Posted by Barbanne on November 17, 1999 at 23:41:52:
THE DEADWOOD FUNERAL PARLOUR. A WESTERN SAGA.
Part Five.
By Barbanne.
Hi! I'm Lucinda Grant, my family is related to General Grant, you know, Civil War hero and US Prez. Like yonks ago. Well, I went to visit my great auntie Barbanne. She's old!.........I mean older than methusela. She married Lord Vestee, the English cattle billionaire and they have this mansion that's about five hundred rooms on this spread in Texas that's like bigger than Minnesota. Auntie is rich! Mega-rich!
Now I always knew she started out as a mortician in Deadwood, in fact the family owns just about every funeral house west of St Louis, but she never talks about it much. See, my Auntie Barbanne's a lady. Real Lady. Except every now and again when we're just together the two of us, she lets rip with some language........whooooeee! So I reckon maybe she wasn't always a lady, not a real lady. Well, what I'm getting around to telling you, is last time I was there (at the mansion) I found this story written in an old school exercise book, in Auntie's writing.
Whacko! What a little ripper my auntie was.
I'll let you judge for yourself:
****
END GAME.
Melissa left me.
Ungrateful little bitch. After all I'd dun fer her. Just up and pissed off with some dude from California. This was not long after we'd buried Annie Coldfield. You remember Annie Coldfield? It was in all the papers with her picture and all, strapped to my board and staring all dead eyed at the camera, with her tongue hanging out about a metre and me and Melissa is either side in some of the pictures pointing at her. I got an extra twenty five bucks for that. Anyways you kin read about that in the stories that Morbidia lady wrote.
That damned little bitch Melissa.
I loved her you know. She wuz nineteen and I wuz fifteen and we looked gorgeous in bed together in that big old mirror I'd put in my bedroom. I wuz a cutie in them days and had a sweet as all get out young body and pretty enough face with a halo of frizzy hair and Melissa was ALL girl. We could make each other moan and groan and puff and pant and sweat rivers too, I kin tell ya.
Anyway, I didn't have no steady love. Not a girl anyways. I mean I could go and fuck Mister Samuel the minister any time and Doc was allus lusting fer me and the Sheriff had started showing interest, but I...........well, I liked them guys, but I really needed a girl pal. A female cumpanion......cum-panion, get it!
So I used to hang around the saloon when I wuz off work. I don't drink or gamble or nuthin', but I went there cause them dance hall gals were there. Never found another one I liked as much as Nancye but there wuz some as appreciated me.
Saturdee nights wuz big in town. Us townies mostly went to church and stuff on Sundees, although you'd never find me there I kin assure you. As a matter of fact I often worked Sundee cause some folks got themselves kilt on Saturday after having a real good time. It wuz a Sunday I looked after Nancye and Sassy and Pussy.
I had found a gal called Julie, who wuz just dancing for a while until she could make enough to buy a ticket back to Alabama where she came from, on account of she had had a gutful of the promised land of the west. Julie wuz nearly thirty but she and I wuz real fond of each other and I'd go around and drink sarsaparilla until she finished the last show and then she'd come upstairs to her room and we'd make whoopee. This night the last show started at about eleven pm and the gals came out whoopin' and a'hollerin' and started kicking their legs at the chandeliers and showing their frilly panties and shakin' their asses at the customers and I give Julie a big wink and went on upstairs. I doffed my dress and sat there in my petticoats with no panties on and reckoned I'd let Julie take my stuff off with her teeth. Suddenly I heard pistol shots and yahooing and the furniture wuz crashing around. I heard females screaming and thought Oh no! not again. Forgetting I wuz only wearing my petticoats I raced downstairs.
The place wuz in an uproar!
