A Victorian Virgin? Ch. 05

"Where are you going to take her?"

"My friend, Doctor Smales, needs a nurse. He's a little bit eccentric, but he would allow Victoria to live in his home."

"What do you mean by eccentric?"

"He wouldn't harm Victoria. His fiancé was murdered six years ago, and ever since, he has become more and more strange. He has started buying child prostitutes, for example, taken them into his home and tried to reform them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. All the people that work in his house have at one time been paid for sex. There isn't anything vulgar about it, he does not use them in that way. He also treats street people thrice a week for free. Because of this, he is shunned by society. He still manages to get paying customers somehow. I have not yet determined how that works. Men like him, but they keep him away from their women. I am going into practice with him."

"He sounds like the sort of person London needs more of. I do not think Victoria will like him though."

"No, neither do I. That is why I have not told her of Smales' reputation yet. It may be easier if she did not know."

"So where is she living?"

Ned told him. "Will you visit her?"

"Yes, of course I will."

*

Arabella regarded herself in the glass and pouted. That crease beside her eye was decidedly another wrinkle. Wrinkles! The blight of her age. Folding her clear white skin like the fine linen sheets she now lolled leisurely upon. Well, at least they were not the deep trenches she saw in her mother's suede-like flesh. Not yet, anyway. She would kill herself before she let her skin become like that. She ran her fingers down the milky white expanse of her chest, down to her darkly pigmented nipples, hard, erect, and ready for her lover. If only he had bothered to come and see her.

She placed the mirror back upon the side table and sat up to admire herself in the larger glass, strategically placed opposite the wide bed. She smiled to herself as she coiled her long blonde hair over her shoulders. She was beautiful and she knew it. Her lips were large and full, shiny and red like an apple where her devilish tongue had moistened them moments before. Feeling them begin to dry, she licked them again and gently rubbed her nipples.

"Good enough to eat," she told herself. She spoke aloud. She did not care if anybody heard her.

Her eyes shone the pure, envious green of absinthe, a perfect match to the dress she had discarded upon the floor. Her skin was as pure and white as ivory, lined only slightly with time. Her cheeks were still radiant with the blush of youth, helped only slightly by a finger-touch of rouge. Unlike most women of her day, she was not above helping nature by emphasizing her beauty with cosmetics. Only a little, mind, nothing terribly noticeable. She was a beautiful rose as it was, she would not have anybody say that this was due to the chemicals she dabbed upon her skin. Or have her mother or mother-in-law know that she used such products. They might start to suspect... something her mother had always known.

Gentle fingers roamed further down the narrow curve of her waist, as tight as that of any eighteen-year-old girl. Her belly was flat and soft beneath her touch, but not visibly flabby. Nobody would guess that this body had borne six children, the last being born five years prior. She was always careful what she ate and bound her body as tightly as possible into her corset, even whilst pregnant. She never suckled her children.

Vanity was her secret to maintaining her youth. That, and ensuring that she never became with child again. She made her lovers wear sheathes over their manhood; if they did not like it, she would not gratify them in any way. Arabella was very good at gratifying men.

Her husband, Peter Hawke, was another matter. Always groaning, sweating and smelling of alcohol, he pumped into her as if he was stabbing her body. It was almost as if he knew, deep down that there were other men. She was glad when he frequently went away on business, leaving her to enjoy her lovers. In one of his sober moments, he had asked a friend to follow her whilst he was away. Little did he know that the friend had met her that same night for a little fellatio.

She could not ask Peter to wear a sheath. He seemed to think that it was his right as her husband to get her pregnant as often as possible. Either that or he knew that whilst pregnant she would not be so terribly attractive to men. Although there were some... but that was another story. Lately he had become so bad that she had left the bed and locked herself in the dressing room. He would stand on the other side of the door, whining and crying until she came out. It was pitiful; he sounded so much like a woman that she wanted to laugh. Sometimes she would tell him so, informing him that he was not a real man, only a drunken shadow, sobbing like a woman. Other times she would relent, letting him to take her back to bed to paw her naked body, his eyes wet and his body too eager.

Whilst Peter bedded her, she wore a small, vinegar-soaked sponge inside her body. She did not really like it. It was messy and took preparation. The man could not go as deep into her body as they both wanted, although in Arthur's case she couldn't care less how he felt. So much brandy, sherry or whisky was in his bloodstream that he would not notice if she just took him between her thighs, as she sometimes did.

What she hated more than the horrible, lust-less sex with Peter, was the time after sex. He would lie upon her, breathing heavily as if his heart were about to burst. She had to push him off her body. Then he would start groping at her breasts again, although he was never capable of doing the act twice in one night (Arabella praised God for small miracles, small being the operative word). His hands were sweaty and rough, the tidy fingernails marking her flesh. She hated it, and she told him so, often. Peter would stop, lie beside her for a while, and then begin to mumble. He had never touched another woman (this she believed), he loved her and he would die if she ever left him. She just wished that he would leave the room. He would ask her if she had enjoyed it, and usually she would say 'yes', even though she had not. If she was in a particularly foul mood, she would say 'no'. Peter would then ask her why not, and she would go and lock herself in the dressing room until morning. Such was the ritual of her life with Peter.

He had been away for nearly three months now, up in Sunderland, doing some sort of business. She had not really paid any attention to what he had said. She never paid any attention to what he said.

He was due back in three days time. Arabella dreaded his return. Back to pawing, sweating and thrusting, at least once a week. She would have to be very careful with her lovers then.

As it was, this lover had not arrived. She had three days left of freedom, the fool knew so, yet for some reason he had decided to stay away. It made her so terribly furious. She would deal to him in a manner he would not appreciate next time they met. Her eager mind shuffled through the possibilities, then discarded them one by one as if they were her clothing, or more appealingly, his body parts. She was fond of him, but this really was too much. How dare he invite her to this grubby, carnal place and not bother to show up himself? She dreaded climbing back into her clothing and trudging down the stairs like some tired whore who couldn't find a customer.

"Damn him," she hissed to her reflection. She wished his silly face would come through the doorway so that she could throw one of her tiny, yet heavy, boots right where it would hurt. She settled for hurling it at the wall, through which she could hear an amorous couple doing what she wanted to do. "Damn you, Ned," she spat again, as if she was speaking to him face to face.

She saw her reflected lips curl up and contemplated how frightening (and sexy) the pout made her look. She must remember that for when he arrived. Ned was afraid of her as it was. This would push him over the edge... For a moment, she imagined how hard she would ride him, where she would put her fingers, how she would suck and bite and scratch him all over, the noises they would make... and found herself getting aroused, her fingers already stroking the silky skin of her own inner thighs. Then she remembered how angry she was.

"I'll give you until Big Ben strikes the hour, then I am leaving," Arabella hurled at the mirror. "If you do not arrive in the impending time I'll hate you forever. You won't ever see my bare body again. That is what I shall do to you." Even as she spoke the words she knew she could not abide by them. Damn Ned. Damn him.

In the far distance, the chimes of the clock tower of the house of parliament pealed out over Westminster bridge, the nick-named Big Ben calling the hour of her departure. Arabella reluctantly rose from the bed. What a waste of an hour.