House of Dark Delights

Chapter One

May 1749





Darius, curled up in his little box of straw in the gatehouse, awoke to Frederic, the guard on duty, barking out, "Halte! Qui va la?"

"It's Mrs. Hayes with the virgins," responded a woman in English. "Sir Francis is expecting us."

Darius rose, quivering as he stretched the kinks out of his back, and leapt from his box. A lady stood silhouetted against the setting sun on the other side of the portcullis barring the arched entryway. She was plump and matronly, her steely hair mostly hidden beneath the hood of a long red cloak.

"What is the watchword?" demanded Frederic, whose English, like his French, bore a pronounced Swiss-German accent. He was, like the two dozen other guards charged with maintaining the peace and privacy of Grotte Cachee, a Swiss mercenary, members of a breed prized throughout Europe for their discipline, skill, and prudence. So discreetly did Frederic and his brethren fulfill their responsibilities that the chateau's guests rarely noticed them, despite their rather garish red and blue striped uniforms.

"Do what thou wilt," she said with a sigh of annoyance. "Now, will you kindly raise this bloody thing and let us pass? We're late as it is, and Sir Francis doesn't like to be kept waiting."

"The cart, it must go 'round back to the stable," said Frederic as he cranked the windlass that operated the portcullis's pulley system. There came a battery of creaks and groans, underscored by a high-pitched metallic grating that Darius could only hear in his present feline incarnation.

Slinking beneath the big iron grate as it rose, he crossed the drawbridge that spanned the dry moat. On the path out front stood a cart full of prettily attired young women, gazing up at Ch%teau de la Grotte Cachee as if awestruck.

"Leave your shawls and mantles in the cart, lasses, but don't forget those fans," Mrs. Hayes ordered. "Necks high, shoulders down, arms curved lightly outward. Pinch your cheeks and plump up those bubbies."

The cartman repeated the instructions in French as he handed the girls down from his vehicle. They were young and creamy skinned, fresh little peaches in dainty lace caps and frocks of dimity and flower-sprigged lawn. They giggled and whispered as Mrs. Hayes ushered them through the gatehouse and into the chateau's enclosed courtyard, their gaits naively rustic, their skirts swishing against Darius as he followed along. They all wore exactly the same scent, an all-too-common eau de parfum redolent of rosemary, bergamot, and orange blossom, no doubt supplied by Mrs. Hayes.

"They await you in the withdrawing room next to the chapel." Frederic pointed toward an arched doorway in the castle's west range.

"What ho," said Mrs. Hayes when she noticed Darius. "Seems a little gray ghost has thrown in with us." She squatted down to pet him, but he dodged her before she could. He could mingle with the chateau's guests on those rare occasions when curiosity got the better of him, such as this evening, so long as he was careful to steer clear of actual physical contact. "Skittish, are you? Aye, but you'll fit right in with the rest of these coy little pusses."

The girls fell silent as they neared the fountain in the center of the courtyard, a stone pool surmounted by a statue of a man and a woman joined in carnal union as water sluiced over them from a jug held aloft by a handmaid. It wasn't the sculpture, indelicate though it was, that had stunned the girls into silence, Darius knew. It was the gentleman kneeling over the edge of the pool with his gold-shot silk coat thrown up and his breeches around his knees, grunting in pain as a lady in an ornate silver half-mask whipped his buttocks with a length of rattan.

"God's balls!" he cried. "Have mercy, my lady."

"Is that you, Your Grace?" asked the whoremistress. "Came all the way to France for a good caning, eh?"