Soiled Dove Read online

  Soiled Dove

  by

  Brenda Adcock

  Copyright © 2010 by Brenda Adcock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The characters, incidents and dialogue herein are fictional and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coinci-dental.

  ISBN 978-1-935053-35-4 (eBooks)

  eBook conversion October 2010

  Cover design by Donna Pawlowski

  Published by:

  Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC

  4700 Highway 365, Suite A, PMB 210

  Port Arthur, Texas 77642

  Find us on the World Wide Web at

  http://www.regalcrest.biz

  Published in the United States of America Acknowledgements

  There have been too many people over the last six years who have helped me realize my dream to be a writer of reasonably decent stories for the enjoyment of others. Although I though I might die in the process, I will be eternally grateful to Miss Jacqueline Patterson, my high school English teacher who saved my life in college English classes by demanding more than I thought I could do. Through the years since high school, writing has always been a therapeutic solution to most of my problems, real or imagined.

  My characters have always been much braver than I am and often the person I wish I was. So I wish to thank all of my characters for allowing me to speak through them.

  Back in the realm of reality I’d like to thank Gail Robinson, a member of my reading group, my beta reader, and friend. A big thanks to my editor on this project, Patty Schramm, better known to me as “the POV Queen.” Too many voices running rampant in my brain to keep track of. My thanks, once again, to Donna for another great cover that conveyed the mes-sage I wanted. Of course, I can never fail to thank the woman who gave me a chance, Cathy LeNoir, my publisher and friend. I will always be grateful and hopefully will never let you down. Last, but never least in my heart, are the thanks I owe to my partner of fourteen years, Cheryl. There is no other person on the planet who would put up with my moods and general occasional bitchiness. That really takes a special person and she is. Thanks, baby.

  Dedication

  To Cheryl –

  Because I never thank you enough.

  Chapter One

  St. Joseph, Missouri, Early April 1876

  LORETTA DIGBY THREW her head back and feigned a groan of pleasure, staring at the hairline crack that began near the top of the window sill and ran halfway across the dingy ceiling of her room. Her first customer of the evening, a well-known member of the St. Joe City Council she wasn’t particularly fond of, breathed heavily as his wandering hands slid around her waist and roughly caressed her buttocks.

  She felt his arousal press against her as he fumbled to untie the lace holding her corset which temporarily denied him access to her breasts.

  “Easy, sugar,” she said. “We have plenty of time.”

  She grimaced as the roughness of his beard scraped across her neck. She tried to remember the first client she had serviced to repay her debt to Jack Coulter, the brothel’s owner. It had taken almost two years of grabbing, pawing, one-hour customers to work her way up to the higher paying and slightly less repulsive men who frequented Jack’s establishment.

  As she stood wearing only her corset and light-weight bloomers, she remembered her terror when the man threw her on the bed and mounted her without bothering to remove his boots and pants. The smell of tobacco in his mouth and liquor on his breath sickened her. Her sixteen-year-old mind grew numb and she prayed for it to end. Now, four years later, she was able to ignore the scent of stale tobacco, stale alcohol, and stale sex. No matter how much she disliked what she did to earn a living she knew she was better off than most other prostitutes. Jack liked her, almost as much as he liked the money she brought in each night. She glanced briefly at the regulator clock hanging near her dresser. Forty-five more minutes to endure the councilman before he strutted home to his wife and family.

  A scream found its way into her thoughts. “What was that?” she asked, turning her head away from the mouth that sought more of her body.

  “Ignore it,” the man mumbled against the soft skin along her white shoulders.

  Amelia, she thought as she pushed him away and smiled up at him. She placed her hand firmly against his swollen crotch. “Hold that thought, baby,” she said softly.

  She opened the door and saw a small crowd gathering in front of a room at the far end of the upstairs hallway. She grabbed her robe and tied it around her waist. She pushed her slight frame past half-dressed men and their entertainment for the evening and reached for the doorknob to the room.

  When the door opened, Loretta stood wide-eyed for a moment, not believing the scene in front of her. A large naked man was on his knees on top of the bed and the newest and youngest girl in the house cowered against the headboard.

  “You stupid fuckin’ whore!” the man screamed.

  The back of his hand flew across the frightened girl’s face. An ornate gold signet ring on his little finger caught her bottom lip and broke it open as she tried to draw the bed cover up to protect her face from further assault. Loretta saw tears flow down the girl’s mottled, freckled cheeks. A violent game of tug-of-war with the bed cover ensued as he continued to hurl curses at her.

  Loretta launched herself at the disgusting, naked figure in front of her and threw her arms around his neck. Her hands weren’t quite successful in grabbing one another and the man turned quickly to shake her off. “Get out, bitch! One uncooperative whore is enough,” the man yelled as his hand lashed out and caught Loretta, sending her onto her back on the gritty wooden floor. She shook her head slightly while he returned his attention to the teenager cowering under the worn quilt. She grabbed a poker from a set of andirons next to the unused fireplace.

  Pushing a wavy mass of unruly, honey-colored hair away from her face she saw three faces staring into the room from the open doorway.

  “Get Jack,” she ordered calmly. “Then get back to work. I’ll take care of this fucker.”

