A Victorian Virgin?

Victoria stared at the untidy, scrawled handwriting on the front of the envelope. She recognized this rambling, acute hand, from the letters Ned Hawke had sent her before. The letters that she had burned. She moved away from Charlotte, who was peaking over her shoulder to see whom had sent the letter. There was no return address.

Decisively, she tore the top corner of the envelope, inserted her finger and pulled downward to cut the side. She was sure Charlotte had no letter opener and she wasn't about to wait until Charlotte came back empty handed.

Victoria folded the letter back up with shaking hands, having scanned it quickly and found it full of explicit language. She would read it later, without Charlotte weaving around her like a stray cat after raw meat. "Mr. Hawke has kept his promise. I have an interview for a position to care for an invalid," she lied. "I'll have to take the train, and then catch a hansom cab, and I'll-" she reddened at the comments Ned had made about her underwear. "I'll have to get changed. Do you think Samuel would mind if I snuck in and took my clothing? I could change in Oliver's room."

Charlotte regarded her sister's faded grey dress, flat skirted and high-necked. "Your clothing is perfectly presentable, sister. You do not need to change."

"This is gentry I'm visiting, Charlotte. I can't turn up looking like a servant in her third best dress," Victoria snapped. She didn't wait for Charlotte's response, instead she pushed out of the kitchen, the letter clenched tightly in her fist. She opened the door to the bedroom where Sam was sleeping and trod carefully across to the wardrobe. He stirred awake as the wardrobe door squeaked open.

"What are you doing?" he murmured in a sleep-coarsened voice.

"I'm just fetching some clothing. Sorry for waking you," she whispered. Hurriedly she flicked through Sam's clothing to her small allocation of space at the back of the closet. The wire coat hangers whined noisily along the metal bar, giving off the sort of brain-piercing sound that made her grind her teeth together. She found a tailored navy blouse and matching skirt. They were relatively new; she had had them made earlier that year whilst she was working at Dr Hawke's clinic. The skirt was suitably unbustled for the versatility of a nurse's lifestyle.

"You don't need to whisper," Sam grunted, grudgingly. "I'm awake now."

"I'm sorry," Victoria muttered. "I'll be out of here in a moment and you can go back to sleep."

"Why are you getting clothes?"

"I have an interview for a job with a rich invalid. I need to make a good impression. Don't worry, I'll get changed in Ollie's room." The policeman was now sitting up in bed. His dark hair was sleep mussed, his cheeks showing signs of fresh growth. His nightshirt was split at the neck, the opening currently pulled to one side over his left shoulder. Victoria turned her head away as he climbed from the bed. "What are you doing?" she hissed, quickly.

"If I'm awake, I'm awake. Get changed in here, if you like, I'll go and get something to eat." He groaned as he stretched his arms above his head. His muscles ached with the deadening brought on by lying on his right side for far too long. Slowly, he padded from the room, shutting the door loudly behind him.

Victoria quickly fought her way out of her sober grey dress. She stared at herself in Charlotte's dressing mirror, her white corset cinching her body into the perfect curve of womanhood. 'For something worth more than all the Queen's jewels, don't wear it', she heard repeated in her head. Could she really go through with it? Could she really wear nothing underneath her clothing, her vulgar naked body flopping against the fabric? It was disgusting. Why would Ned want to touch the soft bulges of her body, instead of the firm, tight curves of her eighteen inch, bridled waist? He had been so explicit about it; what was it that he wanted from her?

She put the letter on the bed beside her discarded dress. Decisively, she put her arms behind her back and untied the tight knot at the base of her corset. Her frenetic fingers began to pull loops of the strings out, so that the bridle loosened. She was careful not to let the strings pull through the eyelets; she had only done that once and it had taken her countless frustrated minutes the following morning to rethread. When she was convinced it was loose enough, she pulled and struggled to heave the corset over her arms and head, finally dumping it upon the floor.

Victoria's body was reflected in the mirror, the pale skin lined with red where the corset had squeezed her. Her breasts were full yet pert, weighing like teardrops in profile. The form contorted by the corset remained. Her ribs tapered down to her narrow waist and her hips flared from there.

