Bound in Moonlight

by Louisa Burton

  “Miss Keating? Yes or no?”

  The air left her lungs on a whispered, “Yes.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Yes,” she said, feeling perilously close to tears.“Yes.Yes.Yes to all of it.”

  “Still, I am required to elicit clear and unequivocal consent to each particular act, lest you protest later that you weren't adequately warned as to what might be done to you. You are willing to be bound, gagged, blindfolded?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to perform sexual acts before an audience?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you willing to engage in sexual activity with another female?”

  Dear God. “Yes.”

  “Do you achieve orgasm,Miss Keating?”

  Heat swept in a wave from her throat up to her hairline.

  “I shall take that for an affirmative,” said the barrister as his pen scratched over the foolscap. “You enjoy sexual relations, then?”

  “I . . . I did so on the one occasion when I engaged in them.”

  “Your age?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Height?”

  “Five feet, six inches.”

  “Weight?”

  “I couldn't say with certainty anymore.”

  “Eight stone at the most,” he muttered as he wrote. “Complexion pallid but unblemished. Hair golden blond.”

  “I was wondering, about my hair . . .”

  “Mm?”

  “I thought I might henna it, if that would be permissible.”

  “In order to help disguise your appearance? Some of the ladies do change their hair color and employ cosmetics for that purpose. I must say, it would be a shame in your case, but you are within your rights to do so if you wish.”

  “Thank you.”

  Setting his pen aside, Sir Charles slid off his spectacles and scrutinized her thoughtfully.

  “Will I do?” she asked in as even a voice as she could muster.

  “It is a pity you've been deflowered,Miss Keating. An intact maidenhead is highly prized in a slave. Virgins tend to command the highest prices, debauchees nearly so—the innocent on the one hand and the unabashedly wanton on the other. You, unfortunately, are neither. But then, great beauty is also a factor of some consequence, which will serve to your advantage. And you are, if not entirely untarnished, nearly so, with a guileless manner of the type that certain gentlemen find irresistible.”

  He closed the folio of lewd pictures and returned it to the drawer, then took out what looked like a visiting card and handed it to her. Engraved on heavy cream stock were the name and address of a Dr. Humphrey Coates.

  Sir Charles said, “You will report to Dr. Coates tomorrow afternoon at five o'clock for a physical examination. This is to ensure that you are of an adequate constitution to endure the rigors of Slave Week and to pronounce you free of disfigurement and disease. Incidentally, the gentlemen who attend Slave Week are also required to submit to an examination by Dr. Coates in order to ensure that they do not suffer from any maladies of a private nature that they might pass on to their slaves. Assuming you pass inspection, Dr. Coates will provide you with a means to prevent you from getting with child, and I will arrange for you to—”

  “That's possible?” An unwed pregnancy had been one of the perils that Caroline had lain awake all night fretting about. “To . . . have relations without conceiving?”

  “There are two devices that serve this purpose, a sheath of sheep-gut for the gentleman and a vinegar-soaked sponge for the lady. As it wouldn't do to inconvenience your master, you will be given a sponge, which you will be required to wear internally at all times, removing it only to clean and refresh with vinegar during your morning bath. Should you neglect this precaution and find yourself afterward in a delicate condition, it will be on your head entirely. By the terms of your contract, you will be forbidden to communicate with your master or to name him as the father.”

  “Contract?”

  “As I had been explaining,” he continued wearily, “pending a positive report as to your physical condition by Dr. Coates, I am willing to approve you to go on the block. In that eventuality, you will return here to execute a binding legal contract setting forth the rules by which you must abide during your week of enslavement. Primary among them is the requirement of utter and absolute obedience to your master, to whose every command you must submit without hesitation or protest of any kind. Should you fail in this even once, you will be sent home with nothing but your traveling expenses.” Sir Charles recited this information in a disinterested drone, as if he'd done so scores of times, which she supposed he had.

  He said, “Your master will be free to enjoy you in any manner he sees fit, so long as he abides by the rules of behavior stipulated in his contract. Should he fail in this, you will be taken from him and re-auctioned to another gentleman, in which case you will receive both purchase prices. Should you sustain an injury at the hand of your master, and if Dr. Coates determines it to be adequately severe, you will be released from servitude, but your master will still be required to pay you the agreed-upon sum in its entirety. Should you be uninjured and request release from your contract at any point before the end of the week, or if you violate the rules of your enslavement, you will be sent back to London immediately at no expense to yourself. However, in that eventuality, you will be deemed to be in violation of your contract, and your master's financial obligations thereunder will be null and void. Do you understand what I have just explained?”

  “I do.”

  “In addition,” he continued, “you are obligated to secrecy about the location of the château to which you will be taken, as well as the identities of the participants, master and slave alike. You will hear the gentlemen addressed by name, but you must never do so yourself, and you must dismiss those names from your memory upon your departure from the château. Should you, at some future point, find yourself in the company of someone whom you recognize from Slave Week, you are to conduct yourself as though you'd never met. The contract that the gentlemen sign stipulates the same requirement. The punishment for violating this crucial confidentiality, for the gentlemen as well as for the slaves, is complete social ruin.”

