“Is it safe?” Angélique asked, looking slightly worried, for the notaire’s benefit. “My children are very young, and we’re a household of women. My servants are all women. We can’t be in a dangerous area.”
“Of course,” he said grandly, “I assure you it’s quite safe for women and children.” The house had been available for rent for six months, and the families that had looked at it had been disappointed by the location and looked for a better one. But he realized this young widow didn’t seem to mind, since the rental price was right. He said she could rent it for a year, or two, whatever she preferred, and renew it if the arrangement worked well for her.
“I think a year to start,” she said without batting an eye, as Fabienne watched her, admiring how easily she pulled it off. “With an option to renew of course, if my children are happy there.”
“I’m sure they will be, and the park nearby is very nice. Will they be going to school?” he inquired.
“They’re tutored at home,” she said demurely. “They’re all girls.” At least that much was true, since nothing else was. He told them there was a carriage house for two carriages around the corner, and she was pleased, since she didn’t know how their clients would come. “With a room for your coachman,” he added. And the four small rooms in the basement, next to the kitchen, were adequate for servants. It was a very fine house, he assured her.
“When may we see it?” she asked him.
“It’s a little late in the day to see it now. I’d rather you see it in morning sunlight. I could take you there tomorrow.” And he had another appointment that afternoon anyway. They made an appointment for noon the next day, and after shaking hands, both young women left his office, and took a carriage for hire back to the hotel.
“My God, you’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Fabienne asked her, stunned by the hour they had just spent with the notaire. “I keep thinking I just dreamed it and I’m going to wake up.” But Angélique was determined, with Fabienne’s help, if she could find the right girls, which remained to be seen. But Angélique thought the house sounded like a gift from Heaven, or Hell, depending on how she looked at it, given what they were planning to do there. It sounded perfect for them.
“Of course I’m serious,” Angélique said with a gleam in her eye.
“What are we going to do for furniture?”
“Buy it. That’s the least of our worries. Now you have to find the girls, and the right ones. The kind of men we want as clients won’t want girls off the streets. We have to find beautiful, intelligent girls who will fascinate them.” She laughed to herself, thinking that Eugenia Ferguson would have been perfect. She was a beautiful woman of loose morals who liked men. But she was also tiresome and spoiled. They needed better girls than Eugenia. Angélique sensed that her clients would want women who enjoyed catering to men, and pleasing them. It was a life of service of a different kind—they had to be beautiful and elegant in the drawing room, and exotic when they went upstairs. She guessed it from some of the novels she enjoyed reading, and added the rest from her imagination. “Do you know where to start searching for them?” Angélique asked her as they got to the hotel.
“I’ll need to go and talk to some people. I know one girl from Madame Albin’s who’s a sweet girl. She’s young and pretty, and appears very innocent, but she isn’t. The men who come to Madame Albin’s love her. She makes all her clients feel important, and nothing seems to frighten her. And she isn’t ruined by drink or drugs, she says she just likes what she’s doing, and does it well.”
“Remember, we’ll need some other girls, slightly older, more sophisticated ones. These men will want to talk to them too. They have to be good listeners, playful, beautiful, elegant.” She had exactly the kind of girl she wanted in mind. Fabienne could be one of the young sweet girls, but she wanted some enticing, mysterious women too. They walked into the hotel, talking about the house again, with their new bonnets in several large hatboxes. As soon as they got to the room, Fabienne put on her big beautiful pale blue one and pranced around the room, looking ecstatic, and thanked Angélique again.
“Thank you for being so good to me.” She beamed at her new friend, and future employer.
“We’re partners in crime now,” Angélique told her, and put on one of her new hats too. They were like little girls playing dress-up with their mothers’ clothes. But Angélique was taking her new role very seriously. She was going to establish the best bordel in town. Houses of its kind were legal, as was prostitution, as long as the prostitutes were registered with the gendarmerie, although the practice was frowned on by respectable citizens. But brothels had existed for hundreds of years, and the police paid no attention to them. All they would have to do was use discretion, and keep all their activities invisible behind their walls. And word would travel like wildfire if it was a good house and men wanted to come there. Angélique was determined to maintain high standards and make it more appealing to their clients than their clubs or homes. Angélique and Fabienne both knew that their clients were out there, just waiting for them. Now they needed to set up the house and locate the girls who would attract them like bees to honey.
Chapter 12
The next day, when the two girls went to see the house that had been described by the notaire, it was as perfect as Angélique had hoped, and she could envision just how it would be set up. It was referred to as an “hôtel particulier,” a private home. The owners had left three chandeliers in the dining room, largest reception room, and front hall, and the rest of the house had to be decorated. Angélique had some experience with that from Belgrave, and what she’d seen at the Fergusons’ two homes, but she wanted this to be warmer and more inviting, while still elegant, without spending a fortune on it. Entering the house had to be like a warm embrace, and so comfortable that the men wouldn’t want to leave it, and would be anxious to return as soon as possible. Everything at the house had to go smoothly, and be set up for their clients’ ultimate happiness.
