He withdrew from her carefully. “Will you excuse me for one moment?”
The restraints were not uncomfortable, and she was uncertain if she could find the strength to move her arms again or not, so she murmured an oddly polite, “Of course.”
As in their past encounters, the strain of manners had returned. It wasn’t on her part, of that she was certain. She found it utterly bizarre the way one moment he could command her, make her a slave to her body in the most intimate way, and the next become cool and detached.
Of course, a regular patron in a place like this would have to have some way of preventing entanglements. Perhaps his detachment was to be admired.
She heard the splashing of water in the discretely placed basin that stood in the corner of all the rooms in the club. Moments later, the blindfold lifted and he stood over her, not respectably attired, but wearing what she’d usually seen him wear as he prowled the club, his mask and loose fitting trousers. His bare chest still glistened with sweat, though rivulets of water glided down his muscled torso.
“Thank you.” She rubbed her wrists as she sat up, feeling altogether too naked. She tugged the top of her corset, trying to wiggle herself and the garment into some sort of agreement. “I hope our absence wasn’t too noticed at the party.”
“Well,” he said noncommittally. “Let me arrange for a cab to take you home.”
As gentlemanly as ever, he sent an automaton to hail a Hansom cab, while he, himself, escorted her to the door. They parted with the appropriate pleasantries, and when the cab deposited her at the hotel, she felt refreshed, rather than exhausted by the night’s activity.
It was only later, when she’d washed and donned the sumptuous pelisse she’d purchased during her stay in Paris, she realized with a start what had just happened. She’d been at the party, and Horace Sterling had engaged her in conversation, and then…
He’d known what he wanted from her from the very moment he’d seen her at the party, and he swooped right in and taken it. From her. Of course, she had planned to visit the club after the dreadfully dull and mannerly English parade of boring conversation. But he hadn’t known that…
It wasn’t as though it were an unfair assumption, but that wasn’t the point, she reminded herself. In the club, all the patrons were free to behave wantonly, without recognition in the outside world. It was an “honour system,” posted on signs all around the club. He’d broken that rule, despite being a rather important member of the club, so far as she could tell.
Did that mean, then, that he wanted her for more than sexual gratification? He could have easily picked her out of the crowd at the club, again. He didn’t have to compromise his standing in the club.
Or maybe he’d though her an easy target. The idea that Horace viewed her as some kind of fallen woman made Tallulah’s blood boil. She wasn’t so desperate for a man’s attention that she would fail to meet the standard expectations of society. At least, not anymore.
She kicked off the covers and padded to the sitting room, where two long doors separated her from the cool night air on the balcony. She wouldn’t go out, not when the street below was as busy at midnight as it was at high noon, but she did open one door a crack to bask in the cool breeze.
There was really only one way to settle this matter. She would call on Horace Sterling outside of the club and make her wishes known. Namely, that she would not be treated like some common whore simply because she enjoyed a man’s attentions. Or, for that matter, a machine’s attentions.
She flushed in shame. Maybe Jimmy was right. Maybe she was a contradiction of her own making. That’s not fair. It had been him who’d been so eager to bed her when they were courting, and when she’d agreed, he’d been mortified. That hadn’t stopped him from taking her up on the offer, and when she’d responded with genuine passion for him, he’d been disgusted. But not until after he’d had his pleasure. He always saved the sermon for after the sin.
Horace wasn’t like Jimmy. To compare the two was ridiculous. The next time she saw Horace Sterling, she could be as prim as any of the English women she’d met so far, and his reaction would be the same. She could purse her lips and pretend to be scandalized by his advances. That was what men wanted, it seemed, if a woman was to be treated with any respect at all.
At the moment, though, respect wasn’t what she wanted from Horace. What she wanted, only the Ace of Hearts could give her.
Chapter Five
Horace laced up the back of his mask while his feet did an impatient dance. It was as though a current arced through him, desperately seeking ground, but his body couldn’t stand the shock.
“Good lord, Horace, do you have to make?”
Horace turned to his brother and glowered down in irritation, but the movement was futile on two points. Point the first, Horace wore a mask. Point the second, Richard’s auburn head was bent, tongue poking from the side of his mouth as he examined his latest creation for the final time before its debut. He held the device with one hand and operated the gear lever on his automotivated chair. A puff of steam issued from the brass chimney that teetered above the two tanks of super-heated water providing combustion for the engine. “Be careful with this one, it’s only a prototype. And not for beginners! Let’s avoid that virgin nonsense Wallace got up to.”
Horace grimaced at that. He loved his sister-in-law dearly, but Wallace and Permilia had been married over a year now. Horace knew the couple far too well to imagine their…marital relations, inside or outside of the club.
Lifting the device, Horace noted the toggles for operation and the delicate power source soldered along the side of the brass cylinder. An aether battery, another of Richard’s astounding inventions, powered the machine. An oblong glass panel revealed the machine’s inner workers, a leather sleeve crumpled like a concertina inside a ring of pistons. “And you want me to put it in there.”
