Little Lily Loses Her Innocence

Lily is frustrated. Eighteen and beautiful, she has suitors cuing up to woo her. But her father will not have it. She is to be respectable, a spinster who cares for her sick mother.

So Lily rebels. She heads for the docks, looking for sailors to satisfy her dark fantasies. She wants to be treated like a harlot—but she has no idea what she's getting herself into…

~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~

Her father's face was now the same color as beetroot. “You will take that back! I will not have you take God’s name in vain under this roof! It’s blasphemy! Go upstairs, and stay there until you have found remorse in your devilish heart and repent your sins in prayer to Our Lord!” Her father pointed up the stairs commandingly.

Lily turned on her heel in way that she hoped expressed both dignity and defiance, trying hard to give the impression that she had better things to do than to argue over such trivial matters with her father. She stalked away and climbed the staircase to the second floor where her bedroom lay at the far end of the hallway. As soon as she shut the door behind her, her tears began.

It was not fair, not fair at all. Horace was from a perfectly respectable family, if perhaps a notch or two down the social scale. His father was a tradesman, true, but he owned his own workshop and their house was not much small than Lily's own. And he had been perfectly polite, approaching her father to ask his permission to take her dancing.

Her father though, would have none of it. He had yelled at poor Horace, then slammed the door in his face. There had been other suitors, and they had been treated in exactly the same way.

Why was her father treating her so? Perhaps he found her suitors wanting. He father was ever the social climber, and it was likely that he intended to make a good match for her, perhaps even with a member of the nobility. He would find her some aged Lord who craved young flesh, and arrange a marriage as though she were a horse or some other livestock.