So ugly, she thought, as she stared at her body. Those large sacs of flesh hanging from her body, that strange inlet on her waistline. The mass of hair poking from the crotch of her drawers, like some dirty smear of grease upon her skin. Why would anybody call these organs beautiful, let alone delicious?

Hurriedly, she unbuttoned the shirt and inserted her arms in it. As she buttoned it up she realized, that even through the triple layer of stiff, starched fabric, the hard points of her breasts could still be seen, at least to her eyes. She rummaged into her own belongings, stuffed to one side of Charlotte's top drawer, and found a plain camisole of a dirty white color with thick shoulder straps. Quickly, she pulled it over her head, and then struggled into the blouse. Her body was permanently contorted from wearing corsets for nearly her entire life, rendering her figure almost exactly the same shape without as it was whilst wearing one. The only difference was that the blouse was slightly more constricted across the chest area, a minor detail not visible to the naked eye.

Victoria climbed into her skirt and clasped it beneath her blouse, pulling the blouse down over the skirt so it seemed more of a jacket than a blouse. She hung her dress back on the discarded coat hanger. Where was she going to put the corset? She looked around in panic. What if somebody found it? It was her only one, it would be obvious that she was not wearing it if it was found. Quickly, she placed it on a coat hanger and jammed it at the back of the wardrobe, behind all her other clothing. Unless somebody was consciously looking for it, it would not be found.

Victoria checked her hair, dressed in a plain chignon, and decided it was satisfactory. She hurriedly stowed the letter in the top drawer underneath her underclothing, squirreled away to be read later.

*

It was by accident that Charlotte found the letter whilst putting away some of her own clothing. She recalled the guilty, red expression on her sister's face when she had opened the letter, and the sly way she had hidden it from view. Her curiosity was aroused. She imagined it to be a love letter of literary prime from the doctor, nothing particularly improper, just a few words of admiration. She knew how funny Victoria was with male affection, and so expected something of little or no consequence to be enclosed in the envelope. Hurriedly, she extracted the pages from the envelope and read it with feverish eyes.

There no word to describe the way Charlotte felt; shocked, angry, heartbroken, appalled, she experienced all of these emotions and more. She recalled Victoria's words about changing her clothing, and the blouse and skirt she had departed in, exactly as described in the letter. She checked the drawers but found no corset. It had to be somewhere. She never stopped to think why she immediately believed the worst about her sister, why she instantly took every illicit paragraph to heart.

Charlotte madly ransacked the bedroom, checking every space in the drawers, under the bed and furniture. She rifled through the shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe and the shelf at the top. Finally, she went to the back of the closet, where Victoria's clothing was kept. There, on the last coat hanger, hung Victoria's corset, as desolate as a dead virgin. It was ultimate proof she needed. She sunk down to the floor, amongst the empty clothing she had strewn about whilst feverishly searching for evidence. Tears tore from her eyes as she clung to the discarded corset as if it was her sister's corpse. Was she upset because her sister had lied to her, or because in her mind her sister was no better than a whore?

Sam Morpeth found his wife lying in a state of frenzied tears surrounded by a pool of clothing. He didn't know why she was crying, or why she was hugging the piece of underwear as if it was life itself. It wasn't until he read the letter that he knew.

*

Victoria met Ned, as planned, in a hansom carriage outside number fifty-six at ten thirty. She unbuttoned her cape to prove her obedience, the buttoned it back up. He was heartened to see that she had dressed in the way he had told her. He was in control and he knew it. She would do anything to feel the same way as she had the other night.

They drove to a less opulent meetinghouse than before. His wallet did not have the capacity for two visits to the previous place in one week.

Victoria looked around the room in distaste. There was no table this time, no furniture apart from a lone chair and a bed. The walls were patterned with dull green paisley wallpaper that was peeled and curling with age. The ceiling was a watermarked white, crazed with cracks and clearly flaking in places. White dandruff-like particles from the ceiling formed a fine film on the dark wooden dado rails, below which the wall was paneled in dark wood. The floor was uncarpeted, the boards squeaky.

The floor space was consumed by a large bed. The bed was four posted, canopied with garish green and purple woven fabric that had clearly seen better days. The coverlet was tasseled and embroidered to match the heavy upholstery fabric used in the canopy.

