The Rake

by Aishling Morgan

  His mount was a grey gelding of moderate stature, while Gurney and Natalie rode a great dun carthorse with white on its forehead and legs. The third horse was little more than a pony. Eloise had speculated that it was the personal mount of the prioress, yet that had not prevented her from commandeering the animal. She now rode it like a man, with her gown of bright vermilion velvet spread across its back and, Henry conjectured, her cunny pressed to its spine with no more than a layer of folded petticoat between, if that.

  Shortly before noon, the woods and hills gave way to a valley, across which further hills could be seen. Eloise declared this to be the head of the Yonne river and suggested that it might be followed to the north and west to save time. Henry agreed, and soon found his spirits rising yet further as they moved out on to flatter land and broke first into a trot and then a canter. Peggy shrieked at the increased pace, laughing yet clearly nervous, and her bottom began to bump firmly against Henry’s front. Suddenly, the temptation to indulge himself between her ripe cheeks became overwhelming, along with a joyous delight in the possibilities offered by being on horseback.

  ‘Ho, Todd Gurney!’ he called. ‘Have you ever taken the double ride?’

  ‘Betimes,’ his companion called back.

  ‘Then a quid says I’ll finish in mine before you!’ Henry yelled.

  ‘Taken!’ Gurney shouted, his call immediately followed by a squeal from Natalie as he began to pull at her skirts.

  ‘What? Henry!’ Peggy squealed as her skirts were tugged sharply out from under her thighs.

  ‘Lift up!’ Henry responded.

  ‘What! You’re not . . .’ she answered. ‘Henry! We’ll take a fall!’

  ‘Damned if we will!’ he answered. ‘Hold hard to the beast’s neck. It’ll be done in a trice.’

  She bent forward, obeying more from terror than her desire. The rubbing of Henry’s cock between her bottom cheeks had been exciting her, yet she had expected him either to slake his lust with Eloise – or, more hopefully, to pause by some dense copse and tumble her quickly down among the leaves. Instead it was to be both dangerous and distinctly public, as more than one cottage looked down on the long, flat water-meadow along which they were travelling.

  ‘Henry!’ She tried a last, feeble protest against the inevitable as her skirts were tugged out from beneath her and her bottom exposed to the air.

  Sure that a dozen French peasants would be watching her intercourse, she buried her face in the horse’s mane, her cheeks hot with shame, fright and not a little lust. Gripping the mane beneath her chest, Henry was trying to mount her, whooping and calling out to Gurney as he struggled with his breeches.

  ‘Got him!’ she heard him call and the next instant something turgid prodded at her vulva.

  It missed, rubbing against her clitoris to send a series of pangs of exquisite pleasure through her. Henry cursed, his knuckles brushing the soft underside of her bottom as he tried to reposition himself. His cock prodded at her bottom-hole and she responded with a frantic wriggle, determined that if she were to be treated so rudely she would at least avoid the pain and indignity of buggery. A cry of feminine surprise and delight indicated that Natalie had been entered and then, suddenly, Henry’s cock found its target.

  Peggy gasped as her vagina filled with penis, a movement of the horse ramming it home with unexpected force. A similar sound from Henry showed that the sudden penetration had not been quite what he intended, and then he had began to hump her, bouncing against her bottom with the animal’s motion as she clung desperately to its mane.

  Maddened by the unaccustomed goings-on, the horse increased its speed, changing gait to a full gallop that had Henry whooping with joy. Peggy shut her eyes, concentrating on the frantic and delicious bobbing of the cock inside her and trying not to think about the ground rushing by below. Henry’s position changed, half his length slipping from her vagina so that the swell of his knob was rubbing in the sensitive entrance while his body weight came down on top of hers. A hand groped under her chest. Her neckerchief was pulled loose, then her breasts popped from her bodice. Henry laughed as he took a full globe in his free hand, kneading it, pinching the nipple to quick erection and then settling down to concentrate on fucking her.

