Virgin Encounter (Virgin Series Book 1) Read online

  Low blow.

  Oh, to strike him. Not dead, but not a missish drawing room slap, either. Full-out fisticuffs guaranteed to wreak havoc on his handsome face.

  Not his nose! I would leave that alone. His hawk-like profile was too aristocratic to mar with a bump.

  Not his cheeks either. High and sculpted, rather exotic, those chiseled bones must stay exactly as is.

  His jaw then? Could I strike him there?

  No. The granite firmness would hurt my knuckles while doing nothing to diminish his male beauty.

  Still, I would retaliate. Not with the flat of my hand but with a volley of logic surpassing his own. See how he liked it!

  “How would beauty hinder seduction, sir?”

  “Figuring her good looks will do all the hard work for her, a good looking woman comes to rely on her appearance to get what she wants. She expects her smile to drop men in their tracks. Whereas a less physically gifted woman, such as yourself, will often develop other traits, less conventional but just as lethal traits…humor…the art of conversation…intelligence…cleverness…carnality…to conquer the male heart.”

  “Sounds like the short end of the stick to me, sir. I would go for the beauty angle every time. Oh, and a smaller arse.”

  Ignoring all that, Malcolm continued. “A true coquette realizes seduction is no more than a sleight of hand trick. You would know all about that sort of deceptive cunning if memory serves.”

  And Malcolm’s memory always did serve. Him.

  Damn it all to hell. He would never allow me to forget my humble thieving origins in Boston for even a minute. I had not always borne the name Cynthia Weatherford. Certainly, my foundling’s birth certificate had not been recorded as such. And should I be fortunate enough to remain with this organization, I probably would not always go by that quality name, either. The aliases would come and go, the name changes suiting whatever the scam.

  And what of me? Would I change too?

  I was not referring to my appearance. Malcolm had already explained my looks would be altered with hair enhancements, hennas and such, as well as with the application of face makeup. Fashions could transform a woman also. But on the inside, where it counted, would I change or remain the same?

  A person must grow or stagnate. I accepted this. But my values, the few I owned, I would like to keep.

  Actually, I would also like to keep the assumed name Malcolm had given me this time around. The alias was tonier than what the Boston Female Asylum had saddled me with on my birth certificate:

  Daisy – a milkmaid’s first name. Crumbly – a surname too close to the truth. I was indeed falling to pieces.

  Had the orphanage taken me for the offspring of some wayward farm girl a travelling salesman had gotten in the family way? Perhaps my mother had hitched a ride into town in the back of a hay wagon, holding me close to her heart before callously abandoning me on the steps of some city church.

  Could be. My background remained a mystery to me.

  In the here and now, I did know this much: I was right smart in the head, possessed nimble fingers and fleetness of foot, attributes that had served me well in the thieving trade I had taken up after escaping the asylum as an incorrigible ten-year-old. Shunning gangs, I operated on my own, avoiding rape, disease, and the authorities. Thanks to my wily willfulness, I remained an independent operator until Malcolm came upon me.

  The day following my last birthday my mentor approached me in an alley. Not for carnal relations. Oh, no. Malcolm was too fastidious to pick up a common nobody like me to see to his masculine needs…if he had any of those. Oh, he had carnal relations with women. But needs?

  Doubtful. Needs would make him human, not the automaton he clearly was beneath the nice suit of clothes.

  Sour grapes?

  Yes. Why did he not love me as I loved him?

  I was not what he had wanted in bed, not back then. But after spying me stealthily lifting a gent’s money pouch, he proceeded to interview me for a vacant position in his group. Out in the open, right on the spot, with people walking by, he had coolly laid it all out for me, all his requirements, loyalty to his den of thieves being the most essential of these.

  “To become one of my students in crime,” he had said back then, “you must work harder than you have ever worked before.”

  Only after my agreement to a trial training period did he introduce himself:

  Malcolm Ignatius.

