One minute Langham had been about to kiss Poppy, and the next he was chasing after her.
“Where are you going?” he hissed, not wanting to draw attention to them from the house. “Slow down, for pity’s sake.”
She was surprisingly swift given that she was hampered by her skirts.
“It could be Violet,” she called out without even bothering to glance back at him.
Knowing how desperate she was to find her sister, he forbore from pointing out that it was far more likely that the light had come from a poacher or some other ne’er-do-well roaming the grounds. So when he caught up to her, he simply grasped her hand to ensure they remained together.
As if by mutual agreement, they were silent as they hurried along the path around the lake. At least it was a well-trod one, Langham thought, as Poppy stumbled over a stone.
“Careful,” he warned, though she didn’t seem to notice as she continued her trek.
When they finally reached the other side of the lake, there was no sign of illumination anywhere near the temple folly, but it was possible whoever was out there had heard them—they hadn’t been precisely quiet as they made their way here—and was now hiding.
Wishing his groundskeepers weren’t quite so diligent about removing stray branches from these paths, Langham resigned himself to his lack of weaponry and forged ahead.
Poppy grasped him by the arm. “Do you smell that?” she hissed. “It’s smoke. There was a torch here.”
Langham didn’t like this one bit. But if Violet was inside the temple, then they needed to find her—if not for her own sake, then for Poppy’s. He greatly feared her own sense of guilt over leaving her sister behind would follow her until she made it right somehow.
He would have liked for Poppy to remain behind while he investigated the interior, but he knew her well enough now to realize that was a vain hope. Instead, he took her by the arms. “Remember to let me lead. If something happens, run as fast as you can back to the house and get help.”
It was possible he was being overcautious, but given that there was a murderer in the vicinity and Poppy’s sister was missing, Langham was willing to risk it.
She nodded, her blue eyes wide in the moonlight. He kissed her swiftly and, taking her by the hand, led her up the stairs onto the pillared portico and through the darkened doorway into the folly interior.
“What is that sound?” she whispered. “It sounds like humming.”
“I don’t know,” Langham said in a low tone. But the sound was unnerving.
The smell of smoke was strong, but as they stood silently just inside the door, he got the sense that they were alone. Feeling along the wall, he found what he was looking for—a lantern hanging from a hook. Using one of the matches he’d stuck in his interior coat pocket for his after-dinner cigar, he lit the wick.
The flame hissed as it caught and illuminated the room.
“There’s no one here,” Poppy breathed as she scanned the chamber, the disappointment in her voice almost palpable. “I was so certain she’d be here.”
But despite the emptiness of the room, Langham wasn’t so sure their errand had been in vain.
“There’s an entrance to the caves over here,” he whispered, pulling her with him toward the far corner of the room.
“But I thought you had them all sealed up years ago?” Poppy hissed, sounding accusatory.
“It’s not as if I added an iron door over them all. A lock was sufficient for most of them. And of all the entrances, this is the one I thought would need the least fortification. Like in St. Lucy’s, there’s a hidden door here. Only a handful of people know of it, and I’d trust them all with my life. Besides,” he added, “We don’t know for sure someone has gone through this one yet. We won’t know until we go in ourselves.”
Handing the lantern to Poppy, he began pressing on the wall, searching for the mechanism that would unlatch the hidden door. As he looked, the hum, which he could tell now was coming from below them, grew louder.
“It almost sounds like…” Poppy seemed to search for the right word. “Bees,” she settled on, with what sounded like a shudder.
He hid his amusement that a woman who’d just run willy-nilly through the dark of night was frightened of stinging insects. “I don’t believe it’s bees you’re hearing,” he said, pressing stone after stone. “I think that might be the sound of voices.”
Poppy stared at him. “But who?”
“I don’t know, but I aim to find out,” he said, just as he finally hit on the stone hiding the opening mechanism. What had at first glance seemed to be a solid stone wall began to silently slide inward, revealing an interior recess above a flight of steps leading down into darkness.
As the door opened, the sound of the humming grew louder, and Langham recognized the noise for what it was: chanting.
“Not bees,” Poppy said staring down into the darkness.
