Page 9 of Seduced

When was the last time she had thought, actually thought for herself?

She couldn’t remember.

What was there to think about, besides her many and repeated sins and offenses; her constant companion, pain; and the enduring, hollow ache at the absence of her father?

She was better off not thinking much.

But now, here was something worth the pain of remembering.

Of finding herself.

That night, she lay awake until four in the morning, when she was sure her brother was snoring in his bed. Then, she got up in a trance, as if some other, brave and horrible creature had taken over her body, proceeded to put on some old clothes of her father’s, and went alone out into the night, dressed like a man.

She took one of her brother’s horses and rode all the way to Mayfair, and to the Hell Club. She spent the greatest part of the night standing outside the exclusive gentleman’s club, waiting. Waiting for a man like the one who had come to the vicarage for help.

This was no impulse: she had thought it through.

She was looking for some desperate soul who would stumble out of the club drunkenly, desperately, straight outof the card room and into the night, having lost his entire fortune and mad enough with grief to do something foolish.

When one such man came out, in the small hours of the morning, Poppy followed him and stopped him from doing something desperate.

The next night, she did the same.

The next as well.

She carried on in this way for a week.

And then, one night, it was so miserably cold outside that she couldn’t help herself: she looked like a young man anyway, dressed in her father’s clothes, and the cold was so vicious it made breathing hard. So Poppy, hardly knowing how she found the courage to do so, stepped up to the Hell Club’s gilded doors and somehow managed to get in.

She was shocked, disgusted and angered—and not only by her own behavior.

By the things she saw there.

She did however manage to pass undetected, for her father had taught her how to play cards like the most cunning knave of them all.

She returned home three hours later, shaking like a leaf with fear and excitement, but her brother hadn’t suspected a thing.

The next night, she was back at the Hell Club.

She was a bit calmer this time, and was able to think clearly and remember how to play well. She very nearly enjoyed herself. That was not hard; she and her father had played so often it was like second nature to her.

But it was hard to concentrate on the game when so much was going on around her.

Her senses were assaulted by the opulence and the vibrant colors on the tapestries and the murals on the walls and ceiling. Every surface of the club was covered either inglittering, spilling candelabras, or thick Persian carpets thrown over rich, mahogany wood. Grecian statues were randomly strewn about in a casual display of wealth, and gilded armchairs sat in front of several roaring fires, the mantelpieces decorated with a distinguished array of rare and beautiful books. Everything was garish and ostentatious, but it was done in surprisingly good taste.

But here the good taste ended.

Poppy could smell the opium from two rooms away; the sensual coming together of men with common women smelled even closer, maybe coming from one of the rooms adjoining to the card table, judging by how near the sounds of pleasure and seduction sounded. Poppy shivered uncontrollably at the thought of two human bodies being in such proximity to each other. How did people endure it? Once upon a time she herself had sat close to her father by the fire, had embraced children and danced with gentlemen at the Yuletide Ball. But now, the only living things she could touch without getting torturous, quick flashes of her brother’s slaps, or even worse, his hateful stares or the rice she knelt on, were the petals of flowers and the stems of herbs.

The idea of being touched and finding pleasure in it was as foreign to her now as a smile.

She tried not to let her nose wrinkle in distaste; it would not fit the character she was disguised as, after all. She was supposed to be a young man with no taste in clothing but with great expectations of a fortune, and had been asked to mention the names of not one but two prominent patrons of the establishment before she could be allowed to get in. The man at the door, a black gentleman of the name of Wilder, with beautiful, intelligent eyes and muscles hard as marble, looked her up and down several times and pondered over thenames she had given him for a few seconds. Then his eyes widened as he no doubt realized, as Poppy had meant him to, that she had somehow gotten a hold of those gentlemen’s secrets, and was wont to spill them unless she was allowed entrance.

He had then told her to enter, looking severely displeased.

Now, hours later, in one of the several card rooms of the Hell Club, Poppy was nestled between a gentleman who belonged to the House of Lords—an important member of Parliament, as he missed no chance to remind everyone, who was currently being fleeced out of his vast fortune—and an attractive-looking young viscount who looked bored out of his mind.

They were playing vingt-et-un—and not well.

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