  Peggy groaned deeply as her naked breasts began to slap on either side of the horses neck. She was pushed well down, her vulva rubbing on the beast’s spine, the rough hair of its back directly on her clitoris. Henry’s cock was pumping inside her, adding to her ecstasy. Her initial shame at being exposed and ridden in public gave way to pure, helpless ecstasy as she started to come and then she was screaming out her lust into the coarse hair of the horse’s mane. At the very peak of her orgasm she opened her eyes, to find herself looking directly into the astonished face of a squat man who stood among a group of pigs.

  Then the vision was past and her orgasm was dying, only to rise again at the erotic shame of having been seen in so rude a position. Even as she cried out once more Henry started to come, his cock pushing hard into her and then jerking as he gave a grunt of pleasure. She felt the wet of his come at the mouth of her vagina, then slick and slippery between her vulva and the horse’s back, giving a final, lesser peak to her orgasm.

  ‘Mine, by God!’ she heard Henry call, only then realising that her grip had started to loosen in the aftermath of her ecstasy.

  Scrabbling desperately for a hold, she heard Henry’s yell of triumph turn to alarm and then the whole world turned upside down. The sky spun by over her head. For an instant her foot was silhouetted against blue and then her bottom struck something, knocking the breath from her body.

  The next thing she was conscious of was Henry’s laughter. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she found that she was on a bank, the soft earth of which had cushioned her fall. Henry lay nearby, on his back in the grass, laughing incontinently with his erection sticking up into the air like a flagpole. Of Gurney and Natalie there was no sign, but Eloise was approaching, her face set in an expression that conveyed more amusement than concern, but which also showed more than a hint of jealousy.

  Some way down the track, Todd Gurney had managed to rein his horse in. He was still inside Natalie, her trim, pale-brown bottom spread in front of him with his penis disappearing into her gaping cunny. She had responded to the sudden stripping of her bottom and to entry with enthusiasm, clinging to the horse’s neck and squealing with fright and pleasure as he had fucked her. Unfortunately he had found himself unable to get the rhythm needed for orgasm and so had lost the bet.

  Now, however, was different. Spreading Natalie’s pert cheeks fully apart with his hands, he began to move into her with short, hard pushes, all the while admiring the spread of her bottom, the tight dimple of her anus and the junction between her well-furred cunny and his cock. It was not just a beautiful sight to him, but exotic, Natalie’s pale-brown skin providing a striking contrast to the creamy-white bottoms of the Devon girls he was used to. He came with a grunt, keeping himself well in her until he was fully drained. She was moaning softly and making little rubbing motions with her bottom to show her own need. Keen to oblige, he withdrew his cock, took her slender thighs in his hands and began to rub her naked cunny against the horse’s back. She came in moments, squealing out her pleasure and thrusting her bottom up and down in a display of abandoned lust that left a deep impression on him.

  Jean Faugres reined his horse in beside that of Emile Boillot on the slope overlooking the Priory of St Peter. His humour was less than good as, for the entire morning, Boillot had either been pontificating on the rights of man or explaining his reasoning for searching in the direction they had taken. Magnien and Brochon, impressed by the young man’s fire and certainty, had hung on to his words and so Jean’s suggestion that the fugitives were more likely to have headed north for Dijon and the main road to Pari had been put down.

  Eloise, he was sure – along with the bastard who had struck him down with some metal object – would now be well to the north. The dem
oiselle, he knew, set a high value on her comfort, and would never stoop to travelling on foot, let alone trudge through the damp autumnal woods of the Morvan. Indeed, had it not been for the one thing, he would have abandoned the chase altogether. That one thing was the man who had attacked him near the Château de St Romain. His forehead now carried a dark, longitudinal bruise, and if there was one thing he wanted more than to bring Eloise de la Tour-Romain to broke, it was revenge on that man.

  Riders sent to Orches and Auxey had reported no sightings of Eloise and so he had been forced to accept Boillot’s theory and tag along, moving ever higher into the Morvan.

  ‘Here is the place that logic dictates she took sanctuary for the night,’ Boillot was saying. ‘We shall . . .’

  ‘Or any other nest of blackfly for miles!’ Faugres retorted.

  ‘Not so, Citizen Faugres,’ Boillot replied, ‘for here alone comes within the radius possible to them after a day’s travel on foot. No, rest assured that Eloise Delatour came here, and with luck is still in residence.’

