March 27th, 1890 — The True Hart Music Hall

The music hall was crowded tonight, Irene, one of the girls with a half way decent voice was warbling some bawdy song or other on the stage in a corset that was too tight to allow her to sing properly, and the rest of her costume was as little material as could reasonably be permitted without bringing an accusation of public lewdness – but lewdness was, of course, the point.

Roes made her way among the tables, greeting regulars, encouraging girls to turn their attention on certain gentlemen or sending bar backs to clear down cluttered tables to make room for more drinks. She wore a deep red dress, which stood out next to the rest of the working girls as most wore costumes similar to Irene’s.

She passed a table of gentleman playing at cards, and enjoying a rather full table of liquor when she tugged sharply from behind and found herself tangled in someones lap. One slender eyebrow rose into her hairline, and a warm smile graced her lips, ’excuse me sir, but what exactly do you think you are doing?’ she asked in a friendly tone which accentuated her American twang.


dress

  

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Having been struck ill-advisedly by an unexpected pang of sorrow for the loss of his little brother, Shrike made the whip-sharp decision to head into London for a bit of boozing and whoring. Normally the English capital was not his city of choice, but the Scot fancied something foreign tonight — and English was foreign. Or whatever the nationality of this delectable golden girl as he wound her smoothly into his lap.

Her blue eyes curt but carefully polite, she regarded him with a look that made it clear she was not on the market — and her words swiftly confirmed it. With a roguish smile, he drawled; "makin' the biggest mistake of m'life, obviously", he held out a hand to help her dethrone from his lap. "Perhap' I kin offer ye a drink by way of apology?"

  

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It was one of Roses great talents to be warm and inviting, to sell the charms of women to lonely men by flaunting her own charms but then hitting them with the bait and switch. It wasn’t the first time in her hall that she was mistaken for one of her girls, because although she wore actual clothing instead of the basic underthings her girls wore while working, she was still selling herself, the fantasy of a lady. The plunging neckline and bare shoulders, more the style of her homeland than England, revealing expanses of white skin, her hair adorned in a fashion to epitomise the harlot and the angel.

So when she was mistaken for one of her girls, she was jokingly reprimanding rather than outright hostile – it was a whorehouse after all the naive and the drunk could be forgiven for mistaken any women inside with being a woman of the night. The gentleman in whose lap she found herself was sensible enough to acknowledge his mistake and as such she made no effort to move. ’Oh I wouldn’t say any time spent with me or my establishment would be a mistake’, she motioned and one of the girls brought a bottle of firewhiskey to the table, ’but I will always allow a gentleman to apologies.’ Her cathouse had a reputation better than most, the girls were clean, the whiskey wasn’t watered and the men who frequented it were ‘gentlemen’ not ‘Johns’ and Rose intended to keep it that way. ’Now was your mistake presuming I was a working girl? Or sweeping me off my feet?’ her tone was teasing and obviously flirtatious.

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

One of the men at Shrike's table jeered at the lady's response, but a second man cuffed the first round the head and had them return to their card game. Shrike was by now more focussed on this other game, lowering his hand to the chair's arm as the lady made no move to flee. He wasn't surprised by this, frankly — the Scot was a handsome beast in a zoo of preening brats. He had the wealth to be here, but certainly not the class; and no part of him was abashed or stifled by this.

He passed a scantily-clad girl a few sickles for the firewhisky as she served it, but his eyes remained on the teasing madam in his lap. "Alrigh', two mistakes then", he corrected himself with a rough chuckle. "Mi brother's've accused me of bein' a magpie; snatchin' up the bonniest thing in the room without stoppin' to think abou' it."

  

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Flirting was Rose’s job, but flirting when the man was good looking was a lot easier. While her girls were better looking than street girls, the sort more likely to be taken as mistresses and concubines than once off knee knockers -the men had more money but few of them were better looking. Good looking men didn’t need to pay. It was why Rose kept at distance from her patrons – she got paid without spreading her legs and so didn’t sell her own wares.

’Your friends are fools’ she grinned cheekily at him, and then at them, ’It’s never a mistake to go after what you want. And you are clearly a man who knows what he wants, and a man who lets what he wants pass them by is a fool’. there was another bawdy round of laughter. She turned her attention to the gentleman in whose lap she was ensconsed - ’So what is it exactly you want?’, she tipped her own drink down her throat, ’We at The True Hart are here to make all your dreams come true.’

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Och, said fools weren't his friends — though Shrike got the impression the young madam knew that well enough. He looked no more suited to those fancy gentlemen than she did to selling her body. But he had enough in common with them to have joined them for a bit of high-risk disobedience.

Only to have found a far more interesting recreation.

"I couldnae possibly blemish yer sweet mind with whit I want", he purred, hand gliding subtly over a few inches of her scarlet-clad leg. Of course Shrike knew she was far from innocent, but... t'was a game they were playing.

"Though yer quaistion makes me curious — whit's the wildest dream ye'v ever made come true?"

  

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Rose couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up as he spoke about protecting her virtue, She hadn’t stayed in charge of her destiny by telling every handsome face her secrets.

With an arched eyebrow she leaned close to him, ’Oh good sir, I assure you there is very little you could say that would shock me’ which was probably true – she had catered to all sorts of proclivities over the year -there were lines of course, but very few. The rich and stupid deserved to pay for their vices – and she might as well be the one counting the coin. ’And don’t you know we fallen woman all dream of the same thing’.

One of her girls brought another round of drinks and the crazy one who thought she was a ghost led away one of the gentlemen, who had been playing at cards, to a private room. ’We all dream of being saved by knights on horseback’ she rolled her eyes and helped herself to another drink. ’Or isn’t that what all gentlemen like to think?’ she challenged.

