The Red Velvet Horse (Siren Publishing Allure) (10 page)

“The cowardly way out” a critical little voice spoke from somewhere deep within. I ignored its admonition and contented myself that I had done what was best for myself.

The thought of my darling Tom with his handsome face and warm eyes sent a thrill as sharp as an electric current coursing straight through me. And despite myself, and my rigid determination to put this part of my life securely behind me, my body betrayed me, and I shivered with longing in the mellow mildness of the flawless spring day.

What would Tom think of me if he knew how I’d earned my living for these last number of years? Would he accept me as wife despite of it, the way Jock Sinclair with all his many shortcomings had done?

A strictly hypothetical question, of course, because I had thrust my former lover out of my new life and resolved to be a good wife to Jock, my most generous of benefactors.

* * * *

The summer of 1902 was a busy one indeed, with Jock converting his fine old house from flickering green gaslight to the stable bright glow of electricity. In addition, creating a sort of mini-brothel in a small antechamber off the master bedroom. For he had missed the raunchy Neddy in our sexual repertoire, and had now acquired a similar horse of his own.

“Ride horsey, ride,” he was wont to say, as I sat astride the velvet beast, clad in my corsets, with bare bum protruding seductively beneath.

Whack…whack…whack…He would give me a light switching across my buttocks and thighs, whipping up the rosy color and leaving me breathless and ready for the handle of the whip to penetrate my twitching cunny.

“You’re ready to take it to the hilt too, you bad wee lassie,” Jock would murmur, as I squirmed and wiggled my way to a most satisfying crescendo; hugging the horse while my erect nipples rubbed against the warm fabric.

Then he would pull me down until my private parts were flush with the rear of the “animal” and slide in his rigid cock, pumping me full of air in both cavities with a fine lusty poking that left me shivering with delight.

“You are indeed a most astonishingly virile man for your age,” I would compliment my husband most sincerely, after he had completed the act of love; straightening up and alighting from the horse while the disconcerting little farts rumbled out of both cunny and bum.

“And you’ve got a quim worth dying for,” Jock would reply most charitably. “And I’m going to feast on it right now.”

The feel of his tongue on my quivering cunny lips, both inner and outer, never failed to take me straight to the heights of exquisite bliss. Trembling and twitching in an almost spasmodic frenzy as his thick fingers slid up my love tunnel and tapped determinedly on my most sensitive spot.

“Oh yes…yes,” I would cry out enraptured, and feeling an intense pressure build within my womb, would bear down as if to birth a child and pass a great quantity of clear liquid instead.

This was the most satisfying orgasm of them all, and it would leave me blissfully sated for days.

Little did I suspect, as I reveled in the comfort and excitement of my marriage to Jock, that a dark cloud from my past was about to threaten my new found happiness.

“Mrs. Cloud sent me.” The girl was well dressed if a trifle showy with bold eyes and bad teeth. It was a muggy August afternoon and I had been playing croquet on the back lawn, when Katy, the parlor maid, summonsed me.

“I showed the…person into the library, ma’am,” she informed me stiffly, with an air of curiosity and disapproval.

The message from my erstwhile employer and Madam of the most successful brothel in the city was simple. Letters had continued to arrive there from a gentleman in Vancouver (Tom, of course) and now he had presented himself at her establishment, in person.

Foreseeing just such a calamity and seeking to forestall it, I had written to him prior to my marriage telling him that I was returning to England where I would take up residence with an Aunt.

Damn the man, I thought with some passion, not all of it negative in nature. For I still had a tender spot in my heart for this most handsome and pleasant of god’s creatures.

“He’s staying at Murray’s Hotel on Wellington Street,” Mrs. Cloud’s emissary advised with a titter, obviously enjoying the discomfiture of one so rich and privileged. This little event would certainly be the topic of all sorts of scurrilous gossip and speculation for a long time to come.

Dreading seeing the pain on Tom’s face when he knew that I’d lied to him, I nevertheless, mustered what little courage I had left and went over to his lodgings that very evening.

Thunder rumbled away angrily from the direction of Lake Ontario, and there were bright flashes of heat lightning streaking across the dark sky.

The hansom cab dropped me near the entrance to the hotel, and I mingled with the commercial travelers and holidaymakers on the sidewalk as I made my way forward on wobbly legs.

Tom was having supper in the dining room when I arrived, a small but pleasant enclave off the front foyer with an abundance of potted plants and wall prints of stagecoaches.

“Hannah!” So delighted was he when I appeared in the doorway, he almost tipped over the table in his haste to stand up and greet me.

“Tom!” I returned his welcome with a degree of emotion, which surprised me. For it wasn’t until I was actually in his presence that I realized how very much I still cared for this man.

Had I been merely denying this passion for convenience’s sake, I wondered unhappily?

“I’ve missed you sorely, Hannah.” Tears welled up in his heavenly green eyes. “Every single day.”

“And I you, Tom,” I answered honestly. Although to myself I admitted that the depth of my yearning had clearly not been equal to his. For would I have traveled across a continent twice to seek news of him? Probably not, I thought with an uncomfortable twinge of guilt.

I decided that honesty would be the best policy here. While I talked, I twisted a lace handkerchief nervously in my hands, and avoided meeting his eyes.

“ How could you do such a thing?” His voice shook with shock and disbelief, when my halting discourse was finally over. “I thought you loved me, Hannah?”

He was referring, of course, to my working in a brothel, and then marrying Jock Sinclair, whom I did not love.

There was a small bowl of violets on the table, and as I touched their velvety petals with my fingertips, I couldn’t help but remember the last time Tom and I had been in a hotel together. It had been the Bryce Arms in Vancouver, where we had lain in rapturous abandon in each other’s arms until the early morning light, and under such different circumstances.

