House of Dark Delights (5 page)

On a red silken couch in the corner, two men positioned the lady with the split skirt on her hands and knees so that one of them could roger her from behind as she took the other in her mouth. A bewigged gentleman whom Darius recognized from newspaper illustrations as Frederick, Prince of Wales, bent a masked lady over the back of that same couch and canted up her petticoats. He lubricated his weapon with spittle and slammed it into her so hard she shrieked.

“Good show, Your Highness,” praised a bacon-faced fellow in a too-tight, fancily embroidered coat who'd come over to watch the bawdy tableau while working himself off. “Give her a taste of the royal cutlass,” he grunted as he thrust into a lace handkerchief. “Stab it in and twist it! Split the wench! Spank her arse! That's it, good and hard. Aye, that's it…”

“What have we here?” The voice was male, softly deep, German accented—and far too close.

Darius's whiskers thrummed a warning just in time for him to leap away from the hand that was about to scoop him up.

There came a chuckle as his would-be captor straightened up, tugging a scented handkerchief from his voluminous, fancily embroidered coat sleeve. He was Prussian-pale, with gray eyes, full lips, and a hard, outthrust jaw. Although his hair was concealed beneath a fashionably small powdered wig, Darius could tell from his eyebrows that he was blond. Like many of the other gentlemen, he had a ceremonial sword hanging in a sheath at his side.

“Bashful, are you,
mein kleiner freund
?” he asked. “Methinks thou hast wandered into the wrong place.”

“Chatting to yourself, Lord Turek?” inquired a lady who sauntered toward them, fluttering her fan. “'Tis the sign of a degenerated mind. I knew there was something about you I fancied.”

It was the woman in the silver mask who'd been caning the duke out by the fountain. Although English, judging from her voice, she wore, like all ladies of fashion, a luxuriant
robe à la française,
its overskirt of quilted silver brocade extending a good three feet to either side. The weapon she'd wielded earlier, a slim rattan crook, like that of a British schoolmaster, hung from a silken ribbon around her waist. Her face was artfully painted, right down to the little black silk patch near a corner of her mouth; her flaxen hair was styled in a complicated arrangement studded with diamonds, and more diamonds adorned the velvet ribbon around her throat.

“Oh, a cat!” she exclaimed. “I loathe the wretched things. Go! Shoo!”

She lifted her skirts and made kicking motions at Darius, who turned to dart away, only to find Turek directly in his path. “I've got him.” He crouched down, arms outstretched and grinning in a predatory way that provoked a searing hiss from Darius.

“There you are!” A pair of female hands snatched him off the floor before Turek could grab him. Darius shot his claws, ready to spring, as she clutched him to her bosom, whispering, “Easy, Darius. 'Tis I, Elle.”

He looked up at her, calming when he recognized the blue-eyed honey-blonde who'd captured, or rather, rescued him: Elic in his female persona, dressed for the evening in a lavish gown of pale blue painted silk. Other follets posed no risk to Darius, only humans, whose slightest touch assaulted him with a barrage of desires that he was helpless to ignore—all manner of desires, from a hankering for iced creams to the most bizarre sexual fetish. Darius relaxed into Elle's embrace, reassured by her familiar scent, barely discernible beneath a saccharine haze of rose oil.

“The beast is yours?” asked the masked lady, eyeing Darius warily over her fan. “You would do well to remove it before it bites someone.”

“He really is quite harmless,” said Elle, cradling Darius protectively, “but he cannot abide the touch of strangers.”

“That is the only kind she
can
abide,” said Turek, indicating the lady who'd just joined them. His grin revealed a mouthful of teeth a bit too white and even to be real, a suspicion that was confirmed when Darius noticed a narrow ribbon of gold around his gumline. Bowing to Elle with a luxuriant sweep of the hand that held the handkerchief, he said, “Anton Turek, at your service, mademoiselle. And this lovely but rather imperious peasant is Charlotte Somerhurst.”

Darius's nose twitched, not at the perfume wafting from Turek's handkerchief, but from an almost indiscernible whiff of something raw and dark that excited the hunter in him.

“Really, Turek,” said Charlotte. “You must learn to introduce people by their titles, as we British do, else one never really knows to whom one is being presented. I am the Countess of Somerhurst,” she told Elle, “and this barbarous Hun is, in fact, a baron from one of those murky little countries no one ever visits.”