  One of the faces disappeared and Loretta heard the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps on the stairway. The indignant customer had resumed fighting with the buried girl and was leaning over the bed. Loretta shuddered as she caught a glimpse of his ample, snowy white ass. Jesus, she thought with a slight smirk, this guy’s got more hair on his ass than his head. She looked at the poker in her hand and knew she could end the altercation in a few seconds with one good swing. But who would believe a whore had killed him in self-defense? Jack and the other girls didn’t need any further attention drawn to them. With a deep breath she dropped the poker, took a step back, lowered her shoulder, and threw her entire one hundred and fifteen pounds into a body tackle.

  Unprepared for the blow, the man’s body flew forward, covering the cowering girl before his head struck the heavy wooden headboard of the ratty, well-used bed. Steeling herself for the man’s retaliation, Loretta planted her bare feet solidly on the floor and waited. When nothing happened, she tentatively approached the prone man and poked his corpulent frame.

  “Please…help me,” a small sobbing voice begged.

  Remembering what brought her to the room in the first place, Loretta grabbed the man and half rolled him off the trapped girl. A hand finally managed to find its way from under the covers and flailed around.

  Loretta took the hand and a moment later a disheveled mass of red hair popped from under the covers, gasping for air. Amelia’s eyes widened in horror when she saw the unconscious man.

  “Did you kill hi
m?” she whispered.

  “God, I hope not,” Loretta breathed heavily, bending at the waist and resting her hands on her knees to calm down. “Get on out of there, Amelia, and get dressed,” she said, straightening up and cautiously touching her bruised cheek. She winced slightly and pushed hair away from her face.

  Amelia yelped and grabbed what little of the bed cover she could in a futile attempt to cover her nakedness as the room erupted once again in pandemonium. Loretta whirled around, prepared for another attack, and saw Jack Coulter pushing his way through a gathering crowd of half-dressed customers and girls. Calmly assuring his customers everything was fine while casting threatening glances at each girl, he nodded and closed the door to the room.

  “What the hell happened in here?” he seethed, looking from Loretta to Amelia. When neither spoke he stepped next to the unconscious man and felt his fleshy neck for a pulse. Standing up and folding his arms across his neatly dressed chest he looked at the redhead. “He was your customer, Amelia. What happened?”

  The teenager looked scared and she stammered to reply as she pointed at her comatose client.

  “He…he…he…”

  “He what? Spit it out for Christ’s sake, girl!”

  “He wanted me to…to do

  something…disgusting,” Amelia choked out.

  Motioning to her for more information, he asked,

  “Which was what? Did he want to take a piss on you?

  Tie you up? What?”

  Loretta worked hard at keeping a straight face during the interrogation although she could see her employer’s patience was wearing dangerously thin.

  Loretta didn’t want to know and had never asked, but suspected Amelia couldn’t have been more than fifteen-years-old. Now she was looking at Loretta, her eyes pleading for help. Loretta leaned down and Amelia whispered something to her, new tears making their way down her already tear-stained cheeks. Loretta patted her on the shoulder and whispered back, to which the girl nodded. She was still looking around for something to cover her body until Loretta sighed and took off her robe. She draped it around Amelia’s shoulders, leaving her own body wearing only skimpy lace underwear.

  Amelia slipped the robe on and, hugging it close to her thin body, carefully made her way past Loretta and Jack into an adjoining room. As soon as the girl left, Loretta said nonchalantly, “He wanted her to suck him off and she bit him. I told you she was too damn young for this shit. What were you thinking when you sent her up here, Jack?”

  Loretta watched Jack’s eyes skim over her shapely body before he answered. “I was thinking she would have more productive working years by starting young. She’s about the same age you were when I found you, Retta.”

  “Send her downstairs as a bar girl. She’s pretty beat up and won’t do much good up here anyway,”

  Loretta said as she walked to the bedroom door. She looked at Jack while she turned the doorknob. “She probably wasn’t being fucked by her stepfather like I was at her age.”

  Jack grabbed her lightly by the upper arm, leaned down and smiled. “But look how well you were trained when you arrived here. Remind me to send your stepfather a thank you card.” As she yanked the door open, he smacked her firmly on the ass. “Finish up with your customer and get cleaned up. I’ll be up later, baby.”

  Making her way down the aging, thin carpeting of the upstairs hallway, Loretta ignored the questions of the other girls and the leering looks of the men.

  Fuckin’ perverts. She had a shapely body and she knew it. She was successful because she had managed to keep her figure over the last four years while avoiding being beaten badly enough to scar her face.

  She took a deep breath and paused in front of the door to her room to straighten her hair. She pasted a smile on her face before turning the doorknob and strolling back inside. “Sorry about that interruption, sugar. Now where were we?”

  IT WAS AFTER midnight when Loretta gently lowered her tired body into a tub of hot water and exhaled a sigh. Her hair was clipped high on her head, but a few long tendrils always managed to slip down her neck and into the water when she leaned her head back. She closed her eyes and reflected over the events of the evening. Amelia had virtually barricaded herself in her room and refused to open the door, even for Loretta. If Jack was smart he would either move the girl back to bar hostess or kick her out completely. If Amelia was smart she would leave.