Saturday night bar room brawl. Some dude wuz shooting holes in the ceiling and the Clanton boys wuz bashing each other stupid. That happened a lot. Jeb walloped Jethro and Jethro went backwards over the card table and Mississipi Luke bashed Jethro over the skull with a whusky bottle and that pissed Jeb off and he kicked Luke in the balls. Luke grunted and sat down squeezing tears from his eyes. Bear Jackson had two of the dance hall gals, one in each hand and he was lifting them off the floor using their frilly knickers as handles. Both gals had had their knickers pulled up real tight into their crotches and they wuz pursing their lips some and going sorta cross eyed. Willy the cowpuncher had my Julie in a corner of the stage and wuz working her top off and her generous southern titties wuz popped out and Willy wuz having a good old feel. I wuz pissed at that and so wuz Madelaine. She wuz bashing Willy with lefts and rights but he wuz so fixated on Julie's tits that he wuz oblivious of everything else. I grabbed a bottle of rot gut off the bar and went sneaking up behind Willy, forgetting I only had petticoats on, and just as he got to sucking one of Julie's lovely big brown nipples I smashed my bottle over his head. He said like "Shite!" and fell sideways and Julie went whappo onto the floor and Madelaine swung a right cross of fearsome proportions and my chin got in the way and Boppo!...........I went backwards, back pedalling and unconscious and fell off the stage and landed on my back on a table which tipped up and my legs kicked skywards and my petticoats answered the call of gravity and fell backward and my legs and knees and chubby thighs and then bare assed, beaver capped pussy, all got displayed as I hit the floor.
I wuz out cold for a few minutes and missed seeing the Arbuthnot brothers throwing the Clantons through the front windows and then tossing each other after them. I came around and sort of got this fuzzy view of my boots waggling back and forth in the air and then I focussed on my knees and thighs and then I saw hips and black pubic bush and all and they wuz all sorta quivering along with my twitchy boots. By now I had a audience of half a dozen blokes who wuz taking a break from the fights and watching my display with rapt interest as they sucked down their hard likker.
I struggled to get up and hoick my petticoats down at the same time.
"Aaaaaaagghhh..............." They sighed as one.
"Barbanne, don't git up. It's a winkin' at me." says Bull Thomas from the hostlery.
"Fuck!" I says and holds out my hand. Bull took it and kissed my finger tips.
"Barbanne, I never saw better, young lady."
"You old enough to be my Paw, yew perv." I says.
I got to my feet, but that Madelaine can punch some I'll tell you and my knees buckled and I went down again. Them six guys all offered me a hand except they wuz more groping than helping. I wobbled off to find Julie.
She wuz sitting on the stage on top of Willy whom I had given a concussion with my bottle. She had a stack of whusky glasses and wuz chucking them at the brawling mob. I sat next to her using Willy's ass as a seat and chucked some too. It was fun. I bopped Mississipi Luke a beauty just as he wuz getting on top of Frank Arbuthnot and Jeb Clanton was coming to the rescue but Julie beaned him with a heavy crystal tumbler.
Talk about laugh.
Them two gals what Bear Jackson had been toting around had gotten free and they wuz having a most unladylike altercation over Bull Thomas. Now Bull is an uncommon handsome and mighty big man and has big everythings and most of us townie gals has at one time or other hungered for Bull's embraces, but there's no way I woulda fought a cat fight like this over him or'n any another man. Them ladies was going at it, hammer and tongs. There was hair pulling and eye gouging and nipple twisting and tummy punches flying and I don't know what all else. One gal, a busty redhead, she gets the other, a tall, rangy brunette, in a head lock and she's pummelling that gal's head like it's a punch ball. Whack, whack, whack, she goes and when she lets up from her arm being sore, that brunette grabs her crotch and gives her the old squeezo. They lay into each other lamming the living daylights out of each other. The redhead gets a break as the brunette's looking a bit winded and sorta resting against the table and she picks up a chair and crasho! smashes it into matchsticks on Miss Brunette's nogging. Well the brunette rolls her eyes up like she's trying to read words printed on the underside of her skull and topples to the floor, out cold as the winter snows. The redhead looks down on her rangy victim's senseless body with a look of evil triumph and just then Bull, he's been watching it all, he uses his gun handle like he's going to hammer in a nail and bonk! He kayoes Miss Redhead and she nose dives over her brunette foe and they's both down and right out for the count. Bull rubs his chin whiskers and picks the redhead and grabbing her ankles he tows her outside for some nooky. She bobbles along compliantly and her short frilly skirt gets hoicked up and the fight stops for a minute or so while the boys take in the view. The brunette starts clambering up off the floor with a look like 'so that's what its like to get run down by the Super Chief' on her gob, and just as she's upright and looking wonkily and cross eyed around the room, Julie lobs a shot glass onto her like a well aimed mortar and she rolls her eyes heavenwards again and goes down again, flat out.
"Never could stand that bitch Mandy." says Julie.
