Camille dropped her arms, her shoulder giving a dull ache. “You told him?”
Madam arched a brow. “Why the surprise? Hawkins knew the rules.”
It was the second time she’d heard that line that morning, and Camille shuddered at the implication. She knew how ‘rules’ worked to intimidate and bully those outside of power to behave. She knew this intimately.
Madam twirled the crop in her hand before catching the tassels against her palm with a swiftcrack! “Hawkins is lucky Lucien gets to administer his punishment. He’ll only have his arms and legs broken. I would have removed his fingers and toes with a butter knife.”
Camille shuddered again. There was a reason Madam Clarice remained the sole and undisputed owner of the Prodding Pony despite heavy competition from local clubs and the grumblings of the clubs’ owners, all brutal and all men: She was ruthless.
Between Madam’s harsh punishments, Markus’s far and skilled reach through the Merry Men gang, and Lucien’s unforgiving nature, it was a wonder idiots like Hawkins continued to so much as take a piss on the streets in Dockside without wiping it up on hands and knees. Pleasure, business, entertainment—the three Underground leaders represented the three faces of the rookeries like a bastardized collage of Catholic saints.
Madam offered her the crop handle. “First strike is yours.”
Camille swallowed the acid in her throat. She wasn’t naive enough to ask for leniency. Dockside justice was swift andbrutal. It had to be, else monsters like Hawkins wouldn’t stop. Grey and the rest deserved what they got, but... the sound of those tassels slapping Madam’s skin sounded just like a different hit, one she wore across her back as a permanent reminder of what happened when rules were broken.
She shook her head.
Madam dropped the riding crop to her side and frowned. “You’re too soft, Angel.”
Camille ignored the pet name, used in disdain and disappointment. All clients knew Madam didn’t tolerate violence towards her girls. Even before the new regulations had been drafted into the current client contracts, courtesy of Camille, the script above every sign outside and in the club spelled it out in bold script:Upon consent.
“I thought you’d take a personal interest in punishment,” Madam said, the memory of that day Camille had stormed into her office and demanded retribution clearly present in her mind too, six months later.
Camille ignored her disapproval. “I’ve no interest being the one doling out punishment.” She’d been raised on it. “There’s no pleasure in it.”
Madam gave the younger woman’s body a heated onceover before she clicked her tongue. “A pity.” She nodded to the panel. “Shall I close the screen?”
Camille looked to the mirror at the far end of the room, an ingenious one-way glass that allowed an occupant in the hidden office to see and hear what transpired in the current room without detection. As far as she knew, only one other club used the mirrors, the Sally Draw, Lucien’s personal clubhouse.
A knock came from the inner door along with Grey’s grating voice. “Asked for me personally, eh? The other chickens been boasting?”
Camille ground her teeth at the derogatory term and turned to the panel before Sensa entered. She pushed the latch and told Madam to leave the screen open.
She wasn’t a real angel, after all.
*
After the firstscream, Camille shut the screen and went back to the files on the desk.
There was no need for a fire since the outer walls’ heat kept the small space regularly sweltering, but today, the secret office was cozy. Nothing as lavish as the main office with its low firelight and plush fabrics meant to seduce wealthy clients into parting with their purses. Here, ingenious electric bulbs provided by a nameless benefactor granted the windowless room the brightness of the day with the privacy of the night. The polished, oak desk gleamed in the flickering, white light and Camille’s backside sank into the worn, leather chair comfortably. Bookshelves lined the walls on either side of the screen, reminiscent of a gentleman’s study. All in all, it was her favorite room, so much like the neglected study in the townhouse she’d grown up in. The one room her mother had never entered, thus giving Camille a haven of written word accompanied by the smell of parchment.
The smell of ink and papers were of little pleasure now. Camille flipped through the files, counting as she went. There were two dozen today, a slow morning.
All the Ponies—an unimaginative descriptor for the women contracted to the club—kept detailed reports of their sessions. Camille read through her third report, noting red flags for potential problems. Clients ranged from low-level fighters with heavy purses to the titled gentlemen, and a sparse few women, of theton. Most understood and appreciated the fantasiesthe Prodding Pony provided, but some liked to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
Camille closed the file and pinched the bridge of her nose. When the tedious and disgustingly specific accounts of male depravity were done, she had membership requests and potential clients to vet. Backgrounds, finances, vices: Madam was known to trade secrets and favors for time with the Ponies, though the more damning information, the older woman kept to herself in a ledger hidden somewhere in the club. Which served Camille fine.
Her mind was permanently filled with the names and innermost desires of hundreds of clients, filed away in her mind with more precision than any solicitor’s cabinet.
She eyed the stack of requests and sneered. Sixty-three more men vying for entry.
Camille pushed the stack of sessions away, needing time to mentally scrub Mr. Pendor’s fantasies of being nursed like an infant from her mind.
She picked up the top file on the secondary stack—a blue file indicating a prospective client scouted by one of the Ponies—and flipped the envelope open.
Her hissed inhale was loud in the quiet room as she read the man’s name.
Renard Leopold Louis, Duke of Lux