  However, if everything the fifteen-year-old had told Loretta was true, she had no family to return to.

  A tap on the bathroom door interrupted Loretta’s thoughts. “What is it now?” she asked wearily.

  “It’s Lydia. Ya got a minute?”

  No, I don’t. “Sure. Come on in. Nobody here but us girls.”

  Lydia, a twenty-five-year-old woman with mousey brown hair who considered herself the whore in charge of the other girls, stuck her head in the door. It wasn’t that she had been rode hard and put up wet, it was more a case of never having been put up, wet or otherwise. Loretta admired her stamina though. It was pretty well known that while Lydia wasn’t the best looking of the girls, she would do just about anything a customer requested.

  “What are we gonna do about Amelia, Retta?”

  Lydia asked as she made herself comfortable on the toilet seat across from the tub.

  “We?” Loretta asked. “I’d say she was Jack’s problem. She sure as hell ain’t mine.”

  “If she keeps actin’ the way she is with the gentlemen callers she’s gonna give us all a bad name,”

  Lydia huffed. Her hands seemed to flutter around the room as she spoke.

  Loretta didn’t want to laugh at the woman, but the statement was so ridiculous she couldn’t help herself.

  She unpinned her hair, letting it fall loosely around her shoulders as she submerged herself in the bath water. She stayed there for a few moments before popping back up, using both hands to sweep hair back, away from her face. She laughed bitterly as she blinked away the water. “I can’t believe you’re worried about our reputations, Lydia. We’re whores, for God’s sake, and it don’t get much lower than that.”

  “This is just a temporary situation. One of my regular, and most faithful, gentlemen has promised to take me away from all this and set me up real respectable like.”

  Loretta reached over the edge of the tub to pick up a container of shampoo and poured a generous amount into her hand, working it into her hair after she returned the container to the floor. She closed one eye to avoid the sting of the soapy substance and looked at Lydia out of the other. “And would that be before or after he leaves his wife and four kids.”

  “Why after, of course!” Lydia said indignantly.

  “Wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

  Loretta re-submerged to get the shampoo out of her hair and smiled as she came back up. “You’re living in a dream, Lydia. Ain’t no man gonna take any of us out of here. None of us is ever gonna get out. So just accept it for a fact. Men only want one thing from any of us and they’ll say whatever it takes to get it.”

  Lydia leaned her chin on her fist and looked sadly at Loretta. “Don’t you ever wish you could start over somewhere though, Retta?”

  “Of course I do, honey. But what’s done is done.

  It’s a tad too late to be thinking about respectability.”

  “But if I moved somewhere else, I might could start over. Ain’t like I got a big old H stamped on my forehead or somethin’.”

  Loretta was touched by the sadness in Lydia’s voice. She was becoming an old woman before her time and despite her obvious lack of education, she could be pretty smart about some things. “Well, save up what you can. Who knows, maybe I’m just full of shit and we’ll all meet the man of our dreams.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Lydia said cheerfully as she stood to leave. “Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to tell you that Jack will be up as soon as he finishes countin’

  what we made tonight.”

  “Thanks, Lydia. Get some sleep. The
wharf rats get paid tomorrow.”

  “Oh, shit! Not them again,” Lydia moaned as she opened the door and left Loretta blessedly alone…at least for a little while longer.

  LORETTA HAD BEEN brushing her hair for nearly three quarters of an hour and it was almost dry. It had a natural wave to it and, as long as she took the time to brush it two or three hundred strokes each night, it remained thick and shiny. She thought her hair was her best asset even though few of her customers ever noticed anything above her neck. Her breasts were well developed and supple. Under the right hands they were more responsive than she believed possible. The flare in her hips added to her delicate feminine figure, making her irresistibly alluring. Four years earlier she had been nothing more than another starving hayseed looking for a better life. Too bad her money ran out by the time she arrived in St. Joseph.

  She hadn’t been able to stand the drunken pawing of her stepfather another day. She gathered up what she could carry and the few dollars she had hidden away. She chose her sixteenth birthday to escape from her home in Ohio and thought she was fortunate when she met another traveler who got her all the way to St. Joe before attacking her and taking the last of her money. She was scavenging through discarded food bins behind a nice looking restaurant when Jack Coulter found her. She tried to run away from him, but he caught her and seemed nice, offering her a job and a place to stay. It wasn’t until she serviced her first paying customer two or three weeks later that she discovered the man Jack really was.

  Jack’s house was clean and well-appointed. His clientele came from some of the best families in town, along with an assortment of local politicians and police officers willing to exchange one favor for another. He spared no expense to decorate his establishment with the best furnishings and the rooms were all comfortable. Loretta later grew to hate the smell that seemed to permeate the walls of the rooms.

  She and the other women were well-clothed and healthy for the most part. Although she never used it, she knew Lydia and a few of the other girls smoked opium Jack supplied to them to make them more compliant for his customers. It helped them relax, he said.Loretta bent over at the waist and tossed her hair over her head, continually stroking the brush through it. There were times she wanted to cut it off so she wouldn’t have to spend half the night getting it dry.