About then the sheriff and two deputies rock up and Julie says "C'mon Barbanne, there's better things to be doing upstairs."
**
I was naked and lying on Julie's bed. She wore her knickers only, French ones she got in Kansas City what had no crotch in 'em. It wuz a game we both enjoyed. I'd lie on my back with my eyes shut and being as still and quiet as I could and she'd work on my nipples and my crotch and, inside me, she'd work at my clitoris nub and meantime she'd pleasure herself in them panties. After a while we'd both get moist and hot and then downright wet and steaming. We'd both have orgasms and then she'd cuddle me and I'd cuddle back and we'd whisper of our love in each other's ear and we'd stroke and pet each the other's body and I loved the closeness of her and I'd drink in the inhalations of her body musks and the odours that she gave out as her levels of arousal rose and fell. After a while we'd get to be uncontrollably impassioned and then we'd rub and stroke and slide against each other, using our whole bodies as extensions of ourselves and at such times I loved to lock my lips to hers and explore the sweetness of her mouth and sexual climax would follow.
It was sex. Forbidden sex to most of the town as women were not supposed to give pleasure to other women. I loved the sex and my girl lovers were so gentle and considerate, not like the men, who, even the nicest of them, had an urgency about their love making that didn't allow for the complexity of my needs and my arousal.
There was more to it too. I'd never known a mother's touch and I had this great need to be held and nurtured. Julie and Melissa and Nancye, especially Nancye had known this without having to be told. Julie and I loved and slept and woke and loved again and slept the whole night away and when the dawn's light woke me in the early morning I felt more rested than if I had slept the night through.
I kissed Julie again, lightly on the lips. She was lying on her back with the bedclothes down around her hips. Her slender arms framed her gorgeous face and her flaring hips just emerged from the rumpled bedclothes and her tummy was lean and flat and the little indentation of her belly button was like a dark little hollow and her large, soft breasts splayed away from her chest and her big, brown nipples were flat and relaxed in sleep. I rubbed the downy softness of my cheek against her so, so, soft breast flesh and kissed her tummy with a flickering of my lips and tongue, like a fairie's touch. She slept on, snoring ever so quietly with bubbly, musical little noises and I loved her to distraction.
I dressed, quickly and quietly and let myself out. The saloon looked like a tornado had hit it and some distinctly unmusical snores were coming from behind overturned tables and such. Mandy was groaning and coming to. From the awful dishevelled look of her finery, someone had taken advantage of her senseless state to have fun with her. I went outside and the redhead whom Bull had towed outside was lying on the boardwalk with her head hanging down and her hair trailing in the dust of the street. Her top was open and her titties were displayed and Bull himself was lying on the seat where the old codgers normally sat. His pants were down around his thighs and his ass was on show and his wedding tackle was flopped over like a fire hose that had died. I gave it a hard squeeze and said "Up and at 'em Bull." and was rewarded with groans followed by dreadful oaths.
I went back to the funeral parlour and spent the rest of the morning embalming Mister Johannson. He had come here years ago from Wisconsin and was a pioneer of the district and his body was to go back to Wisconsin for burial. I ate a lonely lunch and about two pm I heard a knocking at my door and opened it to find Julie standing there dressed up pretty. The girls had a day off from high kicks on a Sunday on account of the whole town got religion for the day and Julie was probably in better shape than Mandy and the redhead whom I reckoned would be pretty damn sick.
"Hi sweetheart." She says and kisses me sisterly like.
"Hi Julie."
"Whatcha doin'"
"Been embalming poor old Mister Johannson."
"And it sure smells that way."
I giggled.
"Barbanne, you're barely more'n a kid and I reckon you need a bit of an outing. Being stuck in here with them stiffs is hardly fun for a young girl, so dress in something purty and I'll take you to Clancy's."
Clancy's is a soda fountain place run by folks from the east coast and Deadwood tolerates it opening of a Sunday afternoon when church is done cause the citizens love them sodas and coffees and that new fangled ice cream.
I pulled out my grey dress with the white polka dots. Its the only one I have. Julie was watching me critical like.
"We gotta get you somethin' better Barb."
"Why?"
"Cause your pretty and you deserve to dress pretty."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I love the way you say that. You do make money here dontcha?"
"Some."
"Well spend a bit girl."
"I'll think on it."
