19 Shillings

"Yeah, I know you're embarrassed, but you've been a great sport, any girl here will tell you how I hate the aristocracy, but you're rapidly working your way towards being an exception." Another prostitute with fiery red hair added (or was she Tiffany?) These girls were clearly skilled at manipulation but I had to admit I was flattered and chastised in equal measure by their arguments. I ruminated on their points for a moderate amount of time before my train of thought was interrupted by the loosening of my corsetry and my mad scramble to correct my outfit before I suffered any indignant exposure.

Tallboy interrupted their fun as he emerged from his building beaming.

"I don't know what you guys are up to, but it's really working, the basement is almost full. I'd say three more men and you can ditch promotion for the night and come inside for some bonus clients." He announced, to everyone's relief.

"Hear that misters." One of the girls announced to a group of three men she had an ongoing conversation with. "You guys come in and we can join you, and you can bet we will be grateful."

"Sounds fun, but it would be sad for this uptight one to be allowed back in, can't we leave her out here to keep selling her wares?" One of the men joshed, I gave him a look of utter disapproval but it carried little weight without my status.

"I'm afraid not, so how about we make it worth your while then." The prostitute countered. "How about you come in if we make sure this prude will be uncomfortable for the rest of the night?"

I was a perfect mixture of intrigue and fear as the women hungrily surrounded me.

"Do you know how much of a difference it will make getting off promotion tonight? The paydays are inside and we can be temporarily out of poverty. All you have to do is one simple thing..." the woman announced, in a loud hushed voice that said this was a salacious conversation but still one she wanted others to hear. "Take off your bloomers and hand them to these men, and you can believe we will all sing your praises at church on Sunday."

I struggled to believe that these women ever set foot in church, but I was also aware that Jesus was not an unknown figure to sex workers, indeed he brought them salvation, just like I could buy surrendering my bloomers. I stood frozen in indecision before one of the men who issued the ultimatum spoke up with a sigh.

"I guess she's not going to do it. Sorry ladies, we're going to see if there's anything else to do tonight." He announced, provoking a wave of disappointed wailing from my entourage. My brain fizzed in panic, I felt like I was about to let myself down and I found myself squeaking in defeated embarrassment.

"Alright, alright. You can have my bloomers." I squealed. Immediately the atmosphere changed to one of jubilation and expectation. As the whole street looked on, I awkwardly hiked up the smallest portion of my dress possible, grabbing the bottom of one of the ruffled legs of my bloomers from the knee and pulling them lopsidedly downwards to an echo of cheers and catcalls. I very uncertainly kneeled down and cautiously extricated the pile of fabric wrapped around my feet.

My body was enveloped in red hot mortification as one of the girls triumphantly handed my bloomers to the three men, who held them aloft like a battle standard, leading a victorious brigade of perversion into Tallboy's establishment. As I took my place amongst them, I also discovered the unique experience of walking with no underclothes, my nethers essentially exposed to the elements beneath a dress acting as the only barrier of respectability.

The air warmed and stilled as I stepped inside but the sensation of walking remained profoundly lurid. The speed at which I descended into the basement was comparable to a snail drawn carriage as I fussed and blustered to ensure nobody got a look up my skirt. By the time I arrived, one of the workers already had a drink waiting for me at the bar, by way of thanks. My bashfulness around liquor evaporated immediately in the face of the night I'd already had.

I took my drink and sat in the corner with quill and parchment, eager to write up my notes and throw myself into the distraction academia offered.

I had been hard at my studies for some time when I became aware that a man was trying to get my attention. I looked up and saw one of the trio men who had relieved me of my bloomers earlier, albeit not the one currently in possession of them.

"So what's your story? You don't look like someone who should be here." He drunkenly noted.

"I've been sent here as part of a royal commission to study the habits of prostitutes and their clients." I informed, not letting the obvious audience oblivion cloud the clarity of my response.

"Woah, so you're a royal." He astutely misobserved.

"No, just a viscountess, but the king himself instructed me to be here to observe and learn." I replied, trying to impress upon him the respect he should be treating me with.

