A/N: Sorry this is late, but I've been busy with other fics. I tried with this chap to get into the Judge's head - so apologies if you find it offensive!
~Pretty Women Part 2~
"My lord," interrupted the Beadle. "Your coach awaits."
Only the Beadle was allowed into Judge Turpin's private sanctum.
The room was both lavish and gaudy, dull and dusty. No expense had been spared. It had the distinct impression of an old king's court.
It wasn't quite comfortable enough to be called a home.
The Beadle hovered on the threshold. His master's figure cast a tall silhouette against the window.
"My lord," the Beadle repeated after some moments, twisting his fingers against the doorframe. He was eager to go to the ball. He'd been anticipating it all day. The lady he selected for his dancing partner would be lucky indeed. What delicious things he had planned for her!
Turpin remained silent, casting a critical eye over the Beadle's powdered nose. If any more powder was snuffed up there, it was liable to fall off.
"I expect there'll be lots of pretty women tonight." The Beadle smacked his lips together greedily, as if the three helpings of roast lamb followed by a long session of snorting himself into a state of drugged up oblivion in the parlour room weren't enough. Pretty women, thought the Beadle lustily, would be the final cherry to top such a feast.
"Ah yes. Pretty women," Turpin echoed somewhat bitterly.
The Judge considered.
The world was full of pretty women. Darting in and out of houses, shops, coffee houses. Up and down stairs. Down cobblestone streets.
Dressing for dinner. Playing cards. Singing at piano.
Drawing their skirts above their ankles in some secluded meeting place.
Some were tall, some were short. Some were shapely, slim, solid, slender. Some paled their skin, plumped their lips, primped and puffed up their hats and hair. Others made no effort at all, and hid themselves beneath canopies of fabric and veils.
Each one fascinated Judge Turpin. "I will be down in five minutes," he said coldly.
"As your lordship wishes." The Beadle could raise no objections when the Judge was in one of his moods, and disappeared tactfully.
* * *
"Ah," was all Turpin could manage.
Celeste would be there, of course. She would come in one of her glorious gowns, whisper some bawdy jokes in his ear, and disappear with him behind one of the curtains for an hour or two.
There would be food, music, dancing, masks.
Lewdness. Depravity. Seduction.
Why wasn't he excited?
Probably, Judge Turpin realised, it was all Joanna's fault.
Since Joanna had eluded him, Turpin had considered seducing the pretty dark widow who called on him every Friday for legal advice. She'd had no idea what he was thinking, as she took out her tattered legal journals, and began to ask this and that trivial question. Judge Turpin didn't care that the widow was an intelligent, sensitive, proud woman, who, had she been born a hundred years later, probably would have made a diplomat, or Judge of the Supreme Court. He was more interested in her smooth, velveteen eyebrows.
But then he had rescued Mrs Lovett – and his normal schedule of seduction went out the window.
It was normally Celeste on a Monday, the Butcher's wife on Tuesday, the local trollop on Wednesday, the barrister's mistress on Thursday, and Celeste again on Saturday. Sundays he left open for a little spontaneity.
Not so the last few weeks. He'd had to cancel all his appointments – they got in the way of visiting Nellie. One of the maids might call, and inform him Nellie was beginning to use her right hand, and then her left leg. Another day, they would report she was talking more.
Turpin had not missed a single development. He would arrive like a proud father watching his child being delivered, and nothing Nellie said or did seemed to deter him. She could have thrown a pot of boiling oil, and he still would have cooed at her.
It got to the stage where Mrs Lovett would disrupt even the little moments Turpin cherished so much. He would think of her at the oddest moments – while he was at his mirror, or delivering a life sentence in court.
Now, for instance, when he was meant to be going to his ball.
Turpin felt annoyed with himself. He could forget Mrs Lovett this once, couldn't he?
He was usually the life of the party.
Perhaps a soothing novel would calm him down before he departed?
Turpin turned to his immense bookshelf, and selected one of his personal favourites. He searched for the particular chapter, and began pouring over the debauched novel as a child devours chocolate. He began to enjoy himself. It was what he'd always imagined on his wedding night with Joanna. He flipped a few pages.
The girl was almost completely won over – when Nellie's pale, smirking face rose up in front of the pages like one of those ghostly streetwalkers he'd pick out from time to time on the streets.
Turpin tried, and failed. He couldn't ignore that face. He stopped mentally tracing his hands over some poor virgin's torso – and sat up.
What was Nellie thinking of, this hour? Was she dreaming? Could she sleep?
He doubted it. He hadn't slept a wink, when he found out his precious Joanna had left him.
The barber had betrayed her. Thrown his partner into the flames.
She could not be sleeping. He felt certain of that.
Turpin snapped the book shut, ran his fingers down the dusty length of his shelves, and carefully slid it back into the empty slot.
It reminded him of a familiar action, and he turned back to the window to consider.
He felt the crude awakening within, and he didn't struggle against it. Turpin wasn't the sort of man to be denied. He wanted her, of course.
Otherwise he wouldn't have her locked up like a heretic in a dungeon. But he didn't want that burnt, charcoaled thing.
He wanted Mrs Lovett: bowing seductively by her shop door, corkscrew locks bobbing, her wide fish-eyes smirking at him, half her mouth turned up in half-serious suggestion.
It had all been so quick. But the moment between them had lingered.
The Judge remembered other little times when he'd passed through her neighbourhood.
* * *
He'd be walking home from work, and there she'd be each day at 4:30pm precisely, preparing the pie shop for its evening rush.
Wiping the occasional window. Putting out the sign. Scrubbing down the benches.
He'd noticed her, naturally. All the men did. Nellie Lovett had her own unique style, adding frills and lace and splashes of odd colour and sparkle here and there.
And she carried herself well – well enough so that any passerby didn't really need to imagine what she was capable of in private quarters.
Naturally, everyone assumed that she was having it off with the barber upstairs.
Who would think otherwise, from the suggestive snake of her waist, and the way she held the trays of pies in her arms as if she were an artist's model half-undressed?
"Evening sir," she'd beam at Turpin, tracking him down the street with those fascinating eyes. Then she'd smile, putting a gloved hand against her hip. Just watching him.
Turpin wondered what her teeth were like beneath the closed lips.
"Care for a pie?"
"Perhaps another time, madam," he'd replied curtly, his eyes still trained on her lips.
He'd been tempted so many times. It wouldn't have been particularly difficult either, Turpin gathered. The woman was half in love with him. She'd have agreed to whatever he suggested.
But he had promised himself to Joanna.
The girl didn't know it yet, but she was soon to be his bride. The deprived child would no longer feel the need to sit and pine for foolish sailors. She would have a man of culture to fulfil her.
Turpin knew well his weakness for pretty women. He desired the baker, as he desired all pretty women.
But he had promised – Joanna was a rosebud, and deserved to be treated as such.
He couldn't be having it off with the baker, if he was to be married to –
* * *
"Joanna," Turpin snarled, jerking the curtains across the window. Lucy too, in her own way, had betrayed him. She was too weak for this world. Perhaps all pretty women were.
But then Mrs Lovett – perhaps she would be made of stronger stuff.
"Pretty women will drive me mad," Turpin muttered, taking his white beaked mask from his bed and heading out the door.
He would forget Joanna. He would forget Lucy. He would forgot Nellie – for now.
Judge Turpin was going to the ball.
* * *
Wooh! Turpin's leaving all the drama at home and about to Live It Up! LOL. Next chapter: What's Mrs Lovett going to do, now that Turpin's out for the night? Can you guess?