Reaching for Jennet, Camilla pulled her partner toward her until the redhead was kneeling above the blonde’s torso. Camilla made short work of Jennet’s flimsy shift, leaving Jennet in her stunning altogether, her thick russet ringlets streaming down the contours of her back as she straddled Camilla’s still supine form.
“You certainly are a redhead,” the gentleman murmured approvingly.
By now Jennet was perched over Camilla’s mouth like a conqueror. The blonde’s clever tongue sought its target, darting in and out with enviable dexterity.
It was becoming increasingly warm behind the velvet drapery.
Jennet arched back, grasping onto each of her ankles, her hair reaching the mattress as she lengthened her torso and dropped her head back. Her large breasts stood out in full relief. The redhead’s lithe body shuddered with pleasure as Camilla accomplished her mission.
“My turn, ladies!” cried the gentleman, and bounced up onto the mattress.
The trio then engaged in a series of extravagant maneuvers while the gentleman tried to service both of his playfellows at the same time. With the ménage à trois thus preoccupied, C.J. emerged from her hiding place and was tiptoeing across the room when the gentleman suddenly exclaimed, “What have we here?”
Unaware that he had spotted her in a mirror, artfully positioned on the ceiling above the bed, and equally unaware that the wardrobe concealing the now-forgotten Sir Runtcock contained a peephole especially designed for such voyeurism, C.J. stopped still in the center of the chamber.
“One of each!” cried the gentleman ecstatically, angling himself to get a better look at the new girl, with not a care in the slightest as to how she might have materialized. “A blonde, a redhead, and now a brunette!”
His companions appeared equally unconcerned with her provenance. Camilla reached down and retrieved one of the champagne bottles. “Come’n join us, lovey!” she slurred happily.
C.J. found herself taking a step or two toward the bed.
“Umnhnhmn!” came a muffled cry from somewhere in the room.
The four of them looked about.
“Mnuhmnmn!” the voice repeated emphatically. “That’s my Proserpine! My virginal Proserpine!”
“It’s coming from the wardrobe,” deduced the astute Jennet.
“Proserpine. What a pretty name,” remarked the friendly Camilla. “When did you start?”
“Perhaps we should release him,” said Jennet, stretching her long legs and striding over to the armoire. She slowly slid back the bolt, tossing a lascivious look at the gentleman. Out popped a scrawny little man with a bandy-legged gait, made all the more prominent by his incarceration within the narrow confines of the wardrobe.
“My Proserpine,” he gasped and lunged for C.J.
“Oh, my goodness, we were interrupting your sport,” Camilla realized.
“Nay, we were quite through,” replied C.J.
The gentleman caught C.J. unawares about the waist. “Come and join us, then,” he insisted, planting a sloppy, wine-soaked kiss behind her ear.
Jennet unwittingly came to the rescue. “Proserpine is Sir Runtcock’s for the evening and cannot be released from his patronage until Mrs. Lindsey permits it.”
“Jennet is right,” C.J. contributed. “I dare not risk my . . . situation . . . until I am at liberty to do so. But if Sir Runtcock is . . . through . . . for the evening, I shall endeavor to see if I may be permitted to come back and join you.” Talk about winging it.
“Never!” cried the skinny little man, taking his member in his hand. “You are my little virgin!”
“And there you have it,” said C.J. gaily, as she pulled open the door and hastily slipped into the corridor.
Sir Runtcock, as bare as a plucked guinea fowl, once again took up the chase. The corridor was not more than forty feet long, with a spiral staircase at the far end of it. C.J. scampered nimbly down the cold marble steps, winding her way about the center pole for several feet. Halting briefly, she glanced up and noticed that her “patron” was nowhere about. His deformity rendered the configuration of the staircase too treacherous for him to follow her.
Having safely reached the foot of the stairs, C.J. took stock of her surroundings. Embedded in the stone walls of the catacomb, tiny slivers of mica glinted in the flickering candlelight provided by thick beeswax pillars in heavy, elaborate iron wall sconces. Mrs. Lindsey evidently spared her patrons no expense if she used such costly candles in her basement.
C.J. traversed another dimly lit corridor and rounded a dark corner. A hand-carved sign above the ebony door before her read STYGIAN CAVES. She pushed against the door and, to her surprise, found it yielded more easily than she had expected. She heard the sounds of lewd laughter and the thumping of pewter tankards and goblets meeting in toasts and then slamming emphatically on long wooden tabletops.
She ducked behind a large stone pillar near the door, praying to remain undetected by the score or so of gentlemen—or so they were by birthright—some attired in modish fashion, with others robed in monkish, hooded brown cassocks tied at the waist with a length of rope. C.J. had read about the Hellfire Club and similar secret societies, which rose to prominence in the middle of the eighteenth century. She thought such brotherhoods had been banned, but apparently, the secret orders were still welcome within the bowels of brothels.
Through the haze of burning frankincense, C.J. watched as the “monks” retrieved black masks from the deep pockets of their cassocks and donned them with utmost solemnity, then with nearly sinister precision, raised their left hands to their hoods and slid them back over their shoulders.
One of the “monks” lifted a ram’s horn from a hook on the wall behind him, brought it to his lips and blew one long blast, followed by eight short ones, then another long blast. The rest of the brotherhood stood facing the center of the table. Two women garbed as nuns in habits and wimples of black and white led a female
