Sinful Seduction (28 page)

The woman nodded dumbly and Maggie smiled again. ‘Good.' She counted the money onto the desk. ‘Now have Millie brought to me.'

Scraping the coins into her black silk apron, Mrs Wilkes scurried out, and when Millie opened the door Maggie was standing gazing out of the window.

‘What you want with me, my lady?' the girl asked nervously.

Maggie turned round, smiling. ‘Oh, I just thought you might like to come and live with me for a while.' She shrugged. ‘Of course, if you prefer to stay here...'

‘Maggie?' she gasped. ‘Wot you doin' here? I was scared stiff. Old Ma Wilkes said some Lady Anston ‘ad bought me.'

‘She has,' said Maggie. ‘That's me. I'll explain it all later. Now get your stuff together, you're coming with me. And fetch young Eddie - I'm taking him as well.'

Ten minutes later, after a few last instructions to Mrs Wilkes regarding Jebediah and Thomas, she ushered her two bewildered charges into the carriage and drove off home.

It was almost two in the morning before explanations were done and plans for the future made: Eddie to be properly educated; Millie to be set up in her longed for milliner's shop. ‘I don't believe it,' she sighed happily. ‘It's like one of them fairy stories for kids where everybody lives ‘appily ever after.'

Maggie's lips set. Not everybody. There were a few scores to be settled yet.

 

First thing in the morning she called young Eddie in. ‘You know the warrens in Whitechapel, don't you?' she asked.

‘Course I do,' he boasted. ‘Born there, weren't I? I could find me way round ‘em wiv me eyes shut.' He grinned at her. ‘What you want me to do, miss?'

‘I want you to find the man who brought me to Mrs Wilkes,' she said. ‘Do you remember what he looked like?'

‘Who could ferget a face like that?' shivered Eddie. ‘A real nasty piece of work.' He stuck out his scrawny chest. ‘Want me ter sort ‘im out for yer?'

Maggie suppressed a smile at the thought of Eddie, not the size of a decent scrubbing brush, tackling her brute of a stepfather. ‘No thank you,' she said gravely. ‘But I would like you to find out where he is and what he's doing. Do you think you could manage that without putting yourself in any danger?'

‘Easy,' grinned Eddie. ‘Consider it done, miss.'

 

Three nights later, Maggie was standing in the shadows outside a drinking den, flanked on either side by Thomas and Jebediah. The night was bitterly cold, but her cloak - and the rage inside her - kept her warm. When Bert finally staggered out, she was ready.

‘Remember me?' she said, stepping out in front of him.

He stared at her blearily, and then recognition crossed his dull features. ‘Well, if it ain't little Maggie,' he said, and then his eyes narrowed as he took in her fine clothes. ‘Done well fer yerself, ain't yer,' he grinned. ‘‘Ow's about a few bob for yer old dad?' He lurched towards her. ‘An' a kiss fer old times sake?'

The first blow caught him full in the face, breaking his nose and his few remaining teeth, and as Maggie watched, Thomas and Jebediah systematically reduced him to a bleeding pulp, lying unconscious in the filthy gutter. She smiled with satisfaction. With any luck he'd spend his dying days broken and in the poorhouse, like her mother. She walked away without a backward glance.

 

‘I wish it was as easy to pay back Lord Edward,' she said bitterly to Millie. ‘He was just as bad, but people like him always get away with it.'

Millie put down her glass and stared at Maggie in astonishment. ‘Ain't you heard?' she gasped. ‘I thought everybody ‘ad.'

‘Heard what?' demanded Maggie.

‘Hang on,' grinned Millie. ‘I kept the papers. I'll fetch ‘em and you can read fer yourself.' She was back in a matter of moments. ‘Here you go, ‘ave a butchers at that.'

So Maggie read the scandalous headlines. ‘I don't believe it,' she gasped.

‘Caught wiv ‘is trousers down, rogering some bum-boy in Clarence Street!' Millie said with relish. ‘Seems he fancied a bit of brown as well as a bit of the other.' She nodded philosophically. ‘Course, ‘e might ‘ave got away wiv it, if he ‘adn't gone bankrupt into the bargain; invested every penny he ‘ad in some bloomin' silver mine that went belly-up. Shot hisself, didn't he?' She grinned and raised her glass. ‘And it couldn't ‘ave ‘appened ter a nicer feller!'

Warring emotions raged within Maggie. Pleasure at his scandalous end, and disappointment at being denied any hand in it. Then another thought struck her. ‘What about Jeremy?' she gasped.

‘Shame about him,' said Millie. ‘‘E was the only decent one of the whole bloody lot of them. Dunno what's ‘appened to ‘im. ‘E could still be at the ‘ouse fer all I know. It's being sold to settle up some of his old man's debts.'

 

The following morning Maggie was standing outside the house, her stomach churning as she stared up at it. It already had a subtle air of neglect; the steps un-swept, the windows dull, weeds growing between the cracks in the basement paving. Feeling unsettled, she walked slowly up to the front door and raised the tarnished brass doorknocker.

The sound echoed through the house, but no smartly turned-out butler hurried to answer it. She was about to turn away when she heard a faint shuffling, and eventually the door opened.

‘Jeremy?' she gasped.

‘Maggie? I don't believe it. Come in.' Despite his welcoming smile, his face was carved in lines of suffering and he looked ten years older than the last time she'd seen him. Her eyes flew from the crutch to the empty space beneath his left knee, and pity and love almost overwhelmed her.

‘Not very pretty, is it?' he said ruefully, following her gaze. ‘A little souvenir from India.' He shrugged. ‘Anyway, come through to the drawing room; we might as well have a glass of wine before the vultures descend.' He stumped off and she followed him, noting the auctioneer's stickers on the furniture.