  Lord! What a convoluted mouthful. How could I ever hope to fire up the blood of a man who had chosen such a stuffed-shirt name for his alias?

  But unwisely infatuated with him, I aimed to do exactly that, to fire up his blood.

  If he kept me on. Would he keep me on?

  Not if I refused to seduce the mark.

  And so I would. I would do what I must to ensure Malcolm kept me on.

  Already, I had learned so much from him. In the few months of apprenticing under Malcolm, I had gone from understanding basic street thievery to complicated confidence games.

  I could teach him a thing or two, as well. A little humanity hovered at the top of my long list. Some small show of spontaneity came next. The man needed to loosen up!

  “Inch your sleeve down your arm, Miss Weatherford.”

  About sodding time…

  This was my favorite part of the lessons – rehearsing the seduction scene with Malcolm assuming the role of my first victim. Lovely.

  And antiseptic. I might have been a nun in training for all the progress I had made with Malcolm outside the role I played. Nevertheless, I lowered the sleeve. At the elbow, I asked, “Like so? Like so? Am I doing the seduction right?”

  After substituting opaque cotton stockings – silk was too much to wish for – for my old nubby woolen hose, my legs were no longer mottled and red. All Malcolm’s doing. He told me my “sensitive skin would not tolerate prickly goods against it.”

  Malcolm was prickly too, but I would more than tolerate him against me. After my long-held virginity was a thing of the past would he give me the opportunity to prove it? I would have some experience under my garters by then, though only a little…

  The mark was to have me once, and once only, before I sprang the blackmail scheme on him.

  Get something on them before they got something on you…

  That was the motto I had lived by since my street urchin days. Malcolm’s extortion plan employed a similar premise.

  After a slow and steady unveiling of flesh, I ceased my sleeve’s downward inching. My neckline now hung in a lopsided fashion below my collarbone. My right shoulder, as well as the top of one full breast, was prominently displayed. A simple tweak from Malcolm would free my bosom from its scant lace bodice.

  Should I fling caution to the winds and do the freeing myself?

  If given a sign, I would.

  But no. Malcolm breathed normally. No rasps. No pants. No sighs. No change whatsoever in respiration.

  Still, I looked for another sign, a more explicit sign. I was a virgin, true, but not an innocent. I knew of one sure-fire way to tell if a woman had gotten a rise out of a man:

  The bulge in the front of his trousers.

  Alas, no betraying evidence ruined the cut of Malcolm’s fine tailoring.

  In my disappointment, I snapped, “Well? Answer me! Is my portrayal correct?”

  “Only if you portray a turtle.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just now – why drop your chin?”

  Better to see your big, bad cock, sir…

  For some reason, my brain was stuck on fearsome nursery tales this evening. First Miss Muffet, now an adult variation of Little Red Riding Hood. Not that my parents ever told me bedtime stories as a child. Had they even met me?

  Certainly my mother must have met me briefly after pushing me into the world. But there had been none of this looking out for me afterwards. Save for a few asylum staff paid to feed and change me, I had always been on my own.

  Until now. Until joining
Malcolm’s band of thieves.

  I was beginning to understand that love brought with it a whole new set of responsibilities…and the occasional spat.

  Malcolm’s sodding question set my teeth on edge. In answer, I did what came naturally:

  I lied.

  “I lowered my gaze, sir, so as not to give my upset away.”

  “Upset over what?”

  “The delay in beginning my con. I am most anxious to start, sir.”

  “I told you – on the morrow you begin.” His usual frown lessened in severity. “You have a long neck.”

  I did?

  I did! Because Malcolm said so, I must.

  In my lovesickness, I sighed over that effusive compliment of his about my swan neck. No, he had not used those exact words. He made no reference to a swan at all, but I still arrived where I wanted to be, the round-about way:

  In terms of my appearance, Malcolm thought me…passable.

