by Mia Gabriel
The viscountess smiled at her expectant guests. “We shall now withdraw to the Egyptian Room, if you please. We have a small entertainment arranged for you, a brief entr’acte that will set the mood for the rest of the evening.”
The Egyptian Room was aptly named. The walls were draped with red-and-gold-striped silk, gathered in the center of the ceiling to transform the room into a pharaoh’s tent complete with nodding palm trees in brass pots. All the paintings on the walls were of Egyptian themes, mysterious pyramids and deities with the heads of animals, and the oversize mantel was supported by a pair of bare-breasted stone sphinxes. Rich carpets were strewn across the floor, and ornate gold benches, covered with pillows, replaced ordinary chairs. Tall torchères gave only a shadowy light to the room, and the heady, musky sweetness of incense contributed to the exotic atmosphere.
With the formal seating from dinner over, I looked for Lord Savage, but to my disappointment, he was nowhere to be seen. Across the room, the baron beckoned brusquely, as much as ordering me to join him. Pointedly I turned away and ignored him, not caring if saving myself meant wounding his pride.
“Sit by me, Mrs. Hart,” the viscountess said, patting the cushioned bench beside her, and I happily obliged.
“What is the nature of the entr’acte, my lady?” I asked, imagining the usual kind of after-dinner entertainment: a singer from the opera, or perhaps a violinist. “From what others were saying around me at dinner, I gather your entertainments are much applauded.”
Lady Carleigh smiled, preening a bit at the praise.
“My friends are most generous,” she said. “I always strive for originality, you see, as a wise hostess should. I promised you’d never be bored at Wrenton, and I am a woman of my word.”
“Mrs. Hart will not be bored tonight, Lady Carleigh,” Lord Savage said, suddenly appearing behind us with the quiet stealth of a large, predatory cat. “I believe she will find your entertainment particularly enthralling, considering her predilections.”
Without any invitation, he took the last place on the bench beside me. There was sufficient room, even for a man as large as the earl, but he still contrived to sit so close as to press his thigh against mine. He did it carelessly, as if by accident, and took no outward notice of how our thighs touched.
Yet, I was acutely aware of him there, the hard, lean muscles pressed against my softer flesh, the inky black of his evening trousers in sharp contrast to the luminous, blush-colored silk of my gown. I was sure I could feel his warmth, his energy, even through the layers of our clothes, and I almost longed for the older fashions that would have insulated me more completely beneath layers of wire hoops and lace petticoats.
I almost wished it, but not quite. Nor did I draw away from him, either. Instead I let him press his leg into mine, a gentle, insistent pressure that hinted at the other intrusions he would like to make in to my body.
I slowly opened my fan, hoping he’d take no notice of how my fingers trembled.
“I did not realize, Lord Savage,” I said, “that we’d become sufficiently familiar for you to identify my predilections.”
“Sufficient for one or two observations,” he said easily, resting his elbow on the bench’s arm as he turned to face me. “I know that you find it acceptable to jab your fan into a gentleman’s arm.”
I frowned, tempted to do it again.
“I did not jab it, my lord,” I protested. “I merely tapped it upon your sleeve to draw your attention, in a manner that is entirely polite and proper.”
He smiled, but a chilly smile, with no humor to it, as he glanced briefly at the small band of turbaned musicians settling in the corner of the room.
“Perhaps in New York, such bravado is considered polite,” he said, “but in this country, gentlemen do not appreciated a lady who chooses to wield her fan like a bludgeon.”
“You exaggerate, Lord Savage.”
“I rather think not, Mrs. Hart.” A single lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead, and he sleeked it back with his palm. The link on his starched white cuff was black onyx, framed by a tiny gold serpent and centered by a single diamond, as brilliantly hard and beautiful as he was himself. “Would you consider it another exaggeration if I reminded you how much you enjoy being a spectator?”
This time, I was ready. “Nearly as much as you enjoyed being the actor with an audience,” I said, smiling. “You see, Lord Savage, I’ve observed a few predilections myself.”
