The Dollhouse Society Volume IV: Lucky (Includes Lady Luck, House of Dolls, The Reluctant Bride, A Woman on Top, plus a bonus story!) (7 page)

I asked him about the mysterious Society, of course, but he seemed more interested in my conversation with Mr. Brinkerhoff earlier. “I thought we agreed to take Darcy on as solicitor?” he said, his voice clipped and very unlike Tiberius. I was surprised. Up until now, he seemed perfectly happy to allow me to make most of our regional business decisions, but now he was questioning my judgment.

“
I suppose we still could. But we weren’t dedicated to that decision, were we? And Mr. Brinkerhoff does seem enthusiastic about our business.”

“
Yes,” Tiberius answered drolly. “I’m sure.”

“
I don’t think I understand,” I told him, mystified by his sudden turn of behavior. “He is a solicitor from New York. He could be of great use to us, especially at the stock exchange! And poor Darcy is already put upon at his firm, handling most of Mr. Smit’s workload the way he is…”

Tiberius looked out the window and watched the countryside pass. “Are you sure that’s all he’s interested in?”

“
Yes, of course. What else is there?”

“
Oh Lucky.”

I despised the way he said that, treating me like some ignorant child! Thankfully, it was only a short while before we turned off on a private road that cut in a wending, snakelike path through a forest of thick fir trees. I leaned out the window and breathed in the stinging, piney night air as we came upon the house.

It was large and grand, a British colonial mansion called Hampton House, if my history of regional architecture was not mistaken. It had been constructed more than a hundred years ago by the Colonial, Jeremiah Hampton, but unlike most colonial homes, the house looked more decadent than functional. Then again, if I recalled my history of the region correctly, Goodman Hampton, a neophyte and follower of the teachings of the Marquis de Sade, had been known to have a predilection for decadence…and many loose women. The Dollhouse was stone-faced, with enormous windows, tall Corinthian columns, and a grand balcony that stretched the whole width of the front. “Who owns it?” I asked. It looked like the house of a dispossessed lord.

“
We do,” Tiberius said.

“
What do you mean?”

“
All of the members of the Society own shares in the Dollhouse. It belongs to all of us,” he explained as the coach carried us up the cobblestone path to the carriage house, where two footmen waited.

I thought about that, and I thought about what he had said about my father and mother. “Does that mean that my father owned a part of the Dollhouse?” I asked. “You said he was part of the Society.”

“
He was. But the Dollhouse doesn’t function that way. It only belongs to those who are still alive, people like me…and you. Those who might enjoy it. That was part of Jeremiah Hampton’s legacy. He was a very wealthy, decadent and generous man who freely offered his home for use by the Society, but only with the stipulation that the Society, as a whole, own and care for it.”

What an unusual setup! I slid back in the window as we came to a full stop and contemplated how one “enjoyed” a Society. Most of the women’s groups I knew were quite dull, full of tea, quilts and recyclable gossip, and the men’s groups didn’t seem much better.

As Tiberius handed me down from the carriage, he said, “In many ways, the Society is in your blood, Lucky. In time, you may even come to enjoy it as your father and mother had.”

“
Do you enjoy it?” I asked.

“
Sometimes,” he said. “And sometimes I find it depressing.” He didn’t elaborate further.

The inside of the Dollhouse was just as grand as the exterior, decorated in the latest and most fashionable Shaker furnishings and petit point fabrics. The anteroom we entered was full of gentlemen in evening wear mulling about as if they were attending a soiree, though, curiously enough, I saw no women. Tiberius walked me through the thong, under the burning lights of the three, grand, lit chandeliers, keeping one hand on my forearm at all times. I blushed appropriately as the other men turned their eyes on me, fully expecting the horror of their expressions—the scandal that Lucky Van der Meer should be seen without escort on the arm of her business partner! And truthfully, I felt a bit of a thrill knowing I was acting so improperly. But they glanced over us, smiled or tipped their hats in greeting, and then went back to whatever conversation they were engaged in.

“
You were right,” I told Tiberius. “They don’t look surprised at all.”

“
The men here are well-heeled, unlike most gentleman,” he explained. “There are no facades here, Lucky, no games of false propriety. We are men and we know what we are here for.”

