Lord Foxbridge Butts In (33 page)

Nevertheless, I sort of enjoyed myself. The music was nice, the drinks were good, and many of the people I met were attractive and interesting; if it weren’t for the frank discussions of rather baroque intimate practices, I might have considered visiting among this crowd on my own without having an ulterior motive. I kept thinking about Lady Bea’s admonishment to say Yes, and tried to let go of the last vestiges of priggishness that infested my soul.

Eventually, a hush came over the crowd, and people started drifting into their seats as the music changed and the show began. I hid behind Caro, a little afraid of what I was going to see, but found that she was half-hiding behind Lady Bea, so we were pretty much in the same boat.

The lights came up on the blue plush curtain, and the Marquis de Mazan appeared in a very impressive scarlet uniform loaded with silver braid, drinking up the scattered applause that greeted his arrival. Lifting his voice to a theatrical roar, he welcomed us to an Evening of Classical Art, and introduced the first act: a
tableau vivant
depicting “the Rape of the Sabine Women.” The curtain rose to reveal three young men and three young women inadequately draped in shreds of red chiffon; but rather than the boys lifting the girls and carrying them away, as the Rape of the Sabines was usually portrayed in art, they were quite simply
mating
, arrayed in terribly uncomfortable-looking positions, with a great deal of hair-pulling and bottom-slapping. I was stunned.

The curtain came down on that vision, and the Marquis returned to announce the next tableau, entitled “Apollo Mourning Hyacinth.” I really don’t think that what the two boys revealed by the rising curtain were doing was what
anyone
could call “mourning.” But the smaller of the youths, with a great red gash painted on his forehead, was laying perfectly still and limp while the larger youth, well,
mourned
him. It was a little more inspiring than the previous scene, and I started feeling rather warm under my corset.

More tableaux of this sort followed, familiar mythological subjects like Apollo and the Muses, Cupid and Psyche, and the Three Graces, all re-imagined as pornography; and after a while, I found myself becoming rather jaded by the sights and sounds, and even to become a little bored by the end of the show, which culminated in a raucous and quite lurid free-for-all depicting the Fall of Troy, complete with wooden horse.

Once that mess had been brought to its conclusion, the Marquis called an intermission, and the audience moved about in their seats as waiters circulated with drinks.  After a certain amount of time, the “slaves” from the tableaux, still in their microscopic costumes, began circulating the room, making themselves agreeable to audience members in hopes of putting up their prices a bit.

By hanging back and letting Lady Bea talk for us, we managed to keep all of the “
artistes
” at arm’s length, though most seemed intent on sitting in every lap in the room; for while our disguises were convincing from a polite distance, any intimate encounters would have given us away.  But eventually the music stopped again, and the boys and girls trooped back onto the stage for the auction.

The auction was very much like a horse auction, with the Marquis announcing the various charms of each slave in equine terminology, ‘fillies’ and ‘stallions’ that were ‘biddable’ or ‘spirited’ but offered an ‘excellent ride’ — though at no horse auction that
I’d
ever attended had the horses wiggled their hindquarters at bidders.  Observing the slaves as they were auctioned off, mostly for double the going rate of a higher-class professional (which I had learned from Gabriel), I thought some of them might be a little drunk, or woozy from drugs, but in general they seemed quite cheerful and pleased to be there.  It did not appear to be degrading in any way, though I wondered what sorts of degradation these young people might experience at the hands of their buyers later that night.

After all sixteen prostitutes had been auctioned, and sent backstage to dress and accompany their owners home, the little orchestra changed its tune to something very dark and Russian-sounding in a minor key, dominated by a whining clarinet.  The lights went down, and an expectant hush fell on the audience.  The Marquis came out in front of the closed curtains and announced that it was time to close the evening with something “very special”: two unwilling virgins, a boy and a girl, to be deflowered by the highest bidder.

