Filling Their Tailoress (Spicy Shorts #1)

Chapter 1

After several minutes of banging, Molly Trenchard opened the door to her shop.

“Madam, I require your assistance,” said a gloriously attired gentleman currently taking shelter from the rain under the eaves, his face partially hidden by a scarf.

“I fear the shop is closed now, sir,” she said. “We’ve been closed since the death of my husband last week, but we’ll be back to whipping up trousers on Monday.”

He stepped closer to her open door, the light from inside illuminating his face.

She knew him.

Lord Banastre Lascelles, known to all of fashionable London as Bonnie.

Not to be confused with Little Boney, Napoleon Bonaparte, forcibly retired to Saint Helena.

Unlike the former Emperor of the French, Bonnie was unlikely to lift a finger for any cause, neither helpful nor harmful to his fellow man.

As the fifth son of a , his role was to merely exist and most decidedly not produce any new, costly shoots of the family tree.

Neither an heir or spare, he was a drain on the dynasty rather than an asset; his income was modest while his taste for luxury was ducal.

His solution to the conundrum was to strut about town attired in the first fashion and leave the settlement of bills to exasperated tradesmen, his secretary, and His Grace, his father.

Molly was one of those tradesmen.

She grabbed him by the elegant scarf. “You owe me money, and my letters have gone unanswered. I trust that you’re here to settle your bill?”

He removed her hand, roughened by tailoring tanned hides, from his attire and walked into the shop as if invited.

“Arousing as your greeting is, I am in fact not here to settle the bill for last year’s pantaloons, I fear. I have just today been pickpocketed, and I find myself entirely without funds,” he said.

“Then why show your face here?” she asked, amazed at his gall.

“I find myself in need of assistance,” he said.

“You’d like me to assist you? When you routinely delay payment on my materials and labor for so long that I keep demand letters to you drafted in my study?”

“You see, it’s something of a serious matter,” he said, turning his cane so that the silver fox head glinted in the candlelight.

“What serious matter could require the assistance of the woman who makes your pantaloons?” she asked, bemused.

Bonnie folded himself into a chair used for waiting customers during shop hours, pulling the elaborate scarf from his neck.

“You see, it began when I was given a living in Great Snoring,” he said.

“Great Snoring,” she repeated.

“Yes, yes, unfortunate name, even more unfortunate place. What’s important is that I was given the living there. As vicar,” he said, in case she was unfamiliar with how ecclesiastical professions worked for less valuable aristocratic sons.

“I had no idea you were a man of religion,” she said, trying to remember if she’d ever heard of Bonnie Lascelles discussed as a man of the cloth in any of the gossipy interactions that happened daily in her shop.

“I am decidedly not a man of religion,” he said while fiddling with his quizzing glass, “which is one of many origins of the problem. The other is that I was given a stipend to support myself in Great Snoring, but one insufficient to support the curate that would do the actual preaching there while also funding my adventures here in the capital.”

“I find it difficult to sympathize with a man who is forced to work,” she said drily.

“And I did attempt to make the best of it!” he said. “I took up my post, having been driven up to Norfolk by my father’s man of business, and preached one Sunday. I thought it went rather well, all things considered, but the parishioners — close-minded people! — drove me out.”

“The people of Great Snoring took up pitchforks to drive out an aristocrat?” she asked dubiously.

“They complained to the bishop,” he said.

“And what was the substance of their complaint?”

“They found my accounts of sin too detailed for Sunday service,” he said.

“You don’t mean to say that you stood before the assembled parishioners and recounted your exploits?” she asked with horror.

“How are they to know sin if totally ignorant of its many alluring permutations?” he replied, brushing a piece of thread from his superfine trousers.

“As a mere tradeswoman, I am unable to intervene on your behalf with the bishop, but I’m sure you’ll find some sympathetic soul to help,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was heading to bed.”

“I too was heading to bed this evening, attempting to put the Great Snoring debacle behind me, when the real trouble started,” he said.

“And I wish you luck with the completion of that. In some other location,” she said, gesturing to the door.

He looked up, his arresting eyes pinning her to the floor with their intensity. As befit his name, he really was beautiful.

“I was heading to bed in a molly house. With a man. As it was being raided by the Night Watch,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, gracelessly landing on the seat beside him.