"Alright Miss Tightwad. Meantimes I'll just watch you get ready."
She giggled and I giggled and she watched as I stripped naked and made a big show of picking my undies and dress and pranced around holding 'em up and looking at myself in the mirror. I wuz doin' that, holdin' 'em up and she comes up behind me and cups my breasts with her gloved hands. "Ooooower." I says and "Oooower yourself Missy Minx." she says. Then she looks at me and her, reflected in the mirror, and says, "Nope. Day out girl."
So we went out.
Down to Clancy's where we sit in a window booth and had coffee and watched nuthin' happening in the street. We chatted and she told me about Alabama and how much she'd like me to visit there and I told her I'd love to and she says "Tell me about your hopes and dreams Barb." and I says, "To get Mister Johannson finished." and she mock swipes me and I ducked and giggled and folks looked disapproving of us and just then Julie says, "Lookit that."
I looked up and there riding down the middle of the street is a lone rider. A woman, young and darkly beautiful, with long black hair and black clothes. Black shirt, black pants and black boots, with Mexican silver ornaments and she's wearing two pearl handled Colt forty fives. She stopped at the saloon and unsaddled her horse and went inside. I looked at Julie. Like everyone else in Clancy's she was lookin' real hard at that horse.
"Who wuz that?"
"Dontcha know Barb?"
"Not a clue."
"That wuz Black Jane."
"Black Jane." Others said the name quiet and hushed like.
"Who's Black Jane?" I says, ever the dope.
The Town mayor, he wuz sittin' there with his family, answered.
"Death!............fer somebody in this town."
**
Black Jane's arrival sorta put a damper on the Sunday fun. We finished our coffee and then Julie came home with me and she sat and read in the parlour while I finished up Mister Johannson. Julie didn't much share my interest in dead folks and I sure as hell wouldn't show her what I kept in back of the cold room. When I finished Mister Johannson he looked terrific. Well, considering he wuz dead he looked terrific. I put him into a lead lined coffin and sealed the lid and I'd get him down to the station tomorrer for onward shipment to Wisconsin. I reckoned his family would be pleased with how he looked.
I came upstairs and Julie watched me while I prepared some vittles and we ate and then we sat together in the darkened parlour and I let her put her arms around me and I just snuggled against her and she said. "You haven't had a lotta folks love you have you Barb?"
This seemed so poignantly true that it got me inside, just like indigestion, and I started to sniffle and shed tears like I wuz a kid.
Julie patted my hair and said. "Poor little bugger."
"Nah, I'm alright." I sniffed.
"Oh you're alright. You're as tough as they come. For a fifteen year old girl with no folks and never knew her Ma."
"Near sixteen."
"Sorreeee."
I sniffled and Julie kissed me on the top of the head and I turned my face up and we kissed on the lips and she murmured, "Wanna play?"
"Kin I just have you hold me?"
"Sure sweetie."
She did and I lay in her arms with my head on her breast and I felt so safe and secure I coulda stayed there forever. Somewheres about then I slipped off to sleep. When I woke up she was still holding me and I said, "Thanks Julie."
"Gotta go."
"OK."
"I'll see you tomorrow."
"Sure................,and we'll play then. No snivelling just sex."
"Lookin' forward to it."
**
Next morning I wuz up early and loaded Mister Johannson onto my cart and wheeled him down to the station and checked him through to Wisconsin. I wheeled the cart back and as I wuz passing the saloon, there wuz Black Jane, sitting on the porch with her boots up on the rail and smoking a cheroot and with her hat tilted back. Up close she wuz awful pretty and really quite young. About twenty one, twenty two, I reckoned. She wuz lookin' down the street towards the Waco trail, like she wuz expecting someone.
"Hi!" says I.
She looked down and took me in.
"Hello kid."
"You Black Jane?"
"Yep."
"You kilt a few folks I believe?"
"Umm hmmm."
"Hey I'd like it if you'd put the business my way."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"I own the Funeral Parlour."
She laughed at that. Laughed real hard, sort of giggling but not mirthful.
"You kin have 'em all, far as I's concerned."
"Thanks. I'll put in first claim." I looked at her but she wuz lookin' back up the street. "You gunna kill somebody here in town?"
She looked back down at me.
"That what they're sayin'?"
"They're thinkin' it."
"Nup kid. The lady I'm gunna kill ain't arrived yet."
