Bound in Moonlight Read Online Free PDF Page B

the hat to find the enormous brim sodden and drooping, with the wet, ratty ostrich feathers hanging limply over the edge.
    â€œAre you going to frig me or not?” the woman asked.
    Taking a step back, I said, “Um, perhaps some other time. I'm looking for my fiancé.”
    â€œAnd that would be . . . ?”
    â€œRandolph Lytton, Baron of Hickley.”
    Brightening, she said, “You're Randy's Yanky Banky? Bloody excellent to meet you. I'm Frances Caddingdon, but you must call me Fanny.”
    I recognized the name—in fact, I thought I might even have met her in passing a couple of years before at the Royal Opera House. She was
Lady
Caddingdon, a marchioness.
    Fanny told me I'd find Hickley in the dining room, gave me directions, and asked me to replace the gag and blindfold.
    You already know the little tableau I encountered in the dining room. When he became aware of my presence, my betrothed paused in his humping, extracted his face from the brunette's snatch, and said, “Miss Townsend?” (No, we had not yet progressed to first names.) “I say, is that you?”
    I replied that it was, since I could think of absolutely nothing else to say.
    Frowning in bewilderment, he said, “What the devil have you got on your head?”
    And with that,
chéri,
I must bring this marathon missive to a close, because my hand is cramping up (impending old age, you know) and Kitty has just come to wheel me into the dining room for dinner. She says to tell you she's blowing you a kiss, and that I must write the following or she'll withhold my postprandial moonshine: “Keep on Em about the marriage thing. She'll cave sooner or later, because she really is crazy about you.”
    She's right on one count.
    Je t'aime à la folie,
    Em

Three
    Y OU'LL THANK US
for this, my dear,” said Lady L——, tying Emmeline's hands behind her as her maid, the robust Fanny, gripped her snugly about the waist.
    â€œUnhand me this instant, you shameless hussies!” Emmeline demanded as the women pushed her down onto a silk-upholstered footstool, yanking her legs indecently wide so as to lash her feet to its two front legs.
    â€œPrudery such as yours only brings misery and fits of hysteria,” explained her ladyship as she gagged Emmeline with the waist sash of her own daisy-sprigged frock. “You are overdue for an education in the ways of the flesh.”
    She whipped aside the curtain over what Emmeline had taken to be a window in the dark little room. It was, indeed, a sheet of glass, however the view it afforded was not to the outdoors, but into a room the existence of which Emmeline had been entirely unaware until that moment.
    â€œWe call this the Ruttery,” Lady L—— announced.
    It was a windowless but bright chamber, thanks to the light from electric sconces reflecting off white walls hung with tapestries depicting acts of unspeakable licentiousness. Some of the furnishings appeared to be of unfamiliar and cunning design, but Emmeline's gaze was drawn to the naked beauty hanging faceup from the ceiling by means of golden chains attached to her outstretched arms and legs. She was not just gagged, as was Emmeline, but blindfolded as well, and at the perfect height to be ravished by a standing man, which was, in fact, precisely the activity that was transpiring at that very moment.
    The gentleman in question was naked but for one peculiarity; sprouting from his nether orifice was what appeared to be a tail of black horsehair. Behind him stood a woman in a black corset, black opera gloves, and tall boots, whipping him on his rear with a riding crop and shrieking, “Harder, you puny gelding!Ram it in! Pound the wench!”
    Nor were these three the only debauchers making use of the Ruttery that evening. What Emmeline had taken for a life-size bas relief sculpture of a man on the back wall was, upon closer inspection, an actual man affixed to the wall by means of a