Dukes of the Demi-Monde Read online

  Dukes of the Demi-Monde

  The Cappadene Club Collection

  by Felicia Greene

  Table of Contents

  A Duke Stripped Bare

  A Lady Unchained

  A Courtesan’s Comfort

  A Bluestocking’s Vice

  A Priest’s Perdition

  KEEP EXPLORING

  A Duke Stripped Bare

  They had forgotten to carry the three. Catherine Wentford, surrounded by stacks of messily scrawled papers, shook her head quietly as she arranged the accounts of the Cappadene Club into clear, if hasty, order.

  Outside the firmly-shut door of the candlelit study, a lush array of feminine giggles and masculine grunts suggested the occupants of the other rooms were not, under any circumstances, focused on mathematics.

  Catherine knew she needed to be hasty. A lady of her position shouldn’t be worrying herself with mathematics, and she certainly shouldn’t be doing mathematics for money. She could already imagine the ton’s questions--why did the Wentfords need money, what on earth could have happened to them, sending their only daughter into something that smacked horribly of trade…

  And as for why she was doing mathematics in a notorious brothel?

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ Catherine murmured quietly to herself as she herded another few recalcitrant numbers into their correct places. ‘I am going to be thrown into the Serpentine.’

  Perhaps being thrown into the Serpentine would be a relief. It would mean not having to conceal the dreadful, brute truth of the Wentfords’ current state; her father had lost a great deal of money on unwise speculation. So much money, all at once, that Catherine had been made suddenly and horribly aware of how paper-thin the contours of her luxurious life had become.

  The Wentfords had servants that needed paying. Grocers, butchers and fishmongers that were threatening to collect outside the door of their smart Welland Street townhouse, and cause a scene.

  The Wentfords needed money. Immediate money, that could be used to pay off the lower orders while Sir William Wentford, still in the beautifully embroidered jackets that he had refused to pawn, wrote increasingly desperate letters to friends and creditors. Sir William could not be seen dirtying his hands in trade; he was a baronet, after all, and even the lowest rung of aristocracy was leagues away from common fold. His wife, Catherine’s sweet, smiling mother, could no more recieve money for labour than she could fly to the moon…

  … But Catherine? Their shy, sweet daughter, so anonymous in every ballroom, already displaying an uncommon talent for logic and numbers that frightened the servants? Their entirely forgettable daughter, soon to marry whichever gentlemen seemed solid, agreeable, financially stable…

  She could do a little financial work. Everyone had books that needed keeping. Those same grocers, butchers and fishmongers, formerly so very angry, were more than happy to give their disordered piles of scrawled accounts to the dark-haired, silent Wentford daughter. Any urge to spread gossip was neatly curtailed by the girl’s frightening accuracy--not to mention the receipts she returned, helpfully detailing all the ways they had undersold, oversold or otherwise swindled both customers and suppliers out of the money that was rightfully owed. The grocers knew haberdashers, who knew cobblers, who knew jewellers, who knew any number of artisans, traders and journeymen who treated numbers with hostility, as something to be feared, rather than the neat and elegant paradise that Caroline Wentford had always experienced in their company.

  Through a complex, half-whispered chain of whispered references and sly allusions to a certain organisation that was in desperate need of accounting help, and willing to pay a tremendous amount--enough to keep the Wentford carriage out of hock for another six months, at least--Catherine had found herself at the tradesman’s entrance to the Cappadene Club. Looking up at the elegant façade of the building, complete with Doric columns and freshly-clipped hedges, she had wondered vaguely as to the purpose of the establishment before being hurried in by a harried-looking man with a moustache.

  Here she was. Here for the third night, in fact; there had been some confusion in the previous months, a change of leadership, which had led to a dereliction of accounting duties and a subsequent backlog of work. At least, that was what Catherine assumed. Arthur Weeks, the moustachioed man who had shown her where the ledgers were kept, lacked the aristocratic pedigree that would ensure the success of a place like the Cappadene Club.

