by Lauren Smith
“Damned cat. What do these fancy lords need with it? Not catching any rats, if you ask me.”
Jonathan shook his head and focused on slipping behind the cook unseen. She paused her stirring and wiped at her brow and then straightened to turn. He was almost to the door that led to the rest of the house when she spotted him.
“Oi! What are you doing in ’ere?”
He froze and turned to look at the squashed face of the grumpy cook. “I’m late, and I’m worried they won’t let me in. I thought if I snuck through the kitchens…” Please, Lord, let this work.
The cook flashed a toothy smile. “New, are you? You’re prettier than the rest. That pale hair, those green eyes—I bet the lassies love you, don’ they?”
“Yes, sometimes.” He swallowed, praying she wouldn’t see through his deception. But she seemed to like him. His looks had always been an asset. Even his older brother’s former mistresses had wanted to bed him, not that Jonathan ever dared to tell his brother that. The Duke of Essex had a powerful right hook.
“Well, go on then. You don’t want to be late for supper. You’ll be needing one of these.” The cook bent and opened a cupboard next to the stove and pulled out a domino mask with the devil’s face painted on it. It left only his nose, mouth, and chin exposed to view. It was a perfect disguise.
“Thank you.”
“You can thank me with a kiss,” the cook suggested, fluttering her short lashes at him.
“Later, I promise,” he offered a way she rakish grin instead.
“Not so fast. I’ll be takin’ me payment now.” She waved the mask out of reach.
“Very well, you tempting lady.” He bent to give her cheek a quick peck, but she moved and gripped his cravat, yanking his face into hers and smashing their lips together.
Startled, he jerked back and hastily grabbed the mask from her hand before she could demand more kisses. She winked at him before he turned away and discreetly wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve.
Good Lord, Audrey, you’d bloody well better be worth all this.
But he knew she was. She was worth paying any price.
He slipped the mask on and stepped into the corridor. A group of men stood in the entryway, drinking heavily. All of them wore black clothing and domino masks like his. He glanced around, his heart pounding as he searched for Audrey, but the room held only men. Where was she? Maybe he could slip away and search the rest of the house?
A booming voice came from the grand stairs above. “Welcome, gentlemen.” Jonathan took shelter behind the men drinking as he studied the man coming down the steps to greet them.
“As the Lord of Lust, I welcome you tonight to our satanic feast.” The man held a black cat in his arms. The cat’s ears were flattened back on its head in fear and fury, but it didn’t claw or spit like Jonathan expected it to. The man who held it, the so-called Lord of Lust, had a familiar voice, but one he couldn’t place.
“Langley, I say…” a drunken man drawled. “Did you finally find that Lady Society? You promised you would—” The man hiccupped. “I’d like to toss her skirts up and—”
The Lord of Lust hissed. “I need not remind you, Lord of Wine, that we must address each other by our sin names, not our true names. Anonymity must be preserved.”
The Lord of Wine chuckled. “Oh…right. Well, did you find her, Lusty?”
The man sighed, clearly feeling his theatrics were going to waste. “I did.”
Langley… Jonathan knew that name. Gerald Langley was a ridiculous but dangerous fool who had recently been publicly exposed for his cruelty and villainy.
And the woman who had dragged his name through the mud was Lady Society.
“So where is she?” another man demanded.
“Coming. I sent her an invitation she couldn’t resist. She foolishly believes she will be getting the better of us. For now, I suggest we all settle into the dining room to drink while we await her arrival.”
The group of men moved into a macabre decorated dining room and took seats at the table. Dozens of candles were lit with wax dripping down, lending a Gothic atmosphere to the entire affair. The “Lord of Lust” sat down, and the black cat hissed and leapt off the table, darting into the hallway.
“Bloody cat.” Langley cursed and poured himself a goblet of wine. He leaned back, a small smile on his lips as he surveyed the rest of his worshipers. When the others joined him, Jonathan snatched up a goblet and took a single sip, attempting to blend in. Why was Audrey coming here, of all places? Surely she didn’t have some mission to spy on these men? They weren’t dangerous, at least not to the Crown. Some hellfire clubs had been known to cause trouble and incite violence in the streets, even riots, but from the looks of it, Langley’s club was merely a chance for men to wallow in debauchery.
