House of Dark Delights by Louisa Burton Read Free Book Online Page B

little curtsey.
    â€œJust ‘Elle’?” Charlotte asked. “No family name?”
    â€œNor title, I confess.”
    Charlotte smiled in a coldly remote way that wasn’t hard to decipher. Having been judged and found lacking in all that was meaningful, namely social standing, Elle could now be crossed off Charlotte’s list of people who mattered.
    â€œI say, but you are the very image of a local fellow who was inducted into the Hellfires yesterday,” Charlotte told Elle. “An acquaintance of our hostess. Evidently he’d been intrigued by the order for some time, and was eager to participate. I believe his name is Eric.”
    â€œElic,” Elle corrected. “He is my twin brother.”
    â€œIndeed.” Charlotte glanced slyly in the direction of Turek, whose gaze had frosted over at the mention of Elic. “Well, I suppose there can be no mistaking the resemblance. There’s a handsome family if ever I’ve seen one.”
    A maid came by with a tray laden with wineglasses and two cut-glass carafes filled with wine. “Regular or enhanced?” she asked.
    â€œOh, enhanced, definitely,” Charlotte replied.
    â€œI would advise you to avoid that kind unless you’ve a tolerance for cantharides,” Turek advised Elle. “Spanish fly,” he explained in response to her quizzical look.
    Elle waved away the tray altogether. Turek chose the unadulterated wine, saying he found the notion of consuming ground-up blister beetles both repulsive and dangerous, and that cantharides, in any event, merely excited the flesh as opposed to the passions.
    â€œI take my excitement in whatever manner I can acquire it,” replied Charlotte as she raised her glass. “To sin in all its varied and wondrous forms.”
    â€œHow came you to join our little romp this evening, Elle?” Turek asked as he raised his wineglass to inhale the bouquet.
    â€œLike my brother, I am a friend of la Dame des Ombres. She thought I might find it diverting.”
    â€œPray, where
is
Madame?” he asked as he scanned the room. “I’ve yet to make her acquaintance.”
    â€œShe tends to keep to herself.” Elle stroked and nuzzled Darius, coaxing a deep purr of contentment from him. “Her
administrateur,
Lord Henry Archer, sees to the needs of her guests.”
    â€œAh, yes, Archer,” Turek said. “Capital fellow.”
    Lord Henry, second son of the Marquis of Heddonshaw, was an affable young dilettante and the first Englishman ever recruited to oversee the affairs of Grotte Cachée. It was he who’d suggested to the chateau’s
gardienne,
Camille Morel, Dame des Ombres, that she invite the Hellfire Club to spend a fortnight at the chateau. They’d been meeting at a London pub called the George and Vulture, but it had burned down recently, leaving the Hellfires betwixt and between. Madame, mindful of the carnal needs of the three follets in her care—Darius, Elic, and Inigo—had written a letter of invitation to the club’s founder and chief “friar,” Sir Francis Dashwood. Having read references to Grotte Cachée in the erotic memoirs of Domenico Vitturi, a sixteenth-century Venetian nobleman, and eager to experience the rumored haven of licentiousness for himself, Dashwood had gratefully accepted the offer. He, his colleagues, and their female followers had disported themselves for two weeks at the chateau, and were to depart on the morrow—but not before a final orgiastic celebration tonight.
    â€œAre you a frequent visitor to the chateau?” Turek asked Elle.
    â€œI’ve been a guest here for some time.”
    â€œCan you enlighten me at all about that rather curious stone figure in the cave next to the bathhouse? The one they call Dusivæsus?”
    â€œBeen snooping, have you?” Charlotte asked him.
    â€œExploring,” he corrected. “’Tis a more worthy pastime, I