“Indeed,” Langham agreed, feeling his chest constrict as his old discomfort in the face of closed-off spaces made itself known. “We needn’t go down there just now. Tomorrow, in the light of day will be soon enough to investigate the mat—”
But before he could finish, Poppy had already descended several feet farther into the depths of the cave.
As much as he’d have liked to turn tail and flee in the opposite direction, there was no way in hell he would let Poppy face whoever had gathered at the bottom of that darkened staircase.
Pushing past his alarm, he followed her down, holding the lantern up to light the way.
As he moved, he tried to remember the diagram he’d found among his great-grandfather’s papers. It had shown a series of corridors leading from the various outbuildings of the estate into a central open space, which was where the large gatherings of the Lucifer Society had taken place. There were, however, several rooms off the main one where small groups or those who wished for privacy might retreat. The reverberation of the chanting that emanated from the caves below suggested that they were approaching one of the larger chambers.
How many people can possibly be down here, he wondered in puzzlement. It wasn’t as if a large influx of people into a village the size of Little Kidding could go unnoticed. And as far as he could tell, his own house was where most of the visitors to the area were currently gathered.
Not wishing for their light to alert the people in the cave to their arrival, he hung the lamp from a hook on the stone wall of the stairwell and moved to stop Poppy. “Your gown will give you away,” he whispered into her ear, unable to steel himself against the sweet perfume of roses and citrus that clung to her. “It’s too light to blend into the dimness.”
She nodded silently and allowed him to step in front of her. Once again, he took her hand and was reassured by the warmth of it as they continued their descent.
As they approached the bottom of the stairs, the sound of voices grew louder until he was finally able to make out what they were saying.
“Prosperity through strength. Prosperity through discipline. Prosperity through love.”
What the devil did it even mean?
Finally, as they rounded a curve in the stairs, the flicker of lights within the large chamber below began to illuminate the way. When they reached the bottom of the steps, he saw there was a small squared-off anteroom of sorts that opened into the main area, where the chanters were gathered. If he and Poppy hid to either side of the open doorway, they should be able to watch the proceedings without being seen.
Before he could whisper this to her, she crept forward and took up a place to the left of the door and peered around the corner. He quickly followed and, thanks to their height difference, was able to see over her and out at the spectacle before them.
* * *
It was like something out of a lurid gothic novel, Poppy thought, not quite able to believe the scene laid out before them in the dimly lit interior of the cave.
She didn’t stop to count, but there must have been close to fifty robed figures surrounding the raised dais. As they chanted, the masked and naked man in the center raised something red and bloody above his head.
It was impossible to tell the man’s identity, but he was too young and fit to be her stepfather—for which she was all too grateful, considering the man’s nudity. Around his neck hung a long chain. It was difficult to be sure from this distance but the golden pendant attached to the necklace seemed to be a jeweled depiction of the Lucifer Society crest.
“Silence,” the naked man barked in a voice that reverberated through the chamber. “We come to honor our fallen brother, Alistair, who gave his life in service to St. Lucifer. All praise to him that gives us power.”
“All praise,” repeated the gathering.
“It is only fitting that we honor him by eating of his heart,” said the leader, and Poppy suddenly realized what it was he held aloft was…she couldn’t even finish the thought. She gripped Langham’s hand tighter, and he squeezed back. It wasn’t much but she was grateful to have another witness to this madness, because she was quite sure no one would believe her if she told the tale.
And as they watched, the man, who wore a golden demi-mask that hid the upper half of his face, brought the bloody mass to his mouth and bit into it. Poppy felt bile rise in her throat as she watched him lift the meat again and saw the red of blood coating his teeth.
“Who will be next?” he cried out.
There were multiple cries of “I will,” until finally the man in the center handed down the bloody mass to one of the others—from the height Poppy would guess a man, but from this angle the face was impossible to make out. And as they passed it around the chanting began again, “All hail St. Lucifer.”
The man in the middle turned as the heart made its way around the circle, and as he turned Poppy was able to see that on his right shoulder there looked to be a brand of the sun.
She wondered about the symbol for only a moment before recalling that Lucifer meant “light bringer.”
Before them, as each member of the group partook of the gruesome feast, he or she would push back the hood on their robe and throw off the garment, revealing a black demi-mask and their nakedness beneath.
“Now, children,” the man in the golden mask said as the members formed a circle around him, “you will each come forward to be marked as one of our number.”