So why would Audrey choose this place? Then it hit him. Langley had lured Lady Society here tonight. The infamous columnist who had wrought devastation with her pen against those she felt deserved it.
If Audrey was friends with Lady Society, that would explain everything about today’s article. He wanted to growl. Once he found her, he was going to get her safely away from these men and give her bottom a good whack; then he could hold her close and finally breathe a sigh of relief.
The door to the dining room opened, and the butler showed in a new man. There was something familiar about him. He walked with a tall, upright stance that spoke of nobility handed down through ancient bloodlines. He was nothing like the men at this table, the rude and callous ruffians in fancy clothes but with not one ounce of nobility between them. He kept a close eye on the man, trying to puzzle out the sense of familiarity.
The man smiled at some of the members who were busy telling bawdy jokes, and even though the smile seemed forced, Jonathan finally recognized him—at least he thought he did. Was that James Fordyce, the Earl of Pembroke? Surely he wasn’t a member? He had better sense than this, and he was a good man, too good. He was a friend to the League of Rogues but deemed by the League much too nice and good of heart to be a member himself. Surely the League had not misjudged him? Jonathan liked him immensely, and his instincts weren’t usually wrong.
So why then was James here? The man, if it was James, walked over and sat opposite him. Their eyes locked briefly, but neither spoke.
“Gentlemen!” Langley’s shout silenced the stories and laughter. Jonathan turned to Langley like the rest of the men. With the blazing fire behind him, the man was playing perfectly into his role as a satanic worshiper, and it seemed even the Lord of Wine was getting into the spirit of things. He rose from his chair, the lights from the candles playing with the eerie painted face of the mask he wore. Jonathan shuddered in revulsion.
“Tonight, we have a feast prepared. As I mentioned at our previous meeting, we have several special guests, some ladies with whom you are well acquainted.” Langley paused to allow the men to chuckle at some private club joke. The cruelty in Langley’s voice made Jonathan tense. Please let Audrey be safe at home…or anywhere but here.
Langley continued. “They wish to participate in the dark arts, and we have two delicious young virgin beauties who graciously volunteered to sate our need for the blood of the innocent.”
Jonathan shifted forward in his seat, trying to fight the urge to leap from his chair and rush from the room. All he wanted was to find Audrey and see her safely away from these bastards.
The man beside Jonathan nudged him in the ribs. “I’d like to pluck that ripe fruit. What about you?”
Jonathan made a gruff noise and hoped the men would assume he agreed, but the whole event made him sick. Volunteered. He found that highly unlikely. If there was one thing that mattered to him, it was a woman’s right to choose her lovers. This night would likely be a series of rapes. Whoever these ladies were, they weren’t safe.
Please don’t let Audrey be one of them. Please let her have stayed home.
“Are you prepared?” Langley demanded, with a dark grin just visible belo
w the edges of his mask.
The men in the room whooped and whistled as the dining room doors opened and six ladies came in. They took seats at the empty chairs in between the men at the table.
Langley cleared his throat. “My lords, as the Lord of Lust, let me present our guests to you. The Lady of Sin, the Lady of the Night, the Lady of the Dark Desire, and the Lady of the Bedchamber.”
Jonathan studied the women closely as they were named. But when he reached the last two women, his breath caught. A woman in a red dress and a woman in purple sat beside each other. Each wore half-masks, revealing their faces enough to be familiar to him. The lady in purple was Gillian Beaumont, Audrey’s loyal lady’s maid and friend. And the hellion in the red dress was…
“Audrey.” He said the word aloud, but so softly that no one heard him.
Damnation. She’d come after all. She and Gillian. He would have to somehow rescue them both, and the odds weren’t in his favor tonight.
He shot a glance at James Fordyce. He had a hunch about the man’s presence, and prayed he was right. But even if James could aid him in the rescue, they were still woefully outnumbered.
