Chapter Four
Allan led his brothers up the river steps and along the street leading away from the dock.
He turned into a mews lane and passed several buildings before opening a gate, nodding to its guard.
He crossed a small walled garden and turned through a second gate into a kitchen courtyard, from which he entered a large building through the back door.
They had donned their masks before leaving the tunnel. Only the proprietor of The Golden Adonis knew their identity—not the boatmen, not the other employees of the club, and certainly not the clients.
“Good evening,” he said to the kitchen servants, as he passed down the service corridor.
“Good evening,” again to the lady who controlled the staff on behalf of the proprietor.
He knew her as Thalia, for all the servants and employees wore nicknames—the names of Greek gods—to protect their identities.
Thalia was the manager, or so the owner called her, though her role combined housekeeper, house steward, secretary and—he often thought—ringmaster.
“Apollo,” she replied. “Madam wishes to see you and Faunus. She said to send you up when you arrived.”
“Problems?” Allan asked.
“Not as far as I know,” said Thalia. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
The brothers went in different directions, some to various card rooms, Isaac and Jerome to the music gallery, the remainder to the ballroom. Allan and Frank mounted the stairs to Hera’s office.
Hera was the widow who owned The Golden Adonis, a club that provided wealthy women with all the services that gentlemen normally found at their various clubs and other, less reputable, venues.
Seated behind her desk, she conveyed an impression of power that was justly deserved.
Here under this roof, she was the final authority, and even beyond these walls she wielded considerable influence.
Her origins were humble—or so Allan had gathered in the eighteen months of their acquaintance.
Murky, even. Nobody quite knew where she had come from or how she had achieved wealth and power.
To look at, she was nothing special. Finely, even richly dressed.
A little on the plump side but all the more formidable for it.
In her middle years, though nudging the upper boundaries of that age span, her hair touched lightly with grey.
Yet she dominated any room she was in, and no one meeting her could doubt she was a woman of substance.
“Good evening, Madam,” Allan said, and Frank repeated the greeting.
Hera looked up from the papers she was studying. “Ah! Faunus. And you, too, Apollo. Good. Faunus, I have a favor to ask. One of our guests has requested that you be her only escort from now on. Apollo, I know you keep a close eye on your relatives, so I asked you to join our meeting.”
Frank tended to become speechless when alarmed, so Allan spoke for him. “Faunus does not provide intimate services,” he said.
Their employer shook both one hand and her head. “That is not what Lady Andromeda requires. Faunus has already been meeting with the lady, and all she wants is someone to talk to.”
“Lady Andromeda,” Frank repeated, with a distant smile. “I am happy to talk with Lady Andromeda.”
That was a surprising response. Frank found it hard to converse with people he didn’t know, and even most of the people he did.
Indeed, he was only comfortable with his brothers, so Allan had arranged for him to work at one remove from the social activities that were the lifeblood of the club.
He exchanged money for gambling tokens, paid out money when the lady guests redeemed their tokens, and kept careful records.
“I should like to help Lady Andromeda, Allan—Apollo, I mean,” Frank said.
“I did not know you had been meeting the clients,” Allan grumbled.
“Lady Andromeda met Faunus on her first night here,” said Madam Hera.
“She says he was kind to her and helpful. That was the evening he helped in the sitting rooms, because some of the other hosts were absent with that ague that was doing the rounds. Ever since, she has sought Faunus out whenever she visits.”
Allan was still uncertain. “What does she need, Madam Hera?”
“Confidence, in a word. Lady Andromeda is uncomfortable with most people, but especially with men. She likes you, Faunus, and that is the first step. Rest assured, however, that she is not a customer for our more intimate services. Lady Andromeda is an unmarried miss, and an innocent.”
Feeling easier in his mind, Allan asked, “When is she expected, Madam? I shall arrange for one of my other relatives to manage the cash box.”
As they finished their meeting with Hera, the sound of a bell indicated that the doors to the club would open in fifteen minutes.
Frank hurried to his station in the little room that held the cash box, and Allan began his usual rounds of the building.
