by Regina Darcy
As she pondered the matter, the sun began its descent and the verdant tapestry of England in the summer accrued a multitude of shadows that concealed the bright flowers and majestic trees.
The hours passed and it was night-time.
It had been a long day and Phoebe felt her eyelids begin to droop heavily as the darkening sky above and her own weariness made it hard to stay awake.
“Phe?”
Prudence, whose senses were too heightened for anything so mundane as weariness to overcome her, heard the sound of her sister’s breathing alter and realised that her twin had fallen asleep.
Prudence rose from her side of the carriage and crossed over to Phoebe’s side, where she placed her folded shawl beneath her sister’s head. Phoebe murmured in her sleep but did not waken.
Prudence returned to her seat. They should arrive soon. It was best if Phoebe slept now, for who could tell when the peace of slumber would return to them?
The Earl might be any manner of cad.
Perhaps his London townhouse was staffed by servants of low esteem who would neglect to bring their bathwater or forget to take their trays. What if his home was an indicator of debts and was ill-furnished, with costs trimmed by not lighting fires in the private rooms?
Perhaps he had a mistress under his roof, a jealous, sniping female who would expect the twins to function as her servants. All manner of debauchery could await them. Yes, she thought as she rose again to place her sister’s shawl over her sleeping form, best to sleep now. Circumstances might require them to remain awake at night and to take turns sleeping during the day, lest they be unprepared for whatever trials might be in store.
The world beyond the carriage window was dark. Mercilessly dark, Prudence thought. But suddenly, as the carriage made a turn, she beheld a street which seemed to be ablaze with light, so much so that it seemed as if it must house supernatural beings. As the carriage drew closer, she saw that it was one house which was lighting up the dark area around it with such profligacy. With the aid of the light from the house, she could identify a long row of carriages in front of the structure. Was there a gala event of some sort going on? Or, her mind raced upon her former musings, was he holding a bacchanalian revel of such wicked hedonism that voyeurs were indulging in their most unbridled desires, watching as scenes of unabated lust took place before them?
Did he not even care that his wards, two defenceless young women dressed in mourning for their dead father, were arriving today? He had to be aware of the date, for she had sent the message herself and had been assured by the innkeeper’s wife, who certainly seemed a most reliable and efficient woman, that the message would arrive before the carriage.
“Phoebe,” she said, gently shaking her sister’s shoulder, “we are quite nearly at our destination and we must look presentable, no matter what ill-natured fate may be upon us.”
Phoebe slowly opened her eyes. “Where—.”
“We are in the carriage, approaching the London home of the Earl of Henton,’ Prudence said as she briskly shook out the folds of her black mourning dress and lowered the veil of her hat. “We must not look as if we lack breeding, even if, as I fear, we are about to enter the domicile of a man whose manners will prove him to be ill-bred.”
Phoebe stirred. “You must not think so, Prue,” she protested as she handed her sister the shawl that had served as her pillow. She smiled as she said it; Prudence was such a worry wort. “If the Earl truly is as terrible as you fear, then it may be our duty to reform him.”
Prudence stared at her sister with matching eyes of deep green eyes that could rival the beauty of emeralds.
“Bounders do not wish to be reformed! Papa did not want us in England with him whilst he was travelling the path to hell. I doubt if the Earl is any more inclined to see the reformation of his character.”
“Prudence,” Phoebe asked in an urgent tone, “you do not think that Papa is damned and in hell, surely?”
“I cannot think otherwise. While Mama was alive, he was, I suppose, a man of some morality, but when she died, he abandoned any effort at following Christian values.”
“Oh, Prue, that cannot be. Mama would have spoken up for him in heaven,” Phoebe said positively. “She would have been most persuasive.”
