Finally she sonorously inquired, “You came for a fitting?” Calum turned a laugh into a cough.
“Yes,” Struan said quickly. “A fitting.”
“No,” Calum said, equally quickly, glowering at his companion. “No, thank you, Mrs. Lushbottam. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to avail ourselves of the, er, your talented staff tonight. Don’t you remember me? I was here in January and again two weeks ago. On that latter occasion you informed me that your lodgers were due to return about now. Did they? Return?”
“Possibly.” Her voice had the quality of a low-pitched wind gusting in a stovepipe.
“What is her name?” Struan asked suddenly, stepping into the house and drawing Calum with him.
“I told you,” Calum said, becoming infuriated. “Mrs. Lushbottam.” That lady had moved aside and folded her arms.
“No,” Struan responded, and Calum discovered it was not at Mrs. Lushbottam that his friend looked. “Her name? Mrs. Lushbottam, may I please meet that girl?”
The girl Struan spoke of had stepped through a door that closed the bay window off from the square vestibule into which the front door opened. She trailed fluidly across a thick carpet patterned with huge pink roses and lattices of green leaves.
“Milo and Miranda,” Calum said, growing truly disturbed by the intensity in Struan’s dark eyes, in the lean lines of his face. “Mrs. Lushbottam, may I take it that they are at home?”
“Why not go up and see?” she told him. “Top floor. I’m sure you remember the way.”
“Yes, yes. Thank you. Come, Struan. It’s growing very late.”
He started up the stairs, but realized Struan wasn’t with him. “Come on, man,” he said impatiently. “We have things to accomplish this night.”
“Mmm.”
“Things to accomplish,” Calum repeated loudly.
“You like what you see,” Mrs. Lushbottam said to Struan. Satisfaction coated her words. “Ella is not one of my regular craftswomen.”
“No,” Struan said indistinctly. He walked toward the girl as if she were a fisherman drawing in a line and he the fish she had caught. “Ella? A graceful name. It suits you.”
“As I said,” Mrs. Lushbottam continued, “Ella is a most unusual treasure who has been entrusted to me.”
Calum shook his head in frustration. Struan had always been the idealist. It had been that idealism that had won him, if only for a short time, for the Church.
“May I…” Struan did not take his gaze from the young woman. “Could I talk to you?”
“She talks to no one,” Mrs. Lushbottam announced. “She owes her safety—her very life—to me. That is my affair alone. But she talks to no one.”
Calum’s interest was aroused. “Come now, madam. Mystery is all very well, but surely we are not dealing with anything more unusual than a”—he glanced at Struan—“a lovely creature who is one of your better sources of income?”
“No!”
Mrs. Lushbottam’s pronouncement stilled Struan, who had taken an aggressive step toward Calum.
“Ella is an innocent,” Mrs. Lushbottam said. “She will remain an innocent until…until I receive the right offer for her. Until then, she is under my protection.”
Calum tasted the acid of disgust. The old crone had acquired a prize and she intended to sell that prize to the highest bidder. “Struan,” he said warningly, reading his friend’s mind, “this is a night filled with odd adventures. Let us take the time we need to consider what they all mean. Later. For now, come with me.”
Mrs. Lushbottam clicked her fingers at Ella, and the girl glided away through double doors into a room from which came female laughter and the rumble of male voices.
“I will join you later,” Struan said.
“An excellent idea,” Mrs. Lushbottam said. “You go on up, Mr. Innes. Your friend will be in good hands—down here.”
“Struan,” Calum said, noting that the proprietress had remembered him well enough from his last visit to recall his name. “I need you with me for this—discussion.”
“They aren’t back yet,” Mrs. Lushbottam said, her thin chest rising on a sigh. “You can always wait with your friend here.”
Infuriated, Calum went to Struan’s side. “You told me they were in their rooms, madam.”
“I told you to see if they were.”
“But you know they are not.”
