A Convenient Bride For The Soldier. Christine Merrill
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Two
Forty members in attendance. Five-and-twenty guests of members. Staff above stairs: fifteen. Staff below stairs: ten.
Frederick Challenger walked through the ballroom of Vitium et Virtus, oblivious to the tumult around him, his mind still focused on the headcount he had taken passing through the rooms.
He could no longer remember what private joke had inspired the name Vice and Virtue when he and his friends had formed the club back at Oxford. There had always been plenty of the former, but he could remember not a single instance of the latter. And that utter lack of morality had turned the place from a college prank into the most decadent and most popular club in London.
It was that same popularity that made organised debauchery into a chore, and Frederick into the saner head that must prevail over the anarchy. Thus far, the night had been uneventful. In the game room, Lord Pendleton had attempted to continue play with an IOU after running though the money in his purse. It had taken only a gentle reminder from Fred that such a thing would render the masks that they all wore a moot point. One could not remain anonymous while announcing one’s own identity with a signed marker. Of course, with his high voice and penchant for elaborate waistcoats, only an idiot would not know that Pendleton was there.
The real reason for cash play was much more simple. Watching a man continue to gamble until he had reduced himself to ruin spoiled the fun for everyone. And if someone blew his brains out at the table, it would make a hell of a mess. Fred had no desire to call upon Mrs Parker, the housekeeper, to arrange for the cleaning of the extremely expensive wallpaper, which was hand-painted silk that matched the Italian mural of a bacchanal on the ceiling.
In the main room, one of the club’s infamous masked balls was in full sway. At the very centre of the dancers was some damned fool, dressed as the devil. Rather than shrink from the appearance of Old Scratch, the masked dancers that thronged the dance floor raised their hands in salute.
Fred had donned a domino mask and cape for the sake of what passed as propriety. On such nights, appearing without a costume drew far more attention than red satin, horns and a tail. As he pushed past him on the way to the owners’ private quarters, Lucifer gave a menacing wave of the cat-o’-nine-tails he held, as if ready to strike.
Fred stared him down with a dark glance worthy of any of the fiends of hell and the man turned away and brought the silken cords of his flail down on the bare shoulders of the nearest dancing girl, instead.
She responded with a shudder of pleasure and turned to Fred with outstretched arms and mouth open for a kiss.
Fred obliged, but only briefly. Then he untangled himself from her grip and thrust her into the waiting embrace of a man on his left. She offered a pout as brief as his kiss had been before turning her attentions to her new partner.
‘Me, next.’ A buxom blonde dressed as a randy milkmaid reached for him, tipping her head up and offering her lips.
He hid a sigh of frustration, forced a laugh and offered another kiss before breaking away to push past towards the green baize door that hid the corridor to the office.
It did not do for an owner of the club to be so unenthusiastic when tempted with sins of the flesh. When he and his friends had founded the secret society at Oxford, they had meant to give in to every temptation and take no vice in moderation. But what had seemed daring ten years ago felt rather silly now that all of London wanted to join them in their debauchery.
His friend, Oliver Gregory, thought that Fred’s time in the army had sucked all the joy from his soul and rendered him the sort of authoritarian that they’d been rebelling against. That was hardly the case. He had his reasons to forgo the excesses here and had discovered he much preferred the military to hedonism. No matter how chaotic it had seemed, war had a brutal structure to it. Orders were given and received. Men knew their place and their reason for living and dying. On the battlefield, life had purpose. After Waterloo, Vitium et Virtus 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