  Whoever had run the place in previous months had done well. Catherine had found few errors in the ledgers. Then, there came a disturbing decline in the quality of records kept.

  What had happened several months ago? Catherine thought hard. The only thing she could think of was a rather unexpected marriage; that of Georgiana Gailford. She had married into a title, yes--and wasn’t there a sister? An unusual type, artistic, married to a man so shrouded in mystery that people barely knew his name.

  Perhaps he had been the anonymous owner. Catherine, shrugging as she turned a page of the ledger, thought it made very little difference to someone hired to count numbers for three days.

  A loud, unmistakably erotic exclamation rang through the wall. Catherine, her cheeks reddening, looked down at the new page of messily-filled columns with ferocious attention.

  Surely they would stop soon. She knew nothing of the act itself apart from what observing animals on a farm had taught her; a country childhood meant there was very little squeamishness when it came to animal mating, but a good deal of incomprehension when human mating rituals were involved. Catherine, who had always been more comfortable with a page of equations than anything approaching romance, had managed to avoid any sort of scandal since her coming out… but now, thanks to her father’s greed and her family’s general helplessness when it came to matters of the purse, she appeared to be caught in the thick of it.

  A rhythmic thumping came through the wall, making the pictures rattle. Catherine stared at the wall in complete incomprehension, before realising that it had to come from a bed-board slamming into the plaster.

  Well. She stared at the accounts, her cheeks so fiery that she was sure she’d burn the paper. That may be enough for this evening.

  She couldn’t leave the room. Not now, in the midst of… well, whatever was happening in the next room. The evening had been the only convenient time to do the last of the accounts; her friend Lydia had so breathlessly begged her to walk through Hyde Park earlier that day, and Catherine had been loathe to refuse her. Leaving was impossible, working was impossible--what was a lady to do?

  Catherine eyed her reticule with deep annoyance. Her mother insisted that she carry a small piece of half-done embroidery everywhere with her; gentlemen will wish to see how accomplished you are. Catherine, not having had the heart to tell her mother that gentlemen never seemed to see her anyway, embroidering or otherwise, reached for the reticule with a heavy heart.

  Moving away to the desk, finding a slightly more comfortable position curled in an armchair of mustard-yellow velvet, she began to stitch. At first the stitches were regular and industrious, but slowly dwindled away to nothing as she stared blankly at the flames.

  The gentlemen in the next room had sounded as if he were… enjoying himself.

  Catherine didn’t think she had ever enjoyed herself to quite such an extent. She had certainly never enjoyed herself in the same manner. Working in this particular establishment represented an opportunity, if she thought about it logically--but logic, so often her friend, left her in a blushing pile of idiocy when it came to this example.

  She didn’t think enjoying oneself in such a fashion was possible, at least for herself, without the correct partner. Really, considering the current crop of gentleman the ton had produced
would be unforgivably scandalous--especially if she imagined them here, in the richly-wallpapered cocoon of the Cappadene Club.

  One name, one face, rose in the flames. Catherine considered for a moment, her features softening, before she shook her head with a bitter chuckle.

  It certainly wouldn’t do to sit dreaming by the fire, making a piece of pattern-work that was neat but utterly uninspired, thinking of a man that she had no business at all thinking about.

  She may as well think of the Prince Regent. He was about as aware of her existence as His Grace James Hildebrande, Duke of Staunton--and really, more suitable as a husband. Unfortunately, the Prince Regent didn’t make her heart sing the way James Hildebrande could.

  He didn’t even have to speak to her. Didn’t have to look at her. Fortunate, really, because James Hildebrande did neither.

  ‘Come now.’ She chided herself, focusing on her piece of pattern-work so minutely that each stitch became enormously large in her mind’s eye. ‘What a useless way to spend one’s time.’