She scowled, drawing her heavy brows together over very pale, deep-set eyes. “The affairs of those two are not my affairs. They pay their rent and don’t give me any trouble. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter.” She seemed to consider before adding, “Stay or go. It makes no matter to me. But I will tell you that they’ll return within the hour. Come back then, if you like.”
Struan continued to stare at the door through which Ella had disappeared. “We will wait, thank you,” he said with a short, hard look at Calum. “Come. What can it hurt to spend an hour in the pleasant company of Mrs. Lushbottam’s lady tailors? I find I have been too long removed from a little stimulation.”
“Well,” Mrs. Lushbottam said in a confidential tone, “if it’s stimulation you want, sirs, then by all means, do become my guests. I think you will find the quality of what we offer unusually fine.” She concentrated on Struan. “And for you, there may be a most intriguing opportunity.”
Calum considered arguing further, but discovered he was more than vaguely curious about what lay on the other side of the double doors. “You will inform us when Milo and Miranda return?” he asked.
Mrs. Lushbottam waved them regally before her. “I’ll let you know, sirs.”
Charmed Five
The room beyond the doors was surprisingly large and appeared to occupy most of the ground floor of the house. Calum had seen his share of pleasure houses and, despite the rumors he’d heard to the contrary, had expected nothing more than a display of faded prostitutes disporting themselves with men unable to afford a higher-class establishment.
But this was no collection of either overused doxies or men with shallow pockets.
“Gad,” Struan muttered, inclining his head toward a company of brilliantly dressed men and women—some of whom Calum recalled seeing at Chandos House the previous evening—who lounged drunkenly on divans arranged in a circle. “Isn’t that…? Bloody hell, it is. Our princely host himself.”
“I had no idea,” Calum said as several of the company noticed his arrival with Struan and offered knowing nods of greeting. “Damn, but this is irony. I’ll lay odds Franchot wouldn’t be a stranger here. And I’ll lay equal odds he’d expire if he knew what is known by the people we came to see in this very house.”
“Make yourselves comfortable, sirs,” Mrs. Lushbottam whispered hoarsely. “Our next offering is about to be displayed.”
Struan led the way to an empty divan within easy reach of the doors. No sooner were they seated than two blond beauties materialized from a curtain-draped corner to join the newcomers.
From behind, Mrs. Lushbottam said, “Camille and Daphne will see you get anything you require. Enjoy yourselves.”
Before Calum could react to the ministrations of Camille or Daphne—the ripe-bodied creature who set to work loosening his cravat and waistcoat made no introductions—a musician entered to sit, cross-legged, on the floor. Dressed in cloth of gold with a matching turban, the swarthy-skinned man played haunting scales on a wooden pipe of a variety Calum had never seen before.
“Thank you, no,” he told his companion as she attempted to unfasten his trousers. She stopped instantly and knelt beside him on the divan, smiling as if she had never seen a more desirable sight than Calum Innes.
He tried to ignore her. Within moments, the task became simple.
From the curtained corner emerged two females, dressed in identical white robes. Their black hair was demurely braided into coronets atop their heads. Hand in hand, they progressed to the very center of the circle and stood there, silently surveying the audience, an audience grow
n expectantly intent.
Calum looked at Struan, who raised his eyebrows while trapping the wrists of his assigned attendant in one large hand. Calum noted that his friend’s neckcloth and shirt hung loose.
An eager gentleman’s cry of “Let’s see what you’ve got, then” was shushed by others present.
The black-haired girls faced each other, apparently passive, before one grasped the neck of the other’s robe and began to tear. In an instant, the calm of the moment disintegrated. Urged on by shouts of encouragement from both the men and the women in the audience, the performers grappled with each other’s clothing, gradually stripping it away. Braids loosened and fell in slithering waves over bared shoulders. With a great ripping tug, one girl’s high, pointed breasts were completely revealed.