"Wow, and how much did the king demand you charge for a fuck?" He asked, his hand beginning to run up my leg. I hesitated, I do not know where this hesitation came from, but his hand was firmly upon my thigh before the sensation of his hand directly of skin formally covered by my bloomers sparked me out of my stupor long enough to swat his hand away with bluntness and assurance.

"No, I'm not available I'm afraid." I stated in a voice that sounded far more breathy and less confident than when I planned it in my head.

"You're sat there with no bloomers on, telling me I'm not allowed a piece?" He asked incredulously, I was readying myself for him to disregard my objections and have his beastly way with me, but instead he glanced around the room, and took a deep breath to calm himself down. "Just to be clear, because Tallboy has a earned a nasty rep from men who don't take no for an answer, you're not playing hard to get, you are flat out turning me down?"

I hesitated again, for an absurdly long time that did not result in any clarification.

"You're barking up the wrong tree with her love." Interrupted the fiery redhead who had been with me during promotion, sensing an opportunity to pick up an easy sale. "Besides, you try anything with her you'd have to brush away the cobwebs first."

They laughed raucously and I joined in with nervous embarrassment as she began to lead him away. She whispered something in his ear which stopped him in his tracks before turning back to me.

"I apologise viscountess." He announced bowing before me. In solidarity the girl he was with also bowed low and solemnly. I allowed myself a moment to magnanimously accept their apology, not realising it was a ruse until too late.

As the woman straightened up, in one swift movement she also lifted my skirt, causing it to billow upwards in an explosion of fabric. For one brief second, the whole basement could see the unclad glory hiding beneath my dress. Most were looking in one way or another, but I saw a smattering of eyes and heard enough guffaws to confirm I had indeed been exposed and seen.

Since my first bleed, only 2 men had ever seen my most intimate parts; my doctor and my husband. Now, with the flick of a whores wrist, that number had at least tripled in the blink of an eye. I squealed and bundled up my dress tight to me to prevent another such incident, then I found myself drinking in the wellspring of appreciation among the guests. From my humiliation, a sense of rare magnificence was granted, those privileged enough to have seen up my skirt considered themselves as lucky as one who had seen the beast of Bodmin or the northern lights. I sunk into my blush and went back to my work, but subconsciously I found myself untucking my dress from beneath me once my heart rate began to settle.

As I returned to my deepest studies, I felt a strange sensation in my upper body, a loosening of sorts. I wondered if a mixture of the alcohol and my comfort with the situation was leading to a physical manifestation of my tension dissipating. It was almost too late when I noticed what had actually happened was that the corseting in my bodice was being stealthily loosened from behind by yet another cheeky working girl. On reflection it made sense, the teasing of my proper status was the reason a lot of the clients were in tonight, so of course these sort of hijinks would continue even after the men in possession of my bloomers had disappeared off to private rooms.

I suitably chastised the miscreant to scare her off, but I never retightened my dress, instead I allowed my bust more freedom as got up to have another drink at the bar, the warming blurring of mental barriers certainly having an affect on my current comfort levels.

As I downed my glass and ordered another, I saw an old friend take her place next to me. Ivy was in good spirits having already earned far more than she would usually expect from a 'slow' night, she wrapped her arm around my waist as she ordered herself a drink.

"I hear you're getting a lot of attention tonight. How are you finding it?" She asked.

"Would you understand if I said it was a strange mix of mortifying and exhilarating." I replied with uncharacteristic honestly.

"That's the magic of places like these I guess." She observed, I felt her hand rubbing against my back in a strange way but thought nothing of it. "You have to work hard for money, but appreciation is free and easy."

"Do you know anyone who took up your profession despite not needing to?" I asked, it was a pretty poor sentence for hiding what my smut and booze addled brain had begun processing.

"Closest I can say is the men who bring their wives in with them. One moment she's all disapproving and weighed with obligation. The next he has her skirt up and is feeling her ass like it's the first time." Ivy explained, it seemed like a strange tangent to go on until I realised what her hand had been doing on my lower back. All of a sudden I could feel her hand directly on my bottom, no intervening fabric.