He wrapped an arm around her trim waist companionably.

“So, you see, I’m in something of a bind and could use your help,” he said.

“They execute for sodomy,” she said in a daze.

“Sometimes,” he said, checking the polish on his boots.

“Adult men going about their business at a molly house with other adult men tend to evade the law, but that’s only if they happen to have coin as a tip for the ever so kind Night Watch.

Given that I happened upon a cutpurse on the way there, I had no recourse. ”

“How were you to pay your bedmate without coin in hand?” she asked suspiciously. “Surely you don’t make mollies send demand letters, too?”

“When did I state that I was to be the one paying for the encounter?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, slumping lower as the gravity of the situation settled on her shoulders.

“But you’re correct: I do have a line of credit there.

Sadly, I am in arrears with the molly house as well, and between the unanswered demand letters and my father’s latest crusade against sodomy in our fair city, the owner was only too willing to give me up to the Watch to protect his operation.

I narrowly escaped out a window and had to leave the rest of my vicar togs behind,” he said while petting the eye-catching scarf he’d been wearing.

“Lord…” she said, unsure of what to call him. She’d only written his name dozens of times in her requests for payment, but feared that he had one of those old, aristocratic names that looked far longer and more complicated than it ended up being on the tongue.

“Bonnie is fine,” he said, waving his beringed hand and planting a kiss on her cheek. “Since we’re going to be the best of friends very shortly.”

“Bonnie, I understand that you’re in a very bad spot, but I’m a mere tradeswoman. One who is currently more solvent than you, I admit, but even with pockets to let, you wield far more power than me.”

He wiggled closer to her on the seat. “Yes, but you have a special feature that I don’t have,” he said.

Molly raised her brows at that.

“Your name,” he said. “The only plausible solution to my woes became clear as I was heading out the window: I was nowhere near a molly house tonight. I was engaged in a tryst at Molly’s house. They heard information and simply misunderstood the substance.”

“You mean to convince the Night Watch that you were not engaging in sodomy at a house of prostitution, and instead spent the night canoodling with me?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” he said. “Not my finest escape, but needs must when the gallows loom.”

“I suppose I have no choice but to offer aid,” she said drily.

“That’s the spirit!” he said, shaking her forefingers in his kidskin-leather-gloved hand.

“How did you know that my Christian name is Molly?” she asked.

“I must have made note of it during some previous visit to the shop,” he said.

“And how did you know that my husband wouldn’t answer the door?” she asked suspiciously.

“Is he not recently deceased?” he asked. “Had he opened the door to me today that would have been a superior distraction for the Watch anyway. A man raised from the dead? Surely they’d let me live if I made that discovery! Though it might mean a warm reception in Great Snoring, perish the thought.”

“I’ll help you. But I’ll need help from you in return,” she said. “And don’t think to evade me!”

He shrugged, apparently unconcerned about the specifics of her demand, which was very much in the manner he handled all demands.

A knock boomed at the door.

“That would be my Night Watch friend. The story is that we’re finally able to enjoy a romantic interlude now that your elderly, entirely unhelpful husband is no more. I’ll handle the important bits; your role is to merely not hold back when you wish to make noise.”

“Make noise?” she asked, allowing herself to be led by the hand to the front door.

“Yes, just let it out,” he said, before placing her back against the door. “And handle conversing with the Watch.”

“What are you—”

“Answer them,” he said as he yanked the bodice of her dress down to expose one full breast.

She gasped, grabbing for her neckline. “What are you doing?” she asked, as he guided her hands above her head.

The door boomed again.

“Answer them,” he said, pinching her exposed nipple between his gloved fingers.

She moaned.

“That’s it,” he said softly.

“Night Watch, open up,” said a loud voice from behind the door.

Bonnie smiled and took her nipple into his mouth.

“Oh god—” she said.

“Madam, I can hear that you’re in there,” said the voice.

“Sir, for the sake of public decency,” she said, unable to remove her eyes from Bonnie’s as he sucked on her breast with a look of immense satisfaction on his gorgeous face, “I’m not able to open the door to my shop right now.”

“We’ve a few questions about a gentleman seen in these parts this evening,” the voice said. “His horse is tied up outside, a real high stepper.”