Until Henrietta Clements.
As he perceived his hand stroking the damaged skin on his right thigh he stopped and touched the silver-and-gold ring he had bought three months ago from the jewellers, Rundell and Bridges, in Ludgate Hill.
‘The symbol engraved upon the circle is Christian, my lord, and of course the word engraved is Latin. Fortuna. Lady luck, and who cannot do with a piece of that.’
The salesman was an earnest young man Gabriel had not seen in the shop before and seemed to have a bent for explaining the spiritual. ‘Luck is, of course, received from the faith a believer entrusts in it, for a talisman is only strong when there is that sense of conviction. We have other clients who swear by the advantages they have received. The safe birth of a babe. The curing of a badly broken arm. A cough that is finally cured after months of sleepless nights.’
The ability to make love again?
Did he believe? Gabriel thought. Could he afford not to? Once he would have laughed at such nonsense, but for now he was catching at rainbows and hope with all the fervour of the newly converted. He had paid a fortune for the questionable assistance and had worn it ever since. He wondered momentarily if he should not just snatch the trinket from his finger and throw it into the Thames, for twelve weeks with no sign at all of any inherent powers was probably a fairly conclusive sign of its lack of potency.
Yet hope held him to the wearing of it, even though his own condition had not changed one whit for the better.
* * *
It was a week later, despite all his attempts at desiring otherwise, that Gabriel Hughes finally accepted the fact that he was impotent.
He looked down at his flagging member in the darkened room off Grey Street and thought that this was where life had brought him. An ironic twist. An unwanted mockery of fate.
The woman in the bed was beautiful, bountiful and sweet—a country girl with the combination of dewy sensibleness and a sultry sensuality burning to be ignited. She sat there watching him, a clean and embroidered chemise the only thing covering her, a quiet smile on unpainted lips.
‘I thought my first customer might be old and ugly, sir. I had wondered if I should even be able to do what my aunt has bidden me to, but I can see that this job is likely to be a lot less difficult than my old one. I worked in a weaving mill, you see, but it closed down. It was me and a hundred other girls and the light hurt my eyes and we were never allowed to just stop. Not like this, sir. Never like this. Never on our backs in the warmth and with a glass of good wine for the drinking.’
‘You are a virgin, then?’ His heart sank at all such a state would imply.
She shook her head. ‘Mary said I was to say I was ’cos the coinage is better that way, but I go to church on Sundays, sir, and could not abide by the lie.’
Gabriel was glad for this fact at least. The first time should be special for every woman. He believed that absolutely.
‘My Jack went and died on me before we were married. He got sick one day and was taken the next. It was just lucky that I did not catch the worst of it though I was ill for a good many weeks after.’
The barrage of information ran into the room with an ease that held him still and listening. For the first time in a long while Gabriel did not wish to be away from the company of a half-naked woman with such desperation. Even the roiling nausea seemed to settle with her words, the information comforting somehow.
‘Mam said I should come to London to her sister, who was doing more than well.’ She shook her brown curls and laughed. ‘I don’t think she realises exactly what it is Aunt Mary is up to, but, with little other in the way of paying work back home, I agreed to come in and try it. We haven’t yet though, have we?’ And, with colourful language, she went on to say just what it was they hadn’t yet done.
Gabriel turned towards the window. The phrases she used were coarse, but the talk was relaxing him. Perhaps such candour was what kept the blood from his ears and his breath even. Small steps in the right direction. Tiny increments back to a healing. If he could only stop thinking and do the deed once...
Reality brought his attention to the problem before him as he looked down. Flaccid. Unmoving. The scar tissue on his right thigh and groin in the light from the window was brutal and he pulled his breeches up.
But she was off the bed in a flash, one warm hand clutching his arm. ‘Can you stay for a while, sir? Only a little while so that...’ She stopped as though trying to formulate what she wanted to say next.
‘So your aunt will think you at least earned your keep?’
‘Exactly that, sir, and it is nice here talking with you. You smell good, too.’
He laughed at this and removed her hand. Sitting here was not the agony he had imagined after the fiasco in the Temple of Aphrodite and he gestured to her to pour more wine, which she did, handing it to him with a smile. His beaker was chipped on one side so he turned it around.
‘Jack used to say we would be married with a dozen children before we knew it and look what happened to him. Life is like a game of chess, I’d be thinking. One moment you are winning everything and the next you are wiped off the board.’
‘You play chess?’
‘I do, sir. My father taught me when I were little. He was a mill worker, too, you understand, but a gent once taught him the rudiments of the game in a tavern out of Styal in Cheshire and he never forgot it. I have my board and pieces with me. We could play if you like? To waste a bit of time?’
The wine was cheap, but the room was warm and as the girl brought her robe off of a hook and wrapped it around herself, Gabriel breathed out.
Little steps, he reiterated to himself. Little tiny steps. And this was the first.
* * *
An hour later after a close game Gabriel extracted a golden guinea from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘For your service, Sarah, and for your kindness.’
Bringing the coin between perfectly white teeth, she bit down upon it. Still young enough not to have lost them, still innocent enough to imagine that gold might be a cure for the dissolution of morality. A trade-off that at this point in her life still came down on the black side of credit. God, he muttered to himself as he grabbed his jacket.
Henrietta Clements had been the same once. Hopeful and blindly trusting.
He brought out his card from a pocket and laid it down on the lumpy straw mattress. ‘Can you read?’
She shook her head.
‘If you ever want to escape this place, find someone who can, then, and send word to me for help. I could find you more...respectable work.’
She was off of the bed in a moment, the scent of her skin pungent and sharp as she threaded her arms about his neck.
‘If you lay down, I’d do all the work, sir. Like a gift to you seeing as you have been so nice and everything.’
Full lips closed over his and Gabriel could feel an earnest innocence. The pain of memory lanced over manners as he pushed her back.
‘No.’ A harsher sound than he meant, with things less hidden.
‘You won’t be calling again?’ Sarah made no attempt at hiding her disappointment. ‘Not even for another game of chess?’
‘I’m afraid I won’t.’ The words were stretched and quick, but as manners laced through reason he added others. ‘But thank you. For everything.’
The stone was cold, rubbed smooth with the echoes