By Jack Cavicchi

Winifred stood proudly in the gray light of dawn. A hair over five feet tall, seven stone, and barely nineteen years old, she was stark naked save a pair of Jack’s childhood hunting boots and a bright red fox hat, its tail flapping in the wind. She blushed down to her navel, and her green eyes burned with fear and excitement.

Jack and the others watched her stand there. Her cream skin, with nary a blemish nor a freckle, was sheened with morning dew. Her smallish breasts were high and pert, the curve of her bottom seemed to jut out at a lurid angle. Her chest heaved, and her heart raced from the shame of being naked, the joy of being the savior of the foxes, and, if Jack guessed correctly, the wicked thrill of being wildly bad.

She turned, the contrast of the black of the boots against her white skin making her seem even more naked and the bright splash of carrot orange between her legs directing every eye down to the virgin shadow every man in the hunting party almost painfully longed for.

Norman Gordon-Stanton, tallish, lean, bespectacled, and wearing a dark gray hunting suit and deerstalker, took off his gloves to shake Jack’s hand properly.

“An outstanding diversion,” he said, clasping Jack’s hand and shoulder.

The other seven men murmured, “hear hear!”

Lord Strachey, by far the cruelest among the hunters, took a rifle from his valet and aimed it high into the air and away from the group and the girl. Even though they knew the sound was coming, each man jumped a bit as the thunderous crack of the shot echoed through the woods.

Winifred jumped at the sound and, startled, turned in a flash and ran. The poor thing managed only a few feet before she stumbled and tripped forward, her white knees painted green and red with grass and blood. She waited there for a moment on all fours, like the very game she was proxy for, and unknowingly gave the hunters a view of the pink split peach between her thin legs.

Jack’s hands tightened into fists in his leather gloves, and he suddenly felt very good about his marital choice.

After a moment, the girl finally got up, and without looking back, she sprinted into the woods.

Strachey fetched something small and white from his saddlebag. Jack saw it was a pair of his bride-to-be’s knickers. The cruel man rubbed said garments into the dogs’ noses, which waited as patiently as hounds could.

“They’re good boys, they won’t hurt her,” he promised with a steely glare.

The clubmen held the hounds back as they mounted their horses. They gave the girl a fighting chance, then, after a good fifteen minutes, the horn was blown, and they were off.

Winifred was, above all other things, immensely caring. Beautiful, delicate, well-spoken, book-learned? Yes, she was indeed all of those as well, but the young ginger waif was above all else caring. Which was interesting because empathy was something her fiancé had no use for.

Second, to caring, introversion was Winifred’s most noticeable trait. This, too, was at odds with her husband-to-be’s disposition, which was gregarious, to say the least. John Sackville, son of the third Earl of Amherst and more colloquially known as “Randy Jack” to the population of greater Londontown was indeed the life of the party and a fixture of London society.

Why then was this union to be? Well, young Winifred’s father, Geoffrey Egerton-Cavendish, Earl of Wessex, had been assured that young John Sackville was of stock so noble his blood was bluer than the Danube by various members of the club. John himself had seen the girl at church services one summer day and thought she was particularly comely and irreproachably devout. He felt a driving need to ruin her all at once.

“The Club,” of course, was The Club de Lancey; a gentleman’s establishment built for the reading of newspapers and the smoking of cigars, the playing of billiards and the drinking of a great quantity of the highland’s finest whiskies. Norman Gordon-Stanton, who was indeed one of the wealthiest men in London, owned and operated said club, and some of the most powerful men in Great Britain were members. It was well known that most of the clientele were womanizers, hedonists, and cads who used the club as a base of operations, an alibi, and a hub for gossip and reconnaissance.

There was the most powerful of all, Horatio “Dewy” Dewhurst, the Duke of Wimbledon; a man of hungers both rich and varied and including but not limited to wine, young women, young men, and games of chance alike. Julian Wentworth, Esq, Lord Dewhurst’s personal barrister, and a well-known shylock. Lord Philip Dunne, son of the Duke of Strachey, who it was said had an entire secret family in India, commonly known as Lord Strachey or Lord Stretch by old school chums. Dudley Price, a well-connected land baron with holdings in five continents, lovers in six. Sir Aaron “Old Fish” Fisher, heir the Earlship of Wellsbury, who it was said had visited every brothel in England, Scotland and Wales, and rounding out this motley crew was the aforementioned Randy Jack, who in his prime had a proclivity for seeing how many debutantes he could deflower in a night and later when that sport bored him how many he could involve in an imbroglio at once.