Chapter Three

LONDON, 1702: YOUNG BLOOD

A luscious display of womanflesh, ripe for the plucking, greeted us at Mrs. Ralston’s that evening. Most of the girls lounged in chemises, straps falling off plump shoulders, hems hiked thighward. One or two wore silken dressing gowns; haughty Marie arranged herself artfully on the divan in a plum-colored velvet overdress with no underdress beneath. In their arms, my friends and I would be received like conquerers, no matter what deficiencies wine had wrought on our prowess after a raucous afternoon at the playhouse in Drury Lane. Not all the finest acting in London was done upon the stage.

Mrs. Ralston glided up to greet us, garbed in rich but sober midnight blue. “Lord Spendler, an honor,” she hailed my friend with a demure nod.

Spendler gestured back with impressive grandeur, given that his arms were draped round Dartmouth on one side and Harrow on the other as they struggled to bear him up. The young lord was slender enough, but like to have consumed half his weight again in port wine during the course of the day.

“Young Mr. Hookbridge, always a pleasure,” the proprietess smiled at me.

“Kind words indeed, Madam, from such an expert in the field.” I swept off my gaudy hat, letting my dark hair spill free under the warm, flattering light, and made a bow that scarcely wobbled at all.

My father was an importer who had made his fortune in the sugar trade out of Bristol. I came often up to London on his business, where I sought out the company of other preening young males like myself to enjoy all the pleasures the city had to offer. Since school, I had journeyed many times to the Indies as supercargo on my father’s ships. I learned to sail from his most daring captains and found a life to which I was far better suited than the dreary routine of account books and business affairs, haunting quarterdeck and boatyard alike, far from my father’s eyes. Back in town, I fancied myself irresistible in my wine-colored coat and gilded frogs, trim breeches, and bucket-cuff boots. In business, I often affected a wig of fulsome curls in the manner of the late king, merry Charles Stuart, who had restored profit and gaeity to the realm. But I was vain of my own dark curls, which had grown long and luxurious at sea and delighted the ladies.

“Come on, man,” grunted Harrow. He and Dartie were already listing off toward the taproom, with Spendler in tow. The young lord was in disgraceful condition, as usual, yet I suppose we were no worse than any other young bloods of twenty or so with coin to spend and sap rising in our veins.

“Will you play for us this evening?” Mrs. Ralston asked me.

“With the most intense delight,” I said, and I turned to the others. “Raise a glass to the fair sex, gentlemen, and meet me in the parlor.”

“Aye, aye, Hooky!” Spendler agreed, and risked a wave of his hand. “On, on, noblesh Englisss…” he exhorted the others, as the three of them turned again toward the taproom. He was my superior in blood, breeding and fortune, yet he deferred to me. They all did. I was their leader.

Others of our acquaintance were already hailing us from the taproom, calling out jests, greetings, carnal encouragement. We were the envy of every clerk and apprentice in London, and most of their masters. We were dazzling. We were immortal.

 

 

An excellent Flemish harpsichord occupied the back corner of Mrs. Ralston’s parlor. Painted in primrose yellow with an abundance of gilding and floral motifs, it featured an edifying scene of pagan nymphs and satyrs afrolic inside the raised lid. I suited my repertoire to the occasion, beginning with “My Lady Has A Pretty Thing,” which delighted what damsels were still downstairs and their prospective gentleman clients.

My father thought music a frivolous pursuit for a man of business and permitted no instruments in his home. Since school, I’d had to take my education where I could find it, most often of late in houses of this nature, where my particular gifts were appreciated. After concluding a spirited account of “A Maid Must Have A Youngman,” my hands flying across the twin keyboards, and most of the house warbling along, I stood at the bench and made an exaggerated bow from the waist to the company, knowing full well how scandalized my father would be to see it. Perhaps I hoped the tales would carry back to him, that he might know me at last for who I was, not who he wanted me to be.

After a deal of careful attention, I finally saw my men disposed among the most forgiving of Mrs. Ralston’s seraphim. Then it was time at last to address the business of the evening. Some of the younger girls were primping hopefully, but I was in no humor to be flattered and chattered at all night after a tumultuous day out and about in town. We’d had words that had nearly come to blows with Lord Mortimer and his men over a singer in the entr’acte at Old Drury. She was a drab and timorous little thing, to be sure, but the lady said “no,” and so we saw our duty to intervene. Although she might just as easily have said “yes” to much the same effect, for it was ever our purpose to oppose Mortimer and his dogs in all things. There would be hell to pay when my father heard about the altercation, of course, a homecoming I intended to delay as long as possible, and so I made my choice.