  “Shrug your right shoulder,” he said. “Allow your sleeve to drift ever so slowly the rest of the way down your arm. If not for stealing it, that bit of frippery would have cost me a pretty penny. You know, the Empress Eugenie once wore a similar House of Worth creation. The sleeve worked for her. Make the window-dressing work for you.”

  Windows were transparent. I was not. After living on the streets for years, I was dirt-smudged and rain-muddied. No one would see through me.

  Certainly not Malcolm. A good thing! Because unwholesome thoughts laid siege to me. All the time:

  A man creeping into my bedchamber in the dead of night, a hairbrush – firm and unforgiving, with stout, inflexible boar-bristles – in his hand. Using that hairbrush, he went at my raised bottom – bared to his attentions, of course – with all the righteousness of a zealot, no temperance whatsoever in his strikes against my flesh.

  Perfect!

  Though, I sensed incomplete somehow. Inexperience limited my imagination, and so all I had were hair brush whacks and faded ribbons trying my wrists together and a great deal of pinching and biting of…well…everything. And then, just as rapturous shivers raced down my spine, the image always faded to black.

  Was my nocturnal visitor Malcolm?

  I loved him so, it must be so.

  Chapter Three

  “In your portrayal of a flirtatious tease, you will remain strictly reputable,” Malcolm informed me. “However, you might get away with a little bohemianism. You understand.”

  “No, sir. Actually, I do not…”

  “Then, let me explain. In the context of this con, you will play the part of a naïve young lady fallen on hard times.”

  “That I know, sir.”

  “A young lady who would go to bed with a gentleman simply because she liked the smell of his hair dressing.”

  “Oh! A silly twit, in other words. Why not just say so?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

  “But you will not get away with outright promiscuity, Miss Weatherford. It is a fine line you walk.”

  Tada! I was all set. My sense of balance was extraordinarily good. I was practically an acrobat.

  I made a face, one that reflected my relief.

  Which, Malcolm misunderstood. “You might smirk, but an unorthodox streak is essential to your cover. It forms the backbone of your portrayal. However, heed my words well here – flagrantly brash behavior will never do. The character you are to play is no better than she need be…and still keep her reputation intact.”

  “My job,” I said, parroting one of his prior briefings, “is to ingratiate myself with the mark, lead him to bed, and then blackmail him afterwards for his indiscretion.”

  “Exactly. The victim of your con is courting another, the eventual marriage more business than pleasure.”

  I nodded. “My victim is a bounder, an opportunistic cad who would pay any price rather than jeopardize his union with a well-placed socialite.”

  “I would call him practical.”

  A different slant. Perhaps, the male point of view?

  “Even a hint of scandal,” Malcolm continued, “will destroy the mark’s chances in society.”

  “Compromising behavior counts,” I said, restating what he had already spoon-fed me earlier in drips and drabs. “I am to think like an irresponsible and entirely spoiled heiress.”

  As I had been self-supporting and poor as a church mouse since childhood, no small thought adjustment for me there.

  For me to pass as a society lady, Malcolm tutored me in deportment and haute couture, to the degree that I found myself wondering over his own history. How did a thief like Malcolm know which fork to use at the supper – or, rather, dinner – table, and other such trivialities? Might Malcolm have been born to wealth and then perhaps disowned by his family? Or, perhaps, another calamity had befallen him…

  I might never know for sure. Malcolm was the closed-mouth sort.

  Was my mentor the closed-mouthed sort when he kissed too? Were his lips tightly pursed against the intrusion of a lover’s spit?

  I shook my head. Not spit. Make that saliva! Saliva sounded classier.

  Kissing and I were not acquainted. No one had ever gotten close enough to try. My fault there. Had any attempt been made to filch a kiss or cop a feel from me, I would have clobbered the masher posthaste.

  My virginity ran deep. Though…I did have those lurid fantasies.

  Goodness, I was flushing. Oh, please, please, please, Malcolm, start tutoring me in kissing today!

