Eliza's Awakening

by Zaide Bishop

  The lords were mostly rich and stout, and their ladies were elegant and young. Here and there someone broke the mould. The Lady Elsalane was grey-haired and thin-lipped, but still as graceful as a panther. Her sleek dress with its white fur trim was just as elegant as the outfits on the younger women and many would argue that she wore the style better. Her lord was a young, well-built man at least twenty years her junior. His trousers were very tight. They passed out of sight, arm in arm, vanishing into the keep.

  “Is that Lord Rakin?” Ylinda pointed to a carriage of deep mahogany and brass as the horses trotted up the drive. They were fiery chestnuts—the same colour as their master’s hair. While their manes were cropped and their tails docked, his hair was long and sleek, falling around his shoulders and pooling on the seat and his lap.

  “It must be…” Eliza agreed. Lord Rakin was heir to the Justfield estate and would be coming into an unrivalled fortune when his sickly grandfather passed away. He was unmarried, though as rumour had it, not for lack of good offers. Young ladies were falling at his feet for the chance to be his bride.

  “He’s so handsome,” Ylinda said.

  She nodded in agreement as the young lord stepped from his carriage. Rakin had high cheekbones and eyes so green she could make them out from the balcony, but his angular features made him look cruel and his stance was too stiff and overconfident for her liking. She would rather wed Kell than the heir of Justfield.

  “He’s hardly got a costume at all, though,” Eliza said, frowning.

  “He’s carrying a mask. I saw it.”

  She sniffed, unimpressed. “I wanted to see bear claws made of steel, fitted to hairy gloves. And big headdresses made of antlers and bones.”

  “Me too, but they couldn’t very well ride up in them. Perhaps they’ll put such adornments on inside.”

  “Not much of a masquerade then, is it?” Eliza chuckled. “Come on, let’s fetch the wine.”

  They scurried back the way they had come and down the wide, cold corridors to the cellar door. The steps were steep and carved from stone, leading down into a confusing maze of archways, shelves and little rooms that could be a nightmare to hunt through if you did not know them well. Some of the girls were scared of the cellar and claimed it was the haunt of ghosts and escaped murderers—but those were the girls who’d come from villages a few towns over. Eliza had spent too much of her childhood playing in the keep while her mother worked to be afraid of the cellar. When she was a girl, she had made fortresses down here with old sheets, playing at knights, dragons and princesses. The closest things to ghosts in the cellar were the numerous queen cats that came down here to give birth and, honestly, who could be afraid of newborn kittens?

  As the girls started down the steps—treading carefully and walking almost sideways to avoid a tumble—Eliza heard a mewling noise. Perhaps it was one of the cats—though none were due to birth now; kittens were for summer.

  However, when the noise came again, both girls froze without a word. This time the breathy whimper was undoubtedly human.

  They exchanged silent glances and Ylinda put down the lantern on the step soundlessly. The brightness would see them to the bottom of the stair without betraying their presence.

  Eliza took a step forward as quietly as she could, but Ylinda hesitated, shaking her head, her waves of dark hair falling forward to frame her big frightened eyes. Eliza grinned and took her hand, coaxing her down, one step at a time, until they stood on the basement floor.

  The sounds were coming from one of the small chambers off to their left—urgent and breathless. The cellar was dark as pitch, but for the orange lantern light spilling from the archway. She felt her way slowly across the floor with the toe of her shoe, not wanting to fall over something unseen in her path. From the far side of the arch, no one would be able to see them in the darkness. They could see, without being seen.

  The sight that greeted them froze them in place.

  Lord Kempsly and Lady Kempsly were there together. Lady Kempsly, with her thick chocolate curls and regal bearing, was bent awkwardly over a huge, old clothing chest with a curved lid—her backside thrust up toward the ceiling, skirts hiked up over her back. Her breasts, full and heavy, were hanging loose from her corset. The collar of her fine velvet gown—the one in deep russet and gold—was unbuttoned and yanked down, baring her pale flesh to the chill air.

