The Devil's Surrogate by Jennifer Jane Pope

you!'
    'Tish!'
Bressingham chided her, raising a hand in a mock defensive gesture.
'You're too cruel my dear, too cruel by half. Give me half a good
reason and I'd be as good a hunter as any you care to name, but
then I don't see you as a hunted bird, more's the pity.'
    'And if you
did,' Isobel retorted, 'it'd take more than you've got to ruffle my
feathers!'
    'But we'll
never know, will we?' Bressingham replied, and deliberately yawned.
'I'd wager five hundred guineas I'd have you within the hour, but
then you wouldn't take that risk, would you?'
    Immediately, several heads turned and even Matilda's ears
pricked up. Five hundred guineas? That was a small fortune, even in these
circles.
    'Hah, a wager,
is it?' another man asked. He was some years older than Bressingham
and going badly to fat, which certainly precluded him from anything
as active as this hunt. 'Why, I'll offer even money on Bressingham
to anyone who wants to take it. I'm sorry, my dear Isobel,' he
leered at her, 'but the odds are against any of these birds
remaining on the loose for more than a couple of hours at best, and
I doubt you'd be quite as quick as they.'
    'And why do
you doubt that, my lord?' Isobel snapped. 'Just because I haven't
spent my life scrubbing floors and carrying buckets doesn't mean I
cannot run. Besides, brains come into the equation, and I'd back my
intelligence against a dozen of these silly whores.'
    'Ah, so you'll
accept my challenge?' Bressingham laughed, and the young redhead
looked suddenly confused and alarmed. 'Or perhaps your brains
aren't really what you claim them to be?' he added.
    Matilda gawped
in disbelief as the scene unfolded before her. Surely this young
noblewoman wasn't intending to allow herself to be put through the
same humiliation that had been inflicted upon herself and these
other girls? And yet... maybe that was why she had been so
interested in them in the first place, she reasoned. Perhaps she
had been looking at them and wondering what it would feel like to
be so helpless, to know that soon she must run, if not for her life
then at least for her honour, whatever remained of it. Whatever the
reason, the redheaded fool seemed reluctant to back down.
    'If you're so
certain, Bressingham,' she was saying, 'and if Lord Wormley is
offering even money on you, surely you can do better with your own
odds?'
    'Six to four,'
Wormley suggested. The knot of guests was drawing in closer now,
eager to see the outcome of this contest.
    Isobel looked
at the paunchy lord with obvious contempt. 'Six to four?' she
echoed. 'Pah! Have you no sense of chivalry? Lay me three to one
and I'll maybe give it some serious consideration.'
    'I'd lay her
anytime,' Matilda heard one of the other men nearest to the
bird-girls mutter to his companion, but he was far enough away that
Isobel could not hear his jibe.
    'Two to one,'
Wormley offered.
    'And I'll lay
you five to two myself,' Bressingham announced, 'but that's a
private wager between the two of us. Wormley has the rights to the
main book, and I'd not presume.'
    'Five hundred
guineas at five to two, you say?' Isobel's eyes narrowed and the
corners of her mouth twitched. 'One hour only? I stay free of you
for one hour, and I wear a marking so the other hunters know I'm to
be prey only to you?'
    'Agreed,'
Bressingham replied.
    Lord Wormley
nodded. 'Agreed, so long as Grayling has no objections.'
    'Indeed, I
haven't.' The masked figure had appeared unnoticed from a
glass-panelled door opening directly onto the lawn from the
library. Behind him followed a second similarly attired figure, but
there was no mistaking Grayling, even beneath his disguise. 'No
objections whatsoever,' he added, 'and I'll lay a hundred guineas
on you myself, Isobel.'
    'But she must
be garbed and treated exactly as the other birds,' Bressingham
insisted. 'The full costume, if you please, down to the very last
detail.'
    To Matilda,
the two dildos inside her suddenly seemed to grow to twice their
actual size and she