‘What happened to you?' he demanded when they were seated. ‘I wrote and wrote, but you never answered.'

‘Never mind that,' said Maggie. ‘What are you going to do when the house is sold? Where will you go?'

‘God knows,' he shrugged. ‘Join mother at her sister's, I suppose. I'm sure they'll enjoy demonstrating their Christian charity to the world by putting up with us, despite the scandal.' He smiled bitterly. ‘Though I think my recouping the family fortunes by wedding some convenient heiress is rather out of the question. Who in their right mind would want to marry me now?'

Maggie's heart began to beat faster. ‘I can think of someone,' she said softly. ‘Me.' He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hand. ‘Though whether you'd want to marry me, is a different story.' Blushing and stumbling she told him everything, then waited, heart in mouth, for the contempt that was bound to come.

But it didn't.

‘Oh, you poor little bitch,' he said softly. ‘What you must have gone through. I'd kill my father if the bastard hadn't already done the job himself.' He began to laugh. ‘A disgraced cripple and a reformed whore; that should give them something to talk about! It'll be the wedding of the season.'

For Maggie relief was tempered with dismay. ‘Is that the only reason you'd want to marry me?' she demanded, feeling hurt. ‘To get your own back? To shock the world?'

‘Of course not,' he said gently. ‘The only thing that ever stood between us was convention, and we're beyond that now.' He grinned. ‘Hell mend the whole damned lot of them. We can do whatever we like.'

For the first time since it had all begun, Maggie felt truly happy. He was right; damn them all, with their rules and their hypocrisy. The estate was there and waiting. They need never bother with so-called society again. She licked her lips; and there were so many new pleasures she could introduce him to...

‘There's just one last thing,' she said demurely.

‘And what's that?' he asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

‘I've been a bad girl...' she said, smiling wickedly into his eyes as she began to undo the buttons of her bodice, ‘...and bad girls deserve to be spanked...'

 

Enjoy more of Kate Benedict's acclaimed damsel in distress stories, all exclusively published as eBooks by us at Chimera:

 

Arena of Shame

 

 

 

 

His good humour restored by the sight of her naked body, he winked at his mates and pulled her against him, his free hand plunging between her thighs as he brought his mouth down over hers. He thrust his thick wet tongue into her mouth and she nearly gagged on his kiss, gasping for breath as she wrenched her head away, but her struggles merely aroused him. When she tried to kick him he laughed and deliberately fell backwards onto the pallet, dragging her with him so she lay helplessly across his lap.

‘You've got to show them you're the boss,' he said to his comrades, running his hand appreciatively over her tight bottom. ‘And the best way to do that is with a good spanking.'

 

Branna's life is torn apart when her tribe is defeated by the hated Romans, her betrothed beaten to death before her eyes, and she is taken as the spoils of war.

From the slave markets her path takes her from innocence to unbridled depravity. Can she survive, or will she become just one more sacrifice on the altar of Roman decadence?

    

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Punishment Exercise

 

 

 

 

‘Bad girl!' he wheezed, gloating over her succulent flesh. ‘Bad, bad girl!' She could feel his prick digging into her tummy as she wriggled on his lap, trying to free herself from his iron grasp.

But her struggles only served to excite him further. He was drooling as his hand rose and fell, smacking her bare bottom as it gleamed rosily in the firelight. She squealed as the stinging pain made her squirm and writhe, her feet, in their buttoned shoes, kicking the air. His eyes, fixed on the rippling globes of her bottom, sparkled in the firelight and his breath came in heaving gasps. As she wriggled she could feel him swelling even further, the heat of his excitement radiating through her pink dress. Suddenly she was unceremoniously shoved off his knees and dumped on the floor.

She sat there, legs sprawled, staring at him with wide-eyed dismay as he fumbled with the remaining buttons on his fly, his hands trembling.

 

Paid-off from her teaching post, Cassie is reduced to finding a job with a respectable escort agency in order to pay the rent - only to discover that the agency is a cover for something darker and more sinister. She finds herself in a depraved world where young men and women are bought and sold to satisfy the sadistic appetites of the rich and decadent.

Can she use her newly found appetite for pain and pleasure to survive - and to gain revenge on the people who put her there in the first place?

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Puritan Passions

 

 

  

He reached out again and seized her by the upper arm, flinging her facedown on the bed. As she struggled to rise he hauled her skirts above her waist, trapping her in the clinging folds. Grabbing her flailing hands at the wrist he wound his belt round them and fastened it to the bed-head so she was stretched out helplessly before him, naked from the waist down.

He ran his hand over her pert buttocks, enjoying the way her flesh cringed at his touch and feeling his manhood swell. ‘Don't run away, sweetheart,' he panted. ‘I shall be back, with a little surprise for you.'

She lay there frozen in the muffling darkness as his footsteps retreated, her heart pounding with horrified anticipation. What was he going to do?

 

England is under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, and young Lucinda Carstairs, daughter of a Royalist family, is in a state of limbo as her betrothed, James Happington, is in exile in Europe with Charles Stuart.

Lucinda unwittingly attracts the eye of their elderly neighbour, Ezekiel Watkins, a Puritan who acquired his estate through his support of Cromwell, and when her brother is seen on a secret visit home to raise money for the Royalist cause, Watkins uses this to blackmail her into marriage, and to her horror she finds that his puritanical mask hides a monster of sexual depravity, and that her life with him is a living hell.

But on the news that Charles has been restored to the throne after Cromwell's death, the loathsome Watkins dies of apoplexy and she is free to marry her beloved James - only to find he has acquired somewhat ‘exotic' tastes whilst abroad, and things may have gone very much from bad to worse.

The final straw comes when James takes to using Lucinda to entertain his associates and settle his gambling debts, and so she must at last try to find a way to freedom and independence...

 

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