2nd Historical Blog Hop 02/17/13 Only A Mistress Will Do

Welcome back to the Historical Blog Hop!  Historical romance in just 10 sentences.  Good enough to get you hooked, bad enough to make you want more. 🙂

The Rake’s Progress: The Orgy by William Hogarth

Today’s treat is a WIP that I’ve only just gotten started on, but I thought, let me change it up and give you something completely different.  This snippet is from Book 3 of my House of Pleasure series, Only A Mistress Will Do.  It is completely unedited and to my recollection, never before seen.  This is the beginning–in which a lady, down on her luck, must make a very hard decision.  Hope you enjoy!

“Miss Carlton?” 

The low-pitched voice of Amorina Vestry made Violet jump to her feet.  On edge from the moment she entered the house, she now wobbled on unsteady legs as she tried to avoid looking at the lewd décor of the downstairs receiving room.  But walls painted with nude scenes, a pair of obscene candlesticks on the mantle, and a ceiling medallion sculpted to resemble a woman’s breast meant the only place she could turn her eyes without blushing was the crimson red carpet.  Even the furniture, carved into indecent shapes, had made Violet cringe when she sat down on it.

“My manservant said you wished to see me?”  The small woman’s dark eyes took in every detail of Violet’s appearance from what used to be her second-best hat to the rumpled and stained deep-purple dress to her scuffed black boots.

            On the tip of her tongue to say that of course she did not wish to see the madam of a brothel, Violet paused and took a deep breath.  She had come to the absolute end of her resources the night before.  No money, no shelter, no food, no friends—these circumstances had driven her to Madame Vestry.

If you want more of my historical snippets, come back next week! 🙂  Thanks for coming by today. Please click here to hop on to more historical posts this week!