Page 1 of What Happens in Hedone

Chapter One

Brighton, 1833

Knocking on the door of this club was the most shocking thing Jay Burnham had ever done in his life.

He’d engaged in his share of pranks and unwise choices, he would admit. Hanging the master’s suspenders from a gargoyle at Ely Cathedral during his time at The King’s School. The Henley cousin that summer he stayed with his school chum at Sandringham. All the women he’d courted thereafter, who liked Jay more for being in line for a barony than for any attractions of his person.

His family name raised enough stares and whispers without his adding to the scandal. Tradesmen sprouting up to become peers of the realm, brickmakers taking seats in the House of Lords. A mother who’d once been locked away for suspicion of murder. His several eccentric siblings, including two sisters who didn’t share his blood. That old sobriquet, the Mad Baron, that floated about whenever Jay’s father, the Baron Brancaster, did something outrageously against the established traditions of his class.

But Jay, as an adult, had never done anything that would merit worse than a stern glare from his father. Or his lovely mother pressing hands to her cheeks with a half-giggled, half-moaned “Oh, Jay Jay!”

Yet here he stood on the doorstep of a place called Hedone—and what in Hades was this meant to be anyway? A club? A theatre? An indoor spectacle of some kind? The building was Bath stone, three stories, scarcely a decade old. The curved bay with its sashed windows looked like any of the new boarding houses and hotels sprouting like teeth across Brighton, pleasure grounds offering delight and ease for the wealthy and genteel.

Yet no lights from within shone through the several panes of glass, not on this floor nor the one above, where a small balcony fronted another curved bay and large window, all heavily draped. The only light came from the small flame in the gas lamp behind him, lighting Norfolk Square.

Farren had described a secret club where men and women could act out their wildest fantasies without censure. Without consequences that might follow a man home.

Jay knew from experience that could not be true. There were always consequences to pleasure. Always a price.

He had gathered his good sense to leave when the door swung open. A woman draped in black velvet stared out. Her gown had the wide neckline and tiny waist of current fashion, while her skirts filled the doorway and her sleeves hung like deflated balloons as she lifted a candle toward his face. Hers was covered by a delicate black veil, held in place by a high bronze comb but stopping short of the enormous brooch pinned to her bosom, an ornate design Jay chose not to examine.

“Member?”

He cleared his throat, bridling at that old resentment that arose whenever he was being judged worthy to enter the domains of the great. “Guest.”

“Referred by?”

“Lord Far—Triton.” Farren had emphasized the insistence on aliases.

“Your name?”

“Poseidon.”

She scarcely paused. “Taken.”

“Jupiter?”

She shook her head.

He groped for a name he’d remember, one he had some small association with. He was a brickmaker, wasn’t he? “Hephaestus.”

“Very good.”

She allowed him into the foyer, dimly lit and painted on one side a dark reddish umber lined with gold, rich and sensuous. The other side, at first glance, opened into an enormous hall lined with statuary in the classical style, graceful and well-shaped men and women clad in scanty garments dotting a gallery draped with trailing vines and flowers.

He sensed his hostess smiling behind the veil as he studied the scene. “What is your desired entertainment? We offer cards, music, conversation⁠—”

“The tableaux,” Jay blurted. It was all Farren would talk about.

“Greece, the Ottoman Empire, or the Far Orient?”

They all sounded intriguing, but the name of the club, and the painted wallpaper, pointed to his choice. “Greece.”

She smiled. “Half sovereign.”

Jay produced the coin, and she slipped it into a small pouch strung from her waist by a golden chain. “This way.”

She turned into the nearest reception room, and Jay regretted not seeing the rest of the house. The scent in the air teased the appetite, a blend of floral and aromatics with a hint of spice. The décor breathed careless luxury, riches won without sweated brow or bruised knuckles.