Virgin Star

Virgin Star

by

Jennifer Horsman

SMASHWORDS EDTION

*****

PUBLISHED BY

Jennifer Horsman on Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Horsman

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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*****

Chapter 1

London, England,

The year of our Lord, Eighteen twenty-three

The naked girl felt heavy in Jack Cracker's arms, a surprise, what with her eye-poppin' beauty and figure as slim and firm as a lad's, all wrapped up in a potato sack—the only cloth they could find. Despite the steady drizzle from gray skies, Jack felt sweat on his brow, but if truth be told, it owed itself to arms that rarely lifted anything heavier than the ale cups at the Fire Fox down on Port Street. "Wait up, Redman," he called in a whisper. "Wait."

The tall redheaded fellow stopped on command. Holding the girl's legs, he turned to see his friend drop the rest of the girl in the mud and stand bent over, hands braced on knees and breathing heavily.

Jack's breath came in small puffs, disappearing in the thick London mist. "I got to catch me breath."

Lowering the girl's legs, Redman looked up and down the long tree-lined, cobbled highway, darkening now at twilight. Not a soul about. Blue-blood streets be as empty as a graveyard.

Jack's grubby gloves, minus the fingers, wiped the rain from his face. "Lord, wh't I woodn't do for an edge off me thirst now." Muck oozed into his worn boots, between his toes. He wondered if he'd get enough coin from the cap'n to buy a new pair.

A carriage raced past. A stream of mud splattered across their legs and the girl. "Curse ye to 'ell," Jack muttered, yet noticeably without enthusiasm. Too darn weary, he was.

"Eh, Jack!" Redman pointed. "Look up at that! Number four."

Jack looked over to see a large bronze number four hanging on the wall—he knew 'is numbers, 'e did, and so he figured 'twas only four or five more buildings. The slip o' paper said number nine, at least that's what the man said. He glanced at her hand, where they had returned the paper, tightly closing her bone cold fingers around it before lifting her up. He peered down the long street as if to see the ninth house. Not that he had to see it, for he knew about it. Everyone in all o' London knew 'bout Number Nine King's Highway. The Hanover House.

'Twas famous on account of its master, Cap'n Seanessy. Cap'n Seanessy raN the Far West fleet from London, ships that nearly supplied as much tea as the honorable East India Company itself, and ships that made the cap'n as rich as the King of Egypt. Lord the stories told about the cap'n: fighting and blue-blood relations and all the women—'twas said there weren't a wench between thirteen and rocking chairs that didn't fizzle to hot butter at the sound of his name. The man be famous all right. Half the merchants of Fleet Street owed their livelihoods to him. Even the King owed him. For 'twas the cap'n who paid for six of his ships to be outfitted for war and speed, and then he sent them to join the King's navy in the royal effort to finally rid the Arabian waters of lecherous pirates, which they did. That was why the King's men never did nothin' when half the town watched the cap'n ride up on the great beige steed and shoot the executioner dead to save the three worthless young pickpockets from a hangin', or when he and his "boys," as they was called—the meanest men on the dock—took out some or another whole crew and for no more reason than they found offense with the way the blokes conducted business.

The cap'n was the law on the streets, he was.

For all of it though, the cap'n was said to be as generous as a bride's father on his youngest daughter's weddin' day. 'Twas this they be countin' on. For the beautiful girl belonged to the cap'n. They had showed the note to five people before one of 'em was able to read the letters. Nine King's Highway, it said. Captain Seanessy.

Redman wiped his face with a wet sleeve. Jack said the cap'n would be thankin' them with gold but—"I dunno, I dunno." He shook his head. "Jack, wh't if the cap'n don't believe us? Wh't if 'e takes it to mind we be the bloody sons of sods who beat the poor lass or worse?" Slowly, in a frightened whisper: "Wh't if 'e thinks we took 'er rags off?"

Jack harrowed his eyes as if Redman had gone daft. "Do we look like blokes who'd strip an' beat a poor lass senseless? Where's yer 'ead, Redman?" He rubbed his fingerless gloved hands together. "'Twill be rainin' silver, 'twill! Wh't I could do with a couple o' more bob in me pocket! Come on."

"I dunno,' Redman shook his wet curls and wiped his face again. "I dunno ..."

Yet Redman obediently leaned over and picked up the bundle of the girl's legs, while Jack bent and, with a heave, lifted the girl's shoulders. Sinking ankle-deep in mud, they made slow progress down the street of London's finest townhouses until at last they came to the tall iron gates of Hanover House.

For a long moment the two men stood at the gates opening to a wide gravel road, which led to the entrance hall. They stared with awe at the splendor of the fine old house. Even in the impending darkness the colossal structure looked as reputable as the house next door, a house that belonged to the Duke of Windsor, cousin of the King.

Hanover House had once belonged to the Fourth Earl of Hanover and was large enough for that great man's frequent entertaining of the entire English court. The house rose up four stories—not including the cellar or the attic where many of the twenty-seven servants lived—and it reached half as wide as a proper cricket field, all surrounded by park like gardens and sky-high, ancient trees. Wild ivy covered both sides of the house, its long green arms reaching around the front as well. Four neat rows of shuttered windows filled the high-whitewashed frontage.

"Come on," Jack whispered. "Get on with it."

Worn boots crunched over the wet gravel of the road. Jack noticed the garden grew wild and untamed here—as if the gardeners had gone on a long holiday. Bushes, hedges, and trees burst with rugged green fecundity, though the neatly manicured lawn stretched out like a smooth green blanket. A longshore boat sat beneath a silver maple tree. Jack stared with incomprehension at the boat, parked like a carriage under the tree, wondering how in blazes it got there. Many of the windows were open, despite the steady drizzle against the thick brocaded curtains. A cat watched their movement from one sill.