His smile warmed, the unexpected charm of it making me melt inside.
“Touché, Mrs. Hart,” he said. “Then as performers and as spectators, we should both enjoy this evening, shouldn’t we?”
“I intend to, my lord,” I said, feeling that I’d somehow won this particular skirmish. His last comment about the performance we were to watch made little sense to me, but I let it pass. Formal entertainments like the one we would soon see were the purview of specially hired performers, not guests.
But before the hour was over, I would learn exactly how wrong—how very wrong—my assumption could be.
THREE
The music was unfamiliar to me, driven by small drums that a seated musician held balanced on his crossed legs. The two other men played some sort of flutes, their keening notes darting over and around the melody in a strangely hypnotic harmony. The primal pulse of the drums, created by the drummer’s bare palms, was a rhythm far from the usual genteel Mozart or Handel heard in country manors, yet I found it irresistibly alluring, even seductive, especially in the incense-laden room. Lady Carleigh had indeed contrived a most original entr’acte.
Soon it became clear that the musicians were not the entire entertainment but merely the accompanists. The arched double doors opened, and a man and a woman entered together.
The man was swarthy and handsome, with a long black beard and a mustache that curled upward. He wore full Zouave-style trousers of red silk and a long open robe, richly embroidered with metallic threads that glittered and winked in the murky half-light. On his head was a turban, and large gold hoops hung from his ears.
I wasn’t sure if he was a true foreigner, or perhaps only an English actor in swarthy paint, but it did not matter. He was wonderfully virile and menacing, making it clear that he would be more the villain than the hero of whatever tableau he and the woman would perform.
The woman was small in stature, but voluptuously proportioned. She, too, wore an exotic costume, though it was much more revealing. Her waist was tightly cinched with a wide leather corselet that supported her brazenly naked breasts, draped with jingling necklaces of brass coins. A thick line of kohl decorated her eyes, and her lips, cheeks, and nipples had been reddened with carmine. Her full trousers were gathered at the ankles, much like the man’s, and bangles clattered up and down her bare arms. Fastened closely around her throat was an unusual necklace of gold beads and green gems that was so tall that it forced her to hold her head proudly high. Where the man was dark, she was ivory fair, her white-blond hair streaming over her shoulders and breasts to her waist.
“A harem scene will be presented,” Lady Carleigh announced with relish. “In which the latest Circassian captive must please her pagan master to win his favor and his mercy to preserve her life.”
She clapped her hands, and the tableau began. The man sank back onto a pile of pillows on the floor, the picture of indolence. The woman struck a brief, dramatic pose, her arms arched over her head to display her thrusting breasts, and then began to move, slowly, slowly.
She let the music dictate her movements, her torso twisting sinuously and her painted breasts quivering like ripe fruit on a tree. Still she kept her hands raised, twitching her head to make her hair spill like a fall of pale silk along her back.
Every motion emphasized the exaggerated roll of her hips and buttocks through the silk, and each step of her small white feet sent her gaudy jewelry jingling across her bare skin like another kind of music. In theory her dance was meant to entice the man, but she was aware of h
er larger audience, too, artfully turning and twisting to include every man and woman in the room.
Fascinated, I leaned forward on the bench. I couldn’t deny that the music and the dancer were seducing me as well, and I felt the beguiling rhythm curling through my blood and deep in my belly. The costly dress that I’d earlier thought to be so revealing now seemed as heavy and dull as a nun’s habit, and part of me wished I could throw it off and dance with the same freedom and abandon as the woman before us.
The music quickened, the drum more insistent. The woman threw back her head and kicked one foot high in the air, arching her back impossibly far.
I gasped. As the woman kicked, she revealed that her silken trousers were completely open both in front and in back, offering a provocative glimpse of her private self. What made her nudity all the more shocking was that she’d been shaved clean, revealing every detail of her full-lipped sex. Another kick, another glimpse, glistening red and wet.