“Bohemia,” Turek said. “But I make my home in Vienna, for the most part.”

“And in London, and Paris, and Venice, and who knows where else,” Charlotte said. “Upon my word, Lord Turek has so many homes, I should think he has forgotten where most of them are.”

Elle introduced herself with a little curtsey.

“Just ‘Elle'?” Charlotte asked. “No family name?”

“Nor title, I confess.”

Charlotte smiled in a coldly remote way that wasn't hard to decipher. Having been judged and found lacking in all that was meaningful, namely social standing, Elle could now be crossed off Charlotte's list of people who mattered.

“I say, but you are the very image of a local fellow who was inducted into the Hellfires yesterday,” Charlotte told Elle. “An acquaintance of our hostess. Evidently he'd been intrigued by the order for some time, and was eager to participate. I believe his name is Eric.”

“Elic,” Elle corrected. “He is my twin brother.”

“Indeed.” Charlotte glanced slyly in the direction of Turek, whose gaze had frosted over at the mention of Elic. “Well, I suppose there can be no mistaking the resemblance. There's a handsome family if ever I've seen one.”

A maid came by with a tray laden with wineglasses and two cut-glass carafes filled with wine. “Regular or enhanced?” she asked.

“Oh, enhanced, definitely,” Charlotte replied.

“I would advise you to avoid that kind unless you've a tolerance for cantharides,” Turek advised Elle. “Spanish fly,” he explained in response to her quizzical look.

Elle waved away the tray altogether. Turek chose the unadulterated wine, saying he found the notion of consuming ground-up blister beetles both repulsive and dangerous, and that cantharides, in any event, merely excited the flesh as opposed to the passions.

“I take my excitement in whatever manner I can acquire it,” replied Charlotte as she raised her glass. “To sin in all its varied and wondrous forms.”

“How came you to join our little romp this evening, Elle?” Turek asked as he raised his wineglass to inhale the bouquet.

“Like my brother, I am a friend of la Dame des Ombres. She thought I might find it diverting.”

“Pray, where
is
Madame?” he asked as he scanned the room. “I've yet to make her acquaintance.”

“She tends to keep to herself.” Elle stroked and nuzzled Darius, coaxing a deep purr of contentment from him. “Her
administrateur,
Lord Henry Archer, sees to the needs of her guests.”

“Ah, yes, Archer,” Turek said. “Capital fellow.”

Lord Henry, second son of the Marquis of Heddonshaw, was an affable young dilettante and the first Englishman ever recruited to oversee the affairs of Grotte Cachée. It was he who'd suggested to the chateau's
gardienne,
Camille Morel, Dame des Ombres, that she invite the Hellfire Club to spend a fortnight at the chateau. They'd been meeting at a London pub called the George and Vulture, but it had burned down recently, leaving the Hellfires betwixt and between. Madame, mindful of the carnal needs of the three follets in her care—Darius, Elic, and Inigo—had written a letter of invitation to the club's founder and chief “friar,” Sir Francis Dashwood. Having read references to Grotte Cachée in the erotic memoirs of Domenico Vitturi, a sixteenth-century Venetian nobleman, and eager to experience the rumored haven of licentiousness for himself, Dashwood had gratefully accepted the offer. He, his colleagues, and their female followers had disported themselves for two weeks at the chateau, and were to depart on the morrow—but not before a final orgiastic celebration tonight.

“Are you a frequent visitor to the chateau?” Turek asked Elle.

“I've been a guest here for some time.”

“Can you enlighten me at all about that rather curious stone figure in the cave next to the bathhouse? The one they call Dusivæsus?”

“Been snooping, have you?” Charlotte asked him.

“Exploring,” he corrected. “'Tis a more worthy pastime, I daresay, than spending the better part of every day as you do, being bathed and groomed and dressed.”

“That sculpture is the oldest thing at Grotte Cachée,” Elle told him. “It predates the birth of Christ.” She did not volunteer the information that it was, in fact, a representation of herself—or, more accurately, herself and himself.