Prudence would not, for the world, cast aspersions on her sister’s rosy view of the afterlife. For her part, while she was absolutely certain that their beloved and blameless mother was in residence with the angels, she was equally sure that Papa was frantically trying to beat out the flames of hell that would be licking at his limbs even now, while all the demons of Satan laughed. It was how the sinful were punished. She had heard the Rector speak on this matter during Sunday sermons many times and there could be no mistaking his meaning. Alas, Papa was in hell and it was likely that the Earl of Henton would, when his time on earth was over, would follow the same path. It was not her duty to reform him; it was her duty to protect herself and her sister from the transgressive nature of his degenerate conduct.
“Come, Phoebe,” Prudence commanded when the carriage stopped. “We have arrived.” She made the announcement in sombre tones, indicating that reaching this particular destination was not a desirous one.
The carriage door opened and the driver stood there to help them out. “Miss Connolly,” he said, speaking to Prudence and nodding at Phoebe as a means to include both young ladies in the reference. “I shall bring your trunks up so that the servants can take them to your rooms. . . it seems as if they’re ready to welcome you,” he said doubtfully, eyeing the house and the lights from inside which cast such a glow about the manor.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Prudence said. “I do not expect a welcome. We may well be told to scrub the kitchen or cook supper, we have no idea.”
“My sister is jesting,” Phoebe said quickly when she saw the look of horror upon the driver’s face. “I am sure that all will be well and we thank you for your care of us during this journey.”
“Miss Connolly, you’ll both be in my prayers,” the driver assured her fervently as he tugged at the front of his hat.
“We shall need them,” Prudence muttered. She dusted off an invisible speck of dust and turned to her sister, “Phoebe, shall we venture to enter the dragon’s lair?”
“I think, dear Prue that we would do better to find out if a dragon lives there before we call it such.”
The sisters, side by side, walked up to the front door together. Behind them, the driver walked at a more hesitant pace, apprehensive at what might be encountered behind the door.
Prudence raised her hand and applied the brass knocker with resolve.
It was opened by a man who, by his attire, was clearly the butler. He was a man of elder years, dressed properly in black. He had sparse grey hair which encircled his head but was absent in the middle, and a cold, masterful countenance as he looked upon them with a stern gaze. He would have been the very model of a lordly servant were it not for the laurel wreath around his head which perfectly tracked the route of the thinning hair on his scalp.
Prudence began to speak and then found that she could not think of what to say.
“You are Miss Connolly and Miss Phoebe Connolly?” the butler said as if there were nothing untoward in his appearance.
“We are,” Phoebe said in the gap of silence, which followed his query. “The carriage driver has our trunks. May he bring them in?”
“Certainly,” the butler told her, opening the door. “The footmen will take them to your chambers.”
In response, a man came forward and picked up one of the trunks. “Very good, Benton,” he said to the butler. “I’ll see to this, and the others as well.”
“Thank you, Lord Beaton,” the butler replied not at all perturbed that a member of the aristocracy was undertaking a servant's tasks.
The man who had been addressed as Lord Beaton gave the Connolly twins a bow.
“Dreadful sorry not to be more welcoming,” he said, “but I haven’t qu
ite got the manner of this deuced sheet and I don’t want to offend anybody. Curse Henton and his outrageous notions!”
The twins watched as he climbed the staircase, a task made perilous not only by the weight of the trunk but also by the fact that he was wearing a garment which would have been familiar to Socrates or Demosthenes, but was not so readily navigated by the exposed limbs of a man of nineteenth-century England.
“Why is that man wearing Greek attire?” Prudence demanded when she had recovered herself.
“The Earl is hosting a party,” Benton told her succinctly.
“What sort of party?”
“A philosophers’ party,” he replied as one of the doors in the corridor opened to admit a gentleman dressed in a toga and a woman at his side. She was dressed in what seemed to be the feminine version of his fashion, with her hair loose and tumbling from her headpiece and her bosom rather more exposed than was customary in English frocks.
“Aspasia!” the young man called out. “My darling Aspasia! Surrender to me your storied charms—dash it, the laurel wreath is slipping. However did they manage it?”