A raucous roar arose, and a lady who had arrived as a guest was similarly divested of her bodice by the men who sat at her sides. Giggling, she writhed in obvious pleasure, with the result that her two companions announced their decision to “share the bounty,” and fell to suckling a breast apiece that was indeed bounteous. The lady cradled the heads of her lovers and gave up ecstatic cries.
Even as Calum felt his own sex leap, he checked over his shoulder. Mrs. Lushbottam continued to stand guard at the doors. To Struan he said, “This is monstrous. Excessive. They have all come for this display.”
“As you say,” Struan agreed. “The women appear as enthralled as the men.”
The grappling females in the center had fallen to the floor and were soon completely naked. Their bodies had been oiled to white slickness, their nipples rouged deep red.
A mystical Eastern quality entered the piper’s music. With the rising and falling of the notes, the fighters contorted, spreading their legs to display their most secret places and calling to the onlookers to join them. Soon one young buck rose to the occasion and entered the fray with his breeches already around his knees and his sex jutting.
As if by a prearranged signal, one of the girls pretended to hold the other down while the eager fellow drove home his manhood, yelling like a man running another through in the heat of battle.
The woman at Calum’s side made a grab for his penis and he came close to losing control. He pushed her, harder than he had intended, but the violence only seemed to incite her afresh. His vision of the copulation on the floor was obscured by the breasts thrust into his face, and as he reached to push them away, the girl took her advantage and snaked a hand inside his breeches.
His next push sent her sprawling from the divan, but rather than anger, she showed only mounting sexual frenzy. Turning away from him, she moved to a flanking divan on which a man who had been at the Esterhazy ball sat with a lavishly dressed creature who fingered his crotch while she avidly watched the display on the floor. The woman who had left Calum pushed up the aroused female’s brocade skirts to reveal plump thighs above lace stockings. When that lady pretended an attempt to cover herself, the prostitute tugged down the jewel-encrusted bodice of the other’s gown.
Instead of protesting, the lady swayed forward, squealing loudly while she fumbled with the blond creature’s clothing. “My God, Struan,” Calum managed to gasp, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“That beautiful girl is here somewhere,” Struan responded. “I want to take her away with us.”
“Don’t be a damned fool.”
Fresh shrieks of excitement arose as a splendid young man, little more than an adolescent, was produced. The females who had started the “offering” rapidly readied the boy, stripping and stroking him until he thrashed and grabbed for them in turn. Always they evaded. Then, without warning, a disheveled onlooker—clearly long past caution—spread herself upon the carpet and held up imploring arms until the boy entered her.
The insane roars of pleasure penetrated Calum’s nerves and he stood. “This is more ugliness than even I can stomach,” he told Struan, who was just as quickly on his feet. “I’d as soon wait for my witch doctors in the street.”
Struan nodded, but kept watch on the room.
“Forget her,” Calum insisted. “It is all an act, don’t you see? She is one of them. One of this. A fake virgin paraded forward for some sort of depraved ritual. These people are all of a kind. Unless I am much mistaken, they come for these orgies regularly. Nothing here was unplanned. They all expected to participate.”
Calum turned away, but Struan caught his arm. “No,” he murmured. “No, she should not be here.”
Calum followed the direction of Struan’s anguished stare. Led by Mrs. Lushbottam, Ella, blindfolded and still dressed in the black velvet cloak, haltingly entered the room. As if a cold wind had passed over the scene, the writhing gradually subsided. Participants in the debauchery slowly eased away from one another and, fastening what clothes they could reach, made a space among them.
“We trust you have enjoyed our little entertainment,” Mrs. Lushbottam said, her lipless mouth parting in what might have been a smile. “Now for a very special treat before I send you home to your beds. Some of you have been awaiting this moment. I had not intended it to come tonight, but”—she looked directly at Struan—“I do believe it is time to begin the bidding.”
“Bidding?” Struan said under his breath. “By God, she intends to auction the girl off.”
“You might as well understand that I am by no means ready to accept offers for my greatest treasure. However, times are difficult and I must be sensible. Please, those interested should write the nature of that interest—in detail—on their cards and leave them in the crystal dish that has been placed by the front door.”