The couple in the room next door could be heard enjoying themselves, a continuous thumping causing the thin walls to shiver. Victoria wrinkled her nose in disgust. "This place is revolting." Her words were all but drowned out by the screams of the woman in the next room.

Ned had to agree with her. "We'll go and ask for another room."

They passed back down the unlit hallway, down a flight of stairs, and arrived at a desk administered by a frizzy haired fat woman. She watched them with small green eyes in a sallow complexion. "Yeah? What can I do for yer?"

"We'd like another room," Ned said.

"What's wrong with the one yer've got?" The woman regarded her two customers. Bloody stuck up toffs, the both of them, trying to dress down to fool her. She saw through the plain clothes and hair of the woman and the shabby suit of the man. Both were quality, she could tell by those haughty voices and the way they looked down on her. It served them right that she'd stung them for the room, letting the man think that the price was the going rate. "Not good enough fer yer, is that it?"

"The people next door are noisy." Ned smiled kindly at the horrid woman. He knew he had paid more than enough for the shoddy room she'd given him, that she was rooking him over. If he walked out, he was unlikely to get his money back without an embarrassing scuffle, so he relied on her good humor to give him something slightly better.

"What do yer want me tuh do about it? They're doing what they came here tuh do." Another couple of toffs, those ones. They came in every week for the same room, arriving and leaving separately. Always during the daytime. When they wouldn't be missed, she supposed. She didn't care that they weren't married, or which Lord's wife the one dressed in her maid's clothing was, just as long as they paid her. And pay her they did, very well. The man must have realized the potential evidence for blackmail in the books of this meetinghouse. He was always nice, always paid her a compliment and gave her three times the fee. Not like this toff, who seemed to think he could get by on a smile.

"Perhaps you could transfer us to a room that is less noisy," Ned said.

The woman fixed him with a smile that would have castrated a satyr - a mouthful of yellow, twisted teeth. "There aren't none other rooms in that price range. Yer'll have to pay some extras."

Bitch. Ned was definitely not coming back to this dump again. She'd already overcharged him, now she would probably ask a fifty percent increase in the price. He smiled on despite this, hoping that if he seemed amicable she may not mark the price up terribly high. Perhaps if he told her how much he was willing to pay, she would be prevented from giving too much inflation. "Of course. I'll give you an extra ten pounds," he declared. To emphasize his point he handed her the money. He knew he would never see it again.

The woman took the money. Bloody toff. She got the distinct impression he wasn't going to give her no more after that lot. Very well, she thought. "I'll give yer a fresh room, more tuh yer liking." Where was the key to room four? Ah, there it was. She took the key that the toff had had and handed him the new one. She pointed to the corridor to her left. "Second door, that way." She turned and went back to her backroom, where she could continue to read her newspaper.

Room four was little improved from their previous room. It was larger, with two chairs instead of one. The wallpaper was slightly better adhered but just as dingy, the dado-rail and wood paneling dull rather than shining. The ceiling showed no watermarks, but the molding was scurfily cracked and flaking. The bed was covered in an oyster toned, embossed cover. There was no smell or sound.

Ned threw his top hat onto the chair that was farthest away and turned the gas-lamps up. "That woman robbed me blind," he said, bitterly.

"I don't understand why you didn't ask the woman to reimburse you after we saw the first room," Victoria replied.

"Those sort of people have bottomless pockets. Once the money goes in, you never get it back." He misinterpreted the look on her face to mean disappointment in the room, not knowledge of a statement that could quite easily describe her father. "It's all right," he said. "Doesn't matter what the room looks like, only that you're here with me. I'm glad you came, by the way." He kissed her chastely on the lips, pulling quickly away as her hands came up about his face. "Not yet. We'll take it slowly."

Victoria watched his handsome face as he slowly unpinned the hat from her head and placed it on the chair beside his own, the hatpin stabbed through the brim. "Remind me not to sit on that chair," Ned joked. "I did that last week with my other top hat. Couldn't wear it anymore so I threw it away."

Nice for some. She smiled numbly and began to unbutton her cape, but he halted her. "I'll do that, you relax." Reluctantly, Victoria dropped her arms at her sides. She let her wavering eyes follow the nimble, tanned fingers that deftly removed the bonds of her cape, where her own shaking hands had stumbled. He could instinctively tell that she was nervous and troubled by her conscience. Her brain was screaming at her to leave immediately before she did her morals and virginity permanent damage. "It's all right, I won't hurt you." She nodded in reply.