“Hurry, we shall be late! Apollo is about to play!”
Another door opened to reveal a trio, also clad in Greek attire.
“You’ll miss Apollo!” chided the man who was ringed by two young women.
“It’s this deuced laurel wreath,” complained the other gentleman who had cried out for Aspasia. “It simply will not stay in place. How do you manage, Benton?”
“I manage as I must, my lord,” the butler replied.
The man with the rebellious laurel wreath came closer.
“What manner of nymph are you?” he asked the twins.
“We are not nymphs at all,” Prudence told him in a forbidding manner. “We are Lord Henton’s wards, arrived from France.”
“Cyprians,” the man said hopefully. “All that black is rather off-putting if you don’t mind me saying so. No one else is wearing black, you should know.”
“You are barely wearing anything at all!” Prudence said. She turned to the butler. “Will you direct us to our rooms? It is plain that we are not expected at this hour and we do not wish to intrude upon this orgy any longer than we are obliged to do so.”
“I shall take you myself,” said Benton. “Pray, follow me.”
“Yes, we shall. Phoebe, let’s go to our rooms before something—Phoebe!”
Her sister was staring in a fascinated stupor at the men and women who were appearing through one of the doors down the corridor. One woman was holding a lyre against her breasts, but the hands that were playing it did not belong to her, but instead, to the man who was standing inappropriately close behind her.
“Phoebe!” Prudence called.
“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” Phoebe said, forcing herself to look away from the tableau. “Really, Prudence, do you remember when we performed as the vestal virgins at school? I do not think that these actors are quite as authentic as Miss Larking required us to be.”
“Phoebe!” Prudence hissed in a fierce whisper. “These are not actors. They are debauched revellers who are all consigned to serve Satan himself!”
TWO
Apollo, it must be said, played abysmally and Christopher Ambrose, the Earl of Henton, who was rather a purist where music was concerned, found that he could not endure the dreadful slaughtering sounds that the application of Apollo’s fingers upon the lyre generated.
“You’re leaving, Henton?” protested one of the guests, who was able to ignore the abysmal tune being played because his ears were covered by the rich mane of his mistress’ red hair.
“I’m seeking the Oracle at Delphi,” the Earl replied cryptically. “I shall return when she has interpreted a riddle for me.”
The man looked momentarily confused.
“Oh. Very good, then. I’ll have a go at her later. I quite like riddles.”
“What do you mean you’ll have a go at her?” screeched his mistress, whose colour of hair matched her temper.
“To solve a riddle, of course,” her lover replied. “She’s the Oracle, after all.”
Christopher Ambrose left them.
There was a time when the uninhibitedness of such a night would have tantalised all of his senses until he sought to outdo the most debauched behaviour.
Not so tonight. He was on his way to becoming complete imbibed and he wondered why he had invited these people to his home.
The women were exquisite, their perfect forms invitingly offered in flimsy garbs which left their shoulders and arms-and no small portion of their legs, Christopher notice—exposed to view in a fashion which did not, he mused, authentically reflect the habits of the ancient Greeks.
“Darling Zeus,” intoned one woman approaching him, “King of the Gods. Allow me to serve you as Leda served the master of Olympus,” the woman said as she knelt before him, the bodice of her garment open and her breasts concealed only by her long, unbound hair.
“Not just now, Leda,” Christopher replied. “Hera is about here somewhere and there would be a dreadful row if she saw us cavorting.” He nimbly slid out of her embrace and continued on his way.
Really, were these people his friends? He recognised the faces of some of the men from the more gentlemanly setting of White’s, but he could not recall what had inspired him to invite them all to his home.
The Greek parties that he had enjoyed with such abandon in his younger days were, it seemed, a pursuit, which belonged to his past.
