A brothel inn was never quiet. That was simply the nature of the place — pleasure was its commerce and sound was its constant currency, drifting through the walls and floorboards at all hours, the mingled voices of men and women doing what men and women came to such places to do. The girls who worked the lower floor had long since stopped registering most of it, the way people who live near rivers stop hearing the water.
But the sounds from the upper floor that afternoon were a different matter entirely.
