Chapter 1
When young Lord Edward Richard Stone first opened the Domesday Book one rainy day to search for his family name, he was surprised to find that his ancestors didn’t live in England at the time of the Conquest.
He learned the truth only after visiting his old nurse: an Anglo-Saxon Stone had fought against the Conqueror, but the family had a different surname in those days.
Edric Stoneheart had acquitted himself bravely before defeat at Hastings and submitted to the new King of England. He accepted a Norman bride and surrendered a good deal of his personal wealth to retain his claim to nobility. But all was not placid in the Stoneheart keep.
After decades of complaints from Stoneheart wives and mistresses alike, Henry I looked up from a plate of lampreys at a royal banquet, made a witty remark about the men of the family not having hearts, and promptly expired.
The court took the offhand joke most seriously, as it was the king’s last pronouncement, and officially shortened the surname to Stone.
Edward Stone — long known as the stud Dick Stone, and more recently named Viscount Netherwallop after the death of his elder brother — nearly sprinted through the streets towards Leicester Fields.
He clutched his heart, suspecting that the old family surname had descended on him this very day like a curse; there must be a small boulder in his chest where his heart should be.
Why would a man well-regarded for his unflappability when confronted with the most unorthodox goings-on be sweating through his tailoring in the London fog?
When he reached the address, he feared he’d arrived too late. Or too soon. There were no lights to signal that the most debauched men in London gathered at this nondescript building to bid on young women and men for the express purpose of taking their virginity.
Edward had reason to believe that these were no charitable souls with an aim of gently inducting the next generation of courtesans and courtiers in the ways of the bedchamber. There had been talk of these auctions. And the lives forever altered when wolves sank their teeth into nubile flesh.
It was on his second trip around the building that he spotted a door with a faint glow about the jamb. He whipped it open and joined the crowd.
***
After an hour of watching the proceedings, Edward still had not seen her.
Her. It was a strange thing to contemplate, even now: his urchin friend, long known to him as Tobias, was a girl. A young woman, he thought, as he watched the auction from the back of the smoky room.
“And finally, for the true connoisseurs, we have a treat!” yelled the announcer from the front of the room. “She may not play the harp as you fuck her from behind or suck your cock between words of French, but she’s a rare jewel indeed: a virgin straight from Covent Garden!”
“A virgin in the Garden? That’d be a first!” yelled one man in the crowd.
“I’ll believe it when I see it, and by it, I mean an intact maidenhead,” muttered a man nearby.
“Stand on this bench, my dear, and show these men how pretty and accommodating you are,” said the auctioneer, his manner rougher with the girl than his words would have suggested.
And when the lass stood on the bench so all the men could see her despite her short stature, Edward finally found what he’d been waiting for: Tabitha, his longtime friend.
She looked different, as was to be expected.
When she’d been picking pockets and then working for Edward as a source of information for his breeding business, Tabby wore breeches, shirtsleeves, and a sack jacket, much as any other lad.
Her disguise had been effective enough that, in all those years of close friendship, he’d never suspected Tobias of being a girl.
But there she was, her limbs spindly and chin pointing at the floor, wearing a threadbare nightdress. On her head appeared to be the ugliest wig in existence.
Edward castigated himself for thoughtless words in the past, begging her only a few weeks ago to carry out whatever harebrained plan she had in mind. He’d expected her to conclude the project quickly and return to their adventures.
He hadn’t realized she meant to auction off her virginity and become a woman of the town!
Now, his redoubtable Tabby was looking like one puff of cheroot smoke would send her tipping from that bench.
The auctioneer lifted the ostensible strands of hair in Tabby’s wig. “Only the finest for our discerning coves tonight. Show them your legs, sweetheart.”
She wiggled her nightgown up to reveal her knees, pinned together, and then let the fabric drop again. The crowd jeered.
“Now, gentlemen, our physician has confirmed that this lass is virgo intacta, a fine treat…for the man short of funds.”
The men in the audience laughed at the joke, pointing to the cheap lace on that cursed nightgown. Where had she got that thing? Edward raged inside. If only she’d shared her plans with him, he’d have at least seen her outfitted properly! And kept her far away from this den of wolves!
“She might not be the cleanest of the girls here tonight, but I can assure you we scrubbed her down with lye so your olfactory senses will not be disturbed when making use of her,” cried the auctioneer, holding his nose for comedic effect.