  She knew that her better self was right. It was useless indeed to think of James Hildebrande. He was far too titled to consider a girl like herself, with naught but a baronet for a father. He was far too financially unstable, if rumours of his gambling and racing were anything to go by, to solve any of the Wentfords’ problems. He was far too arrogant, rakish and incorrigibly playful to take anything seriously--this, Catherine knew, was by far the worst sin of all.

  The fact that she had been secretly dreaming of him for at least six years, ever since she had seen him at the Valentine’s Ball? That was irrelevant. Catherine, feeling the old stab of unrequited passion pierce her chest, shook her head in foolish annoyance at the girl she had been.

  James Hildebrande had never danced with a lady at the Valentine’s Ball. That had been shocking at first, then commonplace, then imbued with a sort of mystical, scandalous allure that had left most of the women in the ton batting their fans, smiling as winningly as possible, sometimes even pretending to bump into him in the middle of the crowded ballroom--anything, anything at all, to induce the man to dance with them.

  Catherine had never been brave enough. But she had dreamed. Oh, how she had dreamed.

  Dreams, alas, invariably led to nothing at all.

  Muffled voices came from the corridor; confused ones. The ringing of a bell came from far away; did that mean the arrival of a new client? Catherine, shaking her head at the new world she had entered, returned to her stitches with a sigh.

  She would stitch, and finish the accounts when the noise had returned to an acceptable level. Then she would return home, slipping through the tight network of alleyways that divided her family’s townhouse from the Cappadene Club, and hope--as always--that she was not assailed by ruffians during the journey.

  There were rarely ruffians. Usually there were laughing couples, watchful pickpockets, and sad-eyed women congregating on the corners of the streets. Catherine, looking at the fire, brushed away the unpleasant recollections from her mind.

  This was her final night at the Cappadene Club. More salubrious workplaces awaited. Money awaited, security awaited, stability and comfort and peace--all of it would be hers in time, if she worked quickly and silently enough.

  And if she forgot about James Hildebrande. That would increase her peace to a tremendous extent. A pity, then, that she stood very little chance of managing it.

  His Grace James Hildebrande, Duke of Staunton, had a shameful confession to make. A confession so shameful, so intimately connected to his reputation, that he had been half-willing to confess all to the maid at the Cappadene Club as he was taken through the dimly lit corridors for his appointment.

  His appointment with the discipline mistress. A certain type of professional woman that James had never seen, in his entire history of debauchery--and really, if he were honest with himself, he was more than a little uncertain about the idea even now.

  If anyone at his Club ever found out that he had never seen a discipline mistress--if he didn’t, in all good conscience, know exactly what a discipline mistress did beyond the usual flogging and other sundries--he would probably be thrown out on his coattails. Everyone knew that James Hildebrande was the most deviant, depraved duke in England, didn’t they? Oh, Lord, his reputation really was growing wings and flying away from him…

  He hadn’t even meant to be here tonight. He was meant to be teaching a new, slightly younger acquaintance about the ways of the world--but Marcus Bennington, a baronet with a timid manner that James found irritating but women seemed to adore, had been swept up by a giggling, perfumed cloud of courtesans and whisked away to one of the upper rooms.

  He had chosen the discipline mistress as a joke. The woman at the door, clearly harassed and somewhat out of her depth, had barely been able to locate his appointment--much less exactly what he had requested, or where he was meant to go in order to receive it. James, wondering vaguely why this particular brothel had required such a sterling reputation for service, had followed the confused swish of her skirts as she had led him through a startling number of passageways, bringing him to a large wooden door.

  With a rushed curtsey, without so much as a by-your-leave, the woman left. James, staring at the door with more foreboding than was healthy, decided with an abrupt shake of his head that it was time to confront his uncertainty.

  He pushed at the door. It swung open easily, revealing a scene that he hadn’t expected.

