India Black and the Widow of Windsor by Carol K. Carr

Balmoral with Dizzy and French. Do not think, however, that I would do anything foolish such as jumping into the path of a speeding bullet to save the woman’s life. If I could deflect an assault with minimal damage to myself, I would probably expend the effort, but the jury was still out on what I was willing to do to save Britain from Bertie.
    There were other, indeed more important, factors contributing to my decision. The first was that the holiday season was notoriously slow around the brothels of London. All the customers were tucked up with their families, pretending a degree of amity that didn’t really exist, watching their children open presents and listening to their wife prattle on about the neighbors. Things would pick up after Epiphany, when hordes of relieved customers would appear at the door of Lotus House, clamoring for their favorite bints and a bit of sex that didn’t involve their partners closing their eyes in dismay. My friend Rowena Adderly, proprietress of the Silver Thistle and an experienced abbess, could easily look after things while I was gone, provided the price was right and I didn’t mind returning to find my best-looking whore trailing back to the Silver Thistle for a few nights of bliss with Rowena.
    And as I have already indicated, I was fed up with the tedious task of running Lotus House, especially when the girls had all the time in the world to sit around and bicker while the revenue dried up. My prior escapade with French had sparked a current of excitement that needed a bigger outlet than umpiring spats over hair combs. I was, in short, as bored as a priest on Monday. I needed a change of scene. All things considered, I would have preferred the Greek Islands at this time of year, but if that wasn’t in the offing, then the Scottish Highlands would have to do.
    But I must confess to another reason for considering Dizzy’s request. It amused me to cavort among the most powerful men in the land, men who wouldn’t dare acknowledge me if they met me on the street but who weren’t too proud to rely on a whore to help them out of a jam now and then. I enjoyed grabbing a pew near the seat of power, patting a government minister on the shoulder and handing him a drink, offering my services (so to speak) and getting the poor devil off the hook. You may say it smacks of arrogance and that it’s unseemly for a lady to gloat, but as I’m not a lady, I don’t care ha’pence for your opinion.

    “India!” Rowena squealed. “Come here, you delightful slut. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
    I endured a crushing embrace and a less than surreptitious squeeze of my womanly assets. Rowena, as even the dullest of readers will have gathered by now, is a tom, albeit the prettiest one in London. She’s an island girl: dark, voluptuous and seething with eroticism. She’s developed a nice business at the Silver Thistle, specializing in providing dusky maidens like herself to soldiers, sailors and civil administrators just home from the colonies and longing for the pleasures they enjoyed under the Southern Cross.
    I extricated myself from her grasp (which was a bit like trying to peel off an enormous leech) and regarded her warmly. Despite her carnal interest in me, I consider her a friend and someone I can rely on when the chips are down. She’d played a peripheral role in the War Office memo affair, accompanying me to the Russian embassy and sharing a brief period of captivity there, so she was not surprised to hear that I was about to become embroiled in another mission with French.
    Indeed, when I mentioned his name, she pursed her lips and gave me a shrewd look. “The dashing Mr. French, eh? Not my type, of course, but he is attractive. If you like men, which damn it all, you apparently do, India.”
    “Some men,” I corrected her. “Well, a few men. And despite what you think, I don’t find French attractive at all. If you’d spent several days in his company, you wouldn’t