She was about to turn around and head back upstairs when she noticed, at the end of the passage, a slightly open door comprised of a thick, iron-banded slab of oak with a small, barred window carved out of it; it was the type of door one might encounter in a prison or lunatic asylum. Charlotte approached it curiously and stood on tiptoe to squint through the little window, but it was too dark on the other side to see much. Using both hands, she hauled the door open and stepped inside.
Yellow torchlight spilled through the doorway, illuminating a groin-vaulted stone undercroft with a floor of beaten earth, its six arched bays supported by a pair of massive, drumlike columns. Embedded in the columns at various heights—and in the ceiling and floor, as well—were a number of iron rings, some of them dangling chains, manacles, and foot irons. The bay in which she stood housed a long, sturdy table with a frame around the edge, fitted out with three rollers to which ropes were attached—a torture rack, Charlotte realized with a little shiver of fascination.
She circled the device, trailing her fingers over it as she recalled an etching she’d seen once of a naked young woman being stretched on the rack by a group of masked inquisitors. One of them was squeezing her nipples with pincers while another manipulated some unidentifiable device in the hairless slit between her legs. The woman had her head thrown back and her mouth open, but it was unclear whether she was crying out in pain or ecstasy—or both.
Charlotte’s arousal intensified as she imagined what it must feel like to be tied up and pulled taut while nameless men did as they wished to her naked and exposed body. She would be completely at their mercy. They could use her in unspeakable ways, make her feel whatever sensation they wanted her to feel, and she would be helpless to resist. That notion should have repelled someone like Charlotte, who was accustomed to power and relished the wielding of it, yet for some reason she found it darkly exciting.
In an adjacent bay stood an old bed covered with a wool blanket, a fat coil of hemp cord looped around one of the bottom posts and a covered chamber pot tucked underneath, next to a little cluster of empty oil lamps. A collection of sinister devices sat on wooden shelves next to the bed. Charlotte recognized the thumbscrews and the spiked “cat’s paw” designed to tear the flesh from bones. There was a Spanish boot, a tongue tearer, iron collars and belts, and a number of helmetlike devices meant to do unspeakable things to the wearer’s head.
Most of the other implements were unfamiliar to Charlotte, although in most cases she could guess which body part they were intended to crush, pierce, or restrain. An unlabeled brown glass vial sat on the bottom shelf, the contents of which she could only begin to imagine. Poison? Flesh-eating acid? The images that came to mind sickened her.
Charlotte strolled through the rest of the cellar, whose furnishings included a hanging cage, a pillory with head and wrist holes, and an iron chair with built-in shackles. Tucked away in a far, dark corner amid a pile of straw was a low wooden stool equipped with leather restraints, a device not unfamiliar to her. There was a whipping stool in most village squares, right next to the stocks. She’d never actually seen one used, but the notion of a miscreant being bound to such a stool for a humiliating public flogging had intrigued her since adolescence. In her fantasies, the offender was always some aloof, powerful nobleman, someone like that bastard who’d sired her, then shunted her off to London the very afternoon of her mother’s funeral; and she, Countess of Somerhurst, would, of course, have the honor of wielding the whip.
But now, contemplating the deceptively simple bench with its straps and buckles, Charlotte couldn’t help but visualize herself being shoved to her knees by some burly peasant whose job it was to mete out justice to the black-hearted and bloodstained. She could almost feel the bite of leather around her arms and waist as he lashed them to the stool, the cool air on her naked hindquarters as he flung her skirts up so that they hung down over her head. He would yank her thighs apart to strap them to the back legs of the stool, leaving her kneeling over it with her arse lifted indecently high, like a bitch in heat.
There would come a pause. She would feel his breath on her most intimate, cruelly exposed flesh…and then would come his bemused, almost pitying chuckle. He would see how her sex lips had flushed and parted, revealing her erect little clit and dripping quim, and he would know the shameful truth—that the high and mighty Lady Somerhurst found degradation so arousing that she was on the verge of release even before the first lick of the whip.
