The door opened, as I said, just as the sun was dipping towards the far hills. I turned from the window expecting to see Polly again, but instead found myself confronted by the sight of Hacklebury. And a drunk Hacklebury, at that.
'Ah, my sweet, darling little wife,' he slurred, holding the doorframe for support. 'How do I find you today, eh? Not as obliging as your little substitute, I'll warrant, but then I haven't promised to pay you fifty guineas, have I?'
So that was it - he'd been drinking and getting his money's worth from the poor fool he had persuaded to play my part in the sham wedding. Fifty guineas? I did a rapid mental calculation and almost gasped out loud. That was worth something like three or four thousand pounds in my own time, and nearer thirty thousand in early twenty-first century terms.
He was playing serious. Unless...
Unless he had no intention of paying the woman at all. Depending upon where he had found her, what her background was and who, if any, her relatives were, I had the nasty feeling that the substitute Lady Hacklebury might not see the colour of the Hacklebury gold. For that matter, she might not be seeing the colour of anything else for much longer.
However, I told myself firmly, that wasn't my problem. I didn't know her, nor did I know anything about her, save that she had to look at least something like me. Like Angelina, I corrected myself. Call me a hard bitch, but I was more concerned about myself.
'You look a little tired, sir,' I replied, affably enough. 'Come, won't you sit down a while?' Okay, okay, so it was hammy, but you come up with a better line. Better still, come up with a better line when you're perched on tiptoe, being steadily squeezed to death by a corset and with your arse still feeling as if someone's been using it for a griddle pan.
No, Hacklebury didn't buy it, either. He stared at me, struggling to persuade both his eyes to look in something like the same direction and then a weird smile spread across his face.
'Such solicitousness,' he said. Well, that's what he tried to say, I think. What came out sounded like an advert for a particularly nasty mouthwash. 'Does my dear wife wish me to believe that she is really concerned about my condition?'
He staggered inside the room another step or so and slammed the door hard behind him.
'I - I've been thinking, Gregory,' I tried again. 'This is all so - so unnecessary. Just a misunderstanding. Mayhap I reacted a little...' I ran out of appropriate words about then, but it wouldn't have mattered.
'Misunderstanding, is it?' he bellowed, and then threw back his head and guffawed - not a word we see much nowadays, I know, but very appropriate just then.
'You stupid bitch!' he cried, tears streaming down his alcohol-flushed cheeks. 'You think you can wheedle your way back with a few solish... solishy... dammit, clever words? I'm drunk, not bloody stupid, girl!'
'I merely meant,' I began, 'that now I've had time to consider—'
'You don't fancy being left to rot in your bedroom, eh? Of course you don't, you tight-arsed little mare! Well don't worry; you won't have to languish here for much longer. Oh no!' He leered at me and took another step closer. How I wished there was something I could have used to hit him with; in that condition I could have sent him to the land of Nod before he had time to react.
'No, madam, I have a far better plan for you,' he sneered. 'I have most of what I want from you already, thanks to that stupid whore downstairs. Now all I have to do is make sure that the pair of you are stabled somewhere safely out of the way and do something about procuring a hostage to your good behaviour if ever I do need to show you in public.'
'What can you mean?' I demanded, but from the look in his bleary eyes now, I suspected I already knew. There's one certain way of making sure a woman will do your bidding and only one sort of hostage whose well being she can be almost guaranteed to put well before her own!
'Why don't we just sit down and try and talk this through?' I suggested. My quaint Victorian diction was out the window now, but he was too far shot to realise that. He was listening to the meaning, rather than to the form of what I was trying to say.
'Listen, Greg... Gregory, perhaps I was a bit hasty before, but there's no need to go to extremes, really there isn't.'
'Ain't there, egad!' he exploded.
'No, there ain't,' I said. 'No need at all. Look, I'll go along with you if that's what you want. You've got my signature on your marriage lines thing now and a couple of witnesses you've probably bribed well enough to make sure they'll swear black was white, if it ever comes to it. Look, I'm a realist, okay?'
