Pokrewne

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Dr Who [Lethbridge Stewart] Andy Frankham Allen (v5.0) (epu
Content Selected Essays on Tech Cory Doctorow
Amazing Doctor Darwin Charles Sheffield
Brian Moore The Doctor's Wife (epub)
Bite My Cookies [Who Needs Chri Joyee Flynn
Doctor MC Three More Wishes Be Kind To Y
Doctor Rat William Kotzwinkle
Doctor No Ian Fleming
Beesley, Lawrence Titanic Wie ich den Untergang ueberlebt
Block Lawrence Bernie Rhodenb Pokorny wlamywacz

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.Scarlette had only come into possession of the House in January, and the ball was in many ways her housewarming party.In the days of high fashion the local watch might have turned a blind eye to such a blatant bordello being opened in the shadow of the Drury Lane Theatre, but to open such an establishment now… and in Henrietta Street, of all places…The feeling was that Scarlette had become out of touch with the times, despite being barely into her twenties.She’d been poisoned, said the whispers, by stories of the good old days: the days of the Hellfire Club, the days when Casanova could take a rich old aristocrat for all she was worth by pretending to be able to transfer her mind into somebody else’s body just through a kiss.The haut ton was terribly bored by that sort of thing now, at least in England, although word had it the French were still gullible enough to make the two-thousand‐year-old Count Cagliostro the talk of Paris.Did Scarlette really believe that by dressing the House up in her old-fashioned Hellfire mysticism, by presenting her women as half-sorceress and half-prostitute, she could impress anyone?It was over, the rumours said, and Juliette must have been troubled by that.A ‘stray’ with nobody to turn to outside the House, she must have secretly wondered whether she had any more future now than she’d had when she’d first arrived in London as a twelve-year‐old.Katya, the alleged Russian spy, was so involved with various members of the foreign office that it seemed unlikely she’d stay at the House for long: always one for self-expansion, in every sense, she was seen leading the ‘Marquis of H_____’ to an upstairs room at the ball even though Scarlette had instructed that no business was to be conducted that night.One of the guests, the Countess of Jersey – nicknamed ‘the Infernal’ in society circles, partly because of her occult pedigree, partly because she was regarded by many as an infernal nuisance – was loudly scornful of both the House and its crimson-and‐black decor that evening, although observers noticed that she quietened down considerably when Scarlette herself finally made an entrance.Did Juliette hear the Countess’s loud, vulgar criticisms? Did she begin to wonder, even as she held up her chin and did her duty as hostess, whether she’d be in the gutters before long?In fact, the only woman in the House who seems to have remained loyal to Scarlette was Rebecca.And this is odd, because – to begin with, at least – Scarlette didn’t trust her in return.A handsome, literate, bespectacled demi-rep, Rebecca had been with the Queen of New York State herself on the day that the British army had surrendered at Virginia and the United States, under General Washington, had been declared a ‘no-go’ area for those of Scarlette’s tradition.The Queen had died that day, and since then the tantrists of London had begun to whisper that the very ground of the Americas was poison to all of their kind, that any English witch or ritualist who set foot on independent American soil would instantly burst into flames… although whenever Rebecca was asked what had really happened in New York, she’d simply shrug and turn her attention back to her deck of cards.There was a kind of stain on Rebecca’s honour, then.Rebecca had been in America when terrible things had happened there – when Matthew Crane, Hidden Master of the Grand Lodge Temple of St Andrew’s Trust, had ordered the covert exile of all foreign mystics and courtesans from every colony, New York to Virginia – and even if Rebecca herself hadn’t in any way been to blame (she was, after all, still only nineteen) she was considered by many in London to be something of a curse.Typical of the era, when she received a visit from ‘the Prince’ her blood was said to turn to poison.Perhaps this is why Rebecca often seemed so detached from those around her: or perhaps it was her habit of matter-of‐factly making predictions about the future (‘oh yes, there are going to be men flying in balloons… there will be whole wars fought in the sky’) and then changing the subject completely.So, all things considered, there must have been a great deal of unease in the air on that night in March when the red-and‐black people met, drank, milled and speculated inside the House on Henrietta Street.The world was changing, society was unsettled, and Scarlette’s decision to hold the ball in the first place seemed somehow fundamentally wrong.Then, on top of all that, there were the rumours about the Doctor.Master of This HouseLisa-Beth moved into the House on Henrietta Street some time in late March.She was definitely living there by April, when her journals describe the peculiar experiments being performed in the House’s cellar, but if Scarlette’s diaries are to be believed then her first visit was on the night of the ball.According to Scarlette, Lisa-Beth had summoned up something which ‘the witch couldn’t put down’; Rebecca had been sent to help her, probably some time around half eleven; and Lisa-Beth had arrived at the House around midnight, when the ball was in full swing but Scarlette had yet to show herself in front of the guests.(How Scarlette knew that Lisa-Beth had summoned such a ‘creature’ isn’t made clear.There’s a suggestion that this may have had something to do with Rebecca’s alleged preternatural knowledge, but there was at least one other individual living at the House who might have been able to sense such a disturbance.)Lisa-Beth distrusted Scarlette and felt, like so many others, that this ‘mystical adventuress’ had been milking the legacy of the Hellfire Club for far too long.So why did this most cynical of demi-reps make the decision to move all her things, from her Indian wall-hangings to her surprisingly large collection of books – including the hilariously pornographic History of Marie Antoinette and Wessel’s futuristic Anno 7603 – from her lodgings off the Strand? Lisa-Beth’s own ‘experience’ on that night had something to do with it, of course.But the babewyn Lisa-Beth ostensibly summoned was only part of the picture.Two weeks earlier, a prostitute named Anne-Belle Paley had been picked up by the watch near Marylebone, to the western side of London.The Roundhouse had been unusually full that night, and as a result the watch had decided to take Paley to a different place of imprisonment just outside the city.The rest of the story reads like some horrible gothic fantasy.The woman had been bundled into a cab, and at first she’d put up no resistance, even flirting with the arresting sergeant (not uncommon in Covent Garden).But as the cab had approached the city limits, the woman – alone in the back of the cab, the watchman being on the roof – had begun to scream [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]