A chorus of cheers drew their attention to a pair of bewigged and liveried footmen entering the room with something that looked like a hobbyhorse in the form of a black swan; its head curved backward so that its gilded beak, carved into a remarkably realistic phallus, jutted upward from the seat.

“My word,” Elle said.

“Just something to get the nuns in the proper frame of mind for the banquet. An
idolum tentiginis,
Sir Francis calls it, one of several little playthings the friars brought with them from London.” Charlotte's eyes, just visible through the holes in her mask, slid toward Elle as if to gauge her reaction for its amusement value.

Mademoiselle de Beaumont took the hand of one of the local maidens, now garbed in the tunic and wimple of a nun, led her to the device, and instructed her in French as to how to mount it. The girl was balky at first, but, emboldened by the mademoiselle's gentle encouragement, she finally lifted her habit and sat astride the creature, impaling herself on its beak.

“That was far too easy,” Charlotte sneered. “She's no more ‘intact' than I am.”

The girl proceeded to rock back and forth on the swan, prompting applause from the onlookers and praise from Mademoiselle de Beaumont.

“Why did everyone laugh when Mademoiselle went to help them undress?” Elle asked.

Charlotte and Turek shared a knowing chuckle. “Take a good look at her,” Charlotte said.

Elle did. “She is very beautiful.”

“She is the Chevalier d'Eon,” Turek said.

“Chevalier?” Elle said. “She's a
man
?”

“No one knows for certain,” Turek said. “There are countless wagers riding on her true sex. One can speculate on the matter through the London Stock Exchange. I've done so myself.”

From behind her fan, Charlotte said, “She is an intimate friend of King Louis's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. They say she spies for the king. I know for a fact that she's a lethal hand with the sword. She has won a number of duels, sometimes dressed as a man, and sometimes as a woman.”

The girl on the swan began rocking in earnest, her breath coming faster, color rising in her face. The spectators cheered her on as they pleasured themselves and each other.

“This is a most curious gathering,” Elle remarked.

With a dismissive wave of her fan, Charlotte said, “These are just preliminaries, my dear, a little
ouverture
to put us all in the mood for the banquet that's to follow the mass. That is when the true festivities will begin. We shall be in nuns' habits ourselves, then, most of us—until they start ripping it all off us, of course.” The wicked spark in Charlotte's eyes betrayed her desire to see Elle swoon with shock. “I do hope you've a fit constitution, my dear, because the entertainments can be a bit acrobatic. There is always a physician on hand, though, to revive those who faint, as well as to prepare the various…invigorating tonics on which some of our members have come to rely.”

“I'm afraid I shan't be able to attend the banquet,” Elle said.

“A pity,” Charlotte said. “'Tis a most singular experience.”

“About this mass…,” Elle began. “You cannot mean there's to be an actual religious service.” Of course, she knew all about the mass, having been well briefed on it following her—or rather, her male alter ego's—initiation into the order yesterday. Perhaps, Darius thought, she was trying to determine just how seriously the Hellfires actually regarded the pseudo-religious aspects of their order.

“'Tis a sort of backward mass meant to invoke the Prince of Darkness,” Charlotte said matter-of-factly. “A
missa niger,
we call it.” Narrowing her eyes at Darius, she said, “Did that cat just
snicker
?”

“He made a noise,” Elle said. “I don't know that I would call it a snicker.”

Darius gave Charlotte his most guileless feline smile.

“The
missa niger
is a very special event for us, and rather infrequent,” Turek said. “Our detractors seem to think we conduct one every night, but it's really no more often than once a month. Its purpose is more to ridicule religious pomposity than to summon the Devil—although it does celebrate our own, rather un-orthodox philosophies and values. Usually only the superior members are permitted in the chapel during the rites, what Sir Francis calls the twelve apostles. Oh, and a couple of footmen, to serve as acolytes. And, of course, the lady who has been chosen to be our Bona Dea for that particular mass.”

“Bona Dea?” Elle said. “She was a Roman goddess of fertility, yes?”

“Quite right,” Turek said. “The Bona Dea serves, in essence, as our altar. She lies naked upon the altar table, and the mass is said over her body. To be chosen as Bona Dea is the highest honor we can bestow upon one of our female companions. Sir Francis will announce her name shortly before the mass. Our fair Lady Somerhurst expects to be chosen for the first time tonight.”