Loving Julia Read Free Page A

find you both very, very fetching, but, uh, well, to be quite frank, tonight I fear I am not quite … quite myself. To be perfectly plain with you, I do not … do not think I am … capable of the feat you require. So sorry, ladies.”
    With a lopsided grin he bowed in the general direction of the lamppost and started to lurch away. Desperate, Jewel grabbed at his arm. She could not let him get away now.
    “Wait! I, uh, seein’ as yer so ’andsome an’ all, I’ll give it ter ya real cheap. Yer sure ter my taste, guvnor.” She smiled at him and rolled her eyes in the way that she had seen the whores do. He smiled back at her, and for a moment she thought she had him. Then he shook his head.
    “You’re a pretty wench, I think. I can’t quite see properly at the moment. Are you hard up for cash? If so, I’ll be glad to make you a little … a little loan….” With that he reached into his pocket and pulled out a purse that bulged at the seams. Jewel’s eyes bulged nearly as much as he opened it, and peeled off a couple of notes from the pile to tuck into her bodice. Hardly feeling his fingers brushing her flesh, she could not tear her eyes from the thick roll of notes remaining in the purse. It must contain hundreds of pounds—a fat pigeon indeed, and she was losing him!
    “I’m ’ard up too, sir,” whined the whore, and if looks could kill the older woman would have been stretched out dead at Jewel’s feet. She was sure she could get him to at least walk with her a little way—far enough to where Jem and Mick could drag him into an alley—if only the old bitch would go away!
    The toff tucked some notes into the crack between the other woman’s fat breasts, smiled seraphically at the pair of them, and again started to lurch away. Down the street a ways, a ramshackle tavern belched forth a quartet of shabby revelers; joining arms, they staggered off in the opposite direction. The toff followed happily in their wake, and Jewel ground her teeth. Then, with a single seething glance at her rival, she would have gone after the toff, but the older woman stopped her with a hand on her arm.
    “We need to ’ave us a little chat, lovey,” she purred menacingly, her grime encrusted nails digging into the soft flesh of Jewel’s upper arm. Jewel turned, feeling the roots of her hair tighten with temper. Hissing like an enraged cat, she started to give the woman the roundhouse punch she had been asking for. But the sound of the toff’s voice, high pitched with drunken indignation, jolted her attention back to him.
    “You. Just what do you think you’re doing?” The young gentleman was protesting in vain at being force-marched down the street between Jem and Mick. The three were nearly of a height, but their burliness and rough clothes overwhelmed his slender, fashionably dressed person.
    “I say now, this isn’t quite-quite cricket!” He was struggling, but the effort was wasted. Jewel watched in consternation as Mick wrapped his burly arms around the toff in a bone crushing hug, lifted him from his feet, and bore him back into the sheltering darkness of a narrow alley.
    “Let me go, ya ol’ windbag,” Jewel hissed at the whore, who was gaping at the now empty alley entrance. When the woman was slow to obey, Jewel shoved her so hard that she stumbled backward and, tripping over a loose cobblestone, sat down hard in the gutter that was running over with filth.
    The woman howled as she struggled to her feet, but Jewel scarcely spared her a glance. She picked up her voluminous skirt in both hands and sped down the street. Even before she reached the alley, she heard the sickening thud of blows and the groans of someone in pain. By the time she rounded the corner into the narrow, shadow filled darkness, the toff was lying on his back behind a heap of garbage while Jem wrestled his purse away from him. Despite, or perhaps because of, his drunken state, the young man was determined to hang onto his purse. He and