied. “A while ago, I reckon.”
“Before we came back East, you were a four-times-a-day man. No release has wound you watch-tight. Theez situation eez bad for your health. Your animal spirits will suffer if theez continues.”
With those words of wisdom, Chelle commenced to bumping and grinding on top of his ass.
“Let me take care of you,” the bronco rider panted, bucking up and down. “I would like to. You always show a whore a good time. Allow me to return the favor.”
“Thanks for the offer, honey,” he wheezed, his backside getting saddle-sore. “But not today.”
“Give me a chance! Turn over for me, s’il vous plait?”
Seb genuinely liked Frenchie. And so, despite his wishes to the contrary, when she lifted up, he rolled onto his back.
“No reflection on you, honey,” he quickly offered at her sad look. “Just feeling a mite peckish today, is all.”
Like a brooding French hen, she gave a cluck. “Such a glorious masterpiece as theez should never be allowed to go soft.”
Before he could stop their descent, a pair of ruby lips paid him a visit south of the border.
After some intense effort, Seb raised a brow -- the only part of his anatomy he could raise -- and took the valiant Chelle by the shoulders. Kissing her rouged cheek, he put Frenchie away from him. “Thanks for the massage, honey.”
Confusion, and then the wounded look he had tried to avoid, flickered across her face. On her reddened mouth, Chelle wore a pout.
To give her a few moments to collect herself, Seb vacated the settee to station himself at the window overlooking the back flowerbeds. A slight figure walking amongst the plants caught his attention.
“How is the new gal getting along in the house?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Chelle.
Sure of her audience, she smoothed both hands over her nude body in a way meant to entice.
Seb sent her a return look in a way meant to discourage. In case his frown missed its mark, he added, “Sometimes, honey, a man just needs a friend.”
The curtain came down on Chelle’s performance.
Crossing the room, she joined him at the window. “You ask about the new whore? Well, the unsuspecting patron who finds heez way into her starched drawers will have heez manhood frozen off for the effort. Visit Michelle’s bed instead.”
“Honey,” he warned. “Companionship, remember?”
Chelle tossed her head. “Friend to friend -- that cold snob will chill your ten inches to an icy stump.”
Sarah -- a cold snob?
Considering her parentage, he was not surprised.
“Thanks for the advice, honey.” No longer bored, Seb cast his gaze out the window again.
The “cold snob” had dropped to her knees in the garden and was digging and scooping dirt with a small metal shovel. While he watched, her black braid broke free of its straw bonnet mooring and commenced to sweep across her spine, back and forth, like a clock’s pendulum. The tattered blue ribbon adorning the end of her plait just about mesmerized him.
Turn around for me, Sarah. Show me your face. Do you take after your old man, Michael Winslow, or his stuck-up lady bride?
Just to be contrary, she remained with her back to the window as she planted orange nasturtium seedlings in a neat row. Her elusive features frustrated the living hell out of him. As to her shape, the childish brown pinafore she wore gave nothing away. Another cause of vexation.
As testy as a hungry grizzly, Seb stopped his spying and pulled away from the window. And got nowhere quick. It seemed like railroad spikes had his feet nailed to the floor. Not for all the tea in China could he move, not even when a hot course of blood rushing to his pinned toes detoured to his groin.
Shoot. Concealing ten inches of piqued interest was mighty damn tough, especially with an observant masseuse close by, but he tried. As his cock jutted for the ceiling, Seb waved Chelle towards the door…before she witnessed the hard evidence of his arousal for herself. “See you tonight, honey. Save me a dance, hear?”
“All that -- for -- for -- Sarah Winslow?” Chelle sputtered.“That tall, skinny stick?”
Too late for Seb to mollify the hurt feelings of his masseuse, not after she saw how his apathetic flesh had sprung back to life at the sight of the new whore, he let his shrug serve as his reply.
She must not have appreciated his answer because, dang, she headed for the door, a real beeline, tossing back over her shoulder as she stomped out into the hall, “Well, you will get no waltz from me tonight, Sebastian Turner. Go fuck yourself!”
Seeing how Chelle had slammed from his office in a Frenchie huff and all, he figured it was only right to take her up on her helpful suggestion. Narrowing his eyes on the window, he proceeded to fuck himself. It took no effort at all. All he did was jerk his fist up and down the throbbing length of his hot misery.
And groan. Hell, he did a whole lot of groaning, repeating a single phrase over and over.
“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. I’m coming for you, Sarah.”