I should have given her the same stern talking to that I gave the man running his hand up my thigh, or at least backed away, asked her to stop, something other than what I ended up doing instead.

I let out a moan, an unambiguous moan of enjoyment, loud enough that there was no way Ivy could miss it.

"See those men don't bring in their wives to share a prostitute, they're obsessed with the fantasy that through their corruption, the good woman they know will be willing to lower themselves to the status of a lowly whore." Ivy continued to explain as she kneaded my buttocks. "And of course they don't wait for the bedroom, they tease them and drive them wild with passion right here in the basement."

Ivy leant over and to my shock, pressed her lips to mine, she swung around to embrace me, her other hand joining the first on my bottom to firmly grab it and pull my pelvis to hers. My passion overflowed and the world swirled as uncontained lust overrode every brain cell screaming for logic and self-preservation.

"When things get this wild." Ivy continued, her mouth only an inch from mine. "They don't even care that the whole basement is staring at her depravity."

I turned and let out a squeak as I saw the wall of eyes staring at Ivy and me. She had hiked up my dress so all that stood between my bottom and my audience were her hands. As she spread my cheeks all I did was grip her tighter and bite her neck in humiliation as the crowd cheered for my total exposure.

"You're interested in our lives for a reason far beyond the king's orders aren't you? Did you know you were clearly trying to subtly touch yourself when you watched Garth fucking me? You want to know what it's like to be a sex object like us. Well here's your chance; I'm going to step away and finish my drink, leaving you dangling in this state between bliss and discomfort. By the time I finish my drink one of two things will happen, either you will still be wearing that dress and I will escort you out unmolested, or you will drop that dress on the floor and be ready for me to give you pleasure you have never felt before, right here, with everybody watching."

Ivy's ultimatum sent shockwaves through my system. As she disengaged all I could feel was longing to have her back on me, then as she began to down her drink, that longing was brutally replaced with panic. Her embrace, the delightful degradation, the destruction of my status only to embrace a new life of carnal desires, it all called me to a deeply dark place. Would I, a viscountess, really strip myself down to become a sex show in the basement of a brothel? Ivy took her mouth away from her cup and showed me the dregs of that sinful liquid in the bottom.

"Last chance." She chirped. I panicked and immediately pulled my loosened bodice open, allowing the dress to cascade down my body to the floor. The petticoat underneath came off in a far less dignified way but soon I found myself standing stark naked in a room full of whores and Johns cheering my exposure.

Ivy slinked up to me and put her hands on my shoulders. I was expecting her to kiss me, but instead she turned me around, forcing me to face the crowd of admirers, giving them an unfettered view of my exposed breasts and incredibly moistened vagina. Ivy embraced me from behind, her errant hands painting a picture of smut on the canvas of my nude form. She cupped my breasts with one hand, while the other wiggled its way between my legs and began playing with my lower lips. The entire time my field of vision was filled only by the gathered audience watching my consensual molestation. As I glanced around the audience, catching Tallboy's eye seemed to be the worst moment, his lecherous grin boding poorly for the remainder of my investigation.

Ivy's unerring hands guided me backwards until I was pushed up against the bar, she lifted me up and sat me down on the bar's edge, then pushed my knees apart, pausing for a moment so the audience could get a look at my spread eagle before plunging her face between my legs to taste my juices.

Her tongue darted and dashed against my pussy, sometimes she would bite just enough to get purchase before unleashing a whole new wave of perverted pleasure upon my body. For my part I began to moan and squeal with such vigour I'm sure many in the audience thought it was part of the show, but it was most assuredly a real part of my enforced sexual awakening.

"Yes, yes, yes, oh fuck yes!" I yelled with reckless abandon as the crowd watched another woman devour me to orgasm. I squeezed my own breasts, tousled my own hair, and generally made myself a slave to my own sensations in front of the baying crowd.