Utter stillness had fallen again.
“Ella,” Mrs. Lushbottam said, removing the girl’s blindfold, “it is time to take off your cloak.”
The girl’s golden face with its great, dark, almond-shaped eyes turned a paler shade. She clutched the neck of the robe even tighter.
“Ella is an innocent,” Mrs. Lushbottam announced with audible relish. “Such a prize. Take off the cloak, child.”
For another instant the girl hesitated; then she parted the velvet garment, pushed it back from her shoulders and let it fall.
A collective sigh rippled around the room, punctuated with exclamations of awe from women as well as men.
Beneath the robe, a modestly cut gown gained the effect for which it had been designed. Of cobweb-transparent red muslin, rather than cover the astonishing body beneath, the filmy gown cast a rose-tinted glow over golden skin. Dampened, the fabric clung to uptilted nipples that had hardened under the crowd’s scrutiny. The girl’s breasts were perfectly round and provocatively pointed at the tips in a way that sent the tongues of many men present in hungry circles around their lips.
A triangle of black hair showed clearly at the juncture of slender thighs.
When Ella made futile attempts to cover herself, Mrs. Lushbottam turned her around to display her rounded bottom, and Struan took a violent step forward. Calum restrained him. He put his mouth close to the other man’s. “You cannot make a move here. Take my word. Nothing is going to happen. That crone is accomplished with her tricks. She intends to do exactly as she has promised. The stakes will dizzy many heads before she sells this Ella’s so-called untouched charms.”
“I’m going to pay whatever the woman asks.”
Calum groaned. “And you will be paying what has doubtless been paid many times before. Heed me, please. I have seen more of this world than you.”
“You do not know how much of this world I have seen,” Struan retorted, and not for the first time, Calum was puzzled by an unaccustomed distance he felt between himself and his boyhood companion.
“Perhaps,” Calum said finally. “That is obviously of no account now. She is leaving. It is my guess that this show takes place from time to time and that it always nets the woman a treasure in attempted bribes. Forget the girl. She could leave if she wanted to. Remember that.”
“It is you who are naive,” Struan said. “There are thin
gs in this world about which you know nothing.”
Calum didn’t argue that his eyes were as old as those of any man who had been about in their particular world for four and thirty years.
With the departure of Ella, revelry broke out once more, and Calum, with Struan at his elbow, escaped gladly into the foyer.
Entering from a door behind the staircase, Mrs. Lushbottam joined them. To Struan she said, “No doubt you will be leaving your card, sir. It’ll take a generous man to win my Ella. Remember that and plan accordingly. Your parties have returned, Mr. Innes.”
Calum frowned, then registered what she’d said. “Very well. Come, Struan, it’s time.” It had been more than an hour already. One look at his companion’s face promised more trouble to come unless he could be persuaded to forget Mrs. Lushbottam’s succulent “offering.”
Struan climbed the ten flights of stairs to the top story quietly enough. Perhaps he would regain his senses more rapidly than Calum feared he would.
The door Calum sought was at the end of the narrow hallway where the ceiling beneath the attic sloped down far enough to make it necessary for him and Struan to bow their heads.
Calum knocked, and jumped when the door flew open and he was faced with the stooped, white-haired form of Milo, the Mystical Healer, Detector of Ills, Bearer of Forgotten Powers. Calum knew this title from the painted boards he’d seen displayed on the sides of the cart Milo and his sister, Miranda, used for their unending round of the fairs of England, Scotland and Wales.
Milo peered up at Calum from beneath jutting, shaggy brows as white as his hair. “You,” he said, his mouth turning down. He attempted to slam the door shut, but Calum’s booted foot happened to be in the way. “We told you not to come back,” Milo said. “You can do us great harm and we cannot help you further.”
“Is it him, Milo?” a querulous voice asked from the dim recesses of the room beyond. “Is it the child?”
Fascination -and- Charmed Page 42