Poppy watched in stunned fascination as one by one the members of the circle came forward. The golden-masked man placed what looked to be a long chain bearing a circular pendant over each of their bowed heads. She would have given much to see what the pendant looked like, but it was impossible from where she and Langham watched the odd ceremony.
As the individual members of the circle received their necklaces, they began to break off into small groups around the chamber, speaking quietly—surreally, it looked like nothing so much as the sort of fellowship church members enjoyed after Sunday service.
One pair, however, seemed to be approaching the corridor where she and Langham hid.
Behind her, Langham whispered a curse and tried to pull her back toward the stairs. But Poppy saw that the approaching couple had stopped their progress and had begun kissing. Farther into the large chamber, the members of the group looked to be engaging in amorous activity. She was fascinated despite the prurience of the scene before her.
“Come away before we are discovered.” The whispered heat of his words against her ear sent a shiver down Poppy’s spine, and she allowed him to nudge her away from their hiding place and toward the stairs.
Neither of them spoke as they climbed the circular stairway, pausing when they reached the lamp—its bright light making Poppy squint after the dimness of the cave—and then continuing on.
They were soon back inside the interior of the temple folly. Langham felt around on the wall for a moment until he found the mechanism that slid the secret door back into its place.
Poppy noted that whereas before there had been moonlight coming into the interior from the outdoors, now it was completely dark. She was grateful for the light of the lantern in Langham’s hand.
Watching as he hung the light on the hook, she burst out with the question that had been on the tip of her tongue as soon as they’d turned away from the gathering in the cave.
“What in heaven’s name did we just see?” She wasn’t sure what she’d imagined a meeting of the Lucifer Society or even the Hellfire Club would look like, but it hadn’t been nearly as lurid as what they’d just witnessed.
Turning to her with a shake of his head, Langham said dryly, “I suppose that is what happens when men have more money than good sense. The mask the leader was wearing looked to be molded from actual gold. And if the requirements for membership are anything like those of the Lucifer Society, then they paid a small fortune for the privilege of joining.”
“They weren’t all men,” Poppy said, remembering the woman and her lover who had come near the spot where she and Langham had hidden. “I must admit I was shocked to see there were ladies partaking of that bloodied flesh. Though I suppose neither men nor women are all possessed of good sense when it comes down to it.”
“Men or women,” Langham said with a scowl, turning toward the door, “none of them had permission to hold their macabre meeting on my land. We need to get back to the abbey so that I can come back with Ned and see if we can catch some of these trespassers in the act.”
It wasn’t until he stopped dead and muttered a curse that Poppy realized something was wrong. Moving to stand beside him, she saw that what she’d previously thought was an entryway without a door was now blocked.
“This explains why it was so much darker in this room than when we were here earlier,” Poppy said, a pang of alarm running through her. “I didn’t even realize there was a door here to close.”
“It’s a pocket door,” Langham said through clenched teeth, feeling along the now closed entrance. “We keep it open in case one of the gardeners or a member of the family needs to seek shelter during unexpected storms. It hasn’t been shut in decades. “
“What are you looking for?” She watched as he felt from the top of the door, which she could now make out in the light of the lantern, to the bottom.
“There’s a brass handle that can be used to pull the door open.” His voice sounded tight, and Poppy recalled how unnerved he’d been in the bell tower. The prospect of being locked inside the folly must be unsettling for him.
Finally, he said “aha,” and Poppy watched as he lifted the large brass handle from where it lay against the surface of the door and wrenched it.
Nothing happened.
“It must be stuck,” he said, and there was no mistaking the annoyance in his tone.
“I’m going to have someone come out and take this entire bloody door off tomorrow,” Langham ground out as he pulled again and again on the handle to no avail.
“Langham, stop,” she said, placing a hand on his arm, “Clearly the mechanism is broken.”
He tried once more to pull the door open, as if doubting the previous attempts had been enough to do the trick. But the result was the same.
“I know you dislike enclosed spaces, but we must remain calm,” she soothed, tugging him by the hand away from the door. If he remained there, he’d just keep trying, which would only frustrate him further. “We will find a way out.”
“I dislike kippers,” he said pettishly. “I dislike rain. I am terrified by enclosed spaces.”
