The Mistress Experience

Prologue

On a rainy night in Mayfair, a dim, wood-paneled gaming hell smelled like cigar smoke, whiskey, and the musk of the hundred damp men who mingled there, squeezing themselves around betting tables and barmaids bearing drinks, braced as if for a battle to the death.

The three ladies who stood at the center of this melee—the infamous radicals known in the papers as the Society of Sirens—had chosen the betting house for its name: the Queen of Hearts. It was an appropriate appellation given the prize of the auction underway: a month with Tha?s Magdalene, the most infamous, voluptuous, foulmouthed harlot in England.

“As you know,” Seraphina Arden called out to the shifting, impatient crowd, “Miss Magdalene only accepts one lover a week, for one night, and never bequeaths her favors to the same patron twice. However, tonight she will do the unprecedented. She will offer herself as the mistress to the highest bidder for an entire delectable, ravishing—”

“Filthy!” Tha?s interjected from the hazard table on which she stood, nearly nude, modeling the buoyant-breasted, flame-haired, ample-arsed resplendence that made her so coveted by the gentlemen—and not a few ladies—of the nation.

“Yes, of course,” Seraphina drawled. “For the right price, Miss Magdalene will provide unimaginable erotic raptures for one delectable, ravishing, filthy month.”

The room rumbled with lusty men shouting their approval.

“The bidding will begin at a thousand guineas and go up in increments of five hundred,” Cornelia Ludgate, Seraphina’s fellow auctioneer, intoned over the din of the crowd. “And the proceeds of the auction will go directly to fund the Institute for the Equality of Women. So bid generously.”

Whether the crowd of wealthy and dissipated men cared to support the ladies’ cause was questionable. They were not here for philanthropy. They were here to win thirty nights with a woman commonly called the best fuck in Britain.

“Who will start the bidding?” Seraphina asked.

“A thousand,” called a scrawny young man with thin whiskers, who looked like he was not yet out of school.

“You can do better than that, lad,” Seraphina said. “Tha?s here will give you an education you’ll cherish for the rest of your life.”

“In bed,” Tha?s added, fluttering her long lashes at the boy.

“I think that was clear, dear,” Cornelia said to Tha?s.

“Don’t vex me, wretch,” Tha?s replied agreeably, plumping out her mass of curly ginger hair for the benefit of the crowd. “Not while I’m for sale.”

“Fifteen hundred,” an elderly man with a gold-tipped walking stick shouted.

“Oh please,” Seraphina laughed. “Come up with a bid commensurate to the size of your staff, sir.”

“Two thousand,” called someone with a French accent from the back of the room.

“Sois plus généreux,” Cornelia encouraged. “Votre pénis vous dira merci.”

“That means your cock will thank you, gents,” Tha?s said helpfully, jutting out her hip to better display the outrageous curve of her famed rear.

“Three thousand,” said a breathless man in front, his eyes fixed on her buttocks.

The bids reached five thousand in five minutes and doubled it in a quarter hour.

“Twelve thousand,” shouted Laird Canaraugh, a burly Scotsman with hair as red as Tha?s’s.

The three ladies exchanged a glance. This was better than they’d anticipated. They’d been expecting eight thousand guineas at the most.

“Thirteen,” called out Faro Devon, the owner of the establishment, evidently so overtaken by the thrill of the hunt he’d decided to join in.

The bids kept coming.

Fifteen. Eighteen. Twenty.

And then, from a table in front, a man who’d bought Tha?s before and begged her to be his mistress to no avail, the notoriously dissipated libertine, poet, and heir to a vast shipping fortune: Colin Camberwell.

“Twenty-five,” he yelled.

The room erupted in murmurs. Camberwell smiled serenely.

“Anyone care to venture twenty-six?” Seraphina asked.

No bids came above the racket of jealous men grumbling their disapproval.

“Going once for twenty-five guineas,” Cornelia shouted.

“Going twice,” Seraphina called.

“Sold!” Tha?s said. She hopped down from the table and sauntered over to Camberwell. “Well, look who finally got his wish.”

“Worth the bloody fortune,” he said.

He bent down, picked her up, and kissed her with the passion of a man who hadn’t fucked in months—though this was unlikely in Camberwell’s case, possessed as he was with a small harem of mistresses tucked around the country.

Tha?s wriggled away with a giggle. “Not for you yet, ya naughty devil. You’ll be sending the fee to my solicitor before you have a taste of this.”

“Oh, I’ll have more than a taste of you,” Camberwell said. “But that’s where we can begin, if you like.”

“Pay promptly, and your month will start on Monday next,” Cornelia said.

“Gladly, Duchess,” he said to Cornelia, who was, in fact, a duchess, though she rarely used the title, except in cases where nobility served her politics—thus not at a sex auction in a gaming hell in Mayfair.

He turned to Tha?s. “I think we’ll while away the month in the Cotswolds. What say you to that?”

“More like the Cockswolds when I’m done with you.”

Camberwell snorted. Cornelia shook her head.

“That was a weak quip even for you,” she said.

“I liked it,” Camberwell said. “Piquant.”

Tha?s smiled. “He found it piquant. Quiet from Her Majesty, if you please.”

“Time to retire, ladies,” Seraphina said. “There is much to discuss.”

Tha?s ran her hand down Camberwell’s chest. “Until next week.”

“I can hardly wait.”

The women linked hands and wended through the crowd to the back exit, where Cornelia’s carriage waited in the mews.