Charlotte crossed to the whipping stool in its shadowy corner, nipples prickling against her tight-laced stays, her sex wet and inflamed. The walls in that bay were festooned with an astonishing assortment of floggers, paddles, horse crops, canes, birches—and most ominous of all, a wooden handle sprouting three lengths of heavy steel links. Chain whips were true implements of torture, devilishly efficient at tearing the flesh from the back.
What must it feel like, she wondered, to be overpowered, bound, disciplined…used? To be a slave to the will of another, a thing with no will of her own? No expectations, no decisions, no responsibility except to meekly accept the punishment that was meted out to her, knowing it was just and right; for there was blood on her hands, the blood of a life cut short through her doing. Invisible though it might be to others, it was a stain that would haunt her until the end of her days.
She ran her hand over the top of the stool, a hefty chunk of satin-smooth walnut carved with rounded edges and a downward slant meant to keep the buttocks elevated, a perfect target for the whip. The leather straps were age-worn, but thick and wide. Charlotte ached to feel their buckles digging into her as she embraced the whipping stool in a posture of abject submission.
She could feel it, if she really wanted to, Charlotte realized. She could bind herself to the stool, leaving just one hand free with which to ease her raging lust. There would be no sting of the whip, of course, but she could close her eyes and imagine it as she caressed herself. The cantharides would keep her in an agony of arousal for hours; the pleasure could be extraordinary.
The only problem was the position of the stool itself, which was tucked too tightly into the corner to be usable. Crouching down, the straw crackling beneath her feet, she gripped it from underneath. As she started to lift it, something furry brushed her hand.
Charlotte screamed and dropped the stool, tumbling onto the floor as a flash of gray—a rat?—darted out of the straw. She kicked out instinctively, bunting the creature into the wall. It yowled, which was when she realized it wasn’t a rat at all, but that gray cat of Elle’s—which was almost as bad.
Charlotte scrabbled backward across the floor, squealing in alarm. Yanking the rattan crook off its ribbon around her waist, she whipped it back and forth to ward off the offending beast. “Begone! Get out of here!”
The cat made a dash for the door. Charlotte chuckled at the idiocy of her reaction as she rose to her feet and shook out her skirts. Thank God there’d been no one about to witness it.
Her relief was short-lived, for a shadow drew her attention to the doorway through which the cat had just disappeared. There, silhouetted against the torchlight in the hallway, stood the figure of a man.
“You don’t loathe cats at all, do you?” he asked in a deep, slightly accented voice as he rubbed his shoulder. “You’re afraid of them.”
“Who is that?” Charlotte asked. He was somewhat taller than average, well muscled and coatless—which meant he was most likely some menial servant or day laborer, for no gentleman, or even a footman, would dream of appearing before a lady half-dressed. “Answer me,” she demanded, brandishing the crook, “or I shall report your insolence to your mistress.”
“I have no mistress.” He retreated to the hallway, returning a moment later with the torch, which he jammed into a sconce near the door. “I am here, like yourself, at the sufferance of our Dame des Ombres.”
In the enhanced light, she could see that he was younger than his voice would suggest, with dark, wavy hair pulled into a l
eather-wrapped queue. Vestless as well as coatless, he wore an unadorned shirt tucked into fawn breeches, and the plainest of white silk cravats.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I am Darius.”
It occurred to Charlotte to fling out some quip about the curious new fashion for introducing oneself by first name only, but her wits seemed to have fled the moment this Darius fixed his gaze upon her. To say he was striking would suggest that he was merely handsome. In fact, by the standards of London fashion, he was anything but; with his humble attire and half-grown beard, he put her in mind of a Cossack, perhaps even a pirate. But those eyes…Charlotte had never seen eyes quite so huge and dark, a gaze so shockingly direct, so intent. Yet there was a quietness to him, a stillness that was mesmerizing.
“I am the Countess of Somerhurst,” Charlotte said when she found her voice.
