‘So I’ve heard. I’m safe then?’
‘Quite.’
The master’s demeanour was very different from the night we met. He looked weary, but managed a smile when I joined him at the piano.
‘What would you like to sing tonight, Irene?’
‘Do you know “A Bird in a Gilded Cage”, sir?’
He frowned. ‘Unfortunately it reminds me too much of my own impending life sentence in a cage. How about another?’
‘“She Was Poor But She Was Honest”?’
He looked at me curiously, then grinned. ‘Oh, I see, you’re pulling my leg, you clever girl. Well, I’ve no intention of ruining a poor, virtuous maid. I am a gentleman above all, by aspiration, if not by birth.’
I had to smile, although I was sure he was toying with me as well. ‘How about a duet? “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden”.’
Pleased with my suggestion, he immediately launched into the popular tune. ‘Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?’
To my surprise, the master had a bewitching tenor voice, pure and slightly sad. Looking back, I see this was the moment I gave him my heart.
‘There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls, and proper too,’ I sang back, striking a coy pose as I did back home with my friends. Together we sang the famous song of courtship and flirtatious jealousy, warming to our roles as if we were indeed top of the playbill on a music-hall stage.
When the song was done, the master beamed. ‘That was jolly fun. We do harmonise well, don’t we?’ His blue eyes took on a mischievous glint. ‘You know, I’ve just come up with a wonderful plan. For revenge.’
‘Revenge against whom, sir?’
‘Those two ill-mannered brutes you met the other night. I’m giving a small party at a restaurant next week to celebrate my last days of freedom before I’m married off for the glory of our merchant dynasty. You could sing for us. I’d rent you a pretty costume and they’d have no recourse but to fall to their knees in admiration and apology. It would serve them right.’
‘It would, sir.’ I tried not to seem too eager, but thus far life in the city had meant homesickness and doubt about the future. Suddenly it promised untold adventures at this very moment.
‘We’d have to practise together every night.’
‘I’m at your service, sir. Singing with you cheers me as well.’
He paused and studied my face. ‘You’re so lovely. You must have a young man waiting at home for you.’
The beguiling heat of his attention loosened my lips more than was perhaps wise. ‘I do have an understanding with someone. He’s a baker’s apprentice, so we’re not free to marry for a while.’
‘Handsome, strapping lad, I’d wager?’
I nodded. That described my Paul well enough.
‘He’s a lucky man. I’ll think of him if ever I’m tempted.’ The master’s fingers brushed my hand ever so lightly. ‘Rest assured you’ll return to him as untouched as the day you left.’
The words themselves were soothing but his voice, dark and slow as molasses, hinted at unspeakable sins of the flesh. I felt a shudder – a sweet shudder – deep in my private places. I knew then I was no longer safe with him. Worse still, I was glad.
My adventure in the city had begun.
* * *
I wonder now if the master had planned it from the start, the path of degradation that gave me more pleasure than I’d ever known in my eighteen years? Not that he ever forced himself upon me. It was my own lust that drove me, one willing step at a time.
The following evening, when he requested one chaste kiss by the piano, I was the one to open my lips to him. I was the one who trembled with gladness when his mouth moved to my neck and uttered no protest when he fondled my bosom with his large, warm hands. He was the one to pull back panting and dishevelled, to send me off to a lonely bed out of respect to my betrothed.
The next afternoon we went to a theatrical shop in Covent Garden, where he had me fitted in a blue satin ‘songbird’ dress for the party. It was I who suggested a private showing of the new frock upon our return to the house. The costume was too low over the bosom and too high above the ankle to be respectable, but in the privacy of his dressing room the effect was most dramatic. The master showered me with the compliments that good manners had forbidden in the shop – how the dress exposed to advantage my divine décolletage and alabaster legs. Intoxicated by the homage, I pulled off the dress and bared my breasts fully to him. He stammered and swore he’d never seen a vision more lovely, snow kissed with berries. Then he suckled them while we lay on the daybed, until I begged him to take me. Once again, he withdrew, invoking my baker’s apprentice.
To be honest, I’d nearly forgotten Paul. He existed in an innocent past I might possibly return to one day, where aunts warned against honey-tongued seducers and honest girls found transcendence only in prayer. Now my greatest desire was to make the master lose his honour and become mine for a precious moment before marriage took him from me for ever.
Finally, he gave me a reward for my devotion. I was wrapped in his arms on the daybed, drunk on his kisses, when he shyly asked me to confess what liberties I’d allowed my sweetheart to take with my fair body.
I immediately stiffened. I’d never spoken such things aloud before.
‘Don’t be shy, Irene, dear. I won’t tell a soul.’
‘Well, I let him kiss me, of course.’
‘I suspected as much. Where did he kiss you?’
‘My lips and … my bosom.’
‘Nowhere else?’
‘No.’ Where else would there be?
He seemed rather disappointed at my purity. ‘I know there’s more, Irene. You’re far too comfortable in a man’s arms.’
I squirmed, oddly ashamed. ‘We did lie together in bed when his parents were away. But I didn’t let him undress me. He just held me and, well, he moved against me.’
The master’s breath quickened. ‘Did you touch his manhood with your sweet little hand?’
I began to realise it would be to my benefit to pretend I had. ‘Well, yes, but please don’t tell anyone. I’d die of shame.’
‘My lips are sealed, my dear. Did you like touching it?’
‘Yes. It was, um, very long.’ It seemed the proper thing to say.
The master sighed and pressed himself closer. ‘Tell me, Irene, did he spend? In your hand, perhaps, or elsewhere on your person?’
‘Why must we speak of him, sir?’ It was not so much the lewd questions but the silvery gleam in the master’s eye that discomfited, even as it aroused me.
He kissed my forehead. ‘Don’t you know? If a woman has already done something with one lover, it’s no longer a sin with the next.’
I’d heard a thousand rules about how a girl should comport herself with a man, but never this one. Suddenly my handsome master’s preference for married ladies began to make sense. Perhaps I could turn this queer lovers’ game to my advantage?
‘I’m ashamed to say where he did it, sir,’ I whispered into his shoulder.
‘You can tell me. I know all about what healthy young men and women do together. And I’m sure your beau has very healthy appetites.’
‘Will you say it for me then, sir?’
I felt his manhood twitch