seemed the epitome of pointlessness.
The club’s third owner, Jacob Huntington, had insisted that Fred was merely jaded. That if he could find some fresh, untried iniquity it would whet his appetite for life.
What a disappointment it must be that neither women nor gaming, or any overindulgence Fred could imagine, was as satisfying as knowing that when he was there to watch over it, the club ran like a well-oiled machine. Jake saw to it that the membership was limited to only the most sought-after dilettantes. After they had joined, Oliver made sure that the entertainments were every bit as excessive as they could have hoped. The food and drink had no equal in London. The games had the highest stakes.
Once the stage had been set for debauchery, the owners’ jobs were almost ended. One did not need to order people to do that which they wanted in the first place. But Fred was the one to make sure everyone who passed the threshold stayed within the bounds of reasonable behaviour. When they left, he saw to it that they kept their mouths shut about what occurred and whom they had seen. There were no fist fights, no embarrassing scenes, and no females shrieking down the main stairs that they were being forced against their will. The women found at Vitium et Virtus, whether members or employees, were all ready and willing to sin.
If there was scandal, he dealt with it, quickly, quietly, and with as little drama as was possible. Before he had returned from Waterloo and taken over the day-to-day running of the place, they had given little thought to security. It had been naïve of them to believe that a den of libertines had no need of structure. That carelessness had reduced the initial number of owners from four to three. Friends were precious. He would not lose another.
Tonight, after his cursory examination of the revels, Fred meant to lock himself in the office with a glass of brandy and a good book. If they caught him at it, Oliver and Jake would be appalled and declare that some portion of him must have died on the battlefield to leave him so indifferent to the activities around him.
Perhaps they were right. He glanced at the laughing people surrounding him, utterly unmoved. Should a place of such unfettered pleasure be so bone-numbingly boring?
But as he passed by the last doorway before the office, the low rumble of the crowd piqued his deadened curiosity. This was the space set aside for the auctioning of favours. There, masked courtesans might throw over their usual protectors for an evening and go away with whatever gentleman had the most money to offer them. If they decided to drop their disguise and reveal their beautiful faces, it was only after the bedroom door was closed.
It was a titillating thrill for all involved. One might find oneself sampling the favourite of the most powerful men in England. Or discover that one’s own mistress, or worse yet, one’s own wife, had grown so bored she’d decided to offer herself to any man willing to indulge her vanity.
Tonight, there was something about the fevered sound of the bidding that seemed wrong. Once Fred pushed past the crowd by the door it took only a glance to see that this was no ordinary auction. In front of him, the auctioneer shouted, ‘How much, gentlemen, for a maidenhead? Turn out your pockets. Dig deep into your purses. Surely this beauty is worth more than the paltry bids I’ve heard.’
She stood on the small stage at the far end of the room as if floating on the cloud of tobacco smoke that hung over the men gathered at her feet. But the greasy light shining through the haze seemed to purify to an opalescent glow as it touched her skin.
And there was so much skin. Desire flooded him, sudden and unusual. She was beautiful and he wanted her. But another part of him wanted to rush forward and throw a coat over those bare shoulders to shield her from the roving eyes of the crowd. It was a sacrilege to look upon such untouched perfection. And she was an innocent. He was sure. Whores sometimes pretended to be virgins in these little games, hiding sponges of blood between their legs to fool their clients into believing they’d bought a deflowering. But they could not hide the look in the jaded eyes behind their masks, the knowing smile, or the lack of blush in their unrouged cheeks.
This girl was different. The downward cast of her masked head was not some ironic parody of shyness—it was genuine discomfort at being scrutinised. Her body was devoid of blemish except for the glow of embarrassment at her nakedness and the attention it had garnered.
Not quite naked, but near enough. She had not bothered with stays, chemise or stockings under the gown she wore, which was of a muslin so fine that it might as well have been a cloud of mist. When she moved, in the slow, awkward dance of one unaccustomed to seduction, the curtain of blonde hair that shielded her body parted revealing first a curve, then a dimple, and occasionally a glimpse of rose-tipped breasts, the hollow of her navel, or the delta of blonde curls between her legs.
As if that was not enough to make a man’s breeches tight, the gold cord that tied her garments into a semblance of a classic tunic had been braided into a chain. The end of it wound around her throat and loosely bound each wrist. It incited fantasies of a captive slave at auction, unable to refuse any depravity a man could imagine for her.
Like the other frenzied bidders in the room, some dark corner of his soul was stirring. Had he ever lain with a virgin? If so, she had not been as sweet and untried as this one. The girl before him could not possibly know the fate that awaited her or the depths that a man might sink to when given the chance to indulge his most forbidden whims. One had only to look at Nash Bowles’s reaction to see what was about to occur. That disgusting toad was every bit as recognisable as Pendleton had been, and the wad of banknotes he waved was easily the largest in the room. He was all but salivating as he shouted his bids.
Of course he would be here. Nash had often expressed his taste for untried blondes, the younger the better. Frederick had told him on more than one occasion that this was a club for mutual pleasure, not a dockside brothel. Then he’d made Snyder, the porter, escort him out the door. Tonight, Snyder stood behind the girl on stage, arms crossed on his chest, doing nothing to prevent what was going on.
It was all too much. The fact that Fred encouraged high stakes at the table and turned a blind eye to Dionysian revels did not mean that he had become a procurer for deviants. If he allowed this auction to continue, that would be exactly what he was. Without another thought, he grabbed for his purse and turned out the contents.
Not enough. So he stripped the gold ring from the finger on his hand and held it in the air. ‘Ten thousand pounds!’
At this, a hush fell over the crowd and the auctioneer turned to him.
Disgusted, he tossed the ring towards the stage where it landed at the man’s feet. ‘It is easily worth that. I have more. Should you refuse it, I will back it with a cheque for twice, or thrice that amount.’
‘No fair,’ cried someone from the crowd.
‘Foul,’ cried another, to an increase of grumbling. ‘You think that since you run this club you can do what you like in it?’
Frederick grabbed the cat-o’-nine-tails from the comic-opera Satan who had followed him into the room and waved it menacingly over his head. It was little more than a toy, but combined with the ferocity of his tone, it was enough to send the men around him scurrying for the corners. ‘Do I think I can do as I like? Since I am the one to set the rules, I think I can. I will have the lot of you chucked out into the street and banned if you doubt me.’
He smiled, relishing the same surge of power he got while frightening soldiers into obedience in Portugal. ‘But that will not be all, you sad bunch of reprobates. Do you wish your fathers, your wives, and your daughters to know what a pack of disgusting, drunken lechers you are? If this room is not empty by the time I count three, I will turn the club books over to the tattle sheets. If you force my hand,