Flora did not bestir herself with any particular haste on my account, rising calmly, adjusting the drape of her dressing gown. A veteran of the profession, perhaps ten years older than myself, she knew better than to come at me like a spaniel, all nervous quivering and twitchy tail, and I admired her the more for it. We knew each others’ ways, by now.

 

 

“Ah, Flora, I’ve had a hellish night,” I sighed voluptuously, sinking back into her plump armchair.

“Not surprising, for such a devil,” she sauced me back from her perch on the tufted ottoman, as she pulled off my boot. She wore her dark hair pinned up in loose curls on one side, the rest tumbling down her back; it glistened in the soft candlelight of her small, private chamber that smelt of dried rose petals and crushed lavender and the sweat of commerce.

“Hell is not just for devils, you know,” I sallied, as she slid off my other boot. “The poet Dante tells us there are circles for even the most ordinary sinners,” I went on, showing off the education for which my father had paid so handsomely. In other matters, Flora was the tutor, and myself an apt and eager pupil.

“Aye, and who might those be?” Flora prompted, as she rose. She reached for my hands to pull me up, and I stood before her in my shirtsleeves.

“Oh, traitors and thieves and suchlike are the worst,” I said. “Panderers,” I added, and peeled off her dressing gown to puddle on the floor at her feet. She obligingly struck a languid pose, displaying her nakedness to alluring effect. “Seducers.”

“Ah.” She slipped her hands beneath my shirt and stroked me beneath my breeches for a long moment before loosening my laces. I closed my eyes and drew a freighted breath, but I’d not cry quarter so soon.

“The violent,” I whispered. Flora grasped the hem of my shirt in both hands and ripped it off over my head with a great show of savagery, then raked her fingertips down my chest, not deep enough to cut; only to make the blood sing beneath my skin. Laughing, I wrestled her onto the bed.

“The gluttonous,” I went on, nipping playfully at her naked shoulder. Rolling her over in my arms, I began to feast with more attention on the delicate lobe of her ear, the tender flesh beneath her jaw, the succulent cleft of her throat, running my fingertips all over the delectable landscape of her body until she was murmuring and arching in response. “And last of all, the lusty,” I breathed into her ear.

Flora nudged me aside. “If lust is such a sin, why did God make us to feel pleasure?” she demanded reasonably, leaning up on one arm.

“Well, it’s only a little sin,” I shrugged. “Far closer to God than all the rest. The next circle up is Limbo, for pagans and unbaptized innocents. Then comes Purgatorio, where those who might yet be redeemed serve out their time before their release into Glory.”

“And what’s the punishment for such a little sin?”

I raised a sardonic eyebrow at her. “An eternal gale of passion where the lustful copulate ceaselessly without gratification.”

Flora’s expression dimpled into a grin. “There’s proof your poet is a man,” she exclaimed, pushing me over on my back. “Gentlemen never appreciate how much pleasure might be had on the way to being gratified.”

She came to lick the last of the wine off my lips while her reckless hand slid once more beneath my loosened breeches, probing and teasing. Steady on, my bully, I cautioned myself, as my blood began to pound; the night is young and we must make the most of our time.

“A gentleman knows the difference,” I said huskily, knotting my fingers gently in her hair, while the fingers of my other hand performed a slow, urgent glissando over all the rounded swells of her flesh and down into her secret crevices. “But man in general is a race of warriors,” I murmured, “and in love and war, we are schooled to demand satisfaction.”

She sprawled back among the pillows, laughing, and braced up her heels. “Oh, hush now, Jamie, and put that clever tongue of yours where it will do some good!”

My father wished me to marry, but time and my father’s fortune were mine to waste in those days. It was all a game to me, then. A wife required patience, indulgence, and some pretense to affection, skills I had no need to cultivate so long as there were willing females like Flora to be bought at my pleasure.

Indeed, we had nothing but time, my men and I. Life was ours for the plucking. Were we not immortal?