"Waitin' for her are you?"
"Smart kid."
"Who is it?"
She looked at me like she wuz gettin' annoyed. Then she pulled out a gun and twirled it on her finger and pointed it at me. I thought "Shit!"
"Piss off kid...............no, wait a minute. If'n I get kilt will you care for my poor old carcass?"
"Jane I'd be honoured."
"I believe you would. Lissen kid...what's your name?"
"Barbanne."
"Lissen Barbanne. If I lose you make sure you get to my bag in room seventeen. Look in the back pocket. You'll find enough to bury me and something else. It's yours kid. Course I'm not gunna lose so I'll also give you my permission to haul off the other stiff. It'll make ya famous."
"Thanks Jane."
OK kid. Barbanne. Now piss off, you're giving me the shits."
I pissed off. I mean Jane was really nice in a way but she was not a lady told you to piss off three times. I busied myself in the parlour and didn't come back out until about six pm. They wuz dusk then and I walked up to the saloon and up to Julie's room. She wuz sitting there, naked, powdering her face. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of Jane.
"Hi honey. Heard the news?"
"About Jane waiting for someone?"
"Sorta. But about the someone bein' here."
"Yeah. Who is it?"
"Felicity Branson."
Jeez, Felicity Branson, Marshall Felicity Branson wuz the most famous law officer for three states and two territories. She wuz about thirty some and she wuz lightning fast on the draw. She had personally rounded up or shot down heaps of our colourful criminals.
"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!" I said.
"Yep. Sunup tomorrer they's gunna shoot it out. "
I stood there with my mouth open and Julie grinned that she'd had news what made me gobsmacked. The thought of them ladies duelling to death excited me enormously and I wanted Black Jane to win. No I didn't. I wanted the law to be upheld. Hell I wanted them both to win. But I didn't want anyone to lose. Mostly I wanted it to begin. I thought of the fight. I thought of Jane's cool sexiness and I thought of the pictures I'd seen of the blonde Felicity. She wuz gorgeous too. I thought of sexy women and dust and blood and death. I wuz so excited I needed Julie. I had her. She did three shows that night and I had her after each. Her high kicks weren't too high in the third show. Then I went home to bed and dreamt of women and killing and death.
**
Next morning I woke in the dark, about four am. I got dressed and wheeled my cart out and took up a position in the street near the saloon. While it wuz still dark Jane came out dressed all in black. She saddled her horse and then waited smoking a cheroot. Just as the sun's first rays spiked down the street, Felicity Branson appeared. She wuz tall and slender and built like Venus. She pulled on gloves and walked into the middle of the street. Jane walked out too. They wuz about twenty five metres apart. My heart wuz hammerin' and I wuz wet down below.
They settled their gun belts.
The sun came over the mountains and the pinky rays lit up our street.
"Surrender to me Jane."
"Nope."
That wuz it. The talking wuz over.
Their hands hovered over their gun butts.
The sun burst free from the mountains and light flooded the street. The hands flew like lightning and guns cleared leather. Twin booms rang out and echoed around the street and bounced between the buildings and faded away. Gun smoke, acrid, blue and heavy drifted on the air and slowly dissipated. Jane turned toward me and her lips moved.
"The bag kid."
Then she dropped to her knees and looked at me and smiled and then she fell face forward onto the dusty street. I raced across the space between us. She was lying face down. I lifted her by her shoulders and turned her onto her side. The front of her shirt was drenched in blood. Bright scarlet blood, pumping and then stopping, oozing, dripping. I looked into her face. Her eyelids fluttered and she looked at me. She went to speak, but blood spewed out from her lips in a stream. She took a deep breath and looked at me again. "Give 'em hell kid." Her eyes went funny and sorta dulled over and she was gone. Her head fell sideways and sorta lolled.
She was dead alright. I know dead people when I see 'em.
I laid her down careful.
Doc ran past me and I looked up. Felicity Branson was sitting on her butt on the dirt and she wuz white faced. She looked awful. Doc was looking at her and had undone her shirt. I could see her breasts and they wuz all bloody.
"Get her to my rooms. Quick." Said Doc and him and the sheriff's boys sorta armchaired her and carried her inside. She wuz dripping blood.
I raced over to the saloon.
"What room was Black Jane in?"
"Seventeen Barb. Why?"
"No matter."
