Free The Fire Night Ball by Anne Carlisle Page A

the right people coming, B. L. Zebub's was guarded and open to privileged adults only. The drinks were over-sized and over-priced to keep the riff raff out.
    The games played weren’t entirely of a sexual variety. Local politicians had been handsomely paid off to look the other way when a high-stakes gambling game came off in a smoky back room, serviced by carefully selected staff: cup-size D waitresses and obsequious, clean-cut waiters in starched, long-sleeved black shirts and long white aprons tied neatly over smart black pants.
    No tired Christmas carols in the musical mix this week, which according to her inside source featured the Staples Sisters, Peter Frampton, Phoebe Stone, Maria Muldaur, Wayne Shorter, Steely Dan, and Silver Convention. And to top it off, his red-headed love slave had seen to it that the lord and master's entrance was heralded by a round of “Hail Britannia” and a skirl of bagpipes. Harry would flash his vintage, shit-eating grin, shake hands with any notables, and boogey.
    It was enough to make Lila throw up that by staying away, she missed out on all the fun to be had in these glum parts. In November, Mick Jagger and Bette Midler had been seen in B. L. Zebub's. Meanwhile Lila was at Drake's Roost, drinking alone and managing the upkeep of her husband's creepy mausoleum. Boring!
    She particularly hated the guest quarters, dismal corridors of old-fashioned bedrooms bearing the names of Harry's many ancestors.
    However, there was no room named after his paternal grandmother, Clare Brighton Drake. Lila supposed that was because the young woman had done the ultimate disrespect to the line after Augustus "Curly" Drake died; she had married a commoner.
    Harry was an intensely competitive and unforgiving man. In this regard, he was exactly like the two Drakes that had gone before him. The most successful of the three was the mildest in personality, Harry's father Nicholas. Life-size portraits of three Drakes, Augustus "Curly" Drake, Nicholas Samuel Drake, and Harold Augustus Drake--painted by a Sargent wannabe (two posthumously)--were prominently featured in the library, along with Harry's wall-to-wall collection of fake, leather-bound books.
    Harry didn't read much, and he wanted the collection to look identical.
    However, there wasn't much else about Drake’s Roost that was faked. The large grey stones had been quarried locally and were hand-hewn; everything dripped with imported English Ivy.
    There was a heated solarium with an indoor swimming pool, stables to rival those in Kentucky, and a separate garage for Harry's eight vintage cars. An entire wing, three stories high, was dedicated to the marble clock tower. Atop it was a plumed rooster made of gold.
    The house carried 41,607 square feet of stone-encased living space under the towering mansard roof. There was a formal ballroom on the fourth floor and a bowling alley in the basement. Between the formal dining room and the gigantic cook’s kitchen was a pantry the size of most houses, which housed a walk-in dumb waiter.
    Under the carpet in the dining room were bells Lila pressed with a tap of her toe to summon the servants. The mahogany dining table could seat thirty comfortably. Six chandeliers, each a yard wide and six feet tall, glittered along the domed ceiling's length.
    Here, Lila had installed the Christmas tree, thirty-six feet tall, four less than the one at the Biltmore. She'd told Harry his was taller (he wouldn't bother to check).
    After their guests oohed and ahhhed over the tree, Harry would drag them off to see his curiosities. These were scattered around the mansion, in collections and single presentations. Harry had a weakness for odds and ends--he collected colonial spinning wheels, medieval suits of armor, antique swords, and red-headed women. She wouldn't put it past him if he'd tried to score with her sister Marty at their wedding in Boston.
    Once Harry saw the Napoleonic chess men at the Biltmore, he didn't rest until the