She laughed again. “I hardly think—”
But he cut her off. “You’ll know soon enough. There’s a card.” He pointed to a small white envelope nestled in the flowers.
Lady Georgiana was itching with curiosity to know what the card said, but she didn’t want to open it in front of Barnes.
“You must let me get dressed for dinner,” she said, looking pointedly at the clock on the mantelpiece. “I have less than an hour.”
It was a transparent ruse, but Barnes recognized that Georgiana wanted to open the card in private. “You’re an astonishing woman, you know,” he said, and then kissed her forehead and took his leave.
Georgiana closed the door behind him and extracted the envelope from the bouquet, being careful not to touch the red leaves. Inside was a card with one word written on it.
Harlot.
EIGHT
Georgiana was shaken, and all the misgivings she’d felt on first hearing that the entire company knew of her affair with Barnes came flooding back. Her knees weakened and she felt herself go faint. She sat down on the bed, still with the card in her hand.
“Who could have done such a thing?” she asked aloud. She ran through the visitors at Penfield, but could venture no guess. And then she thought of Freddy. Could this be his revenge for that slap? She dismissed the thought. He might be rash and occasionally ill-mannered, but he wasn’t venal.
She thought she must tell Lady Loughlin, and reached her hand out to ring the bell for Hortense, but then she thought better of it. Hadn’t Lady Loughlin, just that morning, lectured her about having the courage of her convictions? Hadn’t she herself decided, just that morning, that she wouldn’t allow the opinion of the world to influence her decisions about right and wrong? And now, mere hours later, she was reduced to a quivering jelly by a silly insult from an ignorant prig?
Lady Georgiana Vernon was made of sterner stuff than this, she told herself, and matched her actions to the thought. She tore up the card and threw it and the flowers into the fireplace, where they would serve the only purpose she would permit them: kindling the fire her maid would light for her after dinner. She would not allow them to disturb her.
Georgiana bathed and took some time with her toilette. She assumed she would be facing her anonymous enemy at dinner, and she wanted to do it looking her best.
Her best was very good indeed, and heads turned as she came down to dinner in a sapphire-blue silk gown with a very snug waist and a very low neckline. More guests had arrived that day, and there was some nudging and whispering among the people who were seeing her for the first time as they identified her to one another and remarked on her appearance, which was indeed remarkable.
Georgiana looked around for Freddy. She wanted to make things right with him, but he wasn’t in the room. She certainly wasn’t in the mood for strangers, so she took the last of four chairs grouped around a low table in the corner. The other three chairs were occupied by Gerry, Miss Niven, and a woman Georgiana didn’t recognize but assumed to be Miss Niven’s companion.
And so she turned out to be.
“Lady Georgiana,” said Miss Niven with enthusiasm. “I’m glad you could join us.”
Georgiana smiled her greeting.
“I don’t believe you’ve met Miss Mumford,” Alexandra continued, and introduced the two women properly.
Miss Mumford nodded coldly, with barely enough civility to avoid being flagrantly rude. Georgiana felt her hackles rise, but she chose to ignore the slight, and smiled warmly at Alexandra’s companion.
“I’m so very glad to meet you,” she said with exaggerated sweetness. “Miss Niven speaks very highly of you.”
Miss Mumford nodded again, and mustered up a wan smile.
Georgiana, having done her social duty, turned to Gerry and Alexandra. “Tell me about your tennis game,” she said.
“I’m glad you weren’t there to witness the carnage,” said Gerry, laughing. “I didn’t even give Miss Niven a reasonable challenge. She simply trounced me from start to finish.”
“That’s not quite true,” said Alexandra. “But you’re a good sport, at any rate.”
“Good sport! I’d dashed well better be a good sport. If you’re no good at a thing, being a good sport is all you have left.”
Georgiana, when she met Gerry, had thought she might like him, and now she was sure she did.