I ran down the corridor to seventeen. There wuz a big old carpet bag on the bed. I looked inside in the back pocket. There wuz twenty five hundred dollars and a note. I stuffed the banknotes inside my panties and read the note.
"There's more under one tree in Deadwood gulch kid." It wuz a girl's handwriting. Jane's I guessed. I went back outside and fetched my hand cart and loaded Jane's body onto it. I wheeled her back and laid her out on one of my preparation tables. The ones with the zinc lining. Then I got my rig and rode outta town to Deadwood gulch. I found one tree and found some of Jane's Mexican silver lying on the ground. I dug down there and found an old battered black bag. I opened it up.
There wuz a hundred thousand dollars inside!
I wuz rich!!!!!!!!!!!
I rode back to town and hid the bag.
Then I went in and kissed Jane's corpse. "Lady," I said, "I love you."
Doc wuz bashing on the door. I went and opened it.
"Where ya been?"
"Arhh nowheres."
"Well bring your cart. Felicity didn't make it."
I lugged Felicity's body back and laid it out on a prep table, parallel to Jane's.
I changed into my apron and gloves.
I started on Jane's body and stripped off her shirt, I had to sponge that to get it to come clear from where the blood was sticking it to her skin. She hadn't been a girl for underwear and so after I had unbelted and unbuckled her pants and taken off her boots and slid off her pants, she wuz pretty much naked. She looked like she would need a bit of cleaning up. The bullet had punched a ragged hole only a centimetre or two from her left nipple and had obviously done a heap of damage inside her chest. She had bled plenty and of course she had vomited up blood in the street, I'd been there when that happened, and she wuz messed up all over her pretty face and neck.
I left her and went to Felicity.
She was wearing a fringed shirt and skirt and knee high boots and when I got those off, I found she wuz wearing a bra and panties. She'd been shot just under the breast and most of the damage had been to her tummy. I reckon she plain haemorrhaged to death and there was sure lots of blood. Her clothes and undies and her body was soaked in it. I peeled her bra and panties off, they were stuck to her skin like Jane's shirt had been. When she wuz naked I stood there looking back and forth from Felicity to Jane and from Jane to Felicity. "Well ladies," I said to the two silent corpses, "looks to me like a dead heat. Dead heat, get it!" and I set to giggling at my macabre joke.
I got my bucket and my soap and my slop catcher and I started washing first Jane and then Felicity. I've told you often enough how I enjoy that, I'm a sick little perv who takes pleasure in being with the dead. Anyway, eventually both Jane and Felicity were clean and naked and, although dreadfully white and corpse like, very sexy, and I undressed and lay with them and explored both bodies in intricate detail. Of course I had taken the precaution of locking the doors before starting, but I wasn't interrupted and my excitement was so great at being with these two famous dead ladies that I masturbated to release repeatedly.
Afterwards I washed their clothes and polished their boots and dressed them again and when they looked great I lay both out and the photographer from Santa Fe came and photographed them like that for the papers in Santa Fe and back east as well as a new monthly called The Police Gazzette. That magazine was a bit lurid and so I allowed him to take liberties with Jane's body for the photos.
The next day Jane was buried in Boot Hill and Felicity was shipped off to her folks. Later that day I had my own burial ceremony and buried Nancye and Liz and Jane. That's the schoolmarm Jane.
I put the parlour for sale next day and sold out to a Mister Jackson from Dodge City. I gave Julie the cash to go home to Alabama and that evening she rewarded me handsomely. Then I moved to Santa Fe where I met a young English feller who turned out to be a real live English Lord although a impoverished one. With my money and his nous we started in buying up cattle properties that folks had started off in a burst of enthusiasm and then gone bust. We amalgamated 'em and they became viable once they were big.
Bigger the better! We kept buying out our neighbours until we owned like a half a Texas. Then we started on Wyoming and Montana.
I found I couldn't have children, Paw had seen to that, but my English feller managed to sire a few from lady friends of mine, (I kept up my acquaintance with the dance hall gals yew see and hubbie would fix 'em up when my equipment was inadequate for their needs.) and we adopted all on them kids. We didn't marry as I never knew if I'd stay with him, but I did and eventually, after ten years we got hitched.
I was never accepted into society, no matter how rich we became.
They reckoned that even though I wuz an English Lady, I was a scrubber and they wuz probably right...................................