  Faugres answered with a snort of contempt, but the others were already edging their beasts down the track. He followed, half hoping that Boillot would be proved wrong and half hoping the opposite.

  At the priory gates Boillot demanded an audience with the prioress, using an arrogance that impressed even Faugres. Rather than respond with a curt refusal, as Faugres had been expecting, the elderly nun at the lodge quickly arranged a meeting with the prioress. This proved to be a tall, stern-faced woman who Faugres frankly expected to deny Boillot’s demands for information and attempt to send them back to the road empty-handed. Anticipating the prospect of searching the nunnery by force with considerable relish, his temper began to improve, only for the prioress to respond to Boillot not with antagonism but with something close to friendliness.

  He watched in mounting irritation as the two of them spoke. Despite their differences of background, Boillot and the Reverend Mother Anna Danne proved to share a high moral tone and a conviction that Eloise de la Tour-Romain represented a nadir of virtue transcended only by her companions. Faugres, who considered Boillot a prig and a bore, for all their shared political convictions, took a different view, finding the prioress’s outrage the sole ameliorating factor to his chagrin.

  They left the Priory with all the information the Reverend Mother had been able to supply, including descriptions of the fugitives’ clothing and of the three stolen horses. In return, Boillot had promised to return the horses and add their theft to the long list of enormities he considered Eloise to have committed. Faugres remained silent as they rode away, unable to concede that Boillot had been right all along.

  Henry smiled happily to himself as they walked the horses up the steep incline that led out of the Yonne valley. They had been riding for some hours by the river, directed by Eloise in the direction of a Château at which she hoped to gain aid. Henry was sceptical of this but, as the route lay in a generally westerly direction, he had made no complaint. Despite a few bruises, he was also pleased with himself for what he considered a particularly fine feat of erotic equestrianism. Not only had he managed to come before he fell off and win his guinea from Gurney, but both Eloise and Peggy had become notably more attentive since the event. This was entirely contrary to his expectations and reinforced his long-held belief that women were, at heart, incomprehensible. He had expected a fit of jealous sulking from Eloise, but instead she had become flirtatious, even possessive. Peggy, who he had expected to be furious, had been in a remarkably gay mood ever since and had even dared to flirt a little, in spite of the presence of Eloise.

  They breasted the rise, finding themselves looking down into a valley smaller than that of the Yonne. At the base, among woods but surrounded by a large and formal garden, stood a Château of four towers, each topped with the conical roof and patterned tiles that he had come to recognise as typical of the region.

  ‘Château de la Roche Luzieres,’ Eloise declared. ‘Seat of the family of that name and old friends of my own family. Here we may be assured of shelter.’

  ‘If there’s anyone there,’ Henry replied sceptically.

  ‘They will be there,’ Eloise replied confidently. ‘Unlike my father, the Seigneur de Luzieres is no coward.’

  Henry gave a doubtful snort and angled his horse down the track that appeared to lead in the direction of the Château. As they approached, it quickly became clear that Eloise’s optimism was unfounded. The Château showed no signs of life whatever, and as they rode through the wide open gates even she had to admit that the Luzieres had fled.

  ‘Try the stables, Gurney,’ Henry ordered, ‘and you girls, see if you can’t get some food.’

  Gurney and the two maids did as they were told, Eloise alone ignoring his order and trotting her horse forward towards the main door of the Château. With a resigned shrug, Henry followed her, tethering his horse to the balustrade.

  The inside of the Château was quiet, a place of awesome solitude, the magnificent hall as bereft of cheer as some vast sepulchre. Standing in the doorway, Henry felt suddenly cold, as if the ghosts of generations of Luzieres were demanding his right to step within. As Gurney came up behind him, the big man’s footsteps echoed loud in the empty hall, a noise that seemed as inappropriate as laughter in a cathedral.

  ‘There’s a landau in the stable yard, sir,’ Gurney announced cheerfully, instantly shattering the eerie atmosphere.

  ‘Eh?’ Henry queried. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘She’s old but looks sound,’ Gurney continued.