Angélique told the notaire that they’d take it, once they had toured the entire house. It was clean and in good order, and as sunny as he had promised. Fabienne said they would put screens in each room, where the girls could do whatever they needed to with washbasins, out of sight. Angélique really didn’t want to know those details. She preferred to take care of the grander scheme of things and the decorating project, while Fabienne found their “staff.”
She told the notaire that she would return to his office with the money that afternoon. She preferred to pay in cash, and didn’t tell him that she had to exchange British pounds for French francs. He wanted the first month’s rent, which was quite reasonable. She went back to the hotel to get it, went to the bank with Fabienne, and their first month’s rent was paid by that afternoon, and she had signed a lease for a year. In sympathy for her as a widow, he allowed her to do so on her own, and he asked for no proof of her status. She appeared to be entirely above reproach, and made no fuss over the money. He liked doing business that way, and said that the owner would be pleased to have rented it to such a nice family. A widow with six daughters.
Both girls were almost shaking with excitement when they left the notaire’s office after paying for it and signing the lease. It was happening! The dream was becoming real, and very quickly. But they had so much to do now before they opened. They needed to buy furniture, and find servants. Two maids and a cook, Angélique decided, and they couldn’t be shocked at what went on at the house. And a man to help, and protect them, and do the heavy work. And above all, Fabienne needed to find the girls they needed. That was key. The rest would be easy. But the women whose charms they would be offering had to be impeccably selected, and Angélique wanted to meet each of them and make the final decision. Fabienne knew women of the streets, and young girls, but Angélique knew far better the kind of men they’d be serving.
Fabienne began the search two days later. She sent a message to Juliette, the girl she’d mentioned at Madame Albin’s, a
nd asked to meet her somewhere. It took her five more days to get away on a pretext, and meet at a café, where she was surprised to see Fabienne look far more elegant than she had during her time at Madame Albin’s. Juliette was stunned, as Fabienne described Angélique and her plan. She was eager to join them, and Fabienne arranged a meeting for her with Angélique. She found her a sweet girl, with an angelic innocence about her, who appeared younger than her eighteen years. But she could see the sensual woman under the surface too, and thought she had qualities that would appeal to some of their clients. Fabienne and Juliette could be the angelic young girls of the group, with greater knowledge of how to please a man than it appeared. But after that, she wanted racier women, and was counting on Fabienne to find them, which was no easy task. They told Juliette to bide her time at Madame Albin’s, say nothing, and they would let her know when they were ready, they hoped in a month or two. Angélique wanted to do it right, and not hurry, although she was anxious to open their doors too.
Meanwhile she spent her days buying furniture and having it delivered to the house they’d rented. She bought ten large canopied beds in different places, and miles of fabric to cover them, which she did herself, and a smaller bed for herself. She bought nightstands, dressers, comfortable chairs in silks and satins, rugs for every room, including the reception rooms, oil lamps, a handsome English dining table and chairs, and divinely comfortable couches and Egyptian benches to recline on for the drawing room, where she could imagine the girls lounging as they talked to their clients before they went upstairs. She bought two card tables for the drawing room, and beautiful heavy damask curtains. The house was coming together nicely, and she was spending her father’s money, but keeping good track of it, and staying within the budget she had set for herself. And the house was starting to look beautiful, warm, and opulent, as the pieces arrived, and she wanted the lighting to be just right at night, so that it would be romantic and flattering. And she bought a multitude of mirrors for the drawing room and bedrooms. And Fabienne showed her how to place them strategically in the bedrooms. They were doing all the work themselves, and as the furniture began arriving, even for the maids’ bedrooms, the two women agreed that they needed a man to help them. The furniture was heavy, the curtains hard for them to hang, and they couldn’t do it all alone, although Angélique was working magic. She had even found a few pieces she loved for her own rooms, which reminded her of her bedroom in Belgrave, the one Gwyneth had stolen from her when she arrived, with her parents’ blessing. This time Angélique was in the attic by choice, but in a lovely suite of rooms no one would ever see but herself, away from the girls. And she bought a few simple paintings that she loved, by unknown French artists, which cost almost nothing.
They looked in the newspaper for a man to hire, and interviewed several. It was a delicate business telling each prospect that he would be protecting a houseful of women, but not telling him what they’d be doing. Several asked if it was a school, or a boardinghouse, but the last one they saw asked them nothing, and he and Fabienne instantly liked each other. He had broad shoulders and a strong back, came from the South as she did, and spoke the same patois. He said he had grown up on a farm and had four sisters and no brothers. His father had died when he was young, and he was used to being the only man in the house with a flock of women. His name was Jacques, and when they showed him the house, he followed Fabienne like a puppy. He didn’t mind the small spare room in the carriage house, and Angélique explained to him that he would need to be discreet about whatever went on in the main house. She tried to feel him out for his values, and was relieved when he said he wasn’t religious. One of his sisters was a nun, and he thought she was misguided. The others were married and had children.