The admission hung in the dimness between them like a London fog. Poppy realized then—as she should have guessed if she weren’t so distracted by Violet’s predicament—he’d downplayed the degree of anxiety his fear truly caused him. And yet, for the second time in less than a day, he’d accompanied her to just the sort of place that grieved him. The foolish, gallant man.
“You’re disgusted, no doubt,” he said pulling away from her to lean against the wall. His breathing was shallow, and she could sense his growing agitation.
“Not at all,” she said, stepping closer to him and reaching down to take his hand in hers. He squeezed it and held on as if she were the only thing stopping him from disappearing into some unseen abyss.
She looked up to see that his jaw was tight, and his eyes were bright with pain. “You should be,” he muttered. “I am supposed to be the one calming you.”
“I thought we had dispensed with those antiquated notions of how men and women are supposed to behave,” Poppy said, though she didn’t put any real heat into her words. “Let us just agree that there are times when every person needs a bit of comfort.”
His mouth was tight with frustration, but he allowed her to pull him away from the door and into one of the alcoves beside it.
“Come,” Poppy said in an even tone, “let’s sit down and make ourselves comfortable while we wait for help.”
But when she went to sit down, the cage crinoline beneath her gown made that action impossible.
Diverted from his anxiety over the enclosed room, Langham said, “You’re going to have to take it off.” There was no mistaking the glint of amusement in his eyes.
Poppy drew upon her innermost schoolmarm. “Sit down and cover your eyes, then,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” the duke said, lowering himself to the floor and leaning back against the wall behind him. At a glare from her, he covered his eyes with both hands.
“I have to admit,” he said conversationally as she reached beneath her skirts to untie the fastening of the crinoline and stepped out of it, “this is not the way I’d imagined the moment when you’d remove your underclothes in my presence.”
Despite her embarrassment at the situation, Poppy couldn’t stop the laugh his words surprised out of her. “You are incorrigible.”
“But at least I’m no longer in danger of fainting,” he said reaching for her hand. When she sat on the floor beside him, he didn’t let go, and when he turned to face her, his eyes were grave. “Thank you for that.”
“Of course,” she said, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.
Leaning his head back against the wall, Langham said, “Once the…activity in the cave has died down and the gathering has dispersed, we should be able to find our way out through the connected tunnels.”
“Or,” Poppy said, hoping it was true, “Someone from the house will have noticed our absence, and they’ve already formed a search party.”
“I wish you were right,” Langham said, “but it’s entirely possible that they’ve assumed that we, as a betrothed couple, have simply gone off to be alone, and they are all pretending not to have noticed.”
“Surely, your grandmother and sister would not simply stand aside and allow us to do such a thing,” she argued. What she did not mention was that their disappearance would mean that once they ended their betrothal, she would be well and truly compromised. Ineligible. Ruined.
Poppy knew Kate didn’t give a fig for whether her private secretary’s reputation was intact. However, there were those who subscribed to The London Gazette who did. And if they got wind of Poppy’s exploits in Little Kidding, they might decide to patronize a newspaper whose employees were more well behaved. She couldn’t bring that sort of trouble to Kate’s doorstep. She wouldn’t.
“As much as they like to think they are the ones who manage things, I am still the head of this family,” he said with a slight frown. “It is not for them to allow or forbid me from doing anything.”
Despite her dark thoughts a moment before, Poppy couldn’t help but laugh at his arrogant words. “I’m sure you believe that,” she said patting him on the arm.
“Are you condescending to me?” he asked, looking at her in wonder, his head tilted to the side.
“Of course not, Your Grace,” she said lightly. “I have the utmost respect for your elevated title.”
“Now I am quite sure you’re insulting me,” he said with a shake of his head. “Wretch.” But the epithet was said lightly, and they sat for a moment in companionable silence.
After a few moments, however, he asked. “Do you think she was there in the cave? Your sister, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” she said thinking back to the gathering they’d witnessed. With the masks it had been impossible to tell the identity of any one individual there. “I hope not. Who the others were, I cannot say. Though given the age of the man in the golden mask, I know for a fact that he wasn’t my stepfather.”
She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to endure the sight of Lord Short like that. She suppressed a shudder at the thought.