He was in charge of ensuring that all the men who worked there were diligent, conscientious, and safe.
Tonight, he was particularly aware of Frank, who was closeted in one of the private rooms with the guest who had asked for him. No intimate services, Hera had said. But what could the lady wish to discuss that required such privacy?
There was not much he could do to help. Unless the building was burning down or a worker called for help, no one was permitted to enter the private rooms while they were occupied.
Still, he was relieved when the two of them emerged after nearly an hour alone. Good lord. Frank is smiling. Not only that, but he bent over the lady’s hand when she held it out to him in farewell. What had got into their shy, awkward Frank?
Then the lady turned to walk away, almost bumped into Allan, blushed bright scarlet, and stammered as she made her apology.
Frank hurried to her aid. “Do not be alarmed, Lady Andromeda. It is only my brother. Allan—Apollo, I mean—why were you just standing there? Come along, dear lady. I shall see you to the door.”
Good heavens. Allan stared after the pair. Could it be that Frank was smitten? If so, from the lady’s behavior, the feeling was mutual. What a pity that the brothers were about to flee. If anyone deserved a chance at happiness, it was Frank.
Allan could do nothing about that tonight, and it was time he reminded Isaac and Jerome, who were lost in their music making, to take it in turns to have a break and some supper.
It was two o’clock in the morning but the club was just approaching its busiest time.
They had hours of work still ahead of them.
*
Mel followed the brothers to the guarded back gate of a building. What were they there for? She had tried to engage the guard in conversation, but he just grumbled, “Clear out, or I’ll biff you one.”
Foiled, she retraced her steps along the mews lane and found her way to the front of the building.
There, she soon found people who knew that the building was some sort of gathering place for women.
“Ladies,” said the crossing sweeper. “Masked, most of them,” complained an indolent fellow who was propped against a wall, keeping company with a bottle.
“Indecent, I call it. Hiding who they are and getting up to who knows what.”
“All night long, they come and go,” an eager flower seller added. “I sell out every night.”
Up and down the street, the stories were the same. A mysterious club patronized by masked ladies. And, Mel guessed, by masked men like the Sheppard brothers who went in through the servants’ entrance.
Two men came out of the front door, dressed in a livery of red and gold. They took station on each side of the door. Mel approached, but they ignored her except to wave her away with a frown when she came too close.
Could this be The Golden Adonis? Women spoke in whispers about a ladies’ club, but its whereabouts was a closely guarded secret. Only members knew, and their identity was concealed even more carefully.
It was, so rumor said, a place where ladies could do whatever they pleased without social consequences.
Take tea and converse. Listen to music. Dance with handsome young men.
Read in a well-appointed library. Play table games such as cards, dice, chess, and backgammon.
Conduct discreet liaisons. Yes, and indiscreet liaisons in the case of some of the racier widows who were rich enough and independent enough not to care about social censure.
As if to confirm Mel’s conclusions, a carriage pulled up at the foot of the steps, and one such widow descended and marched up to the front door, holding out something for the doormen to see. One of them opened the door for her.
Some sort of token. Gold in color, but Mel was not able to see the shape.
After that, carriages continued to arrive, and ladies with tokens continued to be admitted. Without a token, Mel could do no more tonight. She was about to give up and go back to the tower prison of the young lords, when something about a new arrival caught her eye.
The cloak was a short one, displaying the wearer’s skirts from the knee. Furthermore, the lady held the skirts up out of the mud, so her embroidered stockings and her footwear were also on display.
Mel knew those skirts and the stockings. She had, during one long month last year, worked as a seamstress in one of Mayfair’s lesser houses, first embroidering the deep band of flowers around the hem of those skirts, and then creating matching flowers down the outer side of each stocking.
As for the platformed shoes that strapped on over the lady’s slippers and kept her above the grime of the street, Mel had suggested them when the lady had come home with mud to her ankles and her slippers ruined after a thunderstorm turned the streets into a quagmire and a broken-down coach on the doorstep of a ball had forced all the guests to walk to their carriages.