As soon as they were inside the coach, they all began to laugh with the universal glee that comes of securing a ridiculous sum of money.

“Unbelievable,” Seraphina said. “I knew you were a prize, Tha?s, but twenty-five thousand guineas?”

Tha?s smiled. “Spoken like a woman who’s never had me in her bed. Young Camberwell knows exactly what he’s buying. I’m worth all the bullion in the sea, and he’s an experienced seaman, if you catch my drift.”

Cornelia groaned. “Please stop.”

But Tha?s would never stop. Disgusting Cornelia with ribaldry was among her chief amusements.

“Don’t squabble,” said Seraphina, who found their amiable bickering tiresome. The three of them had been best friends for twenty years, and in all that time Cornelia and Tha?s had shown their love by competing to see who could provoke more irritation in the other.

“Do you like Camberwell?” Cornelia asked, a note of concern in her voice. “I don’t wish for you to endure a month with a prig, even for untold riches.”

“Oh, he’s tolerable enough,” Tha?s said. “Handsome. A bit dull beneath his antics, but he likes a jolly time and knows how to be creative. I’ll be fine, if bored to death lolling in the country. Certainly worth the coin.”

“Then it’s done,” Seraphina said with wonder in her voice. “We’re finished. We’ve raised all the money we need to complete the Institute, and then some.”

For two years, they had made it their sole purpose to create a place to support activists in the cause of women’s rights and education, as well as a haven to train women in skills and give them apprenticeships to make them independent. They’d each employed their talents and salacious reputations—Seraphina penning a memoir detailing her scandalous life, Cornelia painting a series of portraits of whores dressed as Madonnas—to raise money for the land and the construction. With Tha?s’s proceeds from the auction, they’d be able to open by the end of the year.

“It’s wonderful,” Cornelia said. “But I wish Elinor were here to enjoy it.”

Cornelia’s aunt, Lady Elinor Bell, was their benefactress, mentor, and the closest thing any of them had to a mother. It was she who’d educated them in the radical thinking that had led them to call themselves the Society of Sirens and devote themselves to fighting for female rights, employment, and education.

But she was not here. She was in Devon searching for her children, who had been kept from her since her husband, Viscount Bell, had accused her of insanity and adultery, and entered a bill in the House of Lords petitioning for divorce.

“She’ll be thrilled when she learns the news,” Seraphina said. “In the meantime, we have much work to do.”

“Lord Jesus, can we celebrate a little?” Tha?s said. “Have a piece of cake? We’re still in the bloody carriage.”

Seraphina laughed. “You’re right. I might be overeager to get started. I’ll wait the ten minutes to get home before assigning our next duties.”

They reached Cornelia’s town house where her husband, Rafe, was waiting for them with Seraphina’s lover, Adam. The men had arrayed a banquet’s worth of food on a table in the drawing room, knowing the ladies would be famished by the time their late-night event was over.

“What’s the news?” Rafe asked.

“Twenty-five thousand guineas,” Tha?s clucked, twirling around the room—never mind that she was still partially undressed. She sat down at the table and began eating tiny honey cakes right off the platter.

Adam whistled. “Impressive sum.”

“Enough to fund all the remaining construction, furnish the building, and hire teachers,” Seraphina confirmed, making herself a plate of cheese and fruit.

“And to endow the place with enough funds to sustain it for at least ten years,” Cornelia added. “Imagine what we can do. How many women we can educate and nurture. The speakers we can host and the politicians we can fund.”

“If we move quickly we can get the first cohort recruited by autumn,” Seraphina said. “Thousands of women have already written to express interest in learning trades. We’ll have to write back offering formal applications.”

Tha?s licked the honey from her sticky fingers. “We’ll have to make the place comfortable for the girls who choose to live in the dormitory.”

“And of course secure a final list of teachers and employers to guide their education, and come up with a plan for them to cooperatively share the labor of the house and gardens,” Cornelia said.

“Let’s make a plan to divide responsibilities,” Seraphina said. “I’ll handle the application process for the first class of one hundred, and see to it that the basic curriculum is established. Reading and writing for anyone who needs it, basic maths, civic education.”

Cornelia nodded. “I’ll hire the teachers and secure the employers willing to take on female apprentices.”

“And what will I do?” Tha?s asked.

“Entertain a certain poet in the nude,” Seraphina said with a smile.

Tha?s rolled her eyes. “I mean with my brains, not my bosoms.”

“You can see to it that the place is beautiful,” Cornelia said. “Adam will give you the architectural plans, and you can determine what we need to buy. Order furnishings and fixtures. You’re so good at making people comfortable.”

Tha?s frowned. “How will I do all that from the Cotswolds?”

“By correspondence,” Cornelia said.

Tha?s scoffed. “I can barely write.”

She had been raised in a brothel and received no formal education. Lady Elinor had taught her to read at the age of twenty-two, and Tha?s, while literate, lacked confidence in her spelling and penmanship.

“You are far more adept than you give yourself credit for,” Seraphina said. “I love your letters. They’re quite vivid.”

“She means vulgar,” Cornelia said. “Try not to curse in your missives to upholstery merchants.”

Tha?s sighed. “I’ll certainly not promise that, madam lady.”

The three women laughed.

“It sounds like you have a plan,” Adam said. “Shall we drink to it?”

They all raised their glasses—milky tea for Adam and Seraphina, wine for Tha?s, and whiskey for the others.

“To the Society of Sirens,” Seraphina said. “May we expand our ranks.”