Ramsay’s blood went very still, his lungs constricted as he waited for an answer that should mean nothing to him.
As if summoned by an invisible distress signal, a dapper older gentleman in dinner dress appeared at Cecelia’s elbow and murmured what sounded like rapid French into her ear.
Her features instantly melted into an expression of keen relief as she took his proffered arm, reaching across her body to rest her free hand on his in a gesture of easy fondness.
“Some other time, perhaps.” Her features became still, carefully placid. “Thank you for the … stimulating conversation, gentlemen, but I must bid you a good evening.”
Cecelia didn’t bother with a curtsy, and Ramsay couldn’t bring himself to blame her as he watched her bustle sway with the enticing movement of her wide hips as she glided away from them both. Her head tilted toward her shorter, stocky companion’s in rapt conversation as the Frenchman gestured expansively.
“Bad luck for you, Count,” Ramsay said wryly. “It seems the lovely Miss Teague’s affections are spoken for.” The Frenchman must be wealthy, indeed, as he was nearly old enough to be Cecelia’s grandfather, and was as weathered as an old leather boot.
“Not so. That is Jean-Yves Renault. He’s something of a mascot to these Red Rogues. Miss Teague hired him away from their finishing school at Lake Geneva, and they famously go nowhere without him. He’s essentially Miss Teague’s valet, if a woman can have such a thing.” The count’s black brows drew together. “I am surprised you did not know that.”
Ramsay turned to contemplate the man. “I’m surprised you do.”
The count gave a Gallic shrug. “It does one good to know with whom he is getting into business, and into bed with. The duke and I have many shared pursuits.”
“Indeed.” Ramsay found himself expelling a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. He’d heard of Jean-Yves Renault but had never met the man. He knew his brother Piers was grateful to him for a service to Alexandra and her friends in their younger years, but was also disinclined to speak of it.
He’d never been more than passing curious until tonight.
“These Red Rogues, they are like three rosebuds, conspiring to bloom with such brilliance, they’ll never be challenged by any other in the garden.” Armediano’s voice was touched with awe as he watched Cecelia gather with Lady Francesca and Lady Alexandra to press their heads together in a strictly feminine collaboration. “They are fascinating women, are they not?”
“They’re frightening,” Ramsay said darkly. “I’d avoid them, lest catastrophes befall ye.”
He, too, walked away from the distasteful count, but not before he caught the flash of understanding on the man’s features. To anyone nearby, his words might have sounded like a flippant warning.
But they both knew the intent.
A threat.
CHAPTER TWO
Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies, London, 1891—Three Months Later
It took Cecelia entirely too long to arrive at the realization she’d inherited a gambling hell.
In her defense, Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies seemed perfectly innocuous from the outside.
Number Three Mounting Lane was located in West London, tucked several streets away from the fashionable side of Hyde Park.
The rectangular white mansion reminded her of a Greek pantheon complete with imposing pillars and resplendent arborvitae leading up the circular drive.
A solicitous white-wigged butler met her at the massive front door and ushered her into a lavish parlor done in varying shades of red and gold. Cecelia marveled at his uniform of a century past and did her best not to giggle at his high-heeled shoes and the falls of lace at his wrists.
Even as the reign of Queen Victoria gave rise to Gothic glamour and intriguing innovations, everything about Number Three Mounting Street boasted the overdone opulence of Versailles in the days of King Louis XIV.
And all of it now belonged to her, passed on by her mysterious benefactor, who’d turned out not to be her father but, in fact, her mother’s sister. Henrietta Thistledown.
The reading of the will had been short and terse, whereupon Cecelia was granted everything in Henrietta’s name, including her School for Cultured Young Ladies, a selection of other properties, and a staggering fortune.
Henrietta’s solicitor had handed a sealed letter to Cecelia after their appointment with strict instructions not to read it until she was secured in Henrietta’s office at Number Three Mounting Lane. So she’d taken a carriage straightaway.
