Page 1 of Submitting to the Widow

PROLOGUE

April 1, 1826

Gentlemen’s Private Apartments in Albany

London

Barrister Stephen Forsythe set down his brandy onto Ath’s worn carpet and threw his unfinished lemon biscuit into one of the Albany sitting room’s untidy corners. His gorge threatened to turn on him. His journal pages were never meant to see the light of day, let alone a public circulating library for hedonists.

His fellow reprobate friends had a lot to lose, true, if their journal pages were exposed to the unforgivington. But his pages revealed his secret character, and in the light of day, that did not look good for him. He could lose his privileges to defend cases before the bar. The first judge who caught a bit of the scandal on the wind of gossip, he’d be left to rely on his mother’s good graces. And that, above all, would never do.

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* * *

April 1826

Private rooms above Goodrum’s

Duke Street, London

The highly respected barrister, Stephen Forsythe, and his former partner in lascivious hi-jinks during their days at Cambridge, Bow Street runner Archer Colwyn, did not anticipate any problem arising out of their interview with Captain Eleanor Goodrum. Shewasa woman after all, albeit a frightening one according to many of their friends in the know. But surely, she could be made to see reason. Surely she’d turn over the pages which could ruin both of their careers.

They gingerly sat on one of the plushest retiring couches either of them had ever encountered. A woman with that much solicitude for their personal comfort should not prove so difficult in, erm, delicate negotiations. However, they both immediately sank so low into the soft cushions, that their knees canted up nearly to their chins. Thank God no one could see them in their current ridiculous position.

The chess set on the low table in front of the couch was disturbing to say the least, but he could overlook her bizarre taste in furnishings if she could be persuaded to help them out of their predicament.

Of course, both of them had enjoyed previous brief glimpses of her private club beneath the woman’s lavish private office and rooms—the legendary Goodrum’s. The pleasures to be had there were so numerous, it would take months of repeated visits to sample them all.

Stephen appreciated the discreet dining rooms where one could indulge in a private meal without the world knowing one’s business. And then there were the rare wines, and the menu.

The menu surpassed all expectations. Most evenings, laid out on long, white-linen covered tables in one of the second-floor rooms would be roast fowls and chicken, potted meats, lamb, ribs and shoulder, meat cakes, and ham, ornamented, or slices in silver filigreed baskets. Aspic jellies gleamed in a rainbow of jewel tones in the center of the banquet rooms before the platters of lobster and Italian salads began. For the discerning sweet tooth there were always elaborate, flaky pastries, jellies, creams, ices from Gunther’s, and sweetmeats.

The identity of her chef responsible for the epicurean display was a tightly held secret. Almost more hushed than the identity of Prinny’s mistresses.

And speaking of mistresses, the moving feast of women who glided nightly through Goodrum’s was unlike that of any other women either of them had heretofore encountered. The lot of them were extraordinary beauties, masked, in daring gowns of glittering brocades and decadent silks.

Unlike many other houses of pleasure, however, the women chose the men, or women, with whom they’d spend the evening. Captain El tolerated no exceptions and maintained a veritable army of hulking bodyguards to ensure the women could spend time with whomever they chose without interference.

That aberration alone gave Stephen pause in his consideration of how malleable Captain Goodrum might be in accommodating their need to retrieve the damning pages of their missing journals. She’d purchased his and Col’s shared journal for her infamous lending library of pornography.

Damn Leo’s doddering valet, and damn Leo for that matter for putting them all in the dire situation they now faced. Who knew throwing their university days’ journals of sexual conquests in with other used books from Leo’s library and offering them for sale to Hatchard’s would cause such a tangle with the lot of them ending up in the suds?

* * *

Sea captain,sometime pirate, and mysterious woman extraordinaire Eleanor Goodrum leaned back in her chair and gazed thoughtfully at the two men awaiting her in the anteroom to her Duke Street office above Goodrum’s House of Pleasure.

A strategically placed glass bevel was fitted into the wall across from her luxurious puce velvet-covered, overstuffed Linell couch. The short wooden tube behind the glass allowed her to gaze undetected at visitors in her anteroom. With the distortions of the beveled glass, they never suspected she was watching their movements from her darkened office.

The seating arrangement, probably more suited to a bordello, was designed to lull anyone entering her lair into complete relaxation. Everything in her waiting room worked together to serve her business purposes well.

Captain El never did anything that was not directly related to the furtherance of her business interests. She simply did not have the luxury of time to indulge in unnecessary pursuits.

As if the life-like gilded cherubs holding up each end of the retiring couch were not enough to put the most masculine thinking of her callers into a state of anxiety, she’d also piled atop the couch cushions fringed and beaded pillows brought back from her Algiers hideaway. The walls were painted a rose-tinted ivory, and a low table in front of the couch contained several exotic games, including a chess board with hand-carved ivory playing pieces depicting anatomically correct nudes she’d found in Morocco. The male playing pieces were, um, very well endowed. The way her callers interacted with the games whilst she made them wait told her volumes.

The two fine specimens of manhood now occupying her couch were so agitated about re-claiming their lost naughty journal pages, they had not even noticed the chess pieces. If the two of them had not been a distinguished London barrister and Bow Street runner, she would have considered offering them positions within her organization. With physiques like theirs, she could make a fortune “lending” their services to the wealthy, bored matrons of theton.

She studied the two rogues for nearly twenty minutes to make sure they were sufficiently cowed before she motioned for her assistant to call them in. She’d make them proposals neither one could refuse. If they knew what she knew, they’d run screaming into the night.