Bound in Moonlight (11 page)

“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 little 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

T
HERE'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.”

“He carries it everywhere, even in polite company,” Jonquil said. “At a glance, it looks rather like a mushroom. But if you look closely, you can see the little bishop's eye, and then you realize it's none other than the old bald rat itself. We call it Dunhurst's dilly-whacker.”

Violet said,“He came here last year with a whole trunk full of manacles and whips and paddles, all different kinds. The girl that got stuck with him was called Dahlia. A pretty little blonde, Finnish, I think. Poor thing barely spoke English, but she told us the bastard never even tried to bed her, all he wanted was to cause her pain. She always had tearstains on her face and whip marks all over her. She moved like an old woman—you could tell she was in constant pain.”

Caroline said, “I thought the masters weren't allowed to hurt us.”

“Only superficially,” said Jonquil. “That's the rule, anyway, but Dahlia claimed that Dunhurst had violated it. She went to Dr. Coates covered in bruises one morning, said he'd beaten her savagely with a black stick, which would have meant she could leave but still get the money. Dunhurst denied it, said she'd taken a tumble down some stairs and that he didn't own a black stick. His chamber was thoroughly searched, but nothing of the sort turned up. Mr. Riddell dismissed Dahlia for being disobedient and a liar. After days of abuse, she had to leave here empty-handed—and Dunhurst got to have his fun without paying.”

Violet said, “The outlook is not entirely grim, ladies. Remember that handsome young blood from last year with the black, curly hair? And that
smile
?”

“Inigo,” Jonquil said excitedly. “
He's
here?”

“He's got a bloody club between his legs,” Violet told Caroline. “The girl he bought could barely walk by the time she left here, but she said it was worth it.”

“Is his friend with him?” Jonquil asked. “The blond one with those dazzling blue eyes? They called him Elic.”

Lili and Elle exchanged another look for some reason, this one slightly amused.

Craning her head to see through the narrow opening, Violet said, “I don't see Elic, but Lord Cutbridge is here.”

“Is he?” said Poppy from somewhere behind Caroline.“He was my master last year. A real gentleman, that one, but a rutting stallion in bed. I never met a man who loved bedsport as much as Cutbridge—and he always saw to my pleasure. It got to where I'd come if he just gave me
that look
. I wish they could all be like him.”

“A
gentleman
?” scoffed Narcissa, the beautiful but appropriately named young widow of an earl.“He's a one-eyed tanner's son.”

Elle spoke up. “I understand your Prince Regent thought enough of that tanner's son to make him baron after the Battle of Vitoria, which was where he lost that eye, no? I should hardly think there's any shame in earning one's title through heroism—quite the contrary.”

Violet, still peering through the curtain, said, “Things really are looking up. Rexton's here.”

Her observation was greeted with sighs and one or two carnal little growls.

Scanning the great hall as best she could, Caroline spotted David Childe, Lord Rexton, lounging on a purple velvet settee with his long legs crossed, a snifter cupped lightly in one hand, cigar in the other. His thatch of dark, wavy hair was a bit more neatly combed than the last time she'd seen him, but his expression of languid indifference was the same. He sat all alone, his only company the lacquered writing box on the seat next to him.

“Who is this Rexton?” asked Angelique, who was French and a novice slave, like Caroline.

“He's a viscount,” said Violet. “And a barrister, though you'd never guess it to look at him. He's only here to handle the money and the contracts—more's the pity. I wouldn't mind being
his
slave.”

“He's a cock of the game, and no denying it,”Narcissa said.“ He's also as cold-blooded a viper as ever lived.”

“You're just saying that because he cut you loose before you were ready to go,” Jonquil said.

“She was his lover last year, but it only lasted a few weeks,”
Violet whispered to Caroline. “He's better off without her. She's got opinions on everything and everyone, and you can't shut her up once she starts airing them—a tiresome little magpie if ever there was one.”

Angelique asked the question that had been on Caroline's mind ever since she'd met Rexton. “Why would a viscount become a barrister?”

“No one knows,” Violet said. “He's a partner in Burnham, Childe and Upcott, but he doesn't really practice law, from what I've been told. He mostly lures rich clients to the firm—and girls like us to Grotte Cachée. Most of us English girls were recruited by him. Silver-tongued devil. He could talk a cloistered nun into putting herself on the block.”

Rexton, you blackguard,
Caroline thought as she watched him raise his snifter to his mouth.
You jaded, conscienceless rakehell.

She thought back to that night two weeks ago when he'd snagged her in his talons, preying on her anguish and her desperation—a desperation that had driven her, that afternoon, to let Bram Hugget worm his big tongue into her mouth and maul her breasts for the halfpence it would cost her to die.

“A ha'penny to cross our fine new bridge, miss.” The bells of St. Paul's Cathedral had started chiming midnight as Caroline handed her hard-won halfpenny to the rotund little toll-man.

“A bit late for a lady to be out and about without an escort,” he said as he tucked her toll into the big coin pocket tied like an apron over his round stomach. “Mind you keep your wits about you, crossing the bridge. They ain't got the gas lamps working yet, and it's a dark night, what with all them clouds and not much moon. Don't tarry. The way this wind's picking up, I reckon there's a storm on the way.”

Touching the brim of his leather cap, he gestured her toward the footpath along the east side of the bridge, and the iron turnstile that served as a barrier to it, which clicked heavily as she pushed through it.

Waterloo Bridge, a quarter-mile of flat roadway supported by nine granite arches, had been officially inaugurated that day—the second anniversary of the one-day battle for which it was named—with a military cavalcade and a procession that included the Prince Regent, the Lord Mayor, and the Dukes of York and Wellington. The bridge was bedecked with pennants for the occasion, the sun-spangled river thick with pleasure boats and barges. Spectators from all walks of life crowded onto riverbanks, terraces, and rooftops to view the ceremony. It was the most extravagant event that Caroline had ever witnessed.