Beth and I sit out on the terrace, overlooking the long, elegant, walled garden. Her eyes are sparkling with mischief. “That should give them something to think about, settle them down a bit don’t you think?”

“Richard won’t be upset about it?”

She shakes her head. “He asked me to get to know you.”

“James is a lovely person you know.”

“I’m sure he is. And Michael?”

“Oh yes, even more so.”

“So…” she leans forward, conspiratorially. “How on earth do you manage with two of them? I’ve got my hands full with one.”

*****

One of the wine bottles is empty.

“Let me show you something, Charlotte.” The twinkle in her eyes is wicked. “Come with me. Bring that other bottle of wine.”

She leads me through the long central hallway of the house. As we pass the dining room, we can hear the three men, talking quietly. She looks at me, holding a finger to her lips as we walk silently past.

At the back of the hall is a door, locked. She pulls out a key from a pocket, unlocks it, and leads me down a stone stairway into a basement.

It is beautiful. Down a long corridor, vaulted ceilings arch above us, the stonework clearly old. Doors lead off to either side. We pass scents of wet laundry and oil, but she leads me along, pushing the end door open. “Take a look,” she says with a giggle, reaching around the door to flick on a light switch.

I step inside.

When I see the room, the only thing I can compare it to is the ‘dungeon’ at the club, but whereas that is a copy, here, I am looking at the real thing. The vaulted stone ceilings of the corridor continue through, arching high above us, but now span a large room, perhaps forty feet wide, fifty long. In an old house of this sort, it was perhaps once a meat store. Butchers’ hooks project from the arches that might once have taken animal carcasses. Now, they dangle chains and ropes.

Racks on the walls carry flails, whips, and floggers. The floor is scattered with a variety of padded benches of different sizes and heights. And a huge four-poster bed takes up the far end of the room. The only nods to normality are a wine rack on one wall, stacked with dusty bottles, and a large ginger cat snoozing on the bed.

“So, you see,” says Beth, “why Richard was not at all upset, or shocked, to find you in the Club?”

I am sucking in my cheeks, trying to contain my reaction, but at her words, I just burst out laughing, and she with me.

“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s open that other bottle.”

*****

Some while later, the second bottle is empty and others are scattered around us. A further bottle is half empty. Beth and I are sitting together, cross-legged on the bed, shrieking with laughter. The cat has settled in my lap. “You mean he actually shaved you? Down there?” I ask, eye-pointing downwards.copy right hot novel pub