Welcome to Shiralyn who is sharing an excerpt from her new release, The Dark Cully’s Mistress. Set to a backdrop of 1800’s London, this sounds like a great read! _______________________________________________________________
This is the story of Annie Smith, a prostitute living in the Covent Garden area in the mid 1800’s. The area was rife with prostitution during this era and held no exception to Annie’s plight. Forced by her mother to work in this trade she is determined to find a way out of this life at any cost. When she meets a married man quite by sheer accident she is offered an unusual way to leave this sordid existence behind her.
Annie is extremely grateful for her new found role in life and for a while she accepts this to be the right choice. But soon her life will change again when she meets her Dark Cully’s wife, Mrs. Rose Rotherham, a fine and beautiful woman who happens to be high up in the social circle of London. Annie is besotted with her and has to find a way into her life and when she manages to find that avenue there is literally, hell to pay.
My name is Amelia Haversham, or at least it is now. I was born Annie Smith, an only daughter to Margaret and Frederick Smith. We lived in the slums, an area just by Covent Garden. It was a dirty and disgusting area where only the rats would find a good feast to chew on, and the unpleasant smell of dank buildings would fill your nostrils. And a beggar would be huddled in a corner somewhere trying to spend another night without croaking it from the cold. The sky would be filled with streams of grey smoke billowing out from the chimney tops, and never was there a day where I didn’t blow my nose without black soot appearing on my sleeve. When the lamplighter did his nightly walk and lit the gaslights around the gardens, prostitutes would flock to the area and stand beneath the bright lights wearing their skirts and petticoats tucked up into their waistbands in order to show a little leg. This was a known ritual, a selling proposition so there would be no mistakes as to what to expect from her.
The area was useful for its purposes, it was a haven for prostitutes to hang around and make a few shillings on the quiet. There were plenty of good spots to catch the eye of a sailor, or a needy gentleman who happened to seek a good seeing to after a night out down the local boozer. A girl could give him the service that he’d paid for, maybe use the old quail pipe on his lobcock and in return he’d give a bit of dab on her downy spring moss without being caught by the local blue bottles and spending the evening locked away in a cell, courtesy of her majesty Queen Victoria.
I used to be one of those girls, the type caught up in, ‘The Great Evil.’ That’s what many who sympathised with our needs would call it anyway. But my situation is different now. I was lucky enough to find myself a Dark Cully. He was a kind enough man when I first met him, the sort to keep me on the straight and narrow anyway. He turned my head and I never looked back after that. But if anyone was to ask me if I loved him, my Mr. Rotherham, I would have one of two options to answer their question with. I could tell a lie and say that I loved the bones off the back of his body until the day I died. Or I could tell the truth and say I don’t love him. I never have and I never will. There is one thing though, I am grateful for his kindness and I do adore the way that he avoids being seen out in the daylight hours when he comes to visit me, but then again isn’t that what a Dark cully is?
But he’s my Dark cully, a married man with a family, a wife and a home that he will never leave, he’s hammered for life that one. A dark cully will never be seen out and about with his mistress he’d have to be off his blooming rocker to take his ladybird out. That’s what I used to be, a ladybird, a dollymop. At least I was the pretty one and I made more push than any of the other whores put together. They were so jealous of me. I actually thought that I was going to get nobbled by one of em too just for having the pretty looks that I did.
Lissie one of the street girls I knew, she had really bad teeth, black and rotten and half of em missing, she would tell me that if she looked half like me then she’d make twice as much gilt as she did now. Poor girl, she was practically a beggar herself, a bunter, that’s what she was. Gawd knows the types of blokes she managed to latch on to, must have sought out the lushington’s when they’d been kicked out of the pub after last time had been called.
So if I had to describe myself, well I would say that I have long straight dark brown hair but I could be wrong there on accordance that it had never been washed in years. It could be blonde I don’t really remember, maybe the dirt turned it to the colour it is now. But at least I have my teeth, made sure no bugger knocked them out when he had a bit of the old fancy and got heavy handed with me. No I learned how to take care of myself I did, any funny business and I’d give em a right good hiding I would.
Lissie says that my eyes are brown but I say they’re brown with bits of green in em. We had a barny over it once and neither one of us would admit we was wrong but I know I’m right.
Ere I’m good at cracking my jaw, it’s my trick when I’m down at the Lamb and Flag. Kizzie Noggs, she sometimes has a drink with me. Well she can’t stand it when I do it. She says it sounds like my face is gonna fall off. I do it all the more just to annoy her.
My so called mother had me out on the streets as soon as I was old enough to prig from the more fortunate. I stole many fob watches and gold rings from the likes of the rich. Well maybe they weren’t that rich but if they had decent clothes and a few shillings in their pockets that made em rich to the likes of me. Half of em didn’t even have a bleedin’ clue that they’d just been robbed. I used my beautiful looks and my charming ways to lighten the load from their pockets I did. They were too busy getting their jollies off with me to notice me rifling through their personal belongings. It was a dangerous game that I played, one that might have seen me never wake up the next morning if one of em had decided to open his eyes and check to see what my free hand was doing. But I was as quick as a fly I was.
Persuasion from a mollisher had its advantages too. My boyfriend, a villain who many of the locals were scared of, would be lurking somewhere nearby. He’d never let me out of his sight for too long, not if he knew what was best for him. But he’s long gone now. Croaked it from Cholera three years back he did. Some say that he deserved it too, that it was a blessing in disguise when his lights went out. He was a bit of a bad apple, if you got on the wrong side of him he’d send the punishers round to give you a good beating. He often told me to shut my head if I knew what was good for me. I kept my head shut good and tight for him, I made sure of that.
After his number was up I had to walk the streets on my own. No ponce would come near me cos my reputation for being his mollisher had scared them all. And that’s how I met my Mr. Rotherham, when I was walking down the street in the pouring rain one night on my own. I was down on my luck, hardly made a penny that night. No gentleman in his right mind would be out rogering a bit of tail in that weather. No when it rained up a storm like that the best thing any gal could do was go and have a drink or two down at the Lamb and Flag. That’s where I was heading to when I slipped and fell on the wet cobblestones and landed right on to my arse. He came walking around the corner, his head was bowed low and he was holding on tightly to the brim of his hat to keep his face from being whipped by the wind and the icy cold rain. He saw me do it, saw me land and curse my blooming head off. I wasn’t very lady like when I was down on the ground but he didn’t mind that, Mr. Rotherham I mean. He held out his hand for me to take. His black cloak was soaked through but he didn’t care about that, he just wanted to pick me up from the cold wet ground and take me somewhere that I could dry myself off. Preferably the Lamb and Flag would do as I was heading down there anyway.
It didn’t matter that he was a stranger to me; most gals would be flattered by a man of his standing offering to help her out like that. No he looked as though he had a coin or two in his pockets and who better to spend em on but me.
I have many books published, all written under the lesbian genre. I love to write in different time era’s, from early 1800’s through to modern day stories and I also induce factual events such as, The Great Frost of 1709 and Jack the Ripper. I have also made each story line unique with their plotlines by using occasions from my own personal experiences.
Some of my work is romantic and erotic with light sensual sex scenes, whereas others are featured with stronger explicit sex scenes and even strong language to intensify the drama. I prefer to give my readers a wider selection of choice; we are all different in what we like to read.
Find out more about Shiralyn on her blog.
You can purchase Dark Cully’s Mistress on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
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