Cecelia couldn’t bring herself to sit on the receiving room furniture that appeared too delicate to support her weight, so she paced, comforted by the clack of her boots against the marble floor.
She studied the missive, turned it over in her hands, stroked the fine striations in the expensive paper. An ache bloomed in her heart and a stone lodged in her throat as she battled an emotion akin to loss.
All this time, she’d assumed her father had been the silence on the other end of her letters.
For years, she’d been expected to write a monthly correspondence before her allowance was released to her accounts. Updates regarding her education, travels, and health. She’d dutifully penned this paternal shade who’d begun to take shape over the years. Some man in a mansion much like this one, lonely and bound by the strictures of society. Loving her from afar. Pining for her company.
The revelation of her maternal aunt would have been less disappointing, she supposed, if she’d not gleaned the knowledge of her relation only after the woman’s sudden death.
As such, she mourned two people.
Two people she’d never had the chance to love properly.
Emitting a melancholy sigh, Cecelia drifted to the window overlooking the square garden in the throes of its vibrant late-summer bloom. It was situated in the middle of the manse, surrounded on all sides by tall white stone walls boasting long windows from which to enjoy the view of—
Cecelia clamped both hands over her mouth, the sight before her pinning her feet to the ground.
On a stretch of perfectly clipped grass not seven paces from the window, a dark-skinned woman in a butter-yellow ball gown bounced astride the hips of a half-naked man. The prone figure held her hips as though to keep her from flying away as he thrust upward with such vigor, it appeared as though he were trying to dislodge her from his lap.
On the heels of Cecelia’s shock rode an absurd and intense anxiety for the young lovers. It was only half noon on a summer’s day. If she’d spied their brazen liaison in the gardens, surely someone else would.
Slowly, a few additional details began to permeate her absurd musings.
The girl’s gown was also about one hundred years out of fashion, just as the butler’s attire had been. Her dark hair was powdered, a practice that had died several decades hence. Her lips were almost comically rouged, as were her cheeks and …
Cecelia’s hands moved from her mouth to press against her heart as the man reached up and freed the girl’s breasts from the low bodice.
Her nipples—enviably high, impossibly pert nipples—were rouged as well.
Cecelia should have looked away, but instead she found her breaths increasing to match the rhythm of the shameless copulation.
This was no gentle rendezvous; nor was it a romp, per se. The man’s rough hands pinched at the woman, grabbed at her breasts, her throat, until his fingers found their way into her mouth.
All the while the woman rode him at a galloping pace, baring her teeth to playfully bite at him, exerting just enough pressure to send her lover into obvious fits of delight.
Without realizing it, Cecelia’s hands slid from her heart, over her sedate navy-and-white-striped gown, to settle low on her stomach, where a flurry of hummingbirds might have taken residence. Some heavy sensation bloomed beneath her hand. Heavy and empty at the same time. An ache, but not a pain.
An urge, but not a hunger.
It brought to mind those languorous mornings on Lake Geneva watching the boys of le Radon Institute for Boys scull their boats across the mirror-smooth water. Their bodies surging and pulling, every muscle engaged. The rhythm of it had done something to her, even as a girl of seventeen.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, but—”
Cecelia gasped and whirled, her gaze colliding with that of Genevieve Leveaux, who stood in the doorway swathed in bright pink and bedecked with an inordinate number of bows on her Georgian bodice.
She rushed to the window, unable to fully block Cecelia’s view, as it seemed she’d outgrown Genny in the nearly fifteen years since they’d seen each other.
“Blast and damnation,” the older woman hissed. “Today of all days.” She threw the latch and leaned so far out the window, Cecelia worried she’d fall. “Lilly Belle! This is your last warning before I throw you out on your ear! You’ve been told to keep that sort of enterprise elsewhere. We are not that kind of business!”
Cecelia noted that Genny’s sinuous voice and whimsical American patois hadn’t changed a whit, even after so many years in England.