Once delivered from my fall, I now found myself naked and in an ultimate pit of shame as the full impact of what I had just indulged hit me. Tallboy handed me back my dress with some cheeky banter about its near theft, but all I was able to hear was the ringing in my ears as I stormed out of the den I lost my dignity to.

...

How do you go back to a respectable life after that? I returned home that night and kissed my husband on the cheek as I retired to bed early. He didn't know that moments earlier, his wife was letting strangers watch her naked body convulsing with pleasure as a whore gave her oral sex. He didn't know that my bloomers were still circulating among disreputable men in the disrespectable sections of town. How would he respond if he knew?

He'd probably worry about his status.

What of my study? I couldn't go back after that, after they have seen me so vulnerable, so below my station. I took a moment to think through what this meant for my investigation and came to a conclusion profound enough I said it out loud to nobody.

"Why not?"

Sure it was uncouth, but it didn't affect my ability to extract information from the operation, in fact I'm sure many would now open up to me, seeing kinship in our mutually compromised status.

After a long and fitful sleep I woke up more optimistic than before, especially seeing as I was not due to return to Tallboy's operation for another couple of days, and today I was to talk with my supervisor about progress.

...

Someone had once told me that Doctor Sutcliffe was only 39, he looked at least double that as his wiry frame hunched over my notes.

"So building trust with the individual workers has been slow going, but I have gathered plenty of information about the operation and mechanics of this black market." I explained.

"What you have discovered so far is indeed a fascination, and as is your style, you are building up a solid base of monetary data to quantify your findings, but it is not something we can build strong policy recommendations on beyond maybe new guidelines for the police in the pimp's pockets to ignore." Dr. Sutcliffe replied in his trademark measured tone. "What we really need is more qualitative information on what drives people to partake in, and indeed become, purveyors of loose morals. Some individual stories and anecdotes that add a human touch to the statistical model you are building"

I chuckled to myself that I was getting a first hand lesson in that, but not a word of it would appear in my notes.

"Much has been speculated of course, financial desperation, drug addiction, certain forms of non-consensual coercion. Each with a different policy solution. I'm sure it will turn out to be a deep mixture of factors but if we advocate a scatter shot policy approach the king will think us grasping at straws. So where I think we should focus is one simple question: what makes a reputable woman become a prostitute?"

"I couldn't agree with you more." I replied.

...

It had been a few days since my last visit to Tallboy's establishment. I had spent those days in the library getting a strong foundation of literature to bookend my studies. I was feeling much calmer and detached than I had in the past and I expected to be able to follow my investigative nose with maximum focus.

I entered the building and all seemed quiet, granted I was there too early in the day for any business operations to be underway, this was by design as I wanted a quiet moment to talk to the girls. Nevertheless I was intercepted by Tallboy who welcomed me with a wider grin than usual and invited me back to his office.

"So viscountess, what's your plans for today?" He asked jovially.

"Well I have decided I need to spend less time examining your operation and more time talking to the people within it." I explained, wincing at his knowing gaze running the length of my body.

"I see, what are you looking to discover?" He replied.

"Just what exactly it takes for a good woman to find herself part of this life?"

"Well you already know a bit of that already. What was it that drove you to put on a show for the bar like that?" I had wondered how long it would take for Tallboy to mention my humiliation.

"That was the alcohol." I curtly responded, trying to cut off this line of enquiry.

"You do something like that every time you have a drink? No, it's not just the booze, that just lowered your defences. Different people respond to what I do differently, some are disgusted, or fearful, or angry. But you, you have been intrigued since day one." He monologued, I felt the need to interrupt just to prevent him getting up a head of steam.

"Of course I am intrigued, it's an intriguing area of study." I interrupted.

"You don't need to be coy, this isn't the sort of place people need to have shame in. The primary pull here, for everyone involved, is that nobody needs to feel bad about indulgence." He elaborated. I wanted to respond with a categorical denial, but the philosophers of old currently failed me. "So what would you have mainly been asking about today?"

"I would have been asking about how they were hired by you." I stated in a daze.