Loe raamatut: «The Virgin Courtesan»

Chapter One

Juliana shifted uncomfortably in the rattling stagecoach, trying to calm the nerves that assailed her. She drew her pelisse around the white muslin gown that was far too revealing, with its plunging décolleté, to be any use against a chilly spring night. It wasn’t just the cold that was making her shiver; she was on her way for an intimate evening with Lord Salter, and if the night’s events went as planned she would officially be a courtesan. The new toast of Covent Garden. It wasn’t a future she had exactly planned for herself. Juliana closed her eyes and sighed as she remembered the chain of events that had brought her here.

After her father died, Juliana knew it would not go well for her with his malicious widow, but had been shocked to realise he had made no provision for her at all in his will, trusting her to the care of his wife. Publicly she was the epitome of a loving stepmother, but behind closed doors Juliana knew she was not wanted, was detested for her resemblance to her mother, in fact, but even so had never expected the recently widowed Mrs Dora Hearnshaw to go so far.

‘Scandalous! Wanton!’ she had shrieked upon finding Juliana desperately trying to free herself from the clutches of her stepbrother, Dora’s beloved son. When Juliana had defiantly protested her innocence, accusing the slyly grinning Mortimer of attempted rape, his mother had struck her with such force her ears had rung.

‘You will get out of my house!’

‘My father’s house!’ Juliana had retorted, even as she threw her gowns and her mother’s jewels into a small chest. She had very little to call her own, and nowhere to go except for an old address for a distant cousin of her mother’s. By the time her stepmother’s gossip had done its work, Juliana’s acquaintances would hardly give her the time of day. All the young women she knew were desperately looking for husbands, and it wouldn’t help their cause to be associated with a girl who had seduced her own stepbrother. Perhaps she should have tried harder to make friends before her father died, but Juliana detested the endless gossiping and socialising and pointless morning and afternoon teas that her stepmother whisked her round to, and the frivolous young ladies she was expected to attend. There was nothing in their heads but marriage and lace gloves.

Once in the city she hadn’t found the cousin, but she had found Rose. A courtesan of some standing, Rose had taken her in, initially as a maid, but with an undoubted eye on Juliana’s future.

‘You won’t get a decent husband if there’s a scandal attached to your name,’ Rose had told her as she had curled and pinned Juliana’s luxuriant dark tresses that evening, ‘but you can secure yourself a wealthy patron. And that, my dear, is the key. Keep as much by as you can for when your looks go and you’re not wanted, and you won’t end up in the gutter.’

It was wise advice, Juliana knew, but hardly cheering. She had hoped to secure a position as a governess or similar, but with no letters of reference and the whisper of scandal following her, it had proved impossible. Watching Rose and realising that her status as a courtesan, although scandalous, meant that she was able to be independent and live life mainly on her own terms, Juliana had considered that perhaps it was not such a bad way to live. Certainly, trying to conform and be the ‘good girl’ had got her nowhere in life other than destitute and shamed. And so Rose had taken her under wing, showing her how to dress, talk and otherwise play the part of a coquette able to have men leaping to her every request. There were other lessons, too, the content of which had made Juliana blush. How to touch oneself so as to enflame a man’s desire, and how to touch and tease his most intimate parts in turn. Rose had described these acts in such graphic detail, even mimicking certain gestures and having Juliana copy them until she was satisfied the younger girl had grasped the point, that Juliana had begun to feel she knew everything there was to know about the sex act, despite never having actually participated in it.

‘Of course, you could end up like Miss Fenton,’ Rose had added. Lavinia Fenton, a courtesan who had become a Duchess, had been a rare breed indeed. The majority of courtesans—however glittering their youthful careers, however highly lauded by the fashionable demi-monde, however sensuous their skills—ended up destitute through debt or drink sodden or both. Juliana was determined that would never happen to her. She would do what she must until she found a way out and had enough money to set herself up in a little cottage or similar. So she had worn Rose’s plunging gown with the blond lace, curled her hair and perfumed and rouged herself until she looked exactly what she was about to become: a successful young courtesan.

Lord Salter was in his fifties, a wealthy landowner. After a series of flirtatious afternoon teas, trips to the theatre and a musicale, and intimate soirees full of promise, he had sent a stage for her. He would be a generous patron, Rose had assured her. As well he might. After all, Juliana was not like other courtesans. Rose had let it be known, discreetly, that Juliana was still a virgin.

‘Good idea,’ the older woman had winked at her, ‘as long as you’re certain you can fool him when it comes down to it.’ Only after a few ‘lessons’ had Rose realised that Juliana’s professed virginity was no trick. Juliana had, like most of the young ladies she knew, been expecting to wait until marriage or, at the very least, a concrete betrothal. Thank the Lord that Mortimer hadn’t achieved his aim before they were interrupted. One thing she had to thank her father’s widow for, at least.

The stage rattled on. Taking a peek out, Juliana saw that it was near dark and jumped at the sudden hoot of an owl. They were some way outside London now, in woods Juliana was unsure of. Quite why Lord Salter couldn’t simply receive her at his town house, which would be far more usual, she had no idea. She began to wish she had accepted the gin that Rose had offered her before she left. But on an empty stomach, she had not deemed it wise.

The coach came to an abrupt halt, causing Juliana to drop her fan. Cursing in a most unladylike manner she went to see what the problem was, then froze in horror as she heard the words every night traveller dreaded.

‘Stand and deliver!’

A highwayman. Though the laws against them were stricter than ever and the penalty, death, still they were known to menace English roads. Desperate and dangerous men, most of them, in spite of the romantic tales of ‘gentleman highwaymen’ that went around. No woman who repeated such tales had ever actually encountered one, Juliana wagered.

Nevertheless, as the coach door was flung open, the first impression Juliana got, in spite of her fear, was of a tall and handsome man, with a full sensual mouth under his mask and strong lean thighs in his breeches.

‘Your purse, madam,’ he insisted in tones that struck her as well cultured for such a devil. Then she saw the pistol in his hand and heard the terrified pleading of the stage coach driver, and his face swam before her, then vanished into darkness.