At the look on his face, Polly patted his head and told him not to worry about Madame. And once he started eating, he stopped worrying. After twenty minutes at Madame’s home, Kingsley had already decided he would drag this assignment out as long as possible. The late dinner Polly provided for him was delicious. Some kind of thick vegetable soup spiced with basil, pepper, and thyme, served with a steep glass of cabernet.

“Good wine,” he said after a sip. “Spiked? Poisoned?”

“Madame would never ruin cabernet by spiking it. Champagne, maybe. But never the good wine.” Polly’s eyes twinkled with amusement as she sat down in the chair across from him.

“The house is very cozy for a cult, too,” Kingsley said. “Not that I’m complaining. I was expecting a drafty castle with stone floors and dungeons.”

“You’re in the new part of the house,” Polly said. “Built in 1910. Some famously alcoholic Edwardian architect added this wing to the old house back then. The original house is exactly what you would think of when you think of a château. Very drafty. A nightmare to keep warm in winter. The new wing is where we stay from November through April.”

“Can I see the old house?”

“Tomorrow…if you survive the night,” she said with dramatic relish.

“I think I’ll make it till morning,” he said. “I’ve survived scarier sorts than you.”

“Oh, I’m not very scary, I know. That’s one reason I came here,” she said. “I like being in charge of men, but I’m not much of a sadist. My mother was very disappointed in me for that very reason.”

“Your mother? She wanted you to be a sadist? My mother wanted me to be a doctor.”

“Oh, yes,” Polly said. “Like I said, I was born here, in this house. It was very different, though, in my mother’s time.”

“Your mother lived here?”

“For years. When she fell in love with my father who was a slave here, Madame kicked us out.”

“Kicked you all out?”

“It’s the rules. No monogamy. No falling in love. Unless it’s with the house.”

“Hard rule to follow,” Kingsley said. “Not being allowed to fall in love, I mean. The heart wants what the heart wants.”

When he’d fallen in love as a teenager, that relationship had broken fourteen rules in their school’s student handbook. Kingsley had gotten bored on afternoon and counted.

“I say ‘kicked us out,’ but Madame wasn’t cruel about it,” Polly said. “Mom knew the risks and left on good terms with Madame. Good enough that Madame took me in when I wanted to come back.”

“What did your parents do after you all left here?”

“Mom took us back to Toronto and started her own little château there, just our family. My father was her husband and slave, and she had a few other men who submitted to her. My brother served, too.” Kingsley goggled at her. “It’s not like that,” she said, grinning. “It wasn’t sexual. Well, not my brother, obviously. My father, yes. He worshipped my mother. Lived in abject servitude to her and loved it.”

“But your brother?”

“He was raised to serve women. He did the cooking and cleaning at home. I had the paper route. You look so shocked,” she said, reaching out and tweaking his nose playfully.

“I am,” he said.

“All over the world right now,” she said, “girls are being raised in homes where they’re expected to serve men—first their fathers and then their husbands. The boys get the jobs outside the home and the girls do the cooking and cleaning inside the home. So many countries, so many cultures, it goes without saying that the women serve the men of the household. For some reason—sexism—when it’s reversed, when the fathers and the sons are expected to do the cooking and the cleaning, people assume we’ve all gone insane.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Kingsley said. His sister had done most of the chores when they were growing up. Polly had a point.

“Most men don’t. They simply take it for granted that they’re kings in their castles. Then the daughter grows up and moves out and the wife gets fed up and leaves him, and the poor man who’s left behind can’t even boil an egg.”

“I take it the men in this house do the egg boiling?”

“You know how to boil an egg?”

“If you gave me a recipe,” Kingsley said. “Although…you did serve me dinner.”

“Dinner that was cooked by a man. And you’re new here. A baby. We take very good care of the new babies in this house. That being said, they aren’t allowed to stay babies for long.”

He grinned at that and kept eating.

“I came back two years ago. It was time to leave home…leave home and come home,” Polly continued. “My mother’s a force of nature. Here, I can relax. Be myself. I’ll never be the Valkyrie my mother is, and Madame is just fine with that. She relies on me. I’m her second-in-command.”

