‘Think we’ll win?’
‘No doubt about it, your Lordship. The Reverend always gets the best from his mounts, and his Rose is a sturdy wench, but he has nothing to match these—’ he gave Blossom’s thigh a hearty slap ‘—thoroughbred legs.’
‘What about other entries?’
Blossom felt the sulky move as Lord Alex got into it.
‘Well, Justice Ormorund has not a prayer, as usual. I have seen his pony out on the downs, a big buxom girl called Belinda. Strong, but not fast enough to give Blossom a run. Then there is Mrs Treadwell. She’s been training one of her girls, so they say.’
‘Not sure it’s cricket, women riders in the Silver Cup. After all, Fanny Treadwell is a slip of a thing. She must weigh half of what I do.’
‘Aye and a quarter of what the Justice’s poor mount has to pull! But I would not worry about the lady, sir. After all, it’s her first year on the course.’
‘Well, I’m taking no chances. That blackguard Jack Campion has bet me a hundred guineas against the filly that I’ll not win. I wonder if he knows something about Fanny that we don’t? At any event, I’m going to take Blossom for a trot, just to the meadow and back to make sure she is well warmed-up.’
Blossom felt him take up the reins and listened for her master’s voice. She knew she was as ready to run as she would ever be. The reins flicked on her bared shoulders and she gripped the shafts and pulled.
“Against the filly”, she thought as she moved off. What had her master meant by that?
‘Giddup!’ Lord Alex called as she pulled the little sulky over the cobbles of the courtyard towards the drive. ‘Good girl, we’ll show them, Blossom. That’s it, girl—’ the whip cracked, echoing around the court ‘—giddup!’
‘Jamie, they look delightful. Amelia dear, today is a happy day. No need to look so glum!’
Seated next to a small table upon which gleamed an impressive silver cup, Lady Alicia looked splendidly imperious in purple silk with a matching parasol. She was the still centre of a bustle of busy maids, as the nursery party arrived at the front of the house. There was something about Lady Alicia’s air of languid elegance, her amused eyes and relaxed confidence, which made Amelia’s blood boil. Even after all these months of bitter bondage, her aunt’s amused disdain was almost too much too endure.
The cousins looked ridiculous. Apart from the usual shaming costumes, they both had back-boards buckled to their corsets beneath their silken smocks. These monstrous devices prevented any slouching at all. The girls’ hands had been attached to a steel ring set in the top of the board, where it emerged from the neckline of the smock. A chain pinioned their wrist cuffs to this anchor, set so short that their arms were pulled up high behind their uncomfortably rigid backs. Amelia’s arms ached terribly already, and the afternoon had barely begun.
An extra-wide collar that forced her to keep her head up and a long leash completed the ensemble. Amelia could not even look down to see how much of her distractingly tight rubber bloomers were showing beneath the smock. This is torture, she thought bitterly, as the cousins were told to kneel on the blanket laid by Lady Alicia’s feet.
The centre of the picnic site was a little plateau of lawn, just in front of the house. Below it the lawns sloped down to the ornamental lake, in front of which passed a winding gravel drive.
‘Is Alex getting ready?’ Jamie sat down next to Lady Alicia in one of the wicker chairs that had been set out just on the grassy plateau’s lip.
‘Yes. Look!’ She pointed her parasol at a little flurry of activity on the drive before the lake. ‘They are setting up the starting line already…’
‘Your Ladyship, what a lovely day for racing, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Mademoiselle Isobel, you look lovely. Everyone seems to be late today. Take this seat by me. Your girls can sit on one of these blankets.’
‘I saw Mrs Ormorund’s carriage in the courtyard, so I do not think she will be very long. Ah, here she is!’
Amelia shifted her weight surreptitiously. The back-board and the wicked position of her arms was causing some distress, but she did not want to be accused of fidgeting. Once the race began, she thought, the company’s attention would be on other things and then…
‘Do stop fidgeting, Amelia!’ Jamie said sharply.
‘Ah, the pretty cousins.’ Mademoiselle Isobel’s voice was excited and gay. ‘You still have trouble with Amelia, monsieur?’
‘Amelia is a very wicked, wilful girl,’ Jamie said regretfully.