One of the gentlemen swore loudly, unable to contain himself.
Could the woman have painted herself there as well? I wondered. At once I imagined the lubricious process of sitting before a mirror with legs spread wide, and the tickling sensation of a brush and paint gliding over my own sex. Or was the dancer simply so aroused by the dance that she’d blossomed like an open rose?
I’d certainly never shown myself in such a state to my husband, Arthur. If I’d ever managed to become so visibly aroused, he would have been appalled.
But what if I looked like that to Lord Savage?
I stole a glance at him sitting beside me, curious to see his response to the woman’s performance. He sat with his head resting on his bent arm and his gaze intent and focused.
But he wasn’t looking at the performance. He was watching me.
My cheeks flaming, I looked quickly away, back to the dancer. He’d accused me before of being a voyeur, and I’d denied it. Now he had the proof that I enjoyed watching others, yet I found I did not care.
No, it went far beyond that: I was glad of it. For him to prefer to watch me watching (oh, it was so tangled!) and to concentrate on my reaction rather than on the lewd entr’acte was in itself wildly exciting, and enough to make my heart race even faster.
Yet, soon I was drawn back into the performance. For the first time the woman dropped her arms, and came to dance directly before the man on the cushions. Still shimmying, she bent her knees and parted her legs so that the open trousers fell open to bare her completely. She slid her hands over her hips and the juncture of her thighs, her fingers framing her seductive core. She arched close to the man, offering herself as blatantly as was possible.
“Enough,” the man barked, quickly rising to his feet as the woman sank down to crouch on her heels. “Down!”
The woman shook her hair back over her shoulders and knelt before him. With deft fingers, she opened his trousers and drew his cock and balls free of the crimson silk. He was already erect, and his sizable cock eagerly sprang forward into her fingers. She parted her painted lips and took his cock into her mouth, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked him deeper.
The man closed his eyes and groaned with pleasure as he rocked his hips against the woman’s mouth. He tangled his dark fingers into her pale hair to hold her head so firmly that she couldn’t have pulled back even if she’d wished it.
I watched it all with breathless fascination. I’d heard whispers of this act, knowing it was practiced by the French, but to see it performed—ah, who would have guessed it would be so exciting?
How full the woman’s mouth must be, even into her throat, and yet she greedily sucked harder. I tried to imagine how the man’s cock must taste, how it must fill her mouth and press against her tongue. How powerful in turn the woman must feel, to be able to give this man such obvious pleasure!
The man was clearly approaching his climax, his eyes squeezed shut and his face contorted as his hips jerked more rapidly. I knew the pair were players hired by Lady Carleigh, yet this was not pretend. This was real, passion straining for release, and I could not look away. My own body was on fire, too, my breasts tight and my quim so wet and aching in sympathy that I surreptitiously pressed my thighs tightly together, hoping for some sort of relief myself.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. The man pushed the woman away and his rigid cock slipped free from her mouth. She bent down meekly at his feet with her head bowed, her hair falling around her face like a veil, and he shoved aside her hair to uncover the wide jeweled necklace.
He fumbled with the necklace, turning it around her throat until he found a loop that was part of the design, and then from his sleeve he withdrew a length of chain and fastened it to the loop. The woman was chained like a dog, the glittering necklace now a leashed collar, and she looked up at him like a dog, too, still crouching and waiting for her master’s command.
“Kneel,” he ordered curtly, and without hesitation the woman turned about on her hands and knees. Her hair briefly tangled in the leash, and impatiently the man wrapped the chain around his hand and snapped it back, jerking her head with it and making her yelp with pain. Apparently that was what he desired, for then he let the chain slack.
Swiftly she lowered her shoulders to the floor and raised her hips in the air, the open halves of her trousers sliding apart to reveal the perfect white moons of her bottom with her pouting, wet sex below. Yet, despite how the woman must have suffered, she was clearly aroused, her breathing so ragged that her whole body shook as she waited for the man’s final assault.