  The atmosphere in the room wasn’t very disciplinary. There didn’t appear to be any riding crops in corners, or bruised men whimpering in corners. The room, in James’ decidedly inexpert opinion, resembled one of those half-forgotten places in every establishment where paperwork was thrown, never to be considered again.

  Apart from the woman, of course. The slim, dark-haired woman sitting by the fire, a piece of embroidery in her lap, staring at him as if she had seen a ghost.

  Had he made a mistake? James, suddenly awkward, looked back into the corridor. The woman who had escorted him here was long gone--surely she wouldn’t have brought him to a place where he wasn’t expected.

  ‘Forgive me.’ He smiled his usual smile; the one he had calculated to be most devastating on any woman within fifty feet. ‘You are, I assume, the discipline mistress?’

  The woman was still staring at him as if he had four heads. James, raising an eyebrow, could do nothing but return her gaze.

  What beautiful eyes she had. Not the dark, flashing look he had expected from a discipline mistress; they were a soft blue, like cool water in the light of the flames. A strange face, too--severe in line, but softening with every moment he spent looking at her.

  She still wasn’t speaking. James, beginning to feel a little disconcerted, spoke again.

  ‘Am I correct?’

  Another long moment. It was as if the woman was deciding what to say. James, still staring, wondered why he hadn’t already walked out of the room and found someone willing to help him.

  It was something about her face. It was… singular. Compelling.

  Recognisable?

  Had he seen her somewhere before? James took a step closer, inspecting her features with a new awareness. Perhaps some other pleasure-house, in his long and colourful history of frequenting them…

  Before he could make a proper assessment, the woman nodded. A slow but definite nod, as if some sort of decision had been made.

  James realised he was relieved. He didn’t want to leave this room--hadn’t wanted to, not really. Now that he knew he could be here, he could relax.

  He could begin, however scandalously, to enjoy himself.

  ‘Well, then.’ He smiled a little more scandalously; the slow grin of a lion as it pounced on prey. ‘I think you’ll find me a most unruly gentleman. I am in severe need of discipline.’

  He waited for the woman to produce a riding crop, or say something cutting. To start removing her clothes, at least. Instead, with a look that James couldn’t categorise, the w
oman turned decisively to the fire.

  She picked up her pattern-work that lay in her lap. James, bemused, watched as she began to stitch.

  She appeared to be ignoring him entirely. James, moving to the overly-stuffed chaise that stood in the centre of the room, near a desk piled high with papers, felt a prickle of new awareness at the base of his spine.

  When had he last been ignored by a member of the female sex? Very possibly never. Every creature in petticoats had always displayed some reaction to him, whether astonished shame or flirtatious interest, since he had inherited his title. The first woman to show indifference to him in fifteen years, give or take, was this primly-dressed little…

  Light-skirt. Prostitute, if he was being exact about it. James, watching the woman placidly stitch by the fire, felt his cock stir with no small amount of surprise.

  Was this what he had hungered for? No orgies, no new depravities, no lustful carnival of yielding flesh… merely a woman, dark-haired and disdainful, sewing in the firelight and barely deigning to look at him.

  This, Lord knows why, was what his body and soul had needed. Perhaps the Club did deserve its reputation after all.

  He smiled. Now was the time to try and get the mysterious woman’s attention.

  ‘Would you take grave offence if I make myself a little more comfortable?’ He sat down on the chaise-longue, reaching for the collar of his shirt. ‘This room is dashed warm.’

  ‘I do not care what you do.’ The woman’s voice was low and soft. A thrill of recognition ran through James; he had heard that tone before, somewhere, had he not? ‘Your presence, or the lack of it, makes no difference whatsoever to my evening.’

  She did not sound frightened. She sounded, if anything, determined. James, his cock stirring in his breeches, knew that every penny he had paid was more than worth it.

  ‘Understood.’ He pulled his shirt over his head, the warm air of the room caressing his bare chest. ‘Allow me, then, to become as comfortable as I possibly can.’