‘I suspect that the devil himself would have trouble with that little minx,’ Lady Alicia put in.
Amelia’s face burnt. The collar prevented her from lowering her head so she stared at the starting line of the race, straight in front of her.
Mrs Ormorund arrived, then Hermione and Antonia Lockheart. Spinster sisters, ever active in the Townswomen’s Guild, these ladies ran the genteel tearooms in Hatherby. Such grander folk took the wicker seats, their maids and shop-girls kneeling at their feet. A gaggle of gardeners, grooms and estate-workers took up position to the right. The reason was not hard to discern, for there it was that the reformatory girls sat in their neat rows, under the eagle eyes of their wardresses.
The tradespeople of the district brought their own blankets and spread them out on the grassy sun-bathed slopes. To Amelia’s horror the little barber, Mr Catchpole, sat just below her with his wife. Worse, he turned and said something to the little woman, who looked at Amelia and giggled. Amelia cursed the tightness and semi-transparency of the rubber knickers, and wished most fervently that she was allowed to close her legs.
As more and more people arrived, it seemed as if Lady Alicia was the calm centre of a small cyclone of convivial sociability. Her friends grouped around her, more distant acquaintances pitching their blankets further from the elegant epicentre of the hubbub. This only heightened Amelia’s ordeal. Kneeling at her aunt’s feet, Amelia felt dozens of amused eyes on her, the sheer shame worse than the constriction of rubber or discomfort of the back-board. Her words to Clara that first day came back to her, bitter and unbidden. ‘Yes,’ she had said, innocent and unknowing, ‘I expect that there will be lots of fetes.’
Blossom broke into a gentle trot as the gentle incline down to the lake made the sulky and Lord Alex seem the lightest of loads. He did not pull her up, seeming to sense that she was not tiring herself but just warming up her long legs as she loped down the drive. The slope steepened and the path dog-legged several times as it ran down to the lakeside. There were several other carts on the lawn below the house. Several naked pony-girls stood sweating between the shafts. The sight of them came as something as a shock to Blossom. It was not that she had thought of herself as a real pony, exactly, but she had almost forgotten that she must look like a nearly-naked girl. The sight of the others brought this fact home to her with a real jolt.
‘Ready to be beaten again, Justice?’ Lord Alex called out.
A corpulent and florid-faced fellow waved dismissively. His pony was a big buxom girl with fine blonde hair. Blossom glanced down at her legs, which looked powerful, though neither so long nor so sleekly exercised as her own. Her pale face was a little red already, and pale blue eyes blinked, seemingly anxious, although the bit between the girl’s teeth made her expression hard to read.
‘We will give you a run, this year,’ Justice Ormorund said jovially. ‘Won’t we, Belinda, girl?’ He gave the girl a crack across the tops of her big thighs with the whip he held in his right hand. Pain furrowed the girl’s pale brow, and she might have started forward but for the fact that he held her reins tight. Blossom watched Belinda’s breasts wobble as the girl jiggled around in a dance of pain, constrained by her jingling harness. Then she felt herself urged on.
‘Women in the Silver Cup. Damned impertinence, to say nothing of the matter of weight,’ Lord Alex boomed.
A small, at
tractive woman in her early forties grinned back unabashed. ‘Don’t be a poor sport, Alex. You men are just afraid that I will beat you.’
‘Oh, you may beat me, Fanny,’ the Marquis said jovially, ‘but I am damned if I will let you win the cup.’
The woman’s mount, a sturdy-looking girl with brown hair in a ponytail, suddenly stepped forward and the little woman gave a slightly startled grunt. She hauled back on the reins and somehow got the girl to stop.
‘You stupid mare, Connie!’
Blossom’s stomach tensed in sympathy at the unmistakable hiss of riding-whip cutting through the air. Mrs Treadwell gave her pony three sharp cuts, struggling to hold the girl back with the reins. Blossom looked on, astonished. Pony and rider were no better attuned than she had been with Lord Alex in her first few days. She knew she had nothing to fear from that quarter. Which was just as well.
