Beautiful Torment *Book One of the Beautiful series*

1) His arrival

"This is a brothel not a charity, Luciana Clèment. Get off your lazy rump and greet that man by the door."

"Yes, madam," the young girl nodded, casting her vibrant green eyes towards the polished floor.

Near the door, the fearsome man's gaze bore down on her slight figure. Her auburn brown hair was a mess and soot from the fireplace decorated her cheeks. She stood from her spot beside the wooden wash bucket, its waters murky gray from a day's scrubbing. "This is the girl I am paying silver to bed? Little bedraggled tart's no bigger than a mouse," the man scoffed, kicking his boots clean against the door frame. Bits of dirt and earth littered the freshly scrubbed entryway.

Lucy cringed, her shoulders grew tense and she clenched her jaw. She had spent the last two hours scrubbing that clean. Not bothered by the insult against her appearance, knowing no man would ever want to bed her versus the other girls available.

"Oh heavens no, my lord," Madam Caledonia trilled. Her fingers danced along her overflowing bosom, powdered pale as milk. The ruffled edge of her layered robe brushed the leg of a nearby end table sporting a vase of fresh cut violets. Their scent filled the vestibule. "Luciana will lead you to Isabelle's room where my best girl awaits you most eagerly. We do not often host gentlemen at this hour, my lord. My sincerest apologies for the delay."

The man only grunted in response and looked past the both of them towards the extravagant staircase, anticipation heavy in his dark eyes. "Well?" He demanded when Lucy did not move quickly enough.

"Get a move on girl." Madam Caledonia's thin, white marble cane snapped against Lucy's upper arm, stinging with the fury of an angry wasp. The stick was an extravagant beast, jeweled and topped with a carved ivory lion head. The cane was merely for show, though it doubled as an instrument for pain from time to time when one of her girls misbehaved.

Lucy jumped to her feet, wiping her damp hands on the front of her tarnished apron. Loose strands of her hair fell over her shoulder in her haste to reach the stairs. The man followed uncomfortably close, like the shadow of a wolf that lingers beyond the wood. She felt a shiver come over her and she raced forward, ever faster.

Isabelle, the shining jewel of Granston House, had a room on the uppermost level in the East wing. Private quarters as a privilege for earning the madam so much coinage. Though Lucy herself would not count being woken in the middle of the night to please a cull, lord or not, as something desirable. Yet no pity stirred under her skin. Knowing Isabelle for the cruel wench she was, Lucy felt almost smug as they passed a groggy looking Rosalind in the candlelit hall. The other maid had been sent ahead to rouse and ready Isabelle for the lord that graced their house.

The anticipation was all but bleeding off of him. Having been born and raised in a whorehouse, the young girl recognized the look on the man's face and the rigid excitement of need that coursed through him. The worker was in for a long night.

Trying to hide her smirk as they reached Isabelle's room, Lucy turned her face away from the light and rapped three quick times on the door before opening it. "You have a caller, Miss Isabelle," she said as sweetly as she could force herself to and turned to press her back against the open door so the lord could enter. Heat from his body grazed her skin and she struggled not to recoil, holding steady with eyes lowered in respect.

The room was warm from the blazing fire in the hearth Rosalind no doubt lit for the occasion. Lucy stole a quick peek at Isabelle. The harlot was posed and ready, stretched like a lioness across the end of the canopied bed. She reminded Lucy of one of the mythical Greek muses from Mount Helicon. A painting of them hung just downstairs in the drawing room where Madam's girls gathered to entertain wealthy callers. The nine muses were bare breasted and adorned in white silk as sheer as coats of frost with golden laurel crowns laced through their dark curls.