“Why do you persist in your mistrust of my work? Have I ever failed you before?” Richard drove his chair across his brother’s private office, toward the secret entrance to the tunnel that would lead him back to his dull, cramped apartment.
“Richard, don’t be cross,” Horace implored his brother, but he stopped when it became clear that Richard’s goal was not the tunnel, but the bottle of port on the nightstand beside the huge bed.
Some nights, when Horace could not face the long trek home, to his own bed, he slept in his office, but the bed had never been used for anything more than sleep. There was something too personal about bringing a woman into this part of the club. At first, he’d thought it a bit like a magician revealing the secrets to his tricks; after all, no one wanted to know how the club ran, they were simply happy that it did, so they could partake in its delights. Now, though, it had become something of a sanctuary to him, a place to which the club’s members did not have access. He loved the freedom of the club, the bold interaction between patrons, but night after night, it often became too much.
But not Tallulah. He would never get enough of her, no matter how many times she visited the club.
On the other hand, he would miss her when she went back to America.
He should have never learned her name. He should have never approached her socially.
“Anyway,” Richard continued, snapping Horace from his morose thoughts. “The device is perfectly safe. I tested it on myself.”
Horace made a noise of disgust.
“I wore a sheath, of course,” Richard snapped, exasperation slumping his shoulders as he tossed back a splash of Port. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather I test these things myself? It isn’t as if I’m doing anything important with my penis. I might as well take the risk of having it mangled in one of these contraptions, if it would spare you and Wallace.”
“You’re not doing much to raise my confidence.” Horace was at least half-jesting. Richard was a genius when it came to crafting new, impressive pleasure devices. Horace wondered if his brother’s condition hadn’t opened a door to an inner well
of pent-up naughtiness, all through the power of frustration. The club had been his idea—well, the machines had been his idea, the club had sprung from the heads of all three of them. They’d needed some way to support their mother after their father had died, leaving a wake of debt and a useless silver smithy behind. Of all of them, Wallace had done the best job of supporting himself, finishing school and becoming a solicitor, a job he’d been able to leave behind when the club’s membership had flourished. Richard had joined the Royal Dirigible Corps and had been a cadet for only a month when a fall from a loading bay had crippled him. And Horace, he’d simply been living on his parents’ dime, an artist one week, a poet the next, a drunk consistently.
Not much had changed, but that now he lived off his third of ownership in the club.
Outside the frosted glass windows of his office, club members had begun to trickle in for the night. “Will you join us tonight, brother? Pippa is going to do an amazing show. From what I hear, she’ll be incorporating two automatons and a female club goer.”
“No, thank you. I have work to do.” Richard set his glass down. “Do you have something in mind for that?”
Horace lifted the device and examined it. “I do.”
* * * *
“Horace, my dear, how good of you to come.”
Horace bent stiffly over Lady Goodwin’s hand. When he straightened, he replied, “Only iron chains could have restrained me.”
He wished he had been. He’d had the opportunity, in fact. When Tallulah hadn’t come to the club, a beautiful, sensual older woman had offered him her services for the evening. At the club, the respectable Lady Goodwin went by the pseudonym Lace, and was a much sought after domina. While Horace enjoyed submission with a skilled master, he hadn’t been in the mood. Only one woman would slake his desires, and the thought made his throat uncomfortably dry.
Lady Goodwin winked at Horace as he moved past her so she could greet her next guest. He scanned the parlor for the people who had already arrived. Most of them had continued through the parlor, onto the wide lawn behind the house. Situated just outside of London, the country estate was the site of many a garden luncheon. Anyone who was anyone would be there, and he fervently hoped Tallulah was anyone.
He stepped onto the terrace and looked over the garden, for all the good it would do him. Most of the ladies in attendance wore ridiculously oversized hats, and all of them seemed to be facing the wrong direction.
And then, standing out against the dark green ivy backdrop of the hedge maze, a flash of gold caught his eye. He made his way across the lawn as quickly as he could without being hopelessly rude—meaning he was forced to stop and speak to not only Lord Winterfell but also his son, who had just assumed a seat in the House of Lords, and Mrs. Moorebridge, of the Ladies’ Aether Objections movement—to reach Tallulah’s side. She stood far from the assembly, holding a delicate china cup but not drinking from it. She looked up as he approached, her expression troubled, but that worry evaporated into a smile when she saw him.
It shouldn’t have thrilled him to know that his presence affected her, but it did. “What are you doing all the way out here, on the very fringes of this lovely garden party?”
“I fear my novelty has become slightly worn.” She sipped her tea. “And I don’t like being referred to as a colonist.”
He chuckled. “I imagine being an exhibition piece gets a bit tiring.”
She made a noise of agreement, her crystal blue eyes scanning the grounds.
“I didn’t see you last night,” he said softly, so that no one passing by could possibly hear. “I was disappointed.”
She didn’t meet his eyes, still watching the other party goers with disinterest. “I thought the club’s honor code prevented situations like this.”
Suddenly, Horace’s throat was very dry. He resisted the urge to snatch the cup from her hands and gulp the tea down. “I’m sorry, I had no idea you—”
“It’s not to say that I mind, necessarily,” she chattered on, pretending to be oblivious to his distress. “But it would confuse a girl, being pursued both in and outside of the establishment. She might not know what to think.”