I was shaking, too, not only with the shock of what I was witnessing but with the excitement it roused within me, forcing me to clutch my hands together in a tight knot in my lap to keep some manner of self-control.
How had I never known of such things? Why had I been kept so blindly innocent?
The man paused, breathing hard as he studied the woman’s shameless presentation before him for a long moment. Surely he would take her now, I thought; she was nearly begging him to do it. Surely he would plunge that gleaming, purpled cock into her, and give them both what they wanted.
But instead he raised his hand and struck the woman hard across her offered bottom with the flat of his palm, so hard that he pushed her forward across the floor. Again he struck her, and again after that, the blows flying until her once-pearly skin glowed fiery red with the marks of his hand.
Only then did he fall upon her, twisting the chain around his wrist to hold her steady as he drove his cock into her greedy core. After so much delay, neither of them could last long, and over the music the woman’s frenzied cries rose higher and higher until they reached a crescendo of need. When at last she spent, she screamed with her release, her whole body bucking and shuddering from the force of it. That was enough to fetch the man as well, who with his final thrust collapsed atop her, writhing together as she wrung the last drop of seed and pleasure from his cock.
Even before they’d finished, the audience began to applaud, with many of the gentlemen coming to their feet with cries of “brava, bravo.” It was, I thought, exactly the same display of genteel approval that they’d grant the performers in an opera or a play on the London stage—not that a performance like this one would ever grace the boards at Covent Garden.
The couple slowly untangled themselves and rose to their feet, their hair and costumes plastered to their sweaty bodies as they took their bows hand in hand. As the woman curtseyed before Lady Carleigh, the opening in her trousers again slipped open, showing her partner’s seed as it trickled wetly down her thighs.
Yet, for me, the spell of the performance was still not broken. My entire body felt on edge and unfulfilled, the tension almost unbearable as those around me laughed and chatted. I forced myself to take a deep breath, to swallow, to relax, to try to calm both my racing heart and the ache of desire within me.
Slowly I opened my clasped hands. My fingers were numb for having been so tightly clenched, and my palms were marked with white half-moons from my nail
s.
Finally I dared to look again to Lord Savage.
He was smiling. Smiling at me.
He didn’t say anything, nor did I. His smile spoke more loudly of desire than words ever could, and anticipation raced through me.
“I hope you enjoyed my little entr’acte, Mrs. Hart,” Lady Carleigh said cheerfully beside me. “Those two are wonderfully accomplished, aren’t they?”
“Yes—yes, they are, my lady,” I stammered, turning toward the viscountess. “It was most enjoyable.”
“I am so glad,” Lady Carleigh said. “Especially because that is only the beginning of our evening’s entertainments.”
Gracefully the viscountess rose, clapping her gloved hands twice for silence, and all her guests turned toward her.
“Very well, my dear friends,” she began. “Half of you are already well aware of our next divertissement, and half of you are not, being newcomers to Wrenton. For your benefit, I shall explain.”
She smiled, letting the anticipation build.
“With so many delightful possibilities for companionship in our company,” she continued, “we have over time devised an amusing way to make the selection a bit easier. It’s also a way for you who have visited here before to welcome those who’ve not yet had the, ah, pleasure.”
Several of the guests laughed knowingly at that.
The viscountess merely smiled again.
“To begin,” she said, “I ask that all of you lovely first-time guests—as well as those of you who have chosen to play that role again—return to your rooms. There you’ll find entertaining costumes that I’ve had designed especially for you, my newest guests. I ask that you change your attire, and return to us here as soon as possible. Go now, my dears; the sooner you’ve changed, the sooner our charming festivities, our little game, will truly begin.”
I rose, at last beginning to recover from the performance.
“Are we to have a masquerade, my lady?” I asked. “If I’d known, I would have brought my own costume. I’ve a most splendid one, a Russian fantasy by Monsieur Poiret.”