The Bartered Virgin (11 page)

“Oh, no. I hope not. But I will be careful where I step, especially after the horse carriages have been on the street.” Winn wrinkled her nose at the thought of manure on her white kid boots.

Madame held up her hand. “The spirits are growing restless. Ask a question as they must retire to the netherworld.”

David leaned over and whispered to Winn. “Be sure to get my dime’s worth.”

“How many children will I, er, we have?”

Madame’s freckled fingers hovered over the glass, caressing the air above the globe. She stared so close that David thought her large hooked nose would bump the round glass off its velvet pillar.

“You will be a very loving mother. And—” Celina paused and raised an unkempt eyebrow at David, “—you will be a very busy father.” Then she suddenly reached across the table and cuffed him on the cheek. “Use some restraint once in a while. Give this poor girl a rest or she won’t have the strength to travel. Now…oh. The spirits are gone. The glass is empty.”

“As I always suspected. Here is your dime, Madame.”

The gypsy leaned back from the table. Her shoulders sagged and her head drooped to her chest. She looked exhausted. “Keep your silver, Englishman. I know you have more need of it than I. The future is not always as settled as it would appear.”

They left the fortune-teller and strolled along the boardwalk. David noticed clouds gathering in the sky and the ocean breeze carried a chill. Winn shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. He hugged her close and took over warming her. “You’re cold, dearest. We’ll get a cup of tea, if we can find someplace where the Yanks know to make one. Then we should think about catching the streetcar back.”

“Don’t you want to ride the Ferris wheel?”

“In this wind? We’ll catch our death. Besides, I feel rather peckish. I have to return to my hotel and change for dinner with your parents.”

Winn cuddled up to him. “May I come, too?”

David grinned down at her. “I fear neither one of us will appear at the table if you do. Tell you what. As it’s Sunday, we’ll take the carriage to Central Park after supper. We’ll have the driver let us out at the hotel and we can spend a few hours together.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “I wish it were more than a few.”

He held her close. “This time next week we’ll have all the days to ourselves.”

Winn turned to smile at him. “Just the days? What about the nights?” Just the thought of the endless nights alone with David made her legs suddenly weak and the flesh between her thighs pulse with heat. “I believe you’re turning me into a loose, wanton woman. Here I am hardly able to wait until we can be in bed again so I can feel your hard cock pecking at me.”

“Enough with the rooster. You’re getting him mildly excited, even in this weather.”

Winn smiled wickedly, buoyed by the effect of her power over him. “I have a surprise for you,” she sang in a teasing voice.

“Any more surprises from you and I won’t survive this trip. Please tell me there are no trees or high places involved.”

She squeezed his arm and winked. “You’ll see. Oh, look. Hot buttered corn. Mmm. Come on, let’s get some.”

Winn pulled him over to a vendor. She saw David dig into his pants pocket. A look of despair crossed his face. He wouldn’t admit it but his funds must nearly be depleted. He was going broke showing her a good time when she was supposed to be hosting their tour. Quickly she dug into her reticule and gave the vendor a coin before David could intervene.

“Winn, no,” he chastised. “I’ll pay the man.”

“Not this time. It’s my treat. It’s called
going Dutch
. I read it in Harper’s. Modern girls can pay their own way. It’s becoming perfectly acceptable.” She handed David his hot corn-on-the-cob.

“Ah. My stodgy, old-fashioned ideals must give way to a very modern lady. Next you’ll be wanting to sit on the wheel side of a motorcar or, God forbid, join those suffrage zealots. I’ll not have that,” he said emphatically.

“Oh, slam suffrage! I don’t care one wit who runs the country. Besides, you already have a king.”

“Yes, darling, but you’ll attend Parliament with me and sit in the gallery. I’ll have to teach you about the British way of the House. You’ll be subject to some scrutiny by other lords’ wives and I want you to form an educated opinion. Believe it or not, I happen to think you have quite a remarkable brain in your head. I’d like you to use it.”

The admission startled her. Her teachers at Miss Spence’s berated her with scathing criticisms if she so much as thought about straying outside the standard curriculum of French, home economics or simple mathematics.