“There will be men here, not just women,” Angélique said, watching him intently. “Perhaps many men. And some very beautiful women.” He asked if it was going to be a hotel, and she said no. And as he looked at her, she saw the light dawn in his eyes, and he said he understood. He was not as innocent as he appeared. He seemed worried for a minute and then nodded, and then asked her a question.
“Fabienne too?” He had a decided soft spot for her, which Angélique was not sure was a good idea, if he fell in love with her, and was jealous. It was a complication they didn’t need.
“Yes, Fabienne too,” she said definitely, and he nodded.
“I understand. It’s a job like any other. We all have to make a living. I will protect all of you,” he said seriously, and she could see that he meant it. They hired him immediately, and he was an enormous help, moving furniture, carrying things that arrived, hanging curtains and paintings, and assisting Angélique as she set up the bedrooms, while Fabienne conducted her search for the women.
The first few Fabienne met, through other women she knew, weren’t interested. They liked the arrangements they had, and didn’t want to join a house so recently set up by women who weren’t experienced at running a brothel. Fabienne told them they would be properly registered at the gendarmerie, and protected and paid fairly, but it wasn’t enough to entice them. But they referred her to some others who were dissatisfied with their pimps or madams. And two girls seemed like good possibilities to her, and intrigued Angélique.
One was obviously from a good French family, and for whatever reason had chosen a very different path from her bourgeois sisters and parents. At twenty-four, she had been a prostitute for seven years, looked like a lady and apparently wasn’t. And she made it clear that some of the more “exotic” requests of her clients appealed to her. She said casually that she used a small whip, and was an expert at bondage. She never injured her clients or allowed them to hurt her, but she was more than willing to experiment with new “techniques,” and said she had a large collection of sexual aids. Angélique tried to look nonchalant about it, although she was somewhat unnerved by her. But she was a beautiful woman, and she was very erotic and appealing in a subtle, sensual way. Her name was Ambre, and she had worn a very elegant dress to the meeting, which showed that she knew how to dress well. Ambre had jet black hair and smoldering eyes, and was a tall woman with long legs and big breasts. She had been working alone for a while near the Palais Royal, and said she preferred a house, and hadn’t found one she liked. What Angélique was doing had piqued her interest, and she could see that Angélique was intelligent, and liked that about her. She wanted to be in a house that was run like a business. She charged a fairly high rate because of her unusual specialties. And she had none of the seeming innocence of Fabienne and Juliette. She said she enjoyed her work, and was said to be skilled at her trade. Angélique told her she would be welcome to join them, and Fabienne approved when they talked about it later.
“She scares me a little,” Fabienne admitted. “She’s very cold. But I think some men like that.”
“Apparently,” Angélique said, feeling a little overwhelmed by the meeting, but pleased with their decision.
The other girl Fabienne thought was a possibility was a slightly round, very jovial girl with a great sense of humor and a quick wit, who had fled the convent in Bordeaux her parents had sent her to, and come to Paris on her own. She was twenty-two, had a warm personality, and seemed like everyone’s favorite sister. Her name was Philippine, and Angélique enjoyed meeting her. She was a pretty blonde with a lovely face, slim legs, and a huge bosom, which Fabienne said men would want to dive into, and she was intelligent too.
“I didn’t know if she looked fancy enough for you,” Fabienne said, worried. There was a straightforward, open quality to her that Angélique liked.
“She’s fun to talk to. Some men will really love that. And we can dress her up elegantly. She’s very pretty. It’s not a problem.” They had laughed through the whole interview, and she had a lovely singing voice, could play the piano, and had sung in the convent choir. It reminded Angélique that she needed to buy a piano for the drawing room. They hired Philippine too, which left them four more women to find. They had half the number they ne
eded now.
The next girl Fabienne located was an Ethiopian woman, with coffee-colored skin, delicate features, and huge green eyes. She had been sold into slavery by her father at a young age, brought to Paris by the family who bought her, and abandoned, and had been fending for herself ever since. She was nineteen, and the most exquisite girl of all. Her name was Yaba, and she added another kind of exoticism to the group they were trying to form. With Yaba, they now had five.
Angélique and Fabienne agreed that they could open the house with six women, but they both preferred the idea of eight, to give the men more choices, and the girls could linger with them longer that way, without rushing to the next client. And ultimately, since they had enough bedrooms, Angélique thought they could have ten. But eight was her goal for now.
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