'You're a cunning, scheming little vixen,' he retorted. 'And what manner of words you use, too. Okay, you say?'
'That means yes, I agree,' I tried to explain. 'Um, old Romany thing, I think.' Good lie, on the spur of the moment. Old American thing more like, but not old then, unfortunately. Probably not even first uttered, I wouldn't think. Hacklebury had already moved past that though, and now he was steaming.
'You silly little bitch!' he snapped, spittle whistling dangerously close to my left ear. 'You think I don't know what you're trying to do?'
'Listen,' I said, holding my hands up in a placatory gesture, 'all I'm trying to do is offer a truce, eh? Sort of time out for reconsideration and maybe start at the beginning again?'
'Too late for second thoughts,' he said. 'Far too late.'
'No, really,' I blustered. 'It's never too late. Look, I'll show you I mean it,' I offered. I began furiously trying to pull at the ribbon drawstring that held my drawers about my waist, but my hands were all but useless. I looked up at him again, smiling encouragingly.
'Here, you help me,' I urged. Dammit, it wasn't my body, was it? And it wasn't as though it was anything I hadn't done in my real life. I had to try to win him over, convince him in some way that I was regretting my earlier actions, even if they'd been Angelina's actions anyway.
'Come on,' I said, softer now. 'Help me out of these bloomers, will you?' He looked at me a bit strangely then, but it was more my choice of word, I realised. Amelia Bloomer had died somewhere near the end of that century, as far as I could remember, and though I had no idea how old she was when she finally shuffled off, the odds were she was still a bit of a youngster now and the name she coined for baggy knickers probably took a few years to cross the Atlantic in any case.
'Oh, come on,' I said. 'Just help me with this damned ribbon and then I can manage the rest. I think,' I added, looking down at the awkwardly shaped little boots. Ah well, I thought, it wouldn't be the first time I'd done it with my knickers round my ankles!
'What devil has got into you?' he demanded, narrowing his eyes. I realised maybe I'd gone in just a bit hard, but then that was what he was going to do to me, so why pussy-foot around? 'What manner of change is this I see and hear?'
Oops!
'Look,' I said, 'I'm just trying to show you I'm sincere, that's all. You're a handsome man and far more worldly than I, so I'm trying to bridge that gap between us, that's all. I just panicked before, that's all. Now I'm trying to make it up to you. Or don't you fancy me any more?'
'Fancy you?' Careful with your terminology, Teena. 'You speak like a street whore,' he muttered, but I could see he was beginning to come around to my way of thinking a bit.
'Would you like me to be a street whore for you?' I whispered, and hoped it was a seductive whisper. I placed my hands on my hips in a suggestive pose. 'I could be anything you want, if you just tell me,' I offered. He smiled at me, very lopsidedly, but now I knew I was starting to win some points.
'You look like a little street whore,' he nodded. Hmmm, well of course he'd know about that. 'Your titties are too small, though.'
'Perhaps they'll grow some,' I suggested. 'I'm still young, after all. Besides,' I added coquettishly, 'it isn't the size that's important, is it?'
He ripped the drawers off me and the thin fabric made such a noise over its departure that I knew they'd never be good for anything other than cleaning rags again. I expected to find myself flying through the a
ir and gritted my teeth at the thought of my bruised backside landing on the bed, but instead he stepped back and planted his hands on his hips.
'A sweet little fruit,' he said. I resisted the urge to hide my nakedness behind my hands and simply stood there, letting him stare at my pouting little pussy. He licked his lips and I felt myself starting to tremble. 'A pretty little peach, just ready for the pipping,' he continued. Very poetic - I was almost impressed.
I'm not going to pretend I really enjoyed what happened next and neither am I going to lie and say it was a fate worse than death. After all, as I said, it wasn't something I hadn't done before and neither was I a shrinking violet of a virgin, even if my body belonged to one.