* * * * *
Beneath the mellow glow of the ballroom’s gas chandelier, Miss Sarah Winslow carefully negotiated the three-quarter time of the waltz. Though she assiduously counted off the intricate steps, and her timing showed absolute impeccability, her execution lacked both style and grace. And, yes, fluidity. Not even four years of formal instruction at Mrs. Horatio Alexander’s School for Young Ladies, where the dance master discouraged sloppy posture and heavy stepping with the sting of the cane, helped her stiffness. She feared she was utterly hopeless.
Her father had agreed.
“Completely lacking in social accomplishment,” he had always said, when he bothered to say anything to her at all.
Though, in own defense, she might have performed better on the dance floor this evening had she been able to properly inhale and exhale. As it was, she could scarcely breathe at all. No medical condition impeded her lung capacity. Truth to tell, she enjoyed ridiculously robust health. Another source entirely constricted her respiration…
The gentleman leading her around the ballroom floor.
Not to put too fine a point on it, her dance partner quite literally made her gag. Evidently a nonsubscriber to the “less is more” school of thought, after liberally dousing his pate with perfumed pomade, he had then generously oiled his facial hair too.
And goodness only knew what else.
As a result, whenever he opened his mouth to speak -- done far too frequently in this instance -- his moustache would slither across his upper lip much as a slimy black eel wiggles through a muddy river bottom. Thankfully, a leather mask covered most of his aforementioned error in grooming judgment. Would that it covered more!
Someone overhearing her thoughts might construe her observations as rude, and she was never rude, not even in her most private inner reflections. Nor did she have anything against eels, per se. In fact, she rather liked eels, as she did all God’s more maligned creatures. It was only that, when counting dance steps, an undulating sea serpent upon a partner’s upper lip created a bit of a distraction.
And his eel-like appearance was only the beginning.
Apparently her partner also suffered from a strange affliction -- a rather pronounced and baffling twitch. This spasmodic movement would cause his hand to drop at the most inconvenient of times. Naturally, whenever the strange malady occurred, she returned his digits to her upper back where they correctly belonged. Only to have his fingers twitch right back down again to land on the region of her bustle.
Had she been wearing one, which, per house rules, she was not, for the sake of expediency, she presumed. And so, rather than meet the padding beneath her gown, the cushion absorbing his attentions, his hand fell on something else entirely.
Her derrière, to be precise.
There, he performed what might only be described as an odd gripping motion. Most peculiar.
She was about to offer him a gentle rebuke for the discomfiture when he craned his chin up at her -- the lamentable stretch of his goateed jaw necessary due to his half-rule shorter height -- and whispered a crude obscenity in her ear, this done while compressing her posterior between his two fingers.
This time, there could be no mistake. A pinch was a pinch was a pinch, and this was most decidedly a pinch. Not only was he odoriferous, her partner was also a masher.
What to do?
Her natural inclination called for lifting her limb and kneeing the odious reprobate in what must certainly be the most perfumed testicles in all of New York.
This urge, she resisted. Barely.
She was a lady by birth, if not by present circumstance, and her knee would not stray anywhere near the profligate’s inseam. More was the pity.
Sarah worried her lower lip with her upper teeth while considering the distressing quandary. Obviously, the occasion warranted action. She must rectify this egregious breech of good taste, for nothing would persuade her that an off-color innuendo ever passed as genteel conversation or that a woman should tolerate groping in any circle, not even such a circle as this. Regardless that Mr. Dutton expected her to entertain the paying guests, she felt disinclined to suffer the offensive sea serpent’s presence a moment longer. After all, even when employed in a house of ill repute, one must uphold one’s standards.
“Excuse me,” Sarah said, begging off in the middle of an orchestral downbeat. “I am feeling remarkably unwell of a sudden.”
Her partner sniffed and then pursed his lips, his slimy black eel moustache slithering. “I paid handsomely for this waltz, my dear, and finish the set you will.”
“I think not.” Sarah drew herself up to her full five-foot seven-inch height. “You, my depraved little man, have groped your last grope and uttered your last double entendre. Release me at once, before your repugnant fragrance causes the contents of my stomach to eject. Let your coiffure be forewarned, sir!”
Fine words. Sometime, though, during her self-congratulations, she became inattentive, and her opportunistic partner took full advantage of her distraction. Before she realized his intent, he had danced her into a dark corner at the rear of the ballroom. A small and private anteroom, to be specific, where the fronds of several potted palms did little to disguise the worrisome fact that several couples were eagerly sampling the pâté de foie gras canapés from one another’s tonsils.