  So many changes in my life! Flamboyancy had been the first to go. Replacing my tawdry collar tassels and frothy hemlines were well-designed creations in jewel tones, like the gold House of Worth gown I wore today. And all those props revealed cleavage. On a grand scale. I would have preferred starchy, high-necked creations, something Queen Victoria might wear.

  Though – what did her modesty matter?

  All those children of hers had been conceived the usual way – with the consort’s eye cocked to his wife’s bosom and his cock going just south of there.

  Unlike Prince Albert, Malcolm was aloof to my charms. Instead, he educated me on how to invite another man’s ogling. I told myself Malcolm remained standoffish due to my virginity, which featured so prominently in the scam it was practically a separate character all on its own. And, as my mentor kept reminding me, without my virginity intact, I would have no leverage for hush money.

  Blackmail. That was what this scam was about.

  “If the society lady your mark is courting found out he had ruined another woman altogether – not just hanky-panky – she would break things off with him.”

  New information. Although Malcolm assured me he had taken care of everything, he passed on few details of the confidence game to me. And when he did, he doled them out like a miser. So I would not give into panic?

  Too late. Terror nearly immobilized me.

  “Your allure,” Malcolm said, “must smother a sensible man’s apprehensions about stepping out on his fiancée. You must prove irresistible to the mark. You must besot him so entirely that he entertains no lingering suspicions about you, especially about having set him up to take a terrible fall. The swindle rests on your believability, Miss Weatherford. The con will not succeed if the victim were to investigate the veracity of your background before taking you to bed.”

  My allure?

  What allure?

  Irresistible?

  Please!

  “Sir – a question.”

  “Is it pertinent?”

  Malcolm thought I rambled. Which, I did. Especially when terrified.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Pertinent.”

  “Then, do go on.”

  “What if the mark were to discover my true identity after paying me the large sum of blackmail money? Will he go to the coppers?”

  “Have no fear. He most probably will not report the episode to the authorities or to anyone else. After all, what man would willingly admit to having been duped, taken advantage of, victimized by an unattractive woman?”

/>   “Too humiliating by far,” I conceded, even as my back went up. My gender was every bit as capable as his. As to my looks, the less he said about them the better.

  “I am only thinking of the mark, Miss Weatherford. Kindness, itself, if he never discovers you were a sham. There is his vanity to consider. All men are conceited in this area,” Malcolm assured me. “In the heat of the moment, the mark might excuse his faithlessness to his society lady under the pretext of your seducing him.”

  “I suppose so…”

  Though it did seem to me that blaming the “seductive” female in a situation like this one was not only unfair but standard operating procedure…amongst men.

  “There is one fly in the ointment, Miss Weatherford.”

  “Fly, sir?”

  “A small complication. You must not reveal your innocence to the mark beforehand. From what I have gleaned, the mark would not ordinarily tamper with a lady’s virtue.”

  Oh, dear Lord. Some fly. This one ‘small complication’ could bring down the entire plan!

  So, at this late juncture, Malcolm had finally revealed that this was no trifling gentleman I dealt with, no immoral male slut out to interfere with as many virgins as possible before marriage. From this I deduced the real crux of my job was to make the mark go against his code of honor and fall for me, in particular. To achieve this end, all I need to do was ensure he was blinded by passion.

  A tall order. What was passion, anyway? Was the curious resentment I felt toward Malcolm upon occasion part and parcel of passion?

  “You must play this part of the scenario by ear, Miss Weatherford.”

  Now he tells me…

  Vexed as can be, I started to speak my thoughts aloud – ramble as Malcolm put it – “After the mark beds me, I should not be obvious and immediately demand hush payment from the mark. If he initially resists going in a monetary direction, I can nudge him to do right by me. Better if the victim views cash in exchange for keeping his indiscretion quiet as his idea alone.”

  “Your mind is diabolical in the extreme, Miss Weatherford.”

  My mentor’s enthusiasm spurring me on, I continued, “Naturally, the virginity device will only work once. I can never use that specific ruse again with other marks. But there will be other cons, right?”