Page 95 of An Unexpected Earl

“Trust me, my pet. You’ll enjoy it.” But not nearly as much as he would, when dinner was over and he claimed her for his own dessert, licking off every bit of sweetness that his tongue could reach.

“But the honey and jam’s all sticky! Why did you have to pour that over me?”

“Because tonight I had a craving for tea.”

Then he helped himself to an early taste by taking her honeyed foot into his mouth and licking up the sugar between her toes. She squirmed, which only stirred his lust more. Perhaps there would be time before the ceremony began to—

A bleating noise shot up his spine. He cursed and released her foot. The horn blared a second time from the outer chamber, just as unsuccessfully, just as shrilly.

“What the hell is going on?” The horn signaled the start of the ritual, yet he hadn’t ordered it to begin.

He looked at the two men in the room with him guarding the door, but they only shrugged. So did the footmen who carried in the platters of food from the makeshift kitchen in a hollowed-out antechamber adjoining the banqueting hall.

When the horn went off a third time, Varnham flung open the door to the Inner Chamber.

A hooded monk stood on the dais, holding the ceremonial horn in his hands. The white-robed members gathered in the room, waiting for the ritual to begin. More filtered in from the other chambers. All of their hoods were pulled down low over their faces, ready to begin the ritual, exactly as usual. Only too early.

Varnham flipped up his own red hood and walked through the crowd. They parted to let him pass. As he drew nearer to the dais, a suspicious tingle twined down his spine. Something wasn’t right. The room looked the same as usual, with the same white-robed members and the scattering of guards in their brown friars’ robes. But something was…off.

Pushing down his unease, he mounted the dais. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded in a low hiss to the monk with the horn. “It’s too damned early for the ritual to start.”

The hooded man shrugged apologetically and lowered the horn to his side.

Biting back a frustrated curse, Varnham faced the men.

“Brothers.” He spread out his arms in greeting as he always did. The smile on his face not hiding how irritated he was that the ceremony had started early. The damn man would be fired for this. “You are welcome to the Temple of Bacchus.”

“Thanks be to Bacchus,” the crowd of men answered in unison.

“And to the Armory,” a lone voice called out from the back of the room.

On cue, a half-dozen men pulled down their hoods.

Varnham stared at the strangers who had been lost in a sea of white robes, mixed in with the members. Stunned, he wheeled to face the monk behind him who had blown the horn.

The man yanked down his hood and grinned. “Hello.”

Then he pulled back his arm and swung.

* * *

“Now then.” Clayton Elliott placed one of the chairs from the banqueting hall on the dais in front of Varnham, where he sat tied to his own mock throne. Clayton still wore that damnably silly friar’s robe, but his hand now throbbed delightfully from ramming it into Varnham’s face. If given half a chance, he’d gladly do it again. He straddled the chair backwards and rested his forearms over its back. “Let’s have a little chat, shall we?”

Around them, the stone chambers were finally silent and empty after the fight that had broken out in the Inner Temple when the men of the Armory revealed themselves. Most of the club members had wisely rushed to leave. But a few had stood to fight and raised fists the way they’d paid Gentleman Jackson dearly to teach them to do, only to be leveled to the floor after a few swings, then physically shoved out of the chambers and deposited on the church steps on their arses. The Armory men had swiftly cleared the place of both brothers and nuns—and a naked woman who was oddly covered in honey and sugar—thankfully with no sign of Pearce or Miss Howard.

Clayton hadn’t expected to see them. He was certain that Pearce had whisked Amelia away to safety at the Armory, where Marcus and Merritt would be waiting with a riot-freed and freshly interrogated Frederick Howard. Ifall their plans had gone well.

Right now, though, Clayton’s concern was Arthur Varnham.

“What do you want?” Varnham replied, surprisingly calmly for a man in his situation. “Why did you and your men invade my club?”

“Because the Home Office doesn’t appreciate acts of sedition.” He gestured toward the red robe and throne. “Even ones in fancy dress.”

“We’re just a gentlemen’s club, gathering to have a good time. That’s all.” He laughed. “You can’t take what we do here seriously.”

“Here? Not at all.” He shrugged dismissively. “Here was just a group of middle-aged gentlemen behaving like a bunch of randy schoolboys on their first trip to a brothel.” He fixed his gaze on Varnham’s. “Butyoublackmailed an MP.”

Varnham smirked at the accusation. “Do you have any idea who my brother is?” He leaned as far forward as the bindings at his wrists and ankles allowed. “Not only will I be exonerated of all charges, but your own career in the Home Office will be over.”