Edward’s hand pressed against his right rib and traveled up to his heart.
He begged his cursed ticker not to stop before he got Tabby out of this wretched place.
She stood on that bench so patiently despite the jeers and disparagement, her gaze floating over the heads of those men who might buy and hurt her.
“If I wanted trash, I’d hunch a ragpicker,” sneered a young blade to his mates.
“Get her off the stage!” yelled a man from the back. Edward sent him a glare.
“Is there no one who will relieve this blushing virgin of her hymen? Surely one among you has had his allowance cut and wouldn’t mind breaking in a cheap, fresh whore for the night!” shouted the auctioneer.
The assembled men merely grumbled, and the auctioneer moved to take Tabby down from the bench when she remonstrated with him, moving her hands like a fishwife to ask for another chance at the crowd.
It was when the man presumed to get rough with her that Tabby struck back, landing an elbow in his middle as he pulled her down from the bench.
Edward had seen enough and was halfway to the front of the room when the auctioneer struck Tabby across the face with an open hand, to the delighted cheers of the rakes, bloods, and blades. The sound of the slap rang through the room.
“On second thought, I might have a use for this slut!” shouted a man as Edward passed, earning him a blow to the kidney that sent him to the floor in a heap.
“What’s this? Do we have a taker?” yelled the auctioneer between wheezes. “She’ll look much better with your bruises on her flesh!”
When he passed by the bored cashier sitting before a strongbox, Edward slammed down a banknote, then elbowed his way forward, where Tabby continued to tussle with the auctioneer.
“This one is mine,” said Edward, grabbing her about the waist and swinging her into his arms.
“What are ye doing, Dick Stone?” she asked, pushing against his chest. “I’m trying to become your equal.”
All around them, the crowd hurled abuse, and Tabby had to brush off a lit cheroot that landed in her lap.
“Oh, but I paid so much for this,” she said sadly, looking at the hole left behind.
“I’ll buy you another,” said Edward, exasperated. “We need to get out of here.”
“Sir, your change!” exclaimed the man at the strongbox as Edward made for the exit, still carrying Tabby.
“Keep it,” he ground out. “I’d have paid more.”
***
It was when he’d been carrying Tabby for several streets in the darkened night and longed to put her down that he noticed her lack of shoes.
“Blast it, do we need to go back for your boots and breeches?” he asked, finally realizing that her bare toes bobbed before them.
“Sold ’em,” she said.
“You sold the boots I gave you?” he asked, his heart sinking. Those boots could have lasted her many more years, and she was unlikely to find a pair so fine.
She placed her hand against his waistcoat, not precisely where he’d been in pain, but close enough for Edward to draw a deep breath at last.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the picture of sincerity. “I had to pay for my wig. My hair is so short that I look like a boy otherwise.”
He regarded the cheap, tangled mess in horror. Someone had convinced her to part with her boots so she could buy the most disgusting wig seen in London this century? The thing was likely crawling with lice. Would the horrors never cease?
“And what of your breeches?” he asked faintly.
“Traded them for this,” she said, fingering the burn hole in her dreary nightgown.
“So your plan was to go without shoes and daytime clothing henceforth?” he asked, the words echoing down the abandoned streets as he navigated towards his lodgings.
“I was supposed to get a cut of my auction take,” she said sadly. “But you carried me away before I could collect. I was going to mention it, but you looked so mad.”
“Mad…” he said, his voice rising at the end. He felt positively barking mad; that was certainly true!
“Do you think they’d have me back?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Have you back?” asked Edward, feeling the last rope mooring his self-restraint break. “Did those men seem like they wanted to bid on you tonight?”
“Maybe if I’d lifted my nightdress higher—”
“They didn’t want you,” rasped Edward, tightening his hold on Tabitha as he marched home. “At least for a purpose other than hurting you. Why, the auctioneer slapped you. Blast it, Tabby, why aren’t you tearing at your hair and crying? That was hell to watch!”
She went still in his arms, and her little mouth hardened. “Mayfair misses get to cry over a needle prick, but us? We get told to dodge out the way faster next time. Be happy it wasn’t harder. Haven’t you heard? There are sumpt’y laws on tears.”
“Sumptuary.”
“That too.”