Free House of Dark Delights by Louisa Burton Page B

trouble locating his little pile of straw in the corner beneath the whipping stool. With his forepaws, he scooped out a nice, comfortable hollow and settled in. Twitching his nose at the smell of rose oil on his fur, he gave himself a thorough licking, finishing with his face, which he cleaned by rubbing it with his dampened paws.
    Curling up in the straw, his head pillowed on his paws, he closed his eyes and surrendered to the darkness.
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    Don’t you dare cry,
Charlotte Somerhurst commanded herself as she roamed the halls of the chateau, trying vainly to shake off the rage and humiliation seething inside her.
Don’t give those worthless curs the pleasure.
    They had no real breeding, no taste, no refinement. She’d given herself to them for two years, let them use her like a Drury Lane vestal, and what did she have to show for it? Jeers and laughter. And Dashwood, that scurvy Captain Grand, had just stood there and let it happen. Like a fool, she’d believed that she would finally, after all this time, have the privilege of lying upon the altar as an object of veneration and desire.
    The exquisite little gift she’d brought Dashwood as a gesture of thanks for the honor only underscored her mortification. Thank God she hadn’t yet given it to him. The moment she got back to her guest chamber, she’d have Bridget build a fire and burn the bloody thing to ashes.
    No, first things first. She must arrange with Lord Henry to hire a private coach and driver for tomorrow. The notion of sharing accommodations with the Hellfires, in light of what had just occurred, was unthinkable. She would return to London alone and be quit once and for all of those insolent beau-nasties with their fine silk coats and beer-garden manners.
    No, not London; it would be impossible to avoid the Hellfires there. She’d go to her country house in Cambridgeshire. She’d take a handsome young lover, several of them. She’d host her own outré little house parties, weeklong bacchanals of sensual indulgence that would have all of London society abuzz. She would render the Hellfire Club passé, ridiculous. People who mattered would laugh at their childish rituals just as the Hellfires had laughed at her.
    Charlotte drew up short when she heard muffled singing and realized she must have wandered back in the vicinity of the chapel withdrawing room, where the Hellfires were gathered—but how? She could have sworn she’d been headed in a clockwise direction around the castle, but if so, she couldn’t possibly have come back to where she’d started without encountering the gatehouse. Had she turned around and retraced her steps without realizing it? It was possible, she supposed. She’d felt a bit queer ever since her arrival here, almost as if she’d been breathing in a haze of opium smoke the entire time.
    A surge of wooziness overtook her as she gazed around at the near-black stone walls, identical to all the rest of the walls in this place. She closed her eyes, but that only made everything whirl drunkenly, so she opened them and drew in a deep breath.
Get yourself in hand, Charlotte.
    No more wandering these halls feeling sorry for herself, Charlotte decided. She must find her chamber on the second floor of the northwest tower, but she couldn’t begin to guess which direction she was facing at this point. There was a corner tower directly ahead of her, at the end of the hall; unfortunately, they all looked alike. If this wasn’t the right one, she thought as she entered it and climbed the winding stairwell, she would simply try the next one, and the next.
    It was, in fact, the wrong tower, as she discovered when she opened the door on the second-floor landing to a sitting room decked out
à la Chinois
with sumptuous, Oriental-inspired furnishings and objets d’art—the latest rage in London and Paris. In