Jack's gaze fell on a discarded sword sticking up out of the grass for no reason a mortal could figure. A number of lawn sculptures represented queer animal shapes, ominous in the darkening light: a great bird of prey with outstretched wings, a lion with an open mouth of gleaming sculpted-marble teeth, a huge monstrosity of a stag, its two-foot horns garlanded with blooming blood red flowers.

Jack swallowed while Redman tried to pretend he didn’t see these terrors. They passed an abandoned carriage, one fine enough for a queen, left like a velvet-lined corpse in the rain. Jack's gaze arched up and over the ivy-covered exterior as, with a heave, they lifted the girl up the short flight of steps to the porch.

The two men eased their burden onto the wide portico. Jack removed his cap, slicked back his hair, and set the cap back, noticing the pagan figures carved into the broad, wooden double doors. Redman's gaze widened. "Jack, look." He pointed to a man's shirt pinned to the wall by a dagger.

Jack paused at the arresting sight. He waved a hand in dismissal as he tried hard to keep in mind the pocket of monies and what that would be like. Taking a deep breath, he stepped up to lift the knocker shaped like a brass demon on the door. He glanced down at the tall barrel directly beneath the knocker. A cry rose in his throat as he realized first what the slithering creatures were, then that they were alive. He stepped away and turned. "Oh, God ..."

Neither man looked back as he ran.

Lust, pure and powerful lust.

Seanessy felt it in force, and as he pushed one large foot into his tall black boots, he silently cursed the burning ache in his loins. A primitive call to the wild, he knew, and it always came with a vision of his ghostly lover, an imaginary woman he ridiculously compared all others to. Long dark hair shrouded a larger-than-life, plump, voluptuous form. Dark framed dark blue bedroom eyes. He always imagined her lying in his bed like an invitation beneath a transparent sheet that revealed round/full breasts and sumptuous curves a man could sink his hands into.

He abruptly groaned, "I need a woman."

A preposterous statement, and Kyler's bright dark eyes filled with a blend of outrage and humor as, with a practiced movement, he pushed the metal spike down the barrel of his pistol. He knew Seanessy well, knew that about the last thing Sean needed was another woman. "Like a dog needs another flea, you do."

For women, all women, from the King's niece, Lady Margaret de Bois, to the comely barmaids in Port Street's inns and taverns, swooned as Seanessy passed. It was not just his handsome good looks: his shoulder-length blond hair that framed a unusually long thin face, the dark brows arching dramatically over widely spaced hazel eyes, his strong fine nose, and wide sensuous lips. Rather, his success with women owed itself also to the bounty of his wit and the wealth of his humor, a recklessness, and excitement that bordered precariously on danger.

Seanessy owned a notorious and much-deserved reputation with the ladies, and while he loved the fair sex a good deal more than most men, or at least a good deal more often, he rarely, if ever, entertained any lady in an upright position. Despite many subtle and not so subtle invitations otherwise, Sean valiantly steered away from any entanglements, exercising a trenchant preference for the working wenches, relationships that started and ended quickly, "unambiguous liaisons that I can neatly, happily, and conveniently sever with a pound note,"

Seanessy liked his women fast and loose.

Kyler rose to go to the window. In boots he stood a half-inch shorter than Seanessy, a good half-foot taller than most tall men, wide of shoulder and wider of girth, his formidable size crowned by a head as bald as a robin's egg. He peered at the drizzle falling over the front gardens, looking for Butcher and the horses. "Isn't Doreen upstairs? And I thought I saw Molly last night."

"Ah! Well, the lovely ladies had to depart. Molly had to interview two new girls. And Doreen has a performance at the theater tonight, didn't you know?"

"You won't have to feel bad when you miss it, Sean."

Merriment, as it oft did, danced in Seanessy's eyes as he stood to his full height and reached for his well-worn shoulder harness. "Why's that?"

"Bess and I saw Doreen’s Desdemona Tuesday night. In case you had any doubts, the lovely Doreen did not land the role for her acting talents."

Seanessy harbored no illusions about Doreen's illustrious talents. "Fortunately," he said, smiling as he deftly began working the leather straps. "She has all those other talents to fall back on."

"Fall back on. Right." Kyler nodded, amused despite himself, as Seanessy called out for his new butler.

Sean's voice sounded through the old house, and more than one servant gave a start. He moved through the reading room, one of the three drawing rooms that looked onto the black-and-white-checkered marble squares of the entrance hall, and called out again at the open double doors. "Charles, you rascal, where the devil are you?"

The spacious, two-story foyer was at the front of the tall building, rising above the neat manicured lawns, and no doubt its architect had intended the grand space as a greeting area for distinguished soirees, parties, and balls. Seanessy had never held a soiree, much less hosted a ball. He had bought the house for its sheer size and convenient location to the port, and then only after the owner of the distinguished Connaught Hotel politely and obsequiously objected not to Captain Seanessy—heavens no!—but to his insistence on housing his lively and ribald officers within the Connaught's plush apartments. This objection came after one of Sean's officers bought the favors of Madam Bushard's entire whorehouse for the Connaught guests. Patrons of the Connaught still talked about that night, remembering it with outraged curses or fond amusement, depending wholly upon the gentleman's inclinations and whether he had received the favors of one of the ladies. Yet the commotion brought by Silver’s singular generosity forced Seanessy to concede that private housing might be best suited for "the boys."