The curtains rose on a black and empty stage, and the music rose to a crescendo; with a clash of cymbals, the Marquis whipped two hitherto-unseen black velvet drapes off of two nude figures shackled to great wooden frames on wheels, spread-eagle like the martyred Saint Andrew.

The boy was of course Claude Chatroy; and though I was there to rescue him, I couldn’t help wishing I could buy him instead: for though his intellect wasn’t much, a kindly Creator had rather opulently overfurnished his exterior in more-than-ample recompense. He was
quite
breathtaking.  He seemed to be drugged, probably with opium, as he had a dreamy, confused look on his handsome face.

The girl, quite surprisingly, was also drawn from the upper classes: Miss
 Melinda Cumming, the beautiful but excruciatingly shy daughter of a famously obstreperous Tory MP, whom both Caro and I knew; and though my appreciation of the female form is rather limited, she made a stirring picture in her shackles, with her long strawberry-blonde hair falling down over one side of her face.  She also appeared to be drugged, but aware of her situation and absolutely horrified by it: she struggled weakly to hide herself from view, which seemed to inflame the audience, including my own companions.

“What’s your plan?” Caro asked me, turning her back on the distressing sight of her undraped cousin and the stirring site of Miss
 Cumming, when the Marquis opened the bidding on Claude at fifty guineas.

“Plan?” I asked back, shaking myself out of a lewd stupor.

“You do
have
a plan, don’t you?” she hissed in surprise.

“I seldom make plans,” I explained haughtily, making a virtue of my shortcoming; the fact was, I’d been so caught up in the disguise aspect of the adventure that I’d quite neglected to give any thought to
how
I intended to rescue Claude.

“Well, what are you going to
do
?” she hit me on the arm in her annoyance.

“Buy him, of course,” it was the only solution I could think of.  I’d hate to give my money to the dastardly Marquis, but what other choice was there?  I couldn’t well storm up onto the stage and throw Claude over my shoulder, and carry him out of a room full of people, hobbled as I was by an evening gown and high heels.  Besides, the Marquis was armed with a sword — which, though probably decorative, still counted as a weapon.

“How much money did you bring with you?”

“Surely the Marquis will send a bill, if he’s charging guineas,” I hadn’t yet considered that little wrinkle.  I had about three hundred pounds on me, but Lady Bea had intimated that the virgin auctions went pretty high.

“Will he bill Lord Foxbridge or Mrs. Charles Savarell?” Caro was getting impatient with me.

“Hopefully the latter, then I won’t have to pay,” I joked to cover my own annoyance, both with Caro’s impatience as well as my own lack of forethought.  The bidding had already gone to two hundred and ten guineas while we’d been hissing at each other like a couple of conspiratorial teakettles.

“Well,
bid
already, you moron!” she punched my arm so hard I could swear the bone cracked a little.

I raised my hand at the next bid, but was ignored; apparently only verbal bids were accepted.  But I couldn’t very well bid in my own voice, nor could Caro in hers, without “blowing our cover.”  Caro could drop her voice somewhat convincingly in conversation, and I had managed all evening with a giggly sort of whisper; but neither of us could project our fake voices at volume.  When the bidding started to slow down at three hundred and fifty, I called on Lady Bea’s help once again.

“Lady Bea,” I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Bid on him for me, would you?”

“Of course, my dear,” she purred, “How high can I go?”

“Any amount, it doesn’t matter,” I frowned at her, “But he mustn’t be bought by someone else. We’re rescuing him, remember?”

“Five hundred guineas!” Lady Bea shouted out gleefully, jumping the bidding out of the ten-guinea increments that had held so far.

“Five hundred ten,” responded the truly repellant man in the front corner of the room who had been leading the bidding all along.  He looked a cross between an American gangster and a pantomime Herod: enormously fat and shiny and ugly, with dyed black hair greased back from a low forehead and tiny black-currant eyes stuck in a suet-pudding face; he chewed an immense black cigar and wore spectacular diamond rings on most of his short sausage-like fingers.