That was the main problem of course. After that, the old Teena survival instinct cut in, together with that competitive edge that's eventually produced a hatful of country representative honours, albeit in somewhat different sports, of course.
I laid myself back across the bed and spread my legs as far as those damned chains permitted, which wasn't very much, in truth. I started to suggest that it might be easier for both of us if he removed them first, but he wasn't in the mood for listening. His breeches were down and off before I had time to realise it and I didn't even see the going of his shoes first.
'Now, my sapphic little virgin,' he breathed, lowering himself over me. The brandy fumes were overpowering, but I managed to hide my distaste. Besides, it was far preferable to halitosis. I felt him fumbling and I bent my knees to allow me to open my thighs wider. Even so, I knew it was going to be a painful start.
After a couple of false starts I felt the heat of his knob settle between my outer lips and I tried to conjure up a picture of someone I really fancied, desperate to produce some degree of lubrication. It seemed to work, at least partially. Gregory pressed his assault again and I felt my flesh distend around the head of his weapon, gritting my teeth against the moment when that tender inner membrane would start to tear.
I let out a suitably ear-piercing shriek when it happened and believe me, it wasn't all playacting for his benefit. God, but the man was big! I gasped and clawed uselessly at the bedding as his full length penetrated me, no slow entry this, but a savage thrust filling me in a second so that I thought I must surely burst. I closed my eyes and prayed he would come quickly, but a man who could produce that standard of attack weapon in the face of so much alcohol wasn't about to finish his charge in a prematurely discharged volley.
He settled into a vigorous pistoning action and, to my surprise and not inconsiderable horror, I felt my treacherous body starting to respond. Sapphic little whore, he'd called me, which meant he must know something about Indira, but now he seemed intent on either making a convert, or else exacting some sort of male chauvinistic retribution for my perceived sins.
Very soon I was past questioning his motivation. Ye gods, but did Angelina ever know what she had been denying her trim little body? Trapped inside my accursed corset, I panted and groaned and by this time none of it was artificially created. I reached my arms about him, clawing madly at his back, but the combination of his shirt and my damned gloves rendered my actions totally ineffectual. I tried to throw my legs about him, forgetting in the heat of the moment that my ankles were still chained together and succeeded only in raking the flesh of his shins.
Gregory Hacklebury took not the slightest notice of such a feeble inconvenience, though. He drove into me time and again, and now I could feel my clitoris throbbing urgently and that peculiarly ice-hot feeling beginning to spread out from it, a sensation I knew well enough.
I came in a frenzy of balled fists, kicking heels and banshee-like screeching and the orgasms went on and on, merging into each other until they became one long physical surrender. Somewhere along the way Hacklebury reached his own climax and I felt his hot semen spurting deep inside me, which seemed to serve only to heighten my incredible passion.
It couldn't go on indefinitely, of course. Finally sated, he slumped with his weight pinning me uncomfortably and slowly my own state of abandon subsided to a warm, dull throb. Summoning up what little remained of my body's non-too impressive physical strength, I managed to move him sideways slightly and eventually, as his cock started to go limp, it slipped from inside me and he lay there, gazing at me through eyes that I could tell weren't seeing anything much. I stared back at him and smiled, wanly.
'There, Gregory,' I whispered sweetly. 'Wasn't that much better than whipping me?' He groaned, closed his eyes and fell into a drunken slumber. After a considerable struggle and the expenditure of almost all my remaining reserves, I managed to extricate myself, but I decided against making a move for the door. Even if it was still unlocked - and I presumed it was - there was the small matter of flights of stairs, ankle chains, near nudity and at least one very unpleasant maidservant still standing between me and any realistic chance of freedom.
Besides, until I could find a way of proving otherwise, I was legally married to the beast that now lay snoring next to me and in this society that gave me few, if any rights. As near as dammit I belonged to him and, as near as dammit also, he could now do almost anything he wanted with me, short of murder.
