Cecelia clamped both hands over her mouth, the sight before her pinning her feet to the ground.
On a stretch of perfectly clipped grass not seven paces from the window, a dark-skinned woman in a butter-yellow ball gown bounced astride the hips of a half-naked man. The prone figure held her hips as though to keep her from flying away as he thrust upward with such vigor, it appeared as though he were trying to dislodge her from his lap.
On the heels of Cecelia’s shock rode an absurd and intense anxiety for the young lovers. It was only half noon on a summer’s day. If she’d spied their brazen liaison in the gardens, surely someone else would.
Slowly, a few additional details began to permeate her absurd musings.
The girl’s gown was also about one hundred years out of fashion, just as the butler’s attire had been. Her dark hair was powdered, a practice that had died several decades hence. Her lips were almost comically rouged, as were her cheeks and …
Cecelia’s hands moved from her mouth to press against her heart as the man reached up and freed the girl’s breasts from the low bodice.
Her nipples—enviably high, impossibly pert nipples—were rouged as well.
Cecelia should have looked away, but instead she found her breaths increasing to match the rhythm of the shameless copulation.
This was no gentle rendezvous; nor was it a romp, per se. The man’s rough hands pinched at the woman, grabbed at her breasts, her throat, until his fingers found their way into her mouth.
All the while the woman rode him at a galloping pace, baring her teeth to playfully bite at him, exerting just enough pressure to send her lover into obvious fits of delight.
Without realizing it, Cecelia’s hands slid from her heart, over her sedate navy-and-white-striped gown, to settle low on her stomach, where a flurry of hummingbirds might have taken residence. Some heavy sensation bloomed beneath her hand. Heavy and empty at the same time. An ache, but not a pain.
An urge, but not a hunger.
It brought to mind those languorous mornings on Lake Geneva watching the boys of le Radon Institute for Boys scull their boats across the mirror-smooth water. Their bodies surging and pulling, every muscle engaged. The rhythm of it had done something to her, even as a girl of seventeen.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, but—”
Cecelia gasped and whirled, her gaze colliding with that of Genevieve Leveaux, who stood in the doorway swathed in bright pink and bedecked with an inordinate number of bows on her Georgian bodice.
She rushed to the window, unable to fully block Cecelia’s view, as it seemed she’d outgrown Genny in the nearly fifteen years since they’d seen each other.
“Blast and damnation,” the older woman hissed. “Today of all days.” She threw the latch and leaned so far out the window, Cecelia worried she’d fall. “Lilly Belle! This is your last warning before I throw you out on your ear! You’ve been told to keep that sort of enterprise elsewhere. We are not that kind of business!”
Cecelia noted that Genny’s sinuous voice and whimsical American patois hadn’t changed a whit, even after so many years in England.
“But Lord Crawford came looking for table games, and since we’re closed today, he offered another kind of sport. He prefers to rut out of doors, don’t you, darling?” Lilly reached behind her and slapped his thigh, much as one would the flanks of a horse.
“I prefer an audience,” he managed breathlessly.
To Cecelia’s—well, she couldn’t say horror, but she didn’t quite have another word to describe the amalgamation of shock, titillation, and distress within her—Crawford and Lilly didn’t pause. The discourse didn’t even interrupt their rhythm. In fact, Crawford stared right at Cecelia and increased his pace, grasping Lilly by the hips and thrusting upward rather mercilessly.
Cecelia didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, run, or …
Or continue to watch.
“I said not today, you insatiable slag,” Genny bellowed, her drawl losing its syrupy edge to shards of ire. “Our new headmistress is here, and this isn’t the fashion in which we planned to receive her, is it? Now finish Crawford off and send him on his way. And if I catch you at this again—”
“I thought. She wasn’t. Coming. Until. This. After. Noon.” Lilly’s diction was interrupted by the increasing intensity of what was happening beneath her.
“I’m coming … right … now,” Crawford warned, his voice thick with strain.
Cecelia could stand to watch no longer as a strange and unsettling contortion overtook Crawford’s beakish features. Cheeks on fire and her bodice suddenly too tight, she whirled and launched herself toward the door.
It opened before she could reach for the handle, and the butler burst in, red-faced with panic. “Three carriages full of lawmen are turning onto Mounting Lane,” he panted.
Cecelia looked to Genny, shocked beyond words. Mounting Lane. Never had there been a more apropos address. Had she inherited a brothel?
The butler cast a wary glance toward Cecelia. “I’m told the Vicar of Vice is with them.”
Vicar of Vice? Cecelia mentally searched through everything she’d ever read regarding civics and politics. She arrived at the conclusion they were using a moniker no one claimed willfully.
A litany of words that would have made a sailor blush burst from Genny as she returned to the window. “You get that cull out of here now, Lilly!” she screeched. “The Vicar of Vice is blocks away, and he’s bringing his army to our door.”
“Again?” came Lilly’s plaintive whine from the garden as she tucked her breasts away.
Genny slammed the window shut and locked it before finally turning to Cecelia, her panicked amber eyes softening with regret as she fluffed at her perfect brassy-blond coiffeur. “Well, honey.” She hurried to where Cecelia stood at the door and took her hands. The all-but-forgotten letter crumpled slightly between their palms.
They both looked down to the piece of paper, then back to each other.
Genny had barely changed in fifteen years. Her skin remained smooth and unblemished but for a slight deepening in the creases next to her expressive mouth, to the right of which a painted black heart hovered. Her tight curls were threaded with a whisper of silver at the temples, but she was as exquisite as the day they’d met.
“This isn’t at all how I wanted to welcome you.” Genny freed the hand in which Cecelia clutched the letter but kept the other locked in a firm grip as she turned to the butler.
“Winston, you make sure Crawford has paid Lilly, dressed, and gone before those carriages have a chance to breach the gates. Then you rip through this entire place and make certain they find nothing.”
“Yes, madam.”
Genny launched herself through the door, nearly yanking Cecelia’s arm out of its socket as she dragged her along. “I’d hoped we’d have time to discuss everything, but the wolves are howling at the door.”
“Wolves?” Cecelia tried to keep up both mentally and physically as she allowed herself to be pulled back through the extravagant marble entry toward a small door hidden in dark-wood panels beneath the columns of the grand staircase. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose, afraid they’d come loose in their hurry.
“That letter is from your aunt Henrietta,” Genny explained with forced patience. “Read what you can before the vicar busts the door down.”