“But Lord Crawford came looking for table games, and since we’re closed today, he offered another kind of sport. He prefers to rut out of doors, don’t you, darling?” Lilly reached behind her and slapped his thigh, much as one would the flanks of a horse.
“I prefer an audience,” he managed breathlessly.
To Cecelia’s—well, she couldn’t say horror, but she didn’t quite have another word to describe the amalgamation of shock, titillation, and distress within her—Crawford and Lilly didn’t pause. The discourse didn’t even interrupt their rhythm. In fact, Crawford stared right at Cecelia and increased his pace, grasping Lilly by the hips and thrusting upward rather mercilessly.
Cecelia didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, run, or …
Or continue to watch.
“I said not today, you insatiable slag,” Genny bellowed, her drawl losing its syrupy edge to shards of ire. “Our new headmistress is here, and this isn’t the fashion in which we planned to receive her, is it? Now finish Crawford off and send him on his way. And if I catch you at this again—”
“I thought. She wasn’t. Coming. Until. This. After. Noon.” Lilly’s diction was interrupted by the increasing intensity of what was happening beneath her.
“I’m coming … right … now,” Crawford warned, his voice thick with strain.
Cecelia could stand to watch no longer as a strange and unsettling contortion overtook Crawford’s beakish features. Cheeks on fire and her bodice suddenly too tight, she whirled and launched herself toward the door.
It opened before she could reach for the handle, and the butler burst in, red-faced with panic. “Three carriages full of lawmen are turning onto Mounting Lane,” he panted.
Cecelia looked to Genny, shocked beyond words. Mounting Lane. Never had there been a more apropos address. Had she inherited a brothel?
The butler cast a wary glance toward Cecelia. “I’m told the Vicar of Vice is with them.”
Vicar of Vice? Cecelia mentally searched through everything she’d ever read regarding civics and politics. She arrived at the conclusion they were using a moniker no one claimed willfully.
A litany of words that would have made a sailor blush burst from Genny as she returned to the window. “You get that cull out of here now, Lilly!” she screeched. “The Vicar of Vice is blocks away, and he’s bringing his army to our door.”
“Again?” came Lilly’s plaintive whine from the garden as she tucked her breasts away.
Genny slammed the window shut and locked it before finally turning to Cecelia, her panicked amber eyes softening with regret as she fluffed at her perfect brassy-blond coiffeur. “Well, honey.” She hurried to where Cecelia stood at the door and took her hands. The all-but-forgotten letter crumpled slightly between their palms.
They both looked down to the piece of paper, then back to each other.
Genny had barely changed in fifteen years. Her skin remained smooth and unblemished but for a slight deepening in the creases next to her expressive mouth, to the right of which a painted black heart hovered. Her tight curls were threaded with a whisper of silver at the temples, but she was as exquisite as the day they’d met.
“This isn’t at all how I wanted to welcome you.” Genny freed the hand in which Cecelia clutched the letter but kept the other locked in a firm grip as she turned to the butler.
“Winston, you make sure Crawford has paid Lilly, dressed, and gone before those carriages have a chance to breach the gates. Then you rip through this entire place and make certain they find nothing.”
“Yes, madam.”
Genny launched herself through the door, nearly yanking Cecelia’s arm out of its socket as she dragged her along. “I’d hoped we’d have time to discuss everything, but the wolves are howling at the door.”
“Wolves?” Cecelia tried to keep up both mentally and physically as she allowed herself to be pulled back through the extravagant marble entry toward a small door hidden in dark-wood panels beneath the columns of the grand staircase. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose, afraid they’d come loose in their hurry.
“That letter is from your aunt Henrietta,” Genny explained with forced patience. “Read what you can before the vicar busts the door down.”
“Who is this vicar?” Cecelia paused, feeling as though she stood at a dangerous threshold, both literally and figuratively. She didn’t give the other woman a chance to answer the first question before a second followed: “Where are we going?”
“To the private residence.” Genny gave her another strong, impatient tug. “Follow me. We haven’t time to dillydally.”