  Caroline said,“How can you . . . ?”

  “Certain exceptionally grievous sins, should they become public knowledge,will make a pariah of even the most revered member of the ton. Such sins will be invented, if necessary.”

  Sir Charles gave her two other cards, one for a dressmaker who would supply her with frocks and underpinnings sewn to their particular requirements. “The other card is for a master swordsmith who does very special work for us. He will measure you for a collar, a pair of wrist cuffs, and a pair of ankle cuffs. These he fashions of gilded steel, with rings for the attachment of chains and leashes.”

  Caroline stared at Sir Charles.

  He held her gaze steadily until she looked away, letting out a tremulous breath.

  “The collar and cuffs are to remain on for the entire week,” he said, “even when you bathe, which you will do every morning in water scented with fragrant oils, which a chambermaid will prepare.”

  Well, that was something, Caroline thought. She hadn't had a proper bath in far too long, and she'd missed it. When she was younger, she could lie in a warm tub with her thoughts drifting for an hour or more.

  “You will be contacted regarding transportation arrangements to Calais and from there to the château.”Recharging his quill with ink, he said, “Where do you live,Miss Keating?”

  “St. Giles,” she said, noting how his eyebrows quirked at the mention of the notorious slum. “I share a bed in a lodging house on Denmark Street and Charing Cross Road. But . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “When I left yesterday evening, I told Mrs. Milledge, my landlady, that I wouldn't be returning, and I . . . I don't know if she'll let me back in, because it's tuppence a night, and I haven't been able to pay it for some time.”

  With a l
ittle grunt of acknowledgment, Sir Charles wrote a note on a sheet of writing paper, folded it up around a five pound piece, and sealed it with wax. “Give this to Mr. Peckham at the St. James's Royal Hotel on St. James's Street. The payment covers your bed and board for two weeks. See that you eat your fill, and then some—your thinness detracts from your beauty. Eat beef and mutton washed down with plenty of good, rich burgundy. It will put some much-needed color on your cheeks.”

  She took the note, heavy with the weight of the hefty gold coin. It was more money than she'd had in her hands—more than she'd seen—in a very long time.“Thank you, sir,” she said. “You are most generous.”

  “It is not generosity so much as an investment in future profits. My firm will retain a five percent commission on your sale price, as will Riddell's Auction House, which oversees the event. The more you sell for, the more we make, and I daresay your value will be higher if you are rested and in fine fettle when you go on the block. I need hardly remind you that your attractiveness as a slave will determine how much money you leave with at the end of the week.”

  One week of appalling degradation. If she could stomach it, she would be free forever from the ever-worsening squalor and hunger and hopelessness in which she'd been mired these two years past. She could buy a little cottage in some village in the Cotswolds where no one had ever heard of Caroline Keating and her tattered reputation. Perhaps she could even open the school for girls that had been her dream since childhood.

  “If you've no further questions . . .” Sir Charles scooted his chair back.

  “The money,” she said, sitting forward. “You said thousands. Lord Rexton did, too. Is that true? Is that how much a slave can expect to . . . sell for?”

  “Two thousand at a minimum,” he said, “and possibly quite a bit more. The highest price in the centuries-old history of Slave Week went to a young lady last year, an astonishing beauty, the virginal younger daughter of a duke. She cost her master twenty-three thousand guineas.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “Once the winning bid has been accepted, the gentleman is required to sign a note of indebtedness for that amount, minus the ten percent commission, to the lady whose services he has purchased, which note is held in escrow by Lord Rexton.”

  “He will be there?”

  “As a representative of Burnham, Childe and Upcott, yes. Our client, I shall call him Seigneur X, retains us to handle the legal and pecuniary aspects of Slave Week—and to recruit young ladies here in Britain. The foreign ladies are recruited by Seigneur X's administrator, a Mr. Archer. The gentlemen are chosen by Riddell's, but only issued formal invitations after I have personally ensured their financial solvency. Of course, it goes without saying that some are in a position to bid a good deal more than others. At the end of the week, if all has gone well and the lady has upheld her end of the contract, the note and the funds it represents will be handed over to her. You see?”

  He pressed his lips together in what she took to be his idea of a smile. “Elegantly simple, the entire affair.”

  Two

  Grotte Cachée

  Two Weeks Later

  THERE'S THE QUEER fish that bought me last year,” whispered the slave called Violet as she stole a peek through the curtained service door into the great hall of Château de la Grotte Cachée, resonating with a tapestry of male voices. “Didn't lay a hand on me the whole week, just made me walk about in men's tall boots while he rubbed himself off. Well, sometimes I had to let him rub himself on the boots. I made twelve thousand guineas that way.”

  “Which one? What does he look like?” Caroline jostled for position among the slaves crowded into the dark screens passage between the buttery and the pantry until she was near enough to the curtain to pull back an edge and look through. She would much rather prance about in boots than do some of the other things recounted by the slaves who'd served last year. The stories she'd heard since her arrival at Grotte Cachée the day before had exceeded her worst imaginings.