“Now, last but not least, we have a most esteemed guest amongst us. You recall the scathing, poisonous pen of that bitch who calls herself Lady Society?” Langley spat. Jonathan tensed as the men around him pounded on the table. Audrey jumped, and Jonathan saw the muscles in her throat strain as she tried to remain calm.
“Well, tonight I set the perfect trap and lured Lady Society herself to my door. I let it slip at a ball the other evening that we would be meeting tonight and that she wouldn’t want to miss our entertainment.”
Audrey’s face drained of all color, and her lips parted. Jonathan stared in horror and understanding. Audrey wasn’t here to help her friend Lady Society.
She is Lady Society.
And that meant everything she’d said to him in that column had to be the truth, hadn’t it? To leave her alone, that she didn’t want him.
A deep sense of shame threatened to rob his body of breath, but he clung to his resolve. He had to focus on saving her now. It didn’t matter how she felt about him; that wouldn’t stop him from doing what was right.
The consequences of Lady Society’s crusades were finally catching up to her. And now she was going to get them killed.
2
Audrey Sheridan was facing the worst night of her life.
Her mad dash from the seductive arms of Jonathan St. Laurent at the Midnight Garden earlier that afternoon had sent her on a reckless crusade this evening. And that mission was now crumbling around her.
It was all Jonathan’s fault. He had the audacity to waltz into her life at the worst possible moment. When she had decided to marry him after they first met, he’d simply ignored her at every turn. Then when she decided she no longer wanted to marry him because he continued with his cold, aloof manner, he’d ruined that as well by kissing her senseless, showing her a glorious world of pleasure she’d never known existed. And of course, he’d had to rush into the middle of her espionage training like a raging bull, insisting she was the daft one, pulling her into his arms and…
Well. That had been that. She’d dashed away from everything those lips of his promised and straight into this perilous situation. She’d been so desperate to forget her heartbreak that she’d decided to infiltrate a silly hellfire club to uncover the identities of the men involved. She’d heard too many stories of the injustices done to women by these fools, and she intended to expose them in her Lady Society column.
Now she was facing the consequences of her distracted focus. Both she and her lady’s maid, Gillian, were now trapped and at the mercy of the gentlemen of the hellfire club. She would never forgive herself if she couldn’t save them both from these ridiculous fools, the so-called Unholy Sinners of Hell. Did they not appreciate the absurdity of their name? Unholy. Sinners. Of Hell. It was a nonsense attempt at sounding perversely self-important. Audrey would roll her eyes, but the fact was that even with all that pretentiousness and pompousness, Gerald Langley and his inebriated friends were terrifying. Even this deep into their cups, they managed to make her feel utterly boxed in.
You’ve stepped in it now, girl. Audrey chastised herself and shot a glance at Gillian, who sat behind her. She’d intended to leave her friend behind, but Gillian insisted that they had worked together to form the identity of Lady Society, and she wasn’t about to let her mistress go into this danger alone.
And that was how she and Gillian now faced the revenge of the atrocious man she’d shamed in her column. The man’s crimes were many, but she had exposed him for an awful wager he’d made to ruin a lovely young woman’s innocence for sport. Audrey couldn’t stand for that. She’d made it her mission to ensure that Gerald Langley was no longer fit company for any public circles and her attempt at heroism had led her right into his trap.
She’d thought she’d been clever about it, bribing two ladies not to show up tonight, and she and Gillian had planned to take their place. But somehow Langley had discovered the switch. In fact, he had counted on it.
Damn Jonathan’s mouth and his kisses. If she hadn’t been so distracted by him, she might not have fallen for Langley’s tricks. She shivered at the leer she saw behind Langley’s mask as he prowled toward her and Gillian.