Lord Alex guided her across the sward towards the watching crowd. Just before the slope began to climb in earnest towards the hall, some carpenters were finishing an odd structure. It was something like a football goal, with two uprights and a crossbar. Into this had been fixed a series of eyebolts. The workers were threading chains through these.
‘This is the whipping-frame, girl.’ Lord Alex’s voice was in her ear and the workers paused, distracted. Blossom felt the men’s eyes on her all but naked body. ‘This is where the losers are brought to be flogged after the race. Not that you need worry, if you do what you are capable of.’
‘I would not count any chickens yet, Alex, nor polish any silverware.’
Blossom glanced sideways, grateful that Lord Alex no longer ran her with blinkers. The red-haired girl next to her was doing the same, giving her a cool appraising sideways stare. She was not as tall as Blossom, and her legs were not so long nor so well muscled, but she looked strong and fit. More than that, something determined in her eye made Blossom feel that this was her real rival.
‘Ha, you have had it too long, Richard!’ Lord Alex snorted. ‘Your girl is good, but she does not have my Blossom’s legs.’
As the other girl looked at her legs, Blossom was gratified to see something that looked very much like fear enter her eyes.
‘Look at the whipping-frame, Rose. Remember girl, I shall thrash you without mercy if you fail me,’ the Reverend said quietly to his mount.
The girl looked away from Blossom at last, and up at the frame. Blossom saw her close her eyes, just for a second. Then the Reverend Dawes pulled his pony away. Lord Alex flicked the reins and Blossom moved off.
‘Almost ready to start, your Lordship.’ A tall thin man in a stationmaster’s uniform looked at his fob watch.
‘Very good, Mr Hollis.’
Lord Alex guided her towards the other carts, which were gathering before a rope which was strung out across the path. Blossom trotted across to the far right of the field. The first corner of the course turned to the left, and so this was not the most favoured starting position. However, Blossom knew that Lord Alex was more worried about fouling wheels with less skilled riders, than being ahead for the first bend in a long and arduous course.
Everything was going splendidly. No one disputed their safe position on the right. The sun was shining, she could hear the hubbub of the watching crowd above them on the lawns. Best of all she knew, in her heart, that she could beat the rest of the field.
‘What is the hold up, Mr Hollis?’ Lord Alex bellowed, so loudly that Blossom saw Connie, to her immediate left, flinch, and heard her mistress curse as she struggled to hold the skittish girl in place.
‘Just one rider to come, your Lordship.’
‘What? Who? Who the devil else is taking part?’
‘Ah, here he comes, your Lordship! Now we can get off.’
Blossom sensed as much as heard the stir around her, as riders and mounts craned to see the newcomer. To curses from Lord Alex, the newcomers eased into position on her right. Blossom stared, astonished. Level with her was a woman like no other she had ever seen. The girl was black, with sleek ebony skin, and elaborately braided hair. Her breasts were big, and jutted forward with an almost pneumatic vigour, counterbalanced by an extraordinarily well-developed bottom. It was not these endowments that compelled Blossom’s attention, however, but her thighs. The girl was not so tall as Blossom, nor her legs so long, but her thighs were splendidly muscled and looked ominously fit.
‘I do hope you were not going to start without me,’ an amused male voice drawled.
There was a rueful chuckle from behind her. ‘I might have known that you had something up your sleeve when you bet so much against me. Well, I’ll be damned if I let you win today. Prepare to say goodbye to a hundred guineas, Jack!’
The stir produced at the starting line by the new arrivals was mirrored amongst the audience of picnickers on the slopes above.
‘I say, is that Jack Campion?’ Lady Alicia said. ‘You know, I do believe it is. But who is that magnificent girl between his shafts? I swear those titties jut out further than our Betsy’s do.’
Lady Alicia put her field-glasses to her eyes, but the scene below was near enough that the amazing figure of Jack’s pony-girl was evident to the naked eye. Jack Campion raised his Panama in the direction of Lady Alicia, who burst into a peal of delighted laughter.
‘Oh my, that man is such a devil. If he wins with that exotic creature, Alex will not be fit to speak to for a week. He has bet Blossom against a hundred of Jack’s guineas, you know. That husband of mine never seems to learn that it does not pay to gamble with our Jack!’