Darius nodded thoughtfully. “Are you a countess in your own right? I can’t imagine any self-respecting English earl tolerating a wife who plays camp follower to the infamous Francis Dashwood and his cronies.”
She hesitated, uneasy as always when someone raised the subject of the late Nathaniel Wickham, Earl of Somerhurst. “Not that it is any of your affair, but my lord husband went to his maker several years ago.”
“Before or after you took up with the Hellfires?”
“You are an ill-mannered boor, sir.”
Darius smiled. “And you, madame, are a foul-tempered bitch.”
“H-how dare you…,” she sputtered.
“Ladies who make a habit of kicking cats should expect to be called bitches—and worse.”
“I took it for a rat,” she said, while wondering how he could have seen her do that; she would have noticed if he’d been watching.
“You’d have done it anyway. You’re terrified of cats.” Before she could summon a response to that, he said, “Whatever possessed you to get involved with the Hellfires, Charlotte?”
“How do you know my Christian name? And what makes you think you’re entitled to call me—”
“Were you so very bored…Lady Somerhurst?”
She turned away and hooked her rattan crook back onto its ribbon, thinking she really ought not to linger here, encouraging this audacious lout with his prying questions. She should lift her chin, stalk past him, and be gone from this place.
She cast Darius a sideways glance. He still stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, regarding her with that unnervingly serene absorption. She didn’t quite know what to make of him. He didn’t behave like a gentleman, didn’t look like one or talk like one; yet he was no peasant. He was unlike anyone she’d ever met.
Charlotte realized she was staring, and wrenched her gaze from his. “Of course I was bored,” she said, as if that were the real reason she’d embraced the Hellfires’ extreme brand of libertinage, or rather, the only one. “There are only so many tablecloths one can embroider, so many cups of tea one can pour…” She sighed disgustedly. “So many beef-brained stablemen one can seduce, before one starts to look elsewhere for diversion.”
“Why the Hellfires?” he asked.
“’Twas Sir Francis.” Buzzing with nervous energy, Charlotte lifted a handsome black riding crop from the wall. It aroused her anew, just stroking the braided leather handle with its wrist loop, feeling its weight and balance in her hand. “He was the first man I ever met—the only man—who regarded me as a person of learning and intellect, not just some light-heeled young widow. He knew I was a bit loose in the rump, of course, but he also knew I had a brain. I cannot tell you how refreshing that was. When he told me about the Hellfires, I begged to be a part of it. It all seemed so enlightened, so exotic and exciting.”
“And now?”
“Well, those mock masses are absurd, of course. It always escaped me why Sir Francis felt the need to cloak a bit of harmless sport in all that ritualistic drivel.”
“You didn’t seem to feel that way before Lili was chosen to lie upon the altar in your stead.”
“How could you know that?” she asked. “You weren’t there.”
“I can blend in when I choose to.” Pushing off the wall, Darius came toward her. He moved with an unhurried, feral grace, like a predator closing in on its prey in such a way as to keep that prey blissfully off guard. “Disenchanted with the Hellfires, are you?”
Stroking her hand along the length of the riding crop, she said, “It’s all one great, smutty joke, isn’t it? Hogs in armor, the lot of them. Schoolboys sharing bawdy jests, passing ’round dirty pictures. Half of them can’t even raise the old rogering iron unless their mates are watching and cheering them on. The other half need a good flogging before they can rouse their passions.”
“It rouses your passions, too, does it not?” Darius was standing directly in front of her now, his gaze on the crop she was fondling with all too evident fascination. “The flogging?”
She shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “I shan’t pretend I don’t relish the opportunity to redden the occasional bum.”
“But not half as much as you might relish having your own bum reddened.” He took the crop from her, inspecting it in a leisurely way. “I think you wish there was someone who could take you in hand and deal out the punishments you so ardently desire…and richly deserve.”
Charlotte swiftly weighed and rejected the option of feigning outrage; this Darius was, for whatever reason, far too perceptive for such a disingenuous display. Instead, she merely said, with studied calm, “Deserve?”
“For kicking the cat,” he said.