I was about to ask him a plethora of questions when Tiberius stopped me at the door and laid his hands alongside my face. His eyes were penetrating and very serious. “I’ll be along shortly, but I would dearly love for you to get to know the ladies of the Dollhouse.”

“
Are they in the other room?” I asked. It wasn’t so unusual to divide the sexes, even among my enlightened circle of friends.

Tiberius smiled fondly upon me, drew me close, and kissed me. His hand moved up my side and he boldly squeezed my breast. I immediately flushed at the realization that the other gentlemen in the room could see us and broke his warm, wet kiss first. “You shouldn’t be so shy, my filly,” he said low in my ear, the warning in his voice raising gooseflesh all along my neck. “It won’t serve you well later.”

“
What comes later?”

“
You’ll know later.”

More mystery! I went into the other room, realizing that so far, no disaster had befallen me. It was so very odd, but it almost seemed like my bad luck fled me when I was in Tiberius’s presence!

***

The room was long and starkly white, filled with the candlelight from five gigantic wagon wheel chandeliers. They illuminated the mirror-polished, black-and-white checked parquet floor and the great portraits hanging on the walls. But immediately after I glanced at them, I found myself looking away. Hundreds of portraits of various sizes covered the walls, and every last one of them were of nudes in compromising positions. I thought once more of Jeremiah Hampton, a man driven from his home in England because of his libertine thoughts, and because those around him thought him a witch for having them, and finally realized what the aims of the Society were. Namely, pleasure.

What had Tiberius said?
We are men and we know what we are here for.
 

I stood there in my court gown and wrap, feeling very foolish and ridiculously unworldly, and looked upon the small clutches of women scattered around the room, chatting amicably amongst themselves. I thought there must be fifty in all, all of them elegant and sophisticated, like members of Cinderella’s ball. Slowly, the women noticed me, and I blushed. Some I recognized. A few were the wives of successful businessmen back in Smithtown, and a few came from the surrounding regions, women whose pictures I recognized from the ladies’ magazine and society papers. Powerful women. Proper women. Unlike me. They drifted toward me, and I felt naturally awkward and hunted. Then they had surrounded me, no escape, and they smiled and started asking me questions as if I were a natural part of them, had always been a part of them. These were the wives of some of the most powerful men in New York, and I…well, for all my father’s former glory, I was just a country bumpkin. But I did my best to answer their questions and not sound like an unlearned child.

They told me that I was very pretty, that they were looking forward to my play, whatever that meant. A few inquired about who my gentleman was, a few others admonished those ill-informed women for being so terribly out of the gossip loop. Of course, they were interested in the witch’s curse, and I proved it when one of the women offered me a glass of punch and I, of course, dropped it to the parquet flooring.

But before I could make excuses for my clumsiness, the door opened and the men started filtering in. “You’ll do wonderfully, little one. You’ll be a triumph tonight,” one of the women told me, then surprised me by kissing me fully on the lips before slipping away and finding her gentleman. I had no idea what she meant.

A few moments later, Tiberius found me and slid my arm into the crook of his elbow. His eyes were bright and fierce, as they often were when we’d been apart for too long and he found himself hungry for my company. “You look very beautiful this evening,” he said in his low, rumbling voice, and I tried very hard not to blush as the other members of the Dollhouse began collecting around us. Their interest made me feel very much on display. He leaned in close to tell me the safe word for the night, which only made me blush more furiously. I had a good idea of what was going to happen tonight, but since I wasn’t sure, I inquired.

“
Tonight is your debutante ball,” Tiberius said. “You’ve never had a proper one, have you?”

I wondered how he knew that. He had been away in the Orient when I had come of age. “Is that something my father told you?” I asked. “Is the Society prone to gossip? It seems its members are very close as well as being very secretive,” I babbled on nervously. “Is that the reason you’re resisting me on the matter of Mr. Brinkerhoff? Oh my…is Darcy a member of the Society...?”

His face clouded over with anger and I was suddenly afraid. The situation with Stuart Brinkerhoff had bothered him more than he was letting on. Before I could react, he seized my cheeks and kissed me. “Don’t say his name,” he told me. “Don’t say anyone’s name. If you must prattle on, Lucky, I insist you say only my name tonight.” He kissed me very hard, dipping his tongue deep into my mouth. I resisted him, not because I didn’t enjoy his kisses, which of course I did, but because of his very public display of affection.