“Well, tonight I set the perfect trap and lured Lady Society herself to my door. I let it slip at a ball the other evening that we would be meeting tonight and that she wouldn’t want to miss our entertainment. But which is Lady Society, I wonder?” He paused dramatically. Maybe if she announced herself to be Lady Society, the men would lose interest in Gillian.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter. We will have the pleasure of having both of you.” Langley snapped his fingers. The man on Audrey’s right and the man on Gillian’s left grabbed their arms, jerking them both behind the chair and binding them with rope. The rope cut into Audrey’s bare skin, but she let the pain fuel her rage.
“How dare you, Mr. Langley! I’ll do more than write a bloody article destroying you. I’ll have your bollocks on a silver platter!” She finished with a low growl. She meant it. Langley’s face darkened with rage where the mask showed his mouth and chin. A few men around the table tittered behind their goblets like schoolboys.
Oh dear…
“How dare I? My dear lady,” Langley snarled, “you came here of your own free will. No one forced you here. I daresay there are few who would have any sympathy for a woman who willingly went to a hellfire club. Your reputation will be worthless and your words unfit for print. And that’s only the beginning of what I have planned for you tonight. You wrecked my family, my name—everything! And I will destroy you for it!”
“You got only what you deserved, you bastard!” she snapped.
Langley’s eyes blazed like hot coals before he regained control of himself. Then he looked her way again and smirked.
“And you have the mouth of a whore. I plan to treat you like one.”
She gasped, and her stomach knotted with dread. He could do anything he liked to her and Gillian. She had no way to stop him, and she had just provoked him.
Lord, Jonathan was right—I am trouble.
“Gag them. I wish for silence while we enjoy our feast.” Langley snapped his fingers, and the men on either side of Audrey and Gillian suddenly shoved handkerchiefs in their mouths. Audrey sparked with rage, and she shouted at him despite the gag. The men around her laughed, as though being silenced had also made her unimportant. She glanced around, taking in her surroundings. Twelve men, at least seven servants, a butler, three footmen, a cook and maid, two large windows facing the street. She committed it all to memory, her mind flashing from plan to plan as she tried to think of a way for her and Gillian to escape.
Langley chuckled. “Now I’m famished.” He retrieved a bell by the end of the table near his seat and shook it. The dining room door opened and the footmen entered, bringing the trays with the first course.
“My lord, what about…?” A man close to Audrey pointed at a single empty chair.
“Oh, right.” Langley rolled his eyes and caught the attention of one of the footmen by waving a hand. “Bring in His Unholiness.”
Audrey cringed. His Unholiness? Surely they didn’t claim to have an actual devil, or even the devil to worship?
The footman brought a black cat into the room and placed it gingerly on the table, sliding it a plate of roasted chicken bits. The cat was exceedingly handsome, with a shiny black coat and yellow eyes that glowed in the room’s light. He surveyed every person in the room before he lowered his head, sniffed at the chicken, and began to eat.
Langley must have noticed her staring at the feline.
“Pleased to meet our guest, Lady Society? He’s the oldest member, you see.” Langley’s tone turned falsely solemn. “Ancient, you might say.”
Ancient? Surely he couldn’t believe the cat was the devil himself? Langley was clearly mad. All these men were mad! Gillian tensed beside her, testing her bonds, and Audrey did the same.
Thank heavens Gillian keeps her head in a crisis. Audrey knew she was not as composed as her friend in such dire situations. It was one of the many reasons she loved Gillian like a sister. While most ladies kept a polite, emotional distance from their staff, she and Gilly had been fast friends ever since they met when they were eighteen.
And I put her life at risk.
She caught Gillian’s eye and tried to give a reassuring look, then focused on a plan to get them out of there. If they could find a way to get their wrists freed and the men chose to remove them from the dining room, they could perhaps escape. The front door wasn’t far from the dining room, and if they could reach the street they could call for help or find someplace to hide.
Yes, that could work. It had to.
By the time the feast—if one could call the small portions such a thing—had ended, Langley rose from his chair and held up a pair of black dice. The room hushed.
“Each man shall toss the sacred dice to determine who gets the joy of bedding the one in the purple gown. Then we will cast the die for Lady Society. But rest assured, we have all night, and every man gets a chance with both ladies.”