Page 14 of The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin (The Ill-Mannered Ladies #2)

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I followed Evan into the room opposite.

It was a salon, if you could call it that, for its red velvet upholstered armchairs and sofas had been arranged to view two chaise longues rather than in the usual conversation groups. For a moment I could not conceive why the chairs and sofas would be arranged in such a way. And then I could. I clamped down upon the lurid imagining.

Like the card room, it had been left in a foul state—bottles and glasses and a woman’s stocking wet upon the floor—but at least it did not stink as much as the card room.

Evan had picked up one of the candles and waved me over to a carved lectern that stood facing a wall tapestry that depicted Bacchus and his acolytes in grape-laden revelry. A large leather-bound ledger sat open upon the wooden stand.

“It is the wager book,” he whispered. He held up the candle for me to read.

The entries were in different hands, each page divided into five columns: Date. Names. Wager not much we could do about old wood. If anyone was still down there, they would definitely know we were on our way.