He simply moved one of his hands to the back of my neck, holding me in place while he deepened his searing kiss and the warmth of his body pressed against mine as if he meant to brand me all over. Like those nights when he visited me, I wound up sighing into his mouth and giving him his way. He kissed me over and over, stopping only long enough to snatch a quick breath of air in between kisses. He tasted faintly of port and tobacco, and his cheek scoured me, but I didn’t mind so much. These things had become a kind of comfort to me. They were things I dreamed about late at night.

“
Lucky…” he growled, saying my name in that way he often did in our intimacies, less like a name and more like a prayer. He seemed to be full of fury tonight, and I realized I had angered him deeply by speaking of Stuart Brinkerhoff at my debutante ball, but the anger was translating into something other than violence. He grabbed me up in his arms so I squeaked in surprise and set my hands on his shoulders to steady myself. He stared up at me with almost delirious hunger as he climbed the steps of the dais, tripping over the top step and stumbling toward the divan.

“
Careful,” I warned him. “Witch’s curse.”

He looked briefly worried. “Promise me you won’t set me on fire tonight, Lucky.”

“
I shall do my best not to set you on fire tonight, Mr. Sloan,” I told him. “But tell me…what do you mean to do to me tonight?”

“
Touch you. Play with you.” He eased me down onto the edge of the divan, then dropped to one knee and drew me close to kiss me once more, roughly like before, like he couldn’t bear to be apart from me even an instant. He grabbed my hair, pulling it from its coiffure, and twisted my chin so he could bite at my open mouth and catch my tongue in his teeth. I groaned against his mouth. I thought about admonishing him for ruining my coiffure, but the hand not in my hair had moved to the back of my gown to undo the buttons, and I felt a flash of panic. Like that first night we were together in my bedroom, he began pairing me down. Only this time he fumbled with my clothing as he ripped it from my body, and, of course—also unlike that first night—we weren’t alone. As he tore the dress from me, I reached up and snagged the front of his fine dinner jacket to stop him.

He caught my hands, brought them down, and used a long length of silk scarf from his pocket to bind them in my lap, rather tightly. “Really, Mr. Sloan, this is quite unreasonable of you…”

He took the ends of the scarf and shoved them into my mouth. “Lucky. Be quite.”

I spit them out and said, “No…I will not…!”

The men down in our audience laughed. “You’ve trained your courtesan well, Tiberius!” one heckled Mr. Sloan.

Tiberius looked exasperated. “Lucky, be quiet or I shall spank you.
Publicly.
”

That shut me up. I knew he would do it, too!

He worked his way down to my chemise, and I was only grateful that his presence blocked me from our audience. As he started working on my underthings, I began wriggling around. He didn’t like that very much, so once I was in only my shift, stockings, and boots, he growled, “Lucky,” in a menacing voice, cupped the back of my head, and leaned forward to kiss the front of my throat, over my flitting pulse. The warm, ticklish feel of his lips and whiskers immediately calmed and excited me at the same time. He kissed, and then sucked, at my throat, and before long I was writhing under his ministrations while his hands moved over my knees, then up the buttons of my chemise as he began to undo them. He quickly learned that it is patently impossible to remove a chemise when the owner’s wrists are bound, and, with a faint growl of annoyance, ripped at my corset and the fine, silken material beneath.

I gave a cry at the sudden tearing of fabric and the flaying of whalebone.

“
That was my best corset,” I complained bitterly against his lips.

“
I’ll buy you another one. I’ll buy you ten,” he told me, moving his mouth ravenously over my lips and chin and back down my throat, toward my exposed wreath of collarbones. He shoved the chemise down my arms and out of his way as he continued exploring the shivering surface of my skin. He nuzzled the space between my breasts, then turned his head and tongued my right nipple until it was fully erect. He closed his hot, wet mouth over it and sucked it deep into his mouth. I cried out at the sudden, intense assault of pleasure and pain and clutched the front of his shirt with both bound hands, yanking at the fabric until his buttons broke away. Oblivious, he tongued and suckled me, the suction of his mouth tensing an invisible wire of delight that seemed to vibrate through my whole body from top to bottom. When he moved to my other nipple, to pluck at it with his teeth and lavish the same kind of affection, I rocked against his mouth, whimpering shamelessly, blind to everyone watching us play.