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himself.
    â€œFie!” His tormenter smacked the offending hand with her cane, saying, “You may spend when I say you may spend, and not a moment sooner.”
    â€œAs you please, my lady,” muttered the duke as he lowered his head and raised his rosy ass.
    â€œCome, poppets,” said Mrs. Hayes as she led them, along with Darius, through the arched doorway and into a little vestibule.
    A burly guard, one of the expansive retinue who’d accompanied the chateau’s current guests from England, said, “’Tis high time, Mrs. Hayes. I was thinkin’ you’d been set upon by bandits.”
    â€œSorry, Tommy. Two of the wenches tried to hold out for more money, so it took a bit of dickering to get them to come.”
    â€œAye, but they’ll all come before the night’s through,” Tommy snickered.
    Extending her hand, Mrs. Hayes said, “Fifty quid apiece, as usual, plus my traveling expenses.”
    Tommy made a quick count of the girls, then pulled a sack of coins from inside his coat and handed it to the procuress. “Come along, then.”
    Unlocking the door behind him, he gestured the group into the chapel withdrawing room, a candlelit chamber furnished with silk settees and low marble tables. The centuries-old tapestries that normally graced these walls had been taken down and replaced with paintings depicting men in white monks’ robes disporting themselves with nubile, half-naked nuns. Over the central dining table, where a crystal chandelier normally hung, dangled a lamp shaped like a batlike monster with an erection almost as big as itself. A carved wooden sign hanging over the doorway to the chapel read
Fay ce que voudras
:
“Do what thou wilt,” the motto of England’s Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe, better known as the Hellfire Club.
    About two dozen gentlemen and half as many ladies occupied the room, some standing and some reclining, all exquisitely attired. The ladies, he saw, all wore silver brooches inscribed
Love and Friendship
on the bosoms of their deeply décolleté gowns. Two of them had their gowns half-unlaced, exhibiting embroidered satin stays so low cut as to display their breasts in their entirety. One lady’s gown had been fashioned with a skirt that opened to the waist in back; her petticoats and panniers had likewise been split to reveal tantalizing glimpses of flesh every time she moved.
    The perfumes and scented accoutrements of the assembled company—handkerchiefs, sachets, and powders—merged in a flowery-sweet miasma. There were two maidservants, as well, serving wine and such aphrodisiacal delicacies as oysters, caviar, almonds, pine nuts, and figs. They all turned to watch as Mrs. Hayes ushered in the young women, but the only man who was mannerly enough to rise was Darius’s fellow follet, Inigo.
    â€œBonsoir, mesdemoiselles,”
Inigo said with a bow. The charming young satyr was attired for the evening in a gold-embroidered satin coat of some dark hue which Darius’s feline eyes couldn’t quite place—something reddish or brownish, most likely. His unruly curls were caught in a ribbon at his nape, leaving just enough on the sides to cover those telltale ears. He captured Darius’s gaze and winked.
    Darius winked back.
    The rest of the gentlemen appraised the procession with a frankness that would have seemed grossly rude under ordinary circumstances. Two ladies lounging side by side, one wearing a mask trimmed in peacock feathers, conferred behind their fans as they pointed to this girl and that. Darius swiveled his ears to home in on their whispered comments. “…in the yellow stripes, with those big blue eyes? Wouldn’t you just love to bend her over your knee?”
    Darius wove his way between the ladies’ rustling silk skirts and the men’s white-stockinged legs to the doorway that led to the chapel, where he was less likely to be