“Five fifty,” Lady Bea turned in her chair to face the competition instead of the prize.

“Five seventy-five,” the ugly man responded immediately.

They went back and forth like this, rapid-fire, not letting the Marquis get a word in edgewise.  And anyone who was watching the stage instead of the bidders (as I was doing) could not fail to notice that Claude, despite his drugged haze, was following the bidding intently — becoming,
quite
visibly, more and more aroused as his price went up.  The little tart was enjoying it!

But the fat man started sweating at eight-fifty, and hesitated for a long moment at nine-twenty-five; Lady Bea moved in for the kill.

“
One thousand
guineas,” she declared in a tone that brooked no opposition, then added with girlish mock-seriousness, “eight shillings, and sixpence.”

Silence reigned for a moment, then the Marquis resumed his role as auctioneer.

“I have one thousand guineas, eight and six from La Pantera.  Any further bids, Mr. Arnstein?”

The fat man glowered at Lady Bea, then shook his head sadly.  I suspect he’d really wanted Claude, but didn’t dare risk La Pantera’s wrath: if she was willing to pay a thousand guineas for something, being thwarted would probably make her his enemy for life. And nobody in his right mind wants a dominatrix as an enemy.

“Sold to La Pantera for one thousand guineas, eight shillings, and six pence,” the Marquis banged his gavel with an amused smirk, and Claude squinted against the lights trying to see who’d bought him.  But he was immediately wheeled off the stage, I suppose to be gift-wrapped; bidding started on Miss Cumming, who’d more-or-less fainted and was drooping picturesquely in her frame.

“Oh, goodness, that
was
fun!” Lady Bea giggled with exhilaration, “It’s too bad I won’t be able to actually keep him, though.  He’s quite a specimen.  Did you see how he reacted to the bidding?”

“I
did
,” my annoyance broke the surface.  After all of my efforts on his behalf, he didn’t seem to
want
to be rescued.  I was more than half tempted to
let
Lady Bea have him, but I’d have to ask Caro first — he was her cousin, after all.

“Champagne, my lord?” a tray dropped in front of my face with a glass of bubbly on it.

“Pond?!” I gaped at my valet, who was dressed as a waiter, “What in the name of God are you
doing
?”

“Saving your lordship’s bacon,” he responded in a low tone that could not be overheard, “The police are setting up a raid, and your lordship might find it convenient to be elsewhere when it commences.  I would recommend your lordship escort their ladyships out through the serving pantry within the next few minutes.  I’ll bring Mr. Chatroy out to you.”

“A
raid
?” I goggled at him, flabbergasted by this unexpected and unbelievably sudden turn of events.

“Not so loud, please, my lord,” Pond said quietly, imperturbable, “Sergeant Sir Oliver Paget is coming with his chief and a large force of constables.  Leave now, take your companions with you, and I will bring Mr.
 Chatroy.  Understood?”

“Understood,” I agreed.  I saw the whole thing in a flash: he’d gone behind my back to Twister and set up this raid in order to rid Hyacinth House, and probably England, of the distasteful Marquis; but in keeping with the feudal spirit, he went behind
Twister
’s back to alert me to the danger, so I wouldn’t be caught in the trap.  It was so clever that I couldn’t even be angry with him for disobeying me.

With a hurried explanation to Caro and Lady Bea, we gathered up our wraps and quietly slipped away, one at a time, through the service pantry — where we surprised a number of legitimate waiters who’d been cooling their heels until the auction ended and they could return to serving. Hurrying out into the service hall beyond the pantry, I was surprised to find another Hyacinth House denizen, Stephen the abused house-boy, also disguised as a waiter.

“Good evening, my lord,” he grinned at me a little insolently, amused by my garb, “My ladies.  If you will step this way, there’s a staircase that leads to a side door into the alley.  Her ladyship’s car is waiting there.”

“What are
you
doing here?” I had to ask, even though I was slowing our escape.