  Caroline peered into the lamplit great hall, in which about two dozen men milled about waiting for the Inspection of the Slaves that would serve as prelude to the auction. She couldn't see much through the narrow gap between curtain and doorjamb, just a thin slice of the vast, sumptuous room and its occupants, all identically attired in full-dress cutaways and knee breeches, their necks buried from the chin down in mounds of elaborately knotted white silk. Several had their noses in a little pamphlet called A Floral Compendium, the cover of which was illustrated with an etching of an orchid growing through a link in a chain; the blossom bore a remarkable resemblance to the feminine nether parts. Within its pages were descriptions of the sixteen beautiful young women who would be offering themselves for sale that evening. Attached to each booklet by a ribbon was a little polished ebony pencil for taking notes.

  “Mr. Boots is the strutting rooster with the monocle,” said Violet, whose real name was Elizabeth. She spoke, as did about half of the slaves, in the patrician tones of the British upper classes. The rest had foreign accents and sometimes foreign looks. There was Tulip, a delicate beauty with Oriental features who barely spoke English; Columbine, the caramel-skinned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy sugar grower from somewhere in the West Indies; and Lili, who was Persian by Caroline's best guess, with exotic eyes and a torrent of lustrous, well-brushed black hair. Like several of the others, Lili was a veteran slave, having put herself on the block the previous summer. Slave Week had been suspended for twenty years before that, owing to the warfare Napoleon had waged against Britain and her allies.

  Some of the slaves were clearly friends away from this place. There were two American heiresses called Aster and Iris, both vibrant redheads, who had been best friends at a girls' academy in New York City. Novice slaves, they appeared to view the experience as an uproarious lark, which they had arranged by convincing each girl's mother that her daughter was on holiday with the other's family. Two of the veteran slaves, the voluptuous Laurel and the boyish Jessamine, who wore her hair close-cropped in the smart new Grecian style, had formed a bond during last year's Slave Week, and remained close friends upon their return to their native London. And Lili, although a veteran, enjoyed a warm friendship with one of the novices, a six-foot-tall blond beauty called Elle.

  Foreign or not, one could tell by the slaves' comportment and speech that they were all of gentle blood. Some, like Caroline, were wellborn young ladies in embarrassed circumstances, others adventuresses in pursuit of the ultimate sexual thrill.

  The slaves—curious how Caroline had come to regard them as such—had all been given assumed names in an effort to help disguise their true identities; Caroline's was “Rose.” In addition, several of them had made an effort to alter their appearance, as had Caroline. Her hair, now a burnished russet, was arranged in a modish Grecian topknot with curls framing her face and tumbling down her nape. Her eyes were limned with kohl, her brows darkened, her cheeks and lips boldly rouged. The effect was remarkable; her own brothers wouldn't have recognized her.

  Like her fellow slaves, Caroline wore around her neck a wide, gold-plated band with steel rings and clips hanging off it, which had been locked onto her upon her arrival here; a leash of braided black leather almost five feet long dangled from a ring in front. Smaller versions of the collar adorned her wrists and ankles, the wrist cuffs having been clipped together this evening so that her hands were essentially manacled in front of her. She was attired identically to the other slaves in an “Inspection gown” of ivory silk chiffon gathered with a satin ribbon just under the bosom, and a pair of dainty gold brocade slippers. Beneath the filmy gown she wore nothing, as required, a fact readily apparent from the sheerness of the silk and the way it clung to her feminine contours. Her de facto nakedness, and the fact that she was about to be scrutinized and fondled by strange men, should have paralyzed her with shame, but there was comfort in numbers. With fifteen others in the same boat, she felt less exposed than if she were getting ready to walk
out there all alone.

  “Oh, my word, it's Brummel,” said Violet as she covertly surveyed the great hall. “I haven't seen him since he left England.”

  “Beau Brummel?” Caroline said.

  Violet nodded. “A few years ago, he insulted Prinny and had to . . . Oh, bloody hell,” she muttered. “The Flogster's here.”

  There were groans from the other slaves who'd been there last year, followed by a sharp “Hush!” from Mr. Llewellyn, a dandyish young employee of Riddell's Auction House—a bar-dache, Caroline suspected—whose responsibility it was to run herd on them. Gesturing with the long, slender coach whip he was never without, although Caroline had yet to see him strike anyone with it, he said, “Lower your voices or I shall be forced to order you not to speak at all. And remember, not a peep during Inspection, unless one of the gentlemen asks you a direct question.”

  “What's a flogster?” Caroline asked apprehensively.

  “Someone you don't want for a master,” said Elle. “The Marquess of Dunhurst, rich as Croesus and nasty as the Devil.”

  “How do you know that?” asked a buxom girl with blackdyed hair who'd been dubbed Jonquil. “You weren't here last year.”

  “I warned her about him,” said Lili, catching Elle's eye for a fleeting moment, as they often did.

  “Even the other gentlemen call him the Flogster,” Violet said.“He's the bulldog standing with the group of men by the hearth—the one carrying the walking stick that has the ivory cockhead for a knob.”

  “The what?” Caroline let out an incredulous little gust of laughter. “You can't be serious.”