“To what?” Astonished, overwhelmed, and skeptical, Cecelia tugged her hand out of Genny’s grip. “I’ve never heard the word dilly—”
“I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to listen to me, doll.” Genny’s face darkened as she hung her hands on her broad hips, all tolerance replaced by audacity and urgency. “The man who’s fixin’ to kick our door in is comin’ to take everything from us. From you. This is a casino and a school—regardless of what you just saw. The school allows women to work while they are taught a trade. But that man would sooner see every girl livin’ under our protection put out on the streets to sell their bodies in the gutters to cutthroats and ironworkers. So if you don’t want to spend the next several years in prison on whatever trumped-up charges he has on his warrant this time, you’ll follow me, you’ll read that letter, and then you’ll use every wit in that pretty head of yours to fend him off, you hear?”
She shook Cecelia none-too-gently. “He’s your enemy now. One of many.”
Cecelia stood rooted to the ground, staring incoherently at the woman as information digested slowly.
Enemies? She’d never in her adult life had rivals, foes, or adversaries, let alone enemies.
This morning she’d taken breakfast and coffee in a Chelsea café. At the time, her greatest concern had been a bit of ennui and some existential anxiety about what to do with her recently acquired degree in mathematics.
And now she faced prison?
The very idea made her dizzy.
“What if we reason with this … this Vicar of Vice? What if I told him that I inherited the establishment no earlier than this very morning?” Cecelia cringed at the plaintive, desperate note that had crept into her voice. “Surely he can’t accuse me of a crime yet, I’ve only just arrived.”
Genny made a coarse sound. “There’s no reasoning with the Vicar of Vice. He hates anything that could be considered enjoyable. Gambling, drinking, acting, dancing. He hates whores most of all.”
“But if this isn’t a brothel, you’ve done nothing illegal…”
Genny’s eyes flicked away. “What the women who work here do to make ends meet is none of our concern, and I’ll admit Lilly isn’t the first girl with culls I’ve turned a blind eye to
. But no, we don’t serve sex to our customers, only the suggestion of it.”
They burst into the private residence, and Genny paused a moment to lock the panel behind her before propelling an absorbed Cecelia up a flight of cobalt-carpeted stairs. Ivory damask wallpaper sped by in her periphery as she was led down a hall with white wainscoting and dark-wood floors.
Genny herded her into a tasteful, feminine study done in soft creams, white wickers, dazzling sapphire accents, and canvas paintings.
It bore no resemblance to the opulent and overdone palace of carnality occupying the floor below them.
Cecelia marveled as she took in the refined objets d’art and tranquil furnishings, cheerful sunshine slanting in through a skylight.
The gambling hell, by comparison, had been dimly lit by gas lamps and candelabras, the light flattering and golden, lending the feel of an enchanted evening, even at noon.
Genny was kind enough to allow Cecelia a moment to twirl about like a simpleton, absorbing her surroundings before the older woman dragged her toward the only masculine piece of furniture in the room. The desk faced the door on a raised dais, backlit by floor-to-ceiling windows through which rays of sunlight created celestial pillars to anoint the occupant with a golden glow.
“Sit,” Genny ordered in a voice one generally saved for hounds. “Read.”
Cecelia sat and broke the seal on the letter knowing she would never be truly ready to receive the contents therein.
My darling Cecelia,
If this letter has reached you, dear niece, it means I have been murdered.
She gasped, struck with a chill even the sun-facing august room couldn’t dispel. “No one said anything about a murder. Do you know—?”
“Not now. Keep reading,” Genny clipped. “I’ll get you ready to meet the devil.”
Cecelia puzzled over Genny’s slew of evocative names for their enemy. “How can one be a vicar, a devil, and a wolf all at once?” she wondered aloud.
“Lord love a goat, girl, do you ever stop askin’ questions? Maybe the answers are in that letter…” Genny snatched a ruffled scarlet cape from a stand and swirled it around her shoulders before she turned and riffled in a cabinet, her movements jerky and frenetic.
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