She noticed David looking at the hot corn from an angle as if wondering how to attack the steaming cob. She took him to the side of the vendor cart where a round cake of butter sat on a wooden platter. A concave pattern had settled in the butter where other people had coated their steaming corn. Winn held her corn stick and rolled it in the butter. She lifted the dripping corn to her lips and took a bite. David seemed to relax and followed her lead.

“Mmm. This
is
delicious. And messy.” He wiped a kernel of corn from the side of his mouth and caught a drop of butter with his finger as it slid down his chin.

Winn handed him a tissue serviette. “Yes, but it’s worth it.”

They sat on a wooden bench and finished their corn. Then David took the wooden skewers and soiled tissues and dropped them into a nearby trash container.

“Now, what about that surprise?” he said, returning to her.

“Come with me,” she said simply and hustled him through the crowds on the boardwalk. After a few moments they came to a bathing area on the beach. David seemed somewhat shocked at the women in their bathing dresses. Young children in what looked like cotton sleeping garments cut off at the knees and elbows frolicked in the shallow ocean water. Ladies and their gentlemen sat under huge umbrellas. Winn pointed to the canvas cabanas.

“Want to look inside?”

He turned to look at her. “Is this the surprise? Dearest, we do have bathing beaches at Brighton and spas at Bath. I’ll take you to both sometime.”

“Not the whole surprise. Follow me.” And with that she strode purposely toward a cabana with a front flap pulled open to indicate it was unoccupied. Once there, she scooted inside and pulled the tent flap across. Then she opened it a crack and crooked her finger at him.

“Psst. Come on. Nobody will care. Married people can share the same cabana.”

For once, David was the wary observer, casually looking up and down the beach for any sign of their being seen. Then he slipped inside the cabana.

“Now, what’s all this—Winn!”

She bent down and grabbed the hem of her skirt and lifted it high off the ground and up to her waist. David’s shocked expression told her everything.

“Winnifred Percy! You’re not wearing drawers.”

David stood staring, unable to believe her daring seduction in the middle of a crowded public beach with only the thin canvas walls shielding them. She’d tossed her straw boater on the ground, along with her suit coat, and unbuttoned her filmy silk batiste shirtwaist. He could see she wore only her chemise underneath. The cool ocean breeze was already making her lack of a corset obvious.

Hell and damnation, he was as voyeuristic as the next breathing, red-blooded male. But this was different. This was his Winn. She belonged to him. For his eyes only. But despite his sudden streak of protectiveness over her apparent lack of modesty, she was having an unsettling effect on him.

“No. Not here.”

“Why not here?” she asked boldly and began moving her free hand down her bare belly. He watched, fascinated as her fingers traveled across her abdomen and lingered above the thatch of curls between her legs. He swallowed past a dry throat. She was proving to be too much temptation. His trousers were uncomfortably tight.

“Your penis desires me,” she observed.

He took a step closer to her. “I may be shocked but I’m not dead.” His gaze was riveted to her busy fingers that toyed with the auburn curls at the apex of her thighs

She took a step forward. “Do
you
desire me?” She stopped fondling her pubic hair and untied her chemise bow. She tugged at the gathered bodice, loosened it and then pulled it down over one bare breast.

“Of course I desire you,” he grated out.

“Then show me, David. Touch me. Like this.” She took her nipple and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. She gasped suddenly as the sensitive bud puckered under her ministration.

“You—you don’t know what you’re asking.” He eyed the hand over her breast. She took another step forward, putting her close enough for him to feel the heat of her exposed skin.

Now it was Winn’s turn to torment him, as he’d done to her the first time in the garden. She stopped playing with her nipple and placed her hand over the buttons on his bulging crotch. “Yes. Yes, I do. I must. I can feel it. So do you.” She pressed her fingers along the hard outline of his linen trousers. How strange and fascinating to feel the pulsing heat of him through the material. She gave him a slight squeeze, causing him to groan. It occurred to her then just how wise Louise was when she had written, “The power of a woman over a man is in the palm of her hand.”

There were just the two of them in that tiny tent. David’s eyes, dark and heavy, hungrily gazed into hers. Clearly, he wanted her. Not her money, not the bargain he’d made with her father. That moment belonged only to her.

