Page 14 of All Scot and Bothered
“But Lord Crawford came looking for table games, and since we’re closed today, he offered another kind of sport. He prefers to rut out of doors, don’t you, darling?” Lilly reached behind her and slapped his thigh, much as one would the flanks of a horse.
“I prefer an audience,” he managed breathlessly.
To Cecelia’s—well, she couldn’t say horror, but she didn’t quite have another word to describe the amalgamation of shock, titillation, and distress within her—Crawford and Lilly didn’t pause. The discourse didn’t even interrupt their rhythm. In fact, Crawford stared right at Cecelia and increased his pace, grasping Lilly by the hips and thrusting upward rather mercilessly.
Cecelia didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, run, or…
Or continue to watch.
“I saidnot today, you insatiable slag,” Genny bellowed, her drawl losing its syrupy edge to shards of ire. “Our newheadmistressis here, and this isn’t the fashion in which we planned to receive her, is it? Now finish Crawford off and send him on his way. And if I catch you at this again—”
“I thought. She wasn’t. Coming. Until. This. After. Noon.” Lilly’s diction was interrupted by the increasing intensity of what was happening beneath her.
“I’m coming… right… now,” Crawford warned, his voice thick with strain.
Cecelia could stand to watch no longer as a strange and unsettling contortion overtook Crawford’s beakish features. Cheeks on fire and her bodice suddenly too tight, she whirled and launched herself toward the door.
It opened before she could reach for the handle, and the butler burst in, red-faced with panic. “Three carriages full of lawmen are turning onto Mounting Lane,” he panted.
Cecelia looked to Genny, shocked beyond words. Mounting Lane. Never had there been a more apropos address. Had she inherited a brothel?
The butler cast a wary glance toward Cecelia. “I’m told the Vicar of Vice is with them.”
Vicar of Vice?Cecelia mentally searched through everything she’d ever read regarding civics and politics. She arrived at the conclusion they were using a moniker no one claimed willfully.
A litany of words that would have made a sailor blush burst from Genny as she returned to the window. “You get that cull out of here now, Lilly!” she screeched. “The Vicar of Vice is blocks away, and he’s bringing his army to our door.”
“Again?” came Lilly’s plaintive whine from the garden as she tucked her breasts away.
Genny slammed the window shut and locked it before finally turning to Cecelia, her panicked amber eyes softening with regret as she fluffed at her perfect brassy-blond coiffeur. “Well, honey.” She hurried to where Cecelia stood at the door and took her hands. The all-but-forgotten letter crumpled slightly between their palms.
They both looked down to the piece of paper, then back to each other.
Genny had barely changed in fifteen years. Her skin remained smooth and unblemished but for a slight deepening in the creases next to her expressive mouth, to the right of which a painted black heart hovered. Her tight curls were threaded with a whisper of silver at the temples, but she was as exquisite as the day they’d met.
“This isn’t at all how I wanted to welcome you.” Genny freed the hand in which Cecelia clutched the letter but kept the other locked in a firm grip as she turned to the butler.
“Winston, you make sure Crawford has paid Lilly, dressed, and gone before those carriages have a chance to breach the gates. Then you rip through this entire place and make certain they findnothing.”
“Yes, madam.”
Genny launched herself through the door, nearly yanking Cecelia’s arm out of its socket as she dragged her along. “I’d hoped we’d have time to discuss everything, but the wolves are howling at the door.”
“Wolves?” Cecelia tried to keep up both mentally and physically as she allowed herself to be pulled back through the extravagant marble entry toward a small door hidden in dark-wood panels beneath the columns of the grand staircase. She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose, afraid they’d come loose in their hurry.
“That letter is from your aunt Henrietta,” Genny explained with forced patience. “Read what you can before the vicar busts the door down.”
“Whoisthis vicar?” Cecelia paused, feeling as though she stood at a dangerous threshold, both literally and figuratively. She didn’t give the other woman a chance to answer the first question before a second followed: “Where are we going?”
“To the private residence.” Genny gave her anotherstrong, impatient tug. “Follow me. We haven’t time to dillydally.”
“To what?” Astonished, overwhelmed, and skeptical, Cecelia tugged her hand out of Genny’s grip. “I’ve never heard the worddilly—”
“I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to listen to me, doll.” Genny’s face darkened as she hung her hands on her broad hips, all tolerance replaced by audacity and urgency. “The man who’s fixin’ to kick our door in is comin’ to take everything from us. Fromyou. This is a casino and a school—regardless of what you just saw. The school allows women to work while they are taught a trade. But that man would sooner see every girl livin’ under our protection put out on the streets to sell their bodies in the gutters to cutthroats and ironworkers. So if you don’t want to spend the next several years in prison on whatever trumped-up charges he has on his warrant this time, you’ll follow me, you’ll read that letter, and then you’ll use every wit in that pretty head of yours to fend him off, you hear?”
She shook Cecelia none-too-gently. “He’s your enemy now. One of many.”
Cecelia stood rooted to the ground, staring incoherently at the woman as information digested slowly.