And even that wasn't totally beyond Gregory Hacklebury, I suspected. Not if he thought he could get away with it, and a man who was capable of pulling off a fake marriage was probably capable of getting away with just about anything!
9.
I wandered across the room and parked myself carefully into one of the high-backed chairs. My derrière was still smarting, of course, but at least I now didn't feel like jumping for the chandelier when I put some pressure on it and, in fact, as long as I didn't wriggle about too much, after a while it felt more comfortable, if you can believe that. Either way, I didn't want to stay on the same bed as that man.
The truth was, now the old flames of instant passion and lust had died down, I was feeling very guilty. No, not guilty for having egged the bastard on, but for the fact that my intended pretext of passion had been superseded by an uncontrollable outburst of the real thing.
It's very difficult to explain to someone else just what thoughts were going through my throbbing head at that moment. I wanted to kill Hacklebury and, if I'd had a knife handy right then and there I'd have done for the bastard while he slept and sod the consequences for either of us. Angelina and me, that is; after all, the consequences for Hacklebury would be pretty limited if I'd slit his throat.
However, there were no suitably sharp objects to hand and I didn't fancy my chances of being able to strangle the sod - even if I'd had a suitable ligature, the odds were that he'd come round enough and probably still be able to throw me off and then the gods alone knew what he might do to me. So, it was back to Plan A, what there was of it.
My biggest worry now, however, was that despite my having given him something he'd like as not remember for quite a long time to come, there was still the matter of his other little predilection. My sphincter muscles contracted and quivered merely at the thought of it; Hacklebury might have been a bit short in the manners and considerate approaches department, but he hadn't been hiding behind the door when his creator was distributing the tackle allocation. Maybe he wasn't first in the queue, but I tell you this, he wasn't far from the front!
So that was one problem, but there wasn't much I could do about solving it, so I put it on the backburner and considered the things I maybe could do something about. There weren't a whole lot of them.
The most obvious thing to work on was how to get back to my own time, always supposing that was actually possible. For a few minutes I fell into a very black mood at the prospect of being stuck here and with that! I stared across at the slumbering form and if looks could kill I wouldn't have needed a weapon. After a while, however, I managed to cheer myself up and started thinking positively again.
The locket was the key, I was convinced of that. Somehow or other - and I had no idea how, but that didn't matter - the locket had been responsible for transporti
ng me back into my present predicament and so the locket must surely possess the power to send me back to my own time again. So far so good, I thought, but now we came to a couple of fresh problems.
Number one; I no longer had the locket - correction, Angelina no longer had the locket, always assuming she'd ever had it to begin with, which I was fairly sure she had. And number two; even if and when I got the locket back again, I hadn't the faintest idea of what made it work. Two problems, but no point in worrying about the second until I'd solved the riddle of the first.
Where was the locket now?
Well, there was one obvious answer and he was stretched across the bed doing a fair impression of a lawnmower filled with rather dodgy fuel, while his breeches lay several feet away from him, wrapped around his discarded shoes. From where I was sitting I could see one pocket, and where there was one pocket, I guessed there would be another on the opposite side.
Good guess, Teena, but no lockets in the pockets. With my peculiarly gloved fingers handicapping my every move, I nevertheless succeeded in extracting one rather grubby silk handkerchief, three gold coins and...
...a small key.
It took me a few seconds to understand the significance of that little discovery, for my initial reaction was disappointment at the lack of locket, but even in my blondest moments I always manage to hang on to a tiny thread of reality.
A key! I looked from the key to my ankle cuffs and from my ankle cuffs back to the key. It certainly looked the right sort of size and it made sense that Hacklebury would carry a duplicate with him, in case the formerly ubiquitous Meg was having a non-ubiquitous sabbatical. But could I really be that lucky?
Oh yes - I most definitely could! Click, went the first lock and the left shackle came undone as sweetly as you like. Puffing and panting - bending over in that corset was no picnic, I can tell you - I inserted the key into the lock on the other cuff and then stopped.
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