A Curio for the Count - The Costume Party (Regency Hellfire Club)

A hellfire club is certainly no place for a well brought-up young lady. But antiques expert Jade Bridges, the heroine in my romantic Regency thriller A Curio for the Count, is determined to locate the Thalatte clock for her client. So when the trail leads to the home of Lord Kingston Prendegast, she risks signing up as a serving girl at one of his dubious ‘parties’ so she can slip away to look around the house.

The original 1718 Hellfire Club was actually a satirical ‘gentleman's club’ which admitted men and women as equals to eat, drink, and mock the establishment of the day. But the later version established in 1746 was much more the image we have of them today – a male domain of orgiastic excess featuring food, wine, and paid female ‘guests’.

My favorite depiction of a hellfire club was in the 1966 episode of The Avengers titled A Touch of Brimstone in which Emma Peel and John Steed investigate a secret society re-enacting hellfire activities. It was so risqué that it wasn’t screened in the US and was partially cut for UK television, the entire episode remaining unseen until the 1990s.

Find my novel A Curio for the Count on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BHvQdI

Music: Take Your Time by LiQWYD. Used under license from Storyblocks.
Images: Masked Girl and Girl in Blue Dress licensed by Ingram Image.