“What to think?” he echoed dumbly. The tangled subject and the lazy tripping of her words in that Southern American accent wove some damnable net over his brain. He had the vaguest notion of what she was getting at, but in a way he thoroughly did not understand.
“Is the gentleman seeking an exclusive relationship inside the club? Is he looking to court her outside of it? A girl unfamiliar with the local manners might not grasp the subtle nuances of the gentleman’s behavior.”
“Ah.” Now he understood, and it was an uncomfortable moment as he considered his response. He did think Tallulah was a fine woman, one he would be proud to be seen around London with. But he doubted that was what a woman looked for when it came to romance.
He loved the time they spent together at the club, but was she the last woman he was meant to fuck? There were so many women out there who’d never had the opportunity to be with him. It hardly seemed fair to deny them.
But Tallulah…how could any woman ever compare, in the club or out?
“If I may be so bold,” he began carefully. “If I were the gentleman in question, I would wish to seek both an exclusive arrangement in the club, and outside of it. Perhaps a lady would be so appreciative of my suit as to be seen in the park with me on Sunday?”
“She might.” She still didn’t face him, but a smile bent her mouth. “If the gentleman were to wear something a bit more appropriate.”
He looked down at his rumpled shirtwaist and tattered coat. “I think I look rather Bohemian.”
“And the lady in question isn’t looking for poetry and drunkenness. Now, if you would excuse me, I see an acquaintance I would like to converse with.”
“By all means.” He watched her go, damning the rows of ruffles down the back of her rose walking dress that interfered with any hope of admiring her derriere as she walked away.
On impulse, he called after her, “Will I see you this evening?”
She turned with a scandalized gasp, but nodded a clear yes.
Chapter Six
Frowning at her own reflection in the looking glass, Tallulah regretted every delectable pastry she’d indulged in on her long tour. The cannoli of Rome, the thick, spiced chocolate in Madrid, and in France…butter. Lakes and lakes of butter to drown in, packed into every cake and fluffy bread. It had been so much fun at the time.
She tugged the hem of her new leather corset down, wishing she’d specified it be made just a bit longer to conceal her stomach entirely.
Not that the man she wore it for would have ever complained. On her first night in the club, just when she was about to flee the sinful place entirely, he’d stepped behind her and put his hands, those leather-gloved hands, on her wide hips and squeezed gently, saying, “What have we here?”
If it had been something her late husband had said to her, it would have been insulting. The way Horace had said it, with sheer delight seeping into every word, had made her entire body tingle. He’d confessed to preferring “large” women, though all her life Tallulah had been used to being referred to as a heifer. Which didn’t make much sense to her mind, as everyone knew heifers weren’t as large as a full-grown cow.
Are you going to stand here and worry about milk-cows? She shook her head at herself in the mirror. With a grin, she reached for her goggles. She’d searched all over London after her first visit to the club, finally finding a pair that suited. She’d commissioned the scandalous leather corset to match, so that both would be made of brown leather with brass fittings.
She bent to fasten her scandalous red stockings to her garters and smoothed her hands over the front of the corset. With a final glance at the way her breasts rested above, but were not covered by, the corset, she quickly donned a modest dress and hurried downstairs, wrapped in a velvet opera cape. She was certain she looked ridiculous as she hurrie
d through the lobby and onto the street, and only when she was ensconced in the safe darkness of her hired cab could she finally let out a sigh of relief.
The club was, she reflected after she’d given the automaton at the door the password and stepped into the descending chamber, an escape from a society she would never understand. She’d thought manners at home were strict, but even the governor of Georgia would have seemed no better bred than a stray dog compared to London’s richest and most titled.
She stepped out of the chamber and went to the powder room, where she hung up her dress and cape and straightened her indecorous garments before entering the club proper. On her way, she passed an entirely nude gentleman on his hands and knees, followed by a woman who looked far too similar to the garden party hostess from earlier in the day. Clad in tight black, ruffled bloomers and knee-high boots straight from the cavalry, Lady Goodwin followed the man, nearly half her age, slapping his rosy buttocks with a riding crop. The gentleman paused to nod at Tallulah, and Lady Goodwin planted her boot heel in his back, knocking him to the floor.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” she snarled at the man, then, turning to Tallulah, she smiled and said, “Good evening my dear. Do enjoy yourself.”
So, manners weren’t entirely out the window. Still, it was refreshing to see people act the way everyone seemed to really want to, deep down beneath layers of fortified undergarments and skin and bone one would dare speak of.
The main floor of the club served as a hub to the private rooms and lavish dungeons, but it was an attraction in itself. There was a bar, something right out of a pub, near the entrance. Tall plants poked artful leaves into corners and against brass rails, rising from real Chinese pots, and gaslight chandeliers hung at intervals, casting hazy illumination. The brightest lights burned above what club members called “the pit,” an area where the bolder club members participated in lewd acts for the gratification of the other members.
Bound in Brass (All Steamed Up Series, Book Two) Page 3