“I must say, I think qualities you develop in yourself, like spirit and perseverance, are to be valued much more dearly than qualities that are God-given, like athletic talent,” she said.
“Spoken like a woman with athletic talent!” Gerry said.
“Oh, you can’t be serious for even a moment,” said Alexandra to Gerard. “Lady Georgiana is right, of course. I certainly take pleasure in playing tennis, but I try to take pride only in the effort, and not the result.”
At this point, a pause in the conversation gave Miss Mumford an opportunity to address her charge.
“Alexandra, dear,” she said, pointing to the girl’s empty plate, “as you have finished your dinner, perhaps we should pay our respects to Mr. and Mrs. Churchill. They just arrived today. You met them last year in London, do you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” said Miss Niven wonderingly. “And I will make it a point to speak with them after dinner.”
“You wouldn’t want them to think you aren’t being attentive,” Miss Mumford went on.
“I really don’t see how they could think that,” Alexandra said, finally understanding what her companion was driving at. “I will most certainly speak with them later,” she said definitively, and turned back to Gerry and Georgiana.
Georgiana had understood this exchange fully as well as Alexandra had. Miss Mumford clearly thought that she—Lady Georgiana—was an inappropriate companion for a young lady of virtue, and had made a clumsy attempt at separating the two young women. Georgiana’s heart warmed to Alexandra for rebuffing that attempt.
Determined to turn the conversation, Georgiana addressed Gerry: “Perhaps we can find an activity where spirit and perseverance carry the day, and talent plays little part.”
“Are there any ditches to be dug?” asked Gerard. “Or perhaps some coal to be shoveled?”
The two girls laughed. “I was thinking perhaps we could take a punt out on the pond,” said Georgiana. “We will let you do all the work, and we will sit on pillows and admire your technique.”
Alexandra seconded the idea.
“By Jove, that’s a fine plan,” said Gerard with gusto. “If the weather holds, I consider you engaged to punt on the pond with me after breakfast.”
The three continued to discuss the many opportunities the estate offered for entertainment, with Miss Mumford saying not a word.
When dinner was over and the last guests were straggling upstairs to their rooms, Lady Loughlin sought out Georgiana and took her arm. “Come upstairs with me,” she said to her young friend.
They went to Paulette’s room, where her maid, Jean, was just finishing laying out her mistress’s nightclothes.
“Thank you, Jean. That will be all.”
“Yes, my lady.” Jean nodded and left the room.
“Sit down, Georgiana. After this morning’s conversation, I just want to make sure all is well.”
“All is certainly well,” said Lady Georgiana, her sense of well-being perhaps heightened by the several glasses of wine she’d had with dinner. “Although what I’ve done has not been without repercussions.”
“Repercussions?” her hostess asked with surprise.
Georgiana told her the story of the flowers, and took some perverse satisfaction in Paulette’s evident surprise. It was her turn to be blasé to Paulette’s perturbed; their respective roles of the morning had been reversed.
“I’m very unhappy about having such a thing going on under my roof.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t take it so seriously,” said Georgiana. “I don’t think there’s any harm in it.”
“But I wonder who could have done it,” Paulette mused.
“I couldn’t begin to guess, and so I’m not going to,” Georgiana said, keeping the thought of Freddy to herself. “And I don’t think you should either. It’s only important if we make it so.”
“I suppose you’re right, but I still can’t say I like it. It’s very unsettling.” She shook her head. “I think I’m going to need a sleeping draft.” She reached for the bell to ring for Jean.
The women exchanged other news of the day as Paulette waited for her maid, who didn’t come.
“Where can she be?” Paulette asked with some annoyance.
“You did tell her there would be nothing further.”
“There are sometimes further things that one cannot anticipate.” She rang the bell again, but to no avail.
“Bah!” said Paulette. “I am so tired of waiting that I suspect I will be able to sleep without the draft after all, so I will say good night.”
The two kissed affectionately and Georgiana went to her room.
