She accelerated her pace and heard the corresponding steps behind her quickening as well. The footfall, though distinctly audible, was light enough to belong to a woman—perhaps someone from the working classes—for C.J.’s own tread in her expensive kidskin slippers was almost noiseless. She increased her speed, aided by a slight decline in the pavement, and turned a dark corner into a dimly lit street, which she realized immediately was a cul de sac. Her heart began to pound. There was no turning back or she would run straight into the panting being who was now but a few yards behind her. Given the recent events surrounding Lady Dalrymple’s illness, C.J. hazarded a quick guess as to the identity of her pursuer, but dared not look back to verify it. Her aim was to elude, not to confront. Breaking into a run, she noticed a door being opened about ten feet away; C.J. shoved past the exiting gentleman like a cat scuttling indoors from the cold.
The heavy oaken door shut behind her, locking automatically and leaving a cursing Saunders on its threshold.
Soaked with sweat, C.J. leaned against the wall just inside the building and clutched her chest to catch her breath. Flames flickered in the baroque wall sconces, casting shadows, like greedily lapping tongues against the red flocked wallpaper. The narrow foyer, tiled in a domino black and white, gleamed in the candlelight.
Leaving the building now was inadvisable. Saunders might be lurking near the doorstep, anticipating her exit. This would be a waiting game that C.J. had to win. Her breathing steadier, she decided to explore her sanctuary and slowly pulled back the deep gold damask drape that masked the foyer from the rest of the town house.
C.J.’s eyes widened. Beyond the golden curtain was a world worthy of Hogarth: colorful, brightly lit, loud, and merry. Gentlemen of all stripes were enjoying brandies in oversized crystal snifters, some wagering at snooker—one lewdly brandishing his cue stick as if it were a priapus—and indulging in amorous play with willing young ladies in various states of dishabille. Far from being shocked, C.J. was fascinated by the exhibitions before her. Bustling about like a mother hen in a gown of purple satin with deep décolleté was a stately looking woman with a pile of extravagantly coiffed silver hair and a violet patch on one of her highly rouged cheekbones.
A besotted client, deep in his cups, prostrated himself before the madam. “Mrs. Lindsey, I am forever in your debt,” he said with near-religious fervor before passing out, one arm draped over Mrs. Lindsey’s amethyst-encrusted slippers. The madam had only to glance at a large periwigged man and a small African page boy attired in harem pants and a jewel-studded striped silk turban, and the inert patron was noiselessly ejected.
Suddenly, C.J. felt a tug on her arm as the page boy got her attention. He escorted her to a thin, bandy-legged chap approaching middle age. “Yes, that is the she who will be my ladylove!” cried the patron gleefully. “She shall play my virgin tonight! There can be no other!”
Before C.J. could protest that she was not in Mrs. Lindsey’s stable of beauties, the sweet-faced, ebony-skinned page led her and Mr. Bandylegs—who introduced himself as Sir Runtcock—down a candlelit corridor, passing a half-opened door through which C.J. spied an odd liaison indeed. An extremely fat gentleman of middling age and florid, baby-faced countenance was dressed as a young schoolgirl in a simple, high-waisted white frock with a wide pink sash. His bare, and corpulent, bottom was being soundly flogged by a doxy severely attired as a governess. The cross-dressed patron, evidently enjoying his “punishment,” cried out to be birched with even greater ferocity.
Having reached their destination, the exotic-looking page extracted a ring of skeleton keys from his belt and turned the lock, admitting C.J. and her “client” to a bedchamber of gigantic proportions. C.J. attempted to appear neither surprised nor overwhelmed by her surroundings, all the while scoping out a means of escape that would not lead her directly into the path of the prying lady’s maid or another of Mrs. Lindsey’s patrons. The enormous canopied bed rested atop a raised platform as though it were an altar to love. Above them cavorted painted nymphs and satyrs, contorting themselves into all manner of elaborate sexual postures, the outsized phalluses of the half beasts tipped in bright red, the faces of the voluptuaries convulsed with ecstasy.
The heavy wooden door closed behind them, and C.J. could hear the ever fainter jangling of keys as the page receded down the corridor.
“Ah, my pretty one,” cried Runtcock, rubbing his palms together with delight and hopping from foot to foot. “What are you called, my sweetling?”
C.J. stole a glance at the painted plaster firmament, her eye lighting on a pair of muscled arms stretching up from a shadowy abyss toward a nubile, bare-breasted young woman with flowers entwined through her blond, knee-length tresses. “’Tis Proserpine, sir,” she replied, coyly playing her part.
“Ahh, thou devilish sweet Proserpine, come to your Hades!” exclaimed Runtcock, deftly unfastening his breeches and dropping them to expose, poking through his linen, the tiniest pillicock that C.J. had ever seen. He wriggled out of his pants, linen, and hose, revealing his pale, scrawny bandy legs. Naked now, from the waist down, he proceeded to chase his prey around the gargantuan bed. “Oh, how fond my Proserpine is of the chase!” he squealed as C.J. leaped up onto the mattress and scampered across its breadth. Runtcock stopped in midpursuit. “Something is amiss,” he declared. “Your dress, my precious virgin, is not appropriate to your undefiled temple. My virgin should be attired in purest white!”
Anxious that her “patron” would rush out in his present state of undress and declare to Mrs. Lindsey that he had not been given a true “virgin,” thereby exposing her as an imposter, which might cause her to be ejected from the premises straight into Saunders’s suspicious grasp, C.J.