“Are you going to command me?”

“If you keep being so handsome,” she said, “I’ll have to. Or I’ll never forgive myself. Are you finished eating?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Did you enjoy it?” Polly asked.

“I haven’t had home-cooked food in so long I almost came from the first bite. I live on coffee and cigarettes.” He could use a Gauloise right about now, but didn’t want to be rude.

Polly grinned. She smiled easily and often, and he liked that about her.

“We’ll fatten you up,” she said. “Angelo’s cooking is half the reason I stay here. And half the reason I can’t fit into any of my old jeans anymore. No one is complaining.”

“I’m not,” Kingsley said, and Polly gave him that look women did when a man complimented them and they weren’t quite sure they believed the compliment. But she should. She had a lush, full figure. The gown and robe did far more for her lovely curves than a boring pair of jeans ever would.

“Wash your dishes and dry them, and leave them in the rack,” she said, pointing toward the sink. “When that’s done, come up the stairs right outside the kitchen. I’ll be in the third room on the right. I need to start your bathwater running.”

“You’re giving me a bath? Really?”

“Baby,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Of course I am. How hot do you like your bathwater?”

“Boil me like a lobster.”

“Only if I can eat you after,” she said, and with a swish of silk, she left him alone in the kitchen.

Alone. All alone. Or was he?

Kingsley glanced around and made sure no one was watching him, no cameras, no spyholes.

A telephone hung on the kitchen wall. He could use it right now to call his superiors. They could trace the call, find the house. He didn’t do it. So far he’d been treated with nothing but kindness. No one was holding him prisoner. If he were going to betray Madame’s privacy, it would have to be for very good reason, and so far she hadn’t given him one. Still, he did glance at the phone, checking to see if the house number was listed on it. No luck there.

After doing his dishes, as ordered, he found the back stairs and went up. The second story was even cozier than the more formal downstairs. The hallway was covered in long red rugs and the lights were turned down low. The house had gone quiet since he’d arrived. No more voices and laughter. A sleeping house. It was late. Almost midnight. From behind one closed door he heard the unmistakable sound of a woman quietly having an orgasm. Ah, so not everyone was sleeping.

Another door in the hallway hung slightly ajar, and Kingsley couldn’t resist peeking inside. At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The room was quite dark except for one small nightlight in the shape of a sleeping lamb. By the window he spied something he never expected to see in this place—a bassinet, white with sheer netting draped over it. He crept to the bassinet. A small baby slept inside, lying on his back, tiny hands clenched into tiny fists, and a little square blanket decorated with leaping sheep pulled to the baby’s chin.

“Kingsley?” came a whispered voice from the doorway. He turned and saw Polly walking toward him.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice as low as he could make it. “The door was open.”

“It’s fine. This is Jacques,” she said as she adjusted the baby’s blanket.

“Yours?”

“Ah… Yes and no,” she said, smiling tenderly down at the baby boy. “Come on. Your bath is ready.”

Reluctantly, he let her lead him from the room. He wouldn’t have minded watching Jacques sleep a little more. He hadn’t been around a baby in years.

“What do you mean yes and no?” he asked as Polly led him down the hall.

“We all help with the rearing of children,” she said. “He’s not my son, but he’s as much my responsibility as his mother’s.”

“Do the men help raise the children here, too?’

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

Kingsley felt a knot form in his chest. He ignored it.

“When Madame said she had a family here, I thought she meant it the way, you know, cult leaders call their ‘flock’ their family.”

“Not quite,” she said. “We are very much a family here. Jacques is the first baby born here in a long time, but there have been other children in the house. Myself included. And several more on the way.”

“Who is Jacques’s father?” Kingsley asked.

“No idea,” she said with a shrug. “Not that it matters.”

Her answer was offhand, yet spoke volumes.

“Paying in salt,” Kingsley said.

“What was that?” Polly said.

“You breed the men here, don’t you?” Kingsley asked.

Polly winked at him as she pulled him gently into the room. “Smart boy,” she said. “Now you’re catching on.”

So…it seemed life at the château was not so tame after all.