Jean, meanwhile, was as otherwise occupied as it is possible for a lady’s maid to be. When her mistress dismissed her for the evening, she didn’t go straight to her room in the servants’ quarters. She went first through the drawing room where Lord Loughlin, with a few of his guests, was taking advantage of the dying warmth of the fire to smoke a last cigar before retiring. Jean curtsied to the group.
“Good night, my lord,” she said as she passed them on her way through the room.
But when she shut the far door behind her, she still didn’t go upstairs. Instead, she went through the kitchen—empty, clean, and quiet at this hour—and took a key from her pocket. She checked that no one was watching, and fitted the key to the lock in the door that led to the wine cellar. She slipped through and closed the door quietly.
She turned on the electric light that had been installed only the year before, and made her way carefully down the steep stone stairs, breathing in the familiar smells of must and dust and age. She walked slowly in the narrow aisles between the racks and racks of Lord Loughlin’s wines until she heard the creak of the door at the top of the stairs and the muffled click of footsteps on stone.
And then he stood in front of her, Robert Loughlin himself.
“Hello, Jean.”
“My lord.”
“You’ve been dismissed for the night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said, and took a bunch of keys from his pocket. He walked toward the back of the wine cellar, with Jean following. When he reached the end of the aisle, he turned right. In the far corner of the cellar was a narrow, iron-barred door. Lord Loughlin unlocked it and held it open for Jean. He followed her in, and closed it behind him.
They were in a small, dark space, a kind of a cage not more than eight feet by ten. It was lined with wine racks, which were filled with the very best wines the cellar contained, wines Lord Loughlin wouldn’t entrust even to Dodson, his butler of many years. On the floor, incongruously, was a thick, lush Persian carpet. In the middle of the rug, on a small stand, was a cask of Chateau Laballe Armagnac, which Lord Loughlin shared only with his most favored friends.
Without a word, Lord Loughlin bent Jean over the cask and flipped up her skirts. He stood between her legs and kneaded her buttocks through the thin cotton of her drawers, hard. She took a deep, quick inhale to steel herself against what was almost, but not quite, pain. She always found a strange satisfaction in this, the inevitable prelude to their sessions in the wine cellar. It made her feel flushed and excited, and ready for whatever her master had his mind set on that day.
For Lord Loughlin, the sight of his wife’s maid’s firm young ass, and its succulence in his hands, did more than arouse him. It took him to the point where he could get past his discomfort with having an affair behind his wife’s back, and primed him to indulge proclivities that he almost thought shameful. The sight, the feel of that ass in his hands, and all was put behind him.
His cock was standing at attention when he stepped away and half sat, half leaned on a tall stool in the corner.
“Get undressed,” he said to Jean, almost gruffly.
Jean got up from the cask, and then leaned against it to unlace her boots. Lord Loughlin, she knew, liked her to take her time.
He leaned on the stool, one hand caressing his cock through his trousers, as he watched Jean carefully and deliberately roll down her stockings. The sight of her hands against her legs mesmerized him.
She felt the cool air of the cellar as a balance to the heat she was generating from within. She had learned to love this part of their ritual, to feel the pleasure of her own touch. She folded her stockings inside her boots and began to undo the buttons on her dress.
She stepped out of the dress and stood before him in bodice and drawers. She stepped closer to him, her breasts at his eye level, and reached her hands around to her back to untie the laces that kept her white muslin bodice bound. The motion of moving her shoulders back thrust her breasts forward, and they were only inches from his face. He looked, he closed his eyes for a moment, and the motion of his hand on his penis quickened.
None of this was lost on Jean, and his arousal contributed to hers. As she untied the laces on her own bodice, her eyes were on his hand, and his cock, and she was attuned to his pleasure.
When she loosened her bodice and pulled it off over her head, Lord Loughlin stopped touching himself so he could touch her. He took one breast in each hand and buried his head between them, breathing in the combination of Jean’s spice and the must of the cellar. He held her breasts tight to his cheeks and filled his lungs.