  Lord Kempsly stood close behind her, one hand on her back, pinioning her as he stroked his hand across the blue satin of her drawers. He was in his grey tailcoat, dressed as if he were about to greet his guests. Which is exactly what he should have been doing. What they both should have been doing. He wore a jewelled and feathered mask—grey and white, moonstone and smoky quartz, made to look like a storm owl. Eliza couldn’t see his expression, but she could see the urgent bulge in the front of his trousers and the languid way his fingertips walked across his wife’s expensive underclothes.

  As the lord pressed his fingers against the azure material, it started to darken with moisture and Lady Kempsly squirmed and whimpered again. She tried to rise; bracing her hands against the chest below her, but Lord Kempsly pressed between her shoulders more firmly and slapped his hand across her buttock with a stinging snap.

  “Stay.”

  She flinched and whined, and he began to stroke the damp patch again, spreading it wider and wider on the fine fabric. Lady Kempsly’s eyes were squeezed closed, her mouth open with despair. Her chest heaved with each shuddering breath and her wide, dark nipples were hardened to stiff pebbles, trembling with each touch of the lord’s hand on her behind.

  “Please.” Her voice was just a whisper. “Oh Gods, please…”

  Eliza’s heart was beating very hard and her stomach was in knots. She wanted to look away, but her eyes kept being drawn back to the scene before her. Lady Kempsly had always been so self-assured and confident. She was never cruel, but no servant in the keep was foolish enough to get onto her bad side. Eliza had always thought she controlled her husband too, the way she handled the accounts and correspondence without ever deferring to him or seeking his counsel. When she demanded things he always nodded quietly and said ‘Yes, dear,’ with a tone that was part affection, part exasperation.

  Eliza had never imagined the lord would drag Lady Kempsly to the basement and assault her—it was as if he had become some sort of madman. She wondered if they should run for help, but she was rooted in place—breath shallow, a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if something warm and slippery was making its way down through her belly and out between her thighs.

  “That’s it,” Lord Kempsly commanded, his voice little more than a purr. “Beg. Plead with me. No one can hear you down here.”

  “We should be upstairs,” Lady Kempsly whimpered. “The guests are arriving, we—” She gasped as the lord pressed his hips against her, reaching around her body to grasp at her breasts, rolling both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers—his still-clothed form mounting her from behind like a dog on a bitch.

  Her gasp became a deep moan, almost a cry of pain, as he tugged on those stiff gems of flesh.

  “Gods, Jayden. You are driving me to madness. Please,” she begged. “Please, no more.”

  Ylinda’s fingers touched Eliza’s elbow and trailed down to her wrist. A static shock raced through her skin and her breath caught in her throat. Her own nipples were hard against the material of her clothes and as she jerked in surprise, their sensitive flesh caught on the fabric, sending needles of pleasure into her core. Her quim felt swollen and shame radiated through her, hot as a red coal.

  Here was her mistress, bent over and helpless, being assaulted by the man who married her and swore to protect her, and she was wet and burning from watching. She was practically a criminal, betrayed and made guilty by her own body.

  “Please, is it?” Lord Kempsly mocked. He let go
of her breasts and righted himself, pinning her with one hand again and grasping the top of her fine underclothes in the other. In one swift motion, he yanked them down around her knees—baring her from hip to ankle. Her sex was pink, swollen and wet—framed all around with tight dark curls. Above it, the generous domes of her buttocks were spread and jiggling, doing nothing to hide the amber star of her arsehole. Eliza could see it all, every shivering inch.

  Lord Kempsly placed his hand over his wife’s lower lips, his middle finger resting against her secret nub—the turgid button of her pearl that Eliza could see peering through the folds.

  He pushed and Lady Kempsly gave a hoarse cry that was almost a sob, her hips pressed back hard against his hand.

  “Patience.” He folded one long index finger back and thrust it between her pink folds, questing for that secret entrance.

  She groaned, deep and loud.

  “Yes… Like that,” he said, his index finger moving in and out, his middle finger beating a light rhythm against her nub.