‘But he has not lost yet, cherie,’ Mademoiselle Isobel put in, ‘and everyone says that Blossom is the fastest filly that was ever entered for the cup.’
‘Hm,’ Lady Alicia said, passing the glasses to her friend. ‘I suspect that “everyone” has not seen Jack’s girl run. He must have been keeping her hidden in the lodge, and exercising her in secret. Now why, do you suppose, would the sly old dog do that?’
The back-board, and her wrenched-back arms, were causing Amelia serious discomfort now. She shifted surreptitiously to try to ease the strain. Unfortunately, she moved her legs an iota too much in the process, and the action produced a moist and rubbery squeak.
‘Amelia, do stop fidgeting, or I shall ask Lady Alicia to spank you,’ Jamie said sharply.
Amelia felt her aunt, who must have leant forward, take a handful of her hair and wrench her head back until she could see Lady Alicia, upside down, smiling wickedly at her.
‘I think I shall have to thrash you later, anyway, Amelia.’ She produced the little paddle with the holes which she had used on Clara to such evident effect. Maintaining her grip, she patted the whimpering girl’s cheek with the paddle. It felt hard and cold and unspeakably mean.
‘Cherie, they are taking positions.’ Isobel’s voice brought merciful relief, as Lady Alicia released her hold and Amelia resumed her position, blinking back a tear.
‘The course is clearly marked. Up Holly Hill, through the rhododendrons, around the back of the stable-block—’
Blossom shook her head impatiently. She had run the course scores of times and needed no reminders. Glancing sideways, she met the gaze of the black girl to her right. It was hard to tell, with the bit and bridle harness, but she thought that the young woman smiled.
Mr Hollis, the stationmaster, was clearly relishing his chance for importance, and he took his time in detailing the course.
‘The course goes around the walled garden, and down the slope in front of the house, back to here. Two full circuits complete the race.’ He had been addressing the riders up to this point, but now he put his hands in his waistcoat pockets and assumed a satisfied smirk. ‘You should all know by now that all losing ponies will receive a thorough flogging,’ he inclined his head towards the frame that had been set up, ‘in the traditional way.’
To her left, Connie whimpered. B
lossom took a deep breath and put her head down ready. Mr Hollis gave the signal and a rope was raised across the course. Moving forward until her breasts brushed against it, Blossom willed the signal to be given, and the race to begin.
The stationmaster gave a sharp blast of his whistle. The rope was raised high to a roar from the crowd. Blossom powered forward, a tugging of her bridle forcing her to incline to the right. She wanted to run. She wanted to stretch her long, perfectly trained legs and leave the field behind, but Lord Alex kept her reins tight and held her back.
She followed Mrs Treadwell’s trim back as Jack’s black girl kept pace to her right. They made their way along the shore of the ornamental lake, a short but easy first stage that was nearly level. For all her eagerness to gallop, Blossom understood why she was being held back. Holly Hill loomed in front of them and, as the human ponies reached its sharp incline, the pace slowed dramatically.
The Reverend Dawes had taken the lead and the sound of leather on flesh, up ahead, demonstrated his determination to maintain a cracking pace. It was the next sulky that almost caused disaster. In front of them, Connie swerved violently, almost tipping Mrs Treadwell from her cart. The reason was immediately plain to see. Belinda had hauled Justice Ormorund’s great bulk at a canter along the lakeside, but as soon as she had hit the steep slope their progress had slowed, almost to a walk.
Blossom felt her bit pulled to the left and she turned quickly, overtaking the semi-stranded sulky with consummate ease. Jack and his pony-girl had done the same, but to the right. Mrs Treadwell was trying to control Connie, who had bolted right off the path and onto the grass slopes.
Soon she was shoulder to shoulder with the black girl once again, the two of them slowly gaining on the Reverend and his mount.
‘Giddup!’ There was a crack as the Reverend Dawes belaboured his pony’s bare bottom with his thin black crop. ‘Go on, girl, you can do it. Giddup! Giddup! Giddup!’
The flogging produced a spurt of speed and the sulky in front began to pull away. Blossom wanted to increase her speed but the tight rein held her back.
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