Yet even then, I had chosen the material comfort and security of marriage with the brutal Ned Beasley, rather than commit myself to a life of poverty as Tom’s wife.

“Oh, I do love you, Tom,” I assured him with the utmost sincerity. “I was left destitute, a poor widow without a penny to my name.”

The clanging of a dinner gong drowned out my declaration of love. “It’s time for the second sitting.” Tom’s face looked uncharacteristically grim in the flickering candlelight. “They’ll need our table.”

Outside the hotel, he walked at a stiff distance from me. “You’re looking well, Hannah,” he said. We strolled along the rain soaked pavements in the direction of the railway station. “Even more beautiful than I remembered.”

“And you, Tom, you haven’t changed a bit other than to grow more handsome…and desirable.” There was a surge of hotness in my loins at the thought of him driving into my wetness.

Hansom cabs galloped by, jostling for position on the crowded cobblestones. The harsh cries of their drivers rung through the damp evening air.

I took Tom’s arm, relishing his closeness, for this was a young and handsome male who had won my affections so many years before. A far cry from the crude and aging Jock Sinclair, who stirred no romantic chord in my breast, and never would.

“Kiss me,” I whispered hungrily, steering him into an alleyway between two sooty buildings. Not waiting for his response, I ground my lips greedily against his and forced them open with my tongue.

He gasped as I pressed against his rising cock and cupped his balls in my hand. “Kiss me,” I moaned again and this time he returned my embrace with a need that matched my own.

A lone pigeon cooed from his perch on a windowsill above our heads, under a bewitching quarter moon.

“Take me, Tom,” I implored. As I hitched up my skirts and lowered my drawers, he hoisted me up, so I could wind my legs around his waist, and drove into my twitching cunny with his long steely ramrod of a cock.

“Oh God, that’s good...” I cried out in rapture, feeling the firm rigid maleness of him penetrate to the very hilt of my person.

We rutted most energetically in that squalid alley, ignoring the stink of cat pee and the stench of rotting garbage from a fishmonger close by.

“I’m coming…oh Christ...” Tom gasped like one demented, and with one, two, three almighty plunges exploded into my womb with all the force of an overheated geyser.

When I returned home that night, much later than expected due to the amorous activities, Jock was waiting up for me with a grim expression on his face.

“And where have you been until this hour?” he asked me angrily, flicking the belt of his smoking jacket with restless fingers.

I knew that Katy, the parlor maid would have duly reported to him about the visit from the bold doxy from Mrs. Cloud’s, and it was with this in mind that I gave my answer.

“I was called out to my erstwhile employer’s this evening,” I explained as diligently as I was able. “There was some trouble there with one of the clients, a man who was known to me.”

“Is that a fact?” Jock replied disbelievingly. “And what did Bessie Cloud think you could do about it?”

“Well she didn’t know whether to believe the girl’s story or not, when she said the man was a pervert who had beaten her. While he claimed she had stolen his watch and called for the constable.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see my husband was beginning to place some credence on what I was saying.

“ What was the upshot of the whole sorry debacle?” he asked me a lot less suspiciously than before.

“I was able to substantiate what the girl had said. This client was indeed a brute who wanted to pee on my face, and beat me with his fists when I refused.”

The rhythmic tick-tock of the carriage clock on the mantelshelf was now the only sound in the hushed silence of the parlor.

Standing by the fireplace staring down at my reflection in the toes of my high-buttoned leather boots, I waited with what I hoped was a normal demeanor for the response from Jock.

“Come here lassie,” he ordered at last. And when I was standing beside him, ran his hand up my skirt and nudged it inside my drawers.

I squeezed my eyes shut, so that I would bear this humiliation staunchly, for he was poking around at my cunny for signs of sexual interference by another male.

Thank heavens I had had the foresight to wash out my dripping privates at a rusty old pump in the yard of the fishmonger’s shop. Or else, it would be the copious nature of Tom’s ejaculations that would have been now obvious to my husband’s intrusive hand.

“Really Sir, how could you doubt me so?” I enquired with hurt expression and trembling lip. “I have always been a faithful wife to you.”

“Aye well, that’s as well maybe,” Jock answered shortly. “But you can hardly blame me for being suspicious considering your former profession.”

Not a wink of sleep had I that night, for as soon as Jock had left the house I went immediately to Mrs. Cloud’s and assured that my story would be upheld by her should Jock enquire as to its validity.

“Don’t worry yourself poppet,” Bessie Cloud promised with a finger to her lips denoting silence. “I always look out for my girls, whether they still work for me or not.”

The financial incentive that I paid on a regular basis for her continued discretion, not withstanding, I thought cynically.

Seeing Tom return downcast to Vancouver was exceedingly hard to bear, for I truly did love that man with his dark hair and pleasant expression. “We will remain in touch,” I promised, and kissed him deeply on the mouth before he boarded the train.

At home, in that great granite mansion that Jock built, I caught him looking at me strangely when he thought I didn’t see, and I knew that he had suspicions about me that were as yet unresolved.

Mattie Gwyn has stayed with me. I know she is still resentful of what she deems my defection to both Tom and Jock. I can see it in her eyes when I come upon her, unexpectedly. Yet I truly believed that she was at least resigned to the situation and accepting of it, until I learned in the most devastating way that she was not.

“This was found on the doorstep this morning, addressed to me.” Jock’s face was every bit as gray and craggy as his mansion.

It was a bitterly cold day with a freezing wind sending clouds of smoke swirling down the chimneys. I pulled my shawl more tightly around me as I walked over to where he sat huddled by the fireplace.

The letter was written in crude lettering on cheap stationery. YOUR WIFE IS A BIGAMIST. SHE IS STILL MARRIED TO NED BEASLEY IN VANCOUVER.