Abruptly, he stood up and stripped without ceremony. Naked, he turned away from Jean and walked to the end of one of the racks, where there was a large wooden cabinet. He opened it and surveyed its contents. From the array of toys, tricks, and leather he took out one of his favorites, an ancient Chinese cock ring carved in ivory. It was in the form of a dragon, curled around so its tail met the base of its neck.
He knew he couldn’t get it on when he was in a state of full tumescence, so he used the trick he always used to calm his erection: He thought about fishing. One mental picture of the trout he stocked his pond with, and he felt his attention straying and his penis softening.
When it had lost enough strength that he could fit the ring on, he didn’t put it on himself, but handed it to Jean. She knew to act quickly, and she slid his balls through it—first one, then the other—and then maneuvered his cock in. She adjusted it, holding his entire apparatus in one hand, and moving the ring into just the right spot with the other.
Once it was in position, she gently stroked the underside of his cock, using only her fingertips. He got steely hard under her touch, and gave her a meaningful look. He went back to the cabinet, and returned with a tangle of leather straps, horsehair, and brass fittings, along with a whip.
He handed it all to Jean.
She took it, and the expression on her face underwent a startling transformation. Her mouth hardened, her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to grow an inch or two taller. She took the whip and cracked it on the cellar floor. In a heartbeat, she became his master.
“Turn around!” she demanded in a harsh voice.
Lord Loughlin did as he was told, and felt the intense mix of excitement and trepidation that came of relinquishing control.
Jean separated some of the straps until she was holding a harness in her hand, ready for him to slip into it, which he did.
The harness had originally been made for a mastiff Lord Loughlin had gotten when his two sons were young. The dog had been big enough for the small boys to ride, and the riding apparatus was all of a size to fit Lord Loughlin, if not perfectly, then well enough.
Jean buckled the straps across his chest, and attached the reins to the back of the harness. She was left holding the whip, a riding crop, and what looked like a horse’s tail—which it had been, at one point. Now strands from that tail were attach
ed to a small cylinder of black rubber.
Jean cracked the whip again. “Down!” she barked, and Lord Loughlin got down on his hands and knees. Jean went over to the cabinet and took out a jar of Carston’s Complexion Cream. She opened it, rubbed a large dab of the cream on the rubber cylinder, and went back to Lord Loughlin. “Lean down!” she ordered.
Lord Loughlin put his head to the floor and presented his ass to Jean. She inserted the rubber plug far into his anus, and the horsehair made it look for all the world like a tail.
Jean yanked on the straps. “Up!”
He came back up to all fours, and groaned as his ass closed around the butt plug. Jean cracked the whip again. “Quiet!”
Then she put the whip down and straddled his back, holding the riding crop. She slapped the crop on his ass. “Forward!” she ordered.
At this, Lord Loughlin started forth on all fours, with Jean riding him.
Although Jean still found her master’s proclivities peculiar, she loved the sensation that he needed her. She understood that he showed her a side of himself that no one else knew, and that it was the deepest secret of his soul. It made her feel singled out, special, and that sense contributed to the pleasure she got from their games in the wine cellar.
The power also contributed. She spent most of her life doing the bidding of others, but down here, once she held that whip in her hand, she was in control. Exercising that control heightened all her other sensations, including the feel of her clitoris on her lord’s back, pulsing against it with his motion across the cold stone floor.
“Faster,” she said, and hit his ass again with the riding crop. She could feel him strain with the exertion and the excitement. She reached around and took the horsehair tail in her hand and twisted it until it was taut enough so that her twisting motion turned the plug itself.
He groaned again, and she stopped twisting immediately. “Be quiet!”
He fell silent and continued his cycle around the cask of Armagnac, and she started twisting again. Whenever he slowed down or made a noise she stopped twisting and made him speed up or stay quiet. As long as he continued at a pace she deemed acceptable, and made not a murmur, she twisted.
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