  ‘Any tack?’ Henry enquired, turning once more to the welcome light of the courtyard.

  ‘Plenty, sir,’ Gurney answered.

  ‘Well, rig her up, then, and we’ll travel in style,’ Henry responded. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘Round in the kitchen gardens, gathering apples,’ he answered.

  ‘At least they’ve got some sense,’ Henry responded. ‘Eloise is away upstairs, after ribands and a new gown, no doubt. Do you think I should spank her again tonight? She could still do with some starch taking out of her.’

  ‘Might do her some good,’ Gurney agreed. ‘Then again, there’s a lot of starch in that one to take out.’

  ‘Very true,’ he agreed. ‘She’s been better today, but I might do it anyway, just for the hell of it. Besides, she does react so well.’

  Gurney responded with a curt laugh and walked off in the direction of the stables.

  With the landau rigged to an improvised three in hand and Gurney riding postillion on the massive cart-horse, they struck out due west, along a track notably better than those in the high Morvan. Eloise found herself more relaxed than she had been since leaving St Romain. Not only were they travelling in reasonable comfort, but the bulk of the wealth they had salvaged from the Château de St Romain was artfully concealed beneath the seats of the landau. Also, they had apples and wine to supplement the hard cheese and spiced sausage they had brought away for provisions.

  Slowly, the countryside around them became less harsh, the high, wooded hills giving way to gentler more open land and small villages and peasant farmsteads becoming frequent once more. They stopped at one of these towards noon, purchasing bread, cheese and cured ham. Despite their caution in sending the harmless and definitely unaristocratic Natalie to fetch these provisions, they drew curious stares from the squat, rude-looking locals. Eloise looked disdainfully away, yet not without a prickle of fear very different from her normal reaction to peasants.

  They moved on, eating as they went and washing the food down with bottles of a rich white Méursault that Henry had unearthed in the cellar at Château de la Roche Luzieres. This cheered her further, even reviving a measure of mischief in her character. Opposite her, Henry was draining the last few inches of the third bottle. His legs were well apart, providing her with a fine view of the not unimpressive bulge in his breeches. Thinking of the thick, eager cock the leather concealed, she began to wonder if he might not once more be goaded i
nto taking her with the rough forcefulness she so enjoyed. She was also beginning to feel the need to pee, and wondered if she should not use the fact as an excuse to stop.

  They had reached a place were the fields and cottages of peasant land abruptly gave way to solid forest. Passing by an untenanted lodge, they came into this. Before them, the long ride of the Forest of Premery opened up, a fiat, straight cut between stands of oak and chestnut that vanished over a low brim at the limit of vision. Gurney increased the speed of the landau as Eloise considered how well suited the thick woods would be to her being laid naked on the ground and mounted. Again she glanced at Henry’s crotch, imagining how his cock had felt in her mouth after her impromptu spanking of the previous day. The thought of her undignified exposure, the pain of the spanking and how he’d then made her suck him increased her lust. As he turned towards her, she favoured him with a flirtatious glance and moved the hem of her gown to display an ankle. He returned a lustful grin, only for his expression to alter abruptly to one of concern.

  Eloise turned, her dirty thoughts dying on the instant as she saw what had alarmed him. Pushing between the high limestone pillars that marked the start of the estate, now some quarter mile to the rear, came four horsemen. They were moving at a canter but, as she watched, they urged their horses into a full gallop and the leader among them looked up, revealing the dark, bearded countenance of Jean Faugres.

  ‘Faugres!’ she exclaimed. ‘How?’

  ‘By asking after a chit with red-gold hair and a vermilion velvet gown,’ Henry answered sternly. ‘They’ll be tired though, I’ll warrant. Ride hard, Gurney!’

  The landau surged forward, with panic and fear welling up in Eloise’s breast as Faugres yelled out at them.

  ‘It’s Emile Boillot, Michel Brochon and Hubert Magnien with him,’ Natalie declared, peering over the rear of the landau from beside Eloise. ‘They’ll kill you, and rape us for sure!’

  ‘Damned if they will!’ Henry cursed, fumbling shot from his pouch. ‘Gurney, drive like Jehu!’