“I told you, I thought it was a rat. It darted out at me, and I was startled, so I—”
“Why did it dart out?” he asked. “Because you disturbed it, perchance?”
“Well…”
“You were moving that.” He nodded toward the whipping stool as he ran his hand along the crop’s slender stock. “To what end?”
Charlotte stared at him, heat scalding her face; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d blushed.
He held her gaze. “You were curious. Yes?”
She groped for words, but what could she say?
Gesturing toward the stool with the crop, he said, “Carry on, then. You’ve got me curious now, too.”
She didn’t move.
He took a step toward her, stroked her face lightly with the little leather paddle on the tip of the crop. The smell of the leather made her quim throb. She closed her eyes, swallowed hard.
Softly he said, “Put the stool in the middle of the floor, Charlotte.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“Because you want me to.”
He knew. Somehow, he knew everything.
She looked toward the door, still half-open; anyone could come down here and walk in on them. Before she could voice that concern, Darius crossed to the door, pulled it shut, and tugged a rusty steel plate down over the little window. He took a key from a hook on the wall, twisted it in the keyhole, and stowed it in a pocket of his breeches.
Charlotte felt both more secure now and more vulnerable. A stranger, someone she’d met mere minutes ago, had just locked her into a torture chamber. The situation should fill her with foreboding. There was a certain measure of that, to be sure, but mostly what she felt, God help her, was an intoxicating thrill of arousal underscored by a sense of rightness, a sense that she deserved whatever this enigmatic stranger would do to her, and more.
Rejoining her, Darius nodded toward the whipping stool as if to say, Go ahead.
She lifted the stool, which was remarkably heavy, and set it down in the middle of the floor.
“Take your clothes off,” he said.
She turned to stare at him.
“It has long been customary,” he explained, “when punishing females, or attempting to coax confessions from them, to make them undress. It tends to have a…humbling effect.”
Charlotte met his eyes for a moment, then looked down, her gaze lighting on the front flap o
f his breeches, stretched tight over a bulging erection. She felt suddenly starved for air; her heart thudded in her ears.
Darius noticed the direction of her gaze, but seemed unperturbed, perhaps even slightly amused. “Strip,” he said.
Charlotte took a deep, tremulous breath, and set about unlacing her bodice.
Three
I MET YOUR sister.” This was Sir Francis Dashwood’s greeting to Elic in the chapel’s shadowy little narthex, where Elic was waiting, along with the two footmen serving as acolytes, for the mass to begin. “Lovely girl.”
The Hellfires’ chief friar had a speculative glint in his eye as he smiled at Elic. He was wondering, no doubt, whether Elic was privy to his covert little assignation with Elle in the withdrawing room.
“She told me it was a most rousing encounter,” Elic said.
“Did she,” Dashwood said with a little quirk of the eyebrows. “You two must be close.”
“We share everything.” Including the seed that Elle had tapped from Dashwood, and which Elic would transfer, before the night was over, to some estimable woman—which was his sole reason for participating as Abbot of the Day in this absurd mock mass, in order to have first pick of the Hellfires’ female followers afterward. The seed formed an insistent presence in his lower belly, causing his bollocks to tighten in anticipation, his shaft to grow thick and heavy.
The monkish robe he’d been given to wear—white silk with a scarlet-lined hood, like that of the twelve “superior” Hellfires now murmuring quietly in the chapel—served to conceal his state of arousal. Beneath it, he wore nothing, as instructed—a blessed relief from the constriction of Elle’s rigid, cone-shaped corset. The robe closed down the front with a mere four little hooks, for ease in opening when required during the dark rites and the banquet to follow.
The two brawny young men serving as acolytes had been outfitted for the occasion in white satin breeches and jackets. The darker of the two held a pair of lit black tapers in mammoth iron candelabras, the other a brass censer full of hot coals dangling from the end of a chain, and a matching incense boat. From their expressions of amusement as they whispered together, Elic gathered their attitude toward the impending ritual fell short of reverential.
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