Victoria felt numb inside. Why had she come here? Why was she risking everything for this man? Why had she lied to her sister, the only family that she had? Her skin was stiff with a strange cold. She felt dead. She felt as though she were standing back and staring at herself. This was wrong. This was so terribly, dreadfully wrong. Why was she here? This time she had not been connived or fooled into accompanying Hawke. She had known exactly where he was going and what they would do. So why had she come? Her brain screamed that this was wrong.

His slowly pushed her cape back from her shoulders, letting it fall in a puddle about her feet. She shivered as her frightened eyes focused on his face. Those pale blue eyes held hers, just as his hands held her breasts. She was terrified. What had she gotten herself into? Why had she come here? Her body froze under his grip, rigid as rigor. "Don't," she stuttered, as those long fingers concentrated upon the buttons of her blouse. "Please, don't."

"Sorry." Edward Hawke gently removed his hands. He regarded her in the semi-darkness. Her skin was as stark as sheets, her lips trembling with apprehension. "Are you all right?"

"I- I don't- I think-" Victoria's storm-grey eyes glazed with tears. Her throat was sand-dry. I shouldn't be here, she wanted to scream, but her voice-box seemed sealed tight.

"Nightingale, relax, I won't hurt you. I promise." He fixed her with an easy smile, his hands resting upon her shoulders.

His lips were soft and persuasive, gently directing hers apart so that his hot tongue could slip inside her mouth. She felt her blood sing with energy as her pulse increased ten-fold. Suddenly she had her hands in his coarse hair, her own tongue snaking around his. Her heart drummed harder, her skin prickling with electricity as his fingers stroked the soft skin of her face. Their bodies clashed, the yielding flesh of her breasts squashed against his trunk. She gave short gasps, her lungs scoured with the force of air pulled into her chest, but still she could not breathe.

Ned's hands migrated from her cheeks to the sleek chignon of dark hair tightly coiled at the nape of her neck. Gently he flexed his fingers in the tresses, pursuing the hard metal pins she used to secure the hair in place. One pin, two pins, clattered to the floor beside her cape, then another and another. He felt her abrupt intake of hot breath from his mouth and hoped that he had not hurt her. Now her hair was unraveling down her back like a helix of silken rope, all the way to her tight waist. He felt it unwind in his fingers, free and natural, soft yet strong, unbound like her body.

He pulled away from her mouth and struggled from his own coat, throwing it wildly across the chair that held his hat. Next came his jacket and waistcoat, so that he finally stood only in his shirt, tie and trousers. Victoria watched him with frantic eyes, her body wet with sweat. She could see the swelling in his trousers, nearly bursting from its fastenings. She saw him wrench the tie from about his neck and fling it to the ground. His violence both frightened and aroused her. She wanted him to take her in his arms with all the swiftness and ferocity of before, the action so fast that her brain could not keep up with it.

He was back in front of her now, tenderly combing and positioning her hair until it hung in a swathe of dark waving silk around her pretty face. Her cheekbones were colored with red now. Her lips were hot, wet and inviting. The outlandish blue-grey eyes glowed from between seams of thick, dark lashes, gleaming no longer with tears but with physical need. Slowly, he took the blunt ends of glossy hair between his fingers and gently brushed it across her cheek, painting along the blossoming pink skin. He saw her cheek flinch beneath his touch, the warm lips move as if asking a question. He let the hair drop back to her waist, his mouth now moving gently behind her ear and down the muscular skin of her neck.

Victoria stood still and rigid as a statue. Her breath was trapped in her lungs. She knew not what to do in response to the hot, moist lips that traveled across her skin. She felt herself melting inside. Now the mouth rose from her neck and his face pulled away. "Are you all right?" Ned asked.

"Yes," rushed from her lungs. She shivered as his hands focused on the buttons of her blouse. "What are you doing?"

Ned's pale blue eyes held hers. Strands of rich, dark hair had fallen across his brow and brimmed upon his left eye. He impatiently jerked his head to free his sight, his hands still resting on her chest. "I want to see your body."