Just then, one of the canvas walls caved in behind them. It bowed toward them forcefully and tugged on the rest of the tent. Winn dropped her skirt and gave a tiny scream of surprise just as the tent roof collapsed and covered them.

There was a high-pitched shriek, followed by another one. A child cried out. A weight rolled over Winn. She flailed in the dark. Her first thought was to fasten her shirtwaist buttons, but the tail ends had slipped out of her skirt. She found her tangled suit coat and managed to get one arm in the sleeve. A flurry of mixed voices hovered around her. Hot, dark canvas covered her face. She heard someone yell, “This is no time for another picture. Help them out of there.”

A moment later, fresh air and daylight fell on her face. The first thing she saw was David. He frantically shoved the rest of her jacket on her and tried to fasten the frog clasps. One fell off in his hand.

“Blast it! Here, take my coat quickly.” And he fastened it around her shoulders before helping her to her feet.

“You okay?” asked a man in a bathing suit. A strange woman promptly threw a blanket around Winn. “You poor kid. Spoonin’ your guy, huh. I’m gonna wale that boy of mine. Told him a hundred times, no football near the cabanas.”

“I’ve got sand all over me.” Winn shook her head and wiped her face with the back of her hand. David was beside her, spitting sand out from between his teeth and brushing off his suit jacket.

“Sorry, mister. But it sure was a great tackle. Newspaper man got a nice picture of it. Might even make the
Post
. Kid’s gonna make Notre Dame someday if his ol’ lady don’t kill him first.”

David, ever the gentleman, smoothed over the situation. “No hard feelings, old sport. Bit of a match man myself. Winn, are you recovered?”

She shook her head. “I think so. There’s a ladies’ facility just off the beach. I believe I’ll go and make myself presentable.”

David escorted her there. “I’ll wait for you.” He pointed to a wooden bench beside a photographic establishment.

“Oh, dear. And to think I wanted to stop and have the man take a photograph of us as a souvenir.”

Later that evening, Winn lay in David’s arms after another exhausting session of lovemaking. The room was dark except for the subtle glow of David’s cigar. Winn fanned the air above her.

“Ugh! And you don’t want me to smoke cigarettes,” she scolded.

“Yes, but I actually enjoy my cigars. You smoke to be difficult, don’t you, my little red mop.” He accented her nickname using a dialect similar to the gypsy’s.

She slapped him playfully. “You’re such a camp.”

“Yes, and now I have sand in my bed. Whatever possessed you to leave the house without your corset and knickers? I fear I shall have to have a talk with Margaret.”

“Don’t you dare. You’re already a scrub in her book. I swear that woman has more talent than Madame Celina. She only has to look at me to make me feel guilty, even when I haven’t done anything.”

“I had a talk with her after supper tonight. I offered her a job, you know. To come to England to be your lady’s maid if she wanted. Do you know what that grizzled Irish punt told me?”

“To
go fuck yourself
. She told me before we left.”

“As I recall, it was
go fuck your bloody limey, Irish-hatin’ arse, m’lord
.”

“At least she was respectful about it.”

“And speaking of respect,” he leaned over and lit an electric lamp. “It’s time for you to get those respectable clothes on your delicious unrespectable body and 23 skiddoo.”

Winn rolled off him and laughed. “Congratulations. Now you’re speaking like a true New Yorker.”

“Egads! You can push me out of your tree if that ever happens. Now, out with you, wench! I’ve a busy day tomorrow and need my rest. I’m an old man, you know.” He slapped her on her bare buttocks and she let out a mock yelp of pain. She rubbed her reddened bottom and stuck her tongue out at him. Winn was becoming awfully fond of their post-sexual horseplay. It made him laugh and she liked to see him laugh. It lit up his face in careless animation. David didn’t muffle the sound behind his hands so that his throat sounded like a frog with the grippe. He laughed wholeheartedly with his generous mouth wide open to display two rows of unmarked, intact teeth. For a few moments he looked genuinely happy, despite the worries she knew weighed him down.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked as she leaned over the side of the bed and rummaged through her clothes. Winn pulled on her petticoat and chemise, glad she’d decided to forego her drawers and corset. She felt blissfully unrestrained.