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Shrike flashed a crooked grin, very tempted to rise to the challenge and see if he could shock her. He had tales in his past that would turn a ghost white, but if he was talking things he wanted to do to her specifically then he was probably as likely to shock her as vice versa. So that particular approach wouldn't be any fun.

Linking his wiry arms around her petite form, he replied to the dull dream in question. "Och, you don' want the knight. Y'want the villain, don't ye. The pirate who drives a cutlass through the knight's back."

  

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She let her head toss back as she laughed, cascades of blonde hair tumbling around her bare shoulders. Her own tastes definitely ran more to pirates than to princes, her history spoke to that, the man with whom she had abandoned her comfortable life in Baltimore had been much more of a pirate than a prince. It explained why the indomitable Long Rose had remained seated in the lap of one of her patrons.

She still wasn’t sure yet if he was making a play for her favours in earnest or trying to impress his companions by aiming for the hardest mark in the place – the only favours that could not be bought. ’Pirates, like working women are only as good as their last mark.’ she cheekily bopped his nose with the tip of her finger, she dropped her voice a little so his companions would not hear her over the noise of the hall ’If the pirate is only interested in sticking his sword, I can recommend many a place that would be free and easy…well not free.’, her eyebrow rose as she smiled at him, her most pleasant mix of house mistress and minx. Camille preened on the edge of the table, looking for her evenings work.

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

She was all business, this one. Such an approach made flawless sense — this was her establishment after all, it was popular tonight, and she was only here in his lap in the hope that he would spend some money on something other than firewhisky.

"Don' get me wrong; yer lassies here are enticin' an' they're pretty, I can see they're worth a fast few Galleons. But I dinnae wan' any o' them", he murmured wolfishly, agile hand enjoying the feel of her dress on her thigh. He wanted this one.

"Whit's yer name, madam?"

  

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Oh this one had all the right words, flattery of both Rose and her girls, even Camille, who had been trying hard to take him off her hands, or perhaps take his hands off Rose chuckled at his response, before turning her attention to one of the other gents, straddling his lap brazenly. The gent stood, and sliding his hands under Camilles bum and scooted her away to a private room.

’You mean you haven’t heard of long Rose Hart?’ she asked with mock horror that she wasn’t as infamous to everyone, ’Or have I misjudged you, and are you a virtuous gentleman that has never visited a house like this before?’ she was teasing, and fluffing his shirt as though he were a boy. ’If you are a dear sweet innocent, I can certainly organise someone special to take very good care of you.’ her voice was low and purring,

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Long Rose Hart — he liked that name. It made it sound as if she were the pirate, and in many ways she was.

But he didn't think much of her next move. Shrike wasn't the type to be stung by such a joke, for "Long Rose Hart" knew very well that this was no innocent who'd swept her into his lap. But the Scot didn't quite get the purpose of suddenly pretending he was a wee lad. To Shrike, nothing was less seductive than the suggestion of virginity in a cathouse.

He merely quirked an eyebrow.

  

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That eyebrow spoke volumes and Rose laughed heartily again, ’I will give you some credit sir, I havn’t laughed this well in a while.’ A experiment was perhaps the wrong word, but a testing of the waters it certainly was - a gentleman, even a piratical one who was easily wounded had no place in her world – frail egos could seldom handle all that Rose considered herself to be. Many men still liked the illusion that her girls were falling over themselves for their attention for any reason other than money -their winning personalities perhaps.

There was nothing in this man that spoke of innocence, indeed when she looked at his face all she saw was sins – past and future. She nodded thoughtfully ’Since I am not for sale sir you will have be very clear on what exactly Long Rose can do for you this afternoon?’ She didn’t ask for his name, even though he had hers, well one of them – names held power, isn’t that what ever pureblood in the country wanted you to believe? And a name in a place like this could be damning in the wrong hands.

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Merlin, this madam had quite the unconventional approach. Shrike did not identify this as an experiment, but he possessed no great intellectual prowess, and simply took what was presented as it came. Treating him like a boy, then laughing at him... he was not quite sure what to think of that, but could count himself thoroughly unseduced.

Perhaps that was the point, given that — as she said — Long Rose was not for sale, but she'd still sat quite contently in his lap for the best part of twenty minutes. "Aff ye gang, wee Rosie", he gently escorted her from his lap, and took another sip of firewhisky. Now that he looked at her properly in her standing form, she really was a teeny thing — but with a far more considerable presence than her height allowed. "Ye look tae have a very smart operation set up here. But with yin flaw: whin the shopkeep's maer attractive than her wares, yer bound to end up with a fair few disappointed pirates."

  

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It was time for her to move on to her other patrons, as much fun as she was having with this gent, it would do her business no good to be too accessible to her patrons. It was a line she had drawn years ago, flirt, touch, play, but never be seen to be leaving the floor with the men who came to her business, that undermined her position, it put her on the same level as her girls, and their protection, her business, and Roses own ego relied on it in a way that she would never admit, not even to herself. But there were lines and maintain them she must.

’I’ll certainly try and have a broader selection of ladies for your next visit sir’ she quipped, ’Perhaps one of them will meet The Pirates exacting standards.’ Rose waved her hand, and one of the girls brought a round of drinks for their table. ’On the house,’ she gave him a flirtatious smile, ’For your disappointment.’

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Stef made this and it's beautiful!

Shrike allowed a final, brief, lopsided smile, and accepted the drinks. "Or jus' try wearin' a troll mask", he responded with a wink, and turned back to the other men in time to be dealt into the next card game.

Should he spot Long Rose some other day, in some other context beyond her own establishment, Shrike made note to have her for another round on his lap.

-end? <3-

  

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