Chapter 2
A Conversation
She remembered their first encounter. He was just another customer (or so she thought) but more brusque than most: he had plonked the money onto drawer and started removing his clothes, stripping down to his undershirt. She remembered the smooth powerful muscles rolling easily beneath the thin white cotton. Unexpectedly, he did not make a move toward her but instead sat on the bed and lit a cigar, taking long drags off it.
"Sir," she said, "why don't you come lie here with me?" She patted the empty spot beside her invitingly, arranging her slender legs in a comely position.
He took a long look at her, his immensely dark, intense eyes running from her milky forehead to the cleavage highlighted by her corset, all the way down to her toes; then went back to staring at the wall.
"You do not fear me?" he asked.
What a strange question to be asking a whore! She scrutinized his face for emotion, but found only hardness.
"Well…when you look at me like you just did, sir, I couldn't help but shiver…though it weren't a shiver of fear, exactly, if y'know what I mean."
He sniffed – a strong, fine nose that was – and seemed to find the answer satisfactory. After a while he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, elbow sinking into the mattress.
"Talk, woman," he said.
This was getting more and more curious. Women like her were not hired for their conversational skills. "About…what, sir?"
"Anything. I don't care."
"Well…" She got up and pulled on a sheer nightgown, then shifted closer to him – cautiously, because there was something quite intimidating about him, as if his body held a swelling mount of passionate fury that might burst forth at any minute. Katy was a forthright woman, but this man made her almost timid. "In that case, may I ask a question?"
There was passive silence, which she took as a yes. "What is your name, good sir?"
A small wispy cloud his lips. "Hyde. Edward Hyde."
"Mr Hyde…Edward. Can I call ya Edward? Mine's Katy." Tentatively she laid a hand on his broad thigh, expecting him to fling it away – but he did not. "Y'know," she added, "I feel like I'm at some kinda tea party, like, instead of one of my usual sessions." Despite herself, her gaze grew dreamy. "Perhaps…perhaps we're really seated all dainty and holdin' our cups and nibblin' sugar-coated cakes…and you, a gentleman whom I'm introducin' myself to."
For a moment he actually smiled – that is, a corner of his mouth lifted about half an inch. "I was a gentleman."
"Oh, but I'm sure you can be. You talk diff'rent, you ain't just some randy working-class bloke or…well, you're just diff'rent, is all."
"No I'm not." Another grim half-smile. "I'm an ugly two-faced hypocrite, like any other specimen of mankind."
Katy raised an eyebrow and fell quiet. She didn't know what to say to that.
"And you know what's better?"
"What?"
"I like being an ugly two-faced hypocrite."
"Oh."
"At least, this part of me does." He blew out a long trail of smoke.
"What 'bout the other part?"
"The other part? The other part has never been to this side of London, and probably never will. The other man is a doctor of a flawless moral reputation who does not know a prostitute named Katy."
Then he turned to her for the first time since she had asked for his name, and inquired again, less brusquely: "You do not fear me?"
Feeling a bit more at ease, Katy took his hand in hers. "How can I, when you have not laid a hand on me nor raised your voice at me, even if y'had a right to? How can a girl fear a man who, for all his coldness, does nothing but sit on 'er bed and smoke?"
For a second, the faintest glimmer of warmth lit up the bottomless depths of his eyes. "You're the most unusual whore I ever met."
"Nay. I'm prob'ly the only whore you ever met."