“It was very likely an animal heart obtained from the butcher’s shop in the village,” he said after a moment. “In case you were thinking they were actually biting into Lovell’s heart. Aside from that, he’s been dead for several days, so I cannot think it would be as…fresh as that one was.”
Poppy shuddered. “What could possibly motivate people to engage in such a barbaric act?” Whether it had been an animal heart or not, the ritual had been gruesome.
“If my great-grandfather Thaddeus’s journals are anything to go by,” he said, “it can be a number of different things. Boredom with everyday vice. A need to prove oneself to be as bold as one’s fellows. Or in the case of the man who was leading the travesty, I’d guess a craving for power. Did you see how gleeful he was as he watched them taking and eating the heart after him. He enjoyed having encouraged them, even persuaded them, to do it. He was aroused by it.”
Poppy remembered how the man’s…member…had seemed to grow as they passed the bloody mass from person to person.
She shuddered. “Is that how it is for men?” she asked, not daring to look at him as she spoke. “Do you all derive enjoyment from such things?”
“Good God no!” Langham burst out. “That was an abomination. I know of no man who would find pleasure in such a thing.”
“What about the couple coming toward us?” she asked. “It looked as if they were planning to engage in coitus while there were other people doing the same around them. Is that common?”
At her mention of coitus, Langham coughed a little. She thought he might have done it to cover a laugh, but it was too late to take her question back.
Before he could answer her question, she went on. “Have you ever done that? Made love to a woman in a room where there were others doing the same, I mean?” Her voice trembled a little as she spoke. It was a bold question, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he told her to mind her own business.
He’d been holding her hand in his, stroking his thumb over the back, but he’d let it go at the first mention of the couples in the cave. She felt oddly bereft.
Running a hand through his hair, Langham stared out into the darkness beyond their half circle of lamplight. “I have not been a saint, Poppy. Nor have I ever claimed to be.”
“I did not say you had,” she said firmly. “But you seem to be familiar with things of a carnal nature. And in the gossip papers, at least, you have a reputation as something of a rake.”
“Will I never live down those blasted scurrilous tales?” he asked heatedly. Turning to her with a fierce look, he said firmly, “I haven’t done half the things those tattlers have attributed to me. You must know that.”
“You seemed to indicate their account of your affair with Nell Burgoyne was true enough,” she said, picking at the skirt of her gown.
“That doesn’t mean they are right about everything, for pity’s sake,” he said, brushing a hand over his face.
Turning to look at her, his blue eyes sincere despite his obvious exasperation, he said, “I have done a great many things—a number of them in my misspent youth—which would no doubt make your ears turn crimson if you were to learn of them.”
Poppy nodded, certain her ears were at least a little pink at simply the thought.
“But I have never,” the duke said, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, “in all my years of debauchery, witnessed anything as depraved as what we’ve seen tonight. I wish, in fact, I’d been able to shield you from it.”
This made her still. “I’m not a child, Langham.” Clearly, she’d revealed too much of her naivete to him.
But his rueful laugh gave her pause. “I am all too aware of the fact.”
“Then why would you shield me from the realities of the adult world?” she asked, puzzled. “If you see me as an adult, then you should treat me as an equal.”
“Poppy, sex can be joyful, glorious. And while I feel sure those people were enjoying themselves, something about it—especially the way the fellow in charge seemed to be controlling them—was disquieting. I would have spared you that if I could. And that doesn’t make me disrespectful of you.”
She looked at him and felt a flutter of nerves in her tummy at the idea that was forming in her head.
It was an outrageous idea. But hadn’t she just resigned herself to the fact that she was ruined now? She and Langham—Joshua—had been gone from the abbey for over an hour. They’d been alone together before, but an open-air carriage on a public thoroughfare was not the same thing as an enclosed temple folly in the dark of night.
Illogical as she knew the societal conventions surrounding a lady’s reputation to be, they would nonetheless be applied to her. Even if she and Langham were found right now, she’d still find her reputation in tatters once she left Little Kidding—especially given those guests at the house party who would love nothing more than to see her brought down a peg.
If she was to live out the rest of her days as a spinster, then this might be her only chance to taste the sort of passion he spoke of—the joyful, glorious sort.
“Perhaps,” she said, her voice strangely calm, “you should show me what you mean.”