It had been a fitting setting for the man he had been before he took over the earldom upon the death of his father. Those unbridled days when his name had been a byword for all manner of lascivious excess seemed to him to belong to someone else. And yet those days had been his and he supposed he must have enjoyed them, else why had he acquired such a reputation for outdoing the most celebrated rogues of the ton with his antics.
The chariot race with human steeds remained a legend, even now, five years after it had taken place. They’d have gotten in far more trouble than they had if not for the fact that Prinny himself had been driving one of the chariots . . .
Such a waste of effort and money. Youth was a habit, Christopher decided as he opened doors along the way to make sure that none of his guests was indulging in the sort of behaviour which would excite not only scandal, but legal action.
It was a habit which was best broken as soon as possible.
He was now seven-and-twenty and felt that he had not achieved his maturity until last year.
His mother had died, then his father, and all of a sudden, the vast stage upon which he had played his devilish part had suddenly been cast into darkness.
He was responsible for the earldom, the lands, the rents, the tenants, the harvest, the commerce of the village, the social activity of the county, the hunt, the enforcement of the laws and the choosing of the magistrates, one of which was himself, and without warning, his youth had ended.
It had not ended so quickly in London, to be sure, where one could forget that an entire community depended upon one’s dedication to duty. Yes in the capital is was too easy to resume one’s bawdy entertainments.
In the county, he was obliged to be the lord of the region. But here, in London, dear, depraved, London, where sin smiled upon the initiated from the dawn of the sun until the night undressed itself, he could still indulge in those pursuits which would have scandalised the vicar who dined at Henton House on Sundays after services when Christopher was in the countryside.
In the county, he was the sober Earl.
In London, he was Henton the satyr.
He was not quite sure why tonight’s event, which allowed him to indulge to the fullest of his capacity for decadence, seemed to be losing its savour.
Perhaps he wasn’t drunk enough, he though… The only solution was to drink more until he was sufficiently sodden. Benton would handle the rest of the evening.
Wasn’t that what butlers were for?
He opened
the next door along the corridor. This one was occupied, not by a voluptuous goddess or a tunic-clad Spartan, or a coupling of the two, but by a petite woman all in black fabric that matched the colour of her tresses. Only her creamy skin broke the dark tapestry of her appearance.
She had heard the door open and she fixed her gaze upon him. The candles in the room revealed that she had green eyes rimmed in thick black lashes. The effect was intoxicating and he felt a stirring in his body that neither Leda nor Aspasia nor any other of the Greeks bearing gifts had caused thus far.
“Lord Henton, I presume,” the vision greeted him.
“Delphi speaks,” he said lightly, marvelling that his friends, knowing him and aware that a man as jaded as he had become with the granting of every wicked whim must need something new and titillating to stir his senses. “Shall we solve a riddle together?”
She began to speak but could not; his lips imprisoned her words before she could release them.
The Oracle of Delphi did not need to be understood; she was too cryptic, too mysterious, for her prophecies to be readily comprehended by mortal man. No, he would drink the words like nectar from her lips.
Christopher pulled the woman closer, her body taut and firm beneath the calyx of her garment.
How clever his friends were, to procure a Cyprian for his amorous entertainment and to leave her here in this room until he should go and search for her. How astonishingly crafty.
He felt her lips part beneath his probing mouth and he chuckled. A temptress for his pleasure and an Oracle to be sure, for did not the Oracle of Delphi use her tongue to utter the wisdom that man could not understand.
Christopher held her close, indecently, ardently, and improperly close as all his unleashed needs began to rise within him, like lava in a volcano about to erupt.
He heard the eruption, a crash of glass which was not at all, he was about to say, how he envisioned a volcano unleash its molten fury. But it seemed that the volcano was operating upon its own will, and as he fell to the floor, he wondered dazedly where the Oracle had vanished to and why he was suddenly, without warning, on the floor. Then his senses clashed in a bewildering collision of sound and sight and hearing and he was aware of nothing at all.