  “Don’t make me wait,” Lady Kempsly groaned, her words punctuated with jerks and gasps. “Everyone will be wondering where we are.”

  “Must you rush everything, woman?” He thrust another finger into her, twisting side to side. His wife pushed back, burying his digits deeper and deeper.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Jayden.”

  The lord grunted with frustration, withdrawing his fingers from inside her and slicking the juice onto his trousers. Suddenly in a rush, he fumbled with his trousers, almost popping the buttons off in his urgency to open his fly.

  His cock bounced into the light. A swollen sword—veined and weeping. Lady Kempsly tried to push herself up again, to turn and look, but he forced her down with a firm hand. With his other, he grasped his member and guided it to her slit. Vigorously, he rubbed the head up and down the length of her folds, slathering himself with her juices and making her squeal and gasp and struggle.

  “Now, Gods, now! Jayden, I need you…!” Her head was tossing to and fro as she tried to wriggle out from under him and take control. However, compared to her lord husband she was delicate and willowy—she lacked the strength to escape his grasp and he continued his ministrations with only a grunt of annoyance.

  Then, without any warning at all, he speared into her—burying his cock to the hilt in her quim. She cried out, sobbing with need and clutched her own breasts, squeezing the pale flesh until it bulged between her fingers.

  “Lady,” Lord Kempsly breathed. He pulled back, only to thrust back into her—harder than before. His trousers sunk lower and Eliza could see his puckered balls and dark hairy thighs as he pounded against Lady Kempsly.

  Lady Kempsly cried out as if in pain, her body shuddering over and over with violent contractions, her head thrown back, legs splayed in hopeless abandon.

  Her lord bared his teeth, thrusting hard, as unthinking as any animal. His hands gripped her arse, squeezing the tender flesh so hard it must bruise. His wife’s cries gave him no pause as he pumped her, harder and faster. Then he cried out, his head thrown back, buried as deep as he could go in his lady wife. For one long moment, he froze—then he sank down, still inside her, wrapping his arms around her to hold her as they lay over the chest. The tenderness confused Eliza as much as all that had come before. “I love you,” Lady Kempsly breathed. Lord Kempsly found his feet and tugged her upright so they were both standing. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her, smearing semen and her own juices onto her dress as it fell into place around her.

  “My sun,” he sighed. “My stars. My whole world.”

  Eliza was frightened, of their intimacy, of the way they looked at one another. To her the coupling had seemed brutal, violent even. Now they were acting as if this was love.

  Suddenly Ylinda was squeezing her hand so hard she almost cried out. She looked to her friend and saw Ylinda’s wide, panicked eyes. Ylinda pointed to the stairs with urgent jabs of her finger.

  Quickly, she mouthed. They’ll see us.

  Eliza stood a moment, mute, then she nodded and hand in hand they scrambled across the stone floor, racing quietly to the door. But not quietly enough.

  “Who’s there?” Lord Kempsly demanded and she could hear his shoes on the flagstones. She and Ylinda were already at the bottom of the stairs though and they gave up their attempts at silence, pounding up the steps as fast as their feet would carry them.

  She slowed for the lantern on the stair, but Ylinda kept dragging her before she could grab it and they fled up the last few stairs, stumbling over steps. As they burst into the corridor, Eliza heard Lord Kempsly begin to mount the stairs, then a pause, and Lady Kempsly’s giggle. Neither Eliza nor Ylinda slowed, galloping down the corridors, taking heedless twists and turns until they were deep in the west wing of the house, surrounded by empty and silent guest rooms.

  Ylinda had been ahead of her most of the way, pulling her along. The bones of her finger felt crushed.

  They caught their breath in the near darkness as she flexed her fingers and tried to calm the frantic beating of her heart.

  “That was awful.”

  “Awful?” Ylinda studied Eliza with her big dark eyes.

  “The way he held her down. She was begging him and he didn’t stop.”

  Ylinda snorted. “I don’t think ‘stopping’ is what she was begging him for, Eliza.”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded.

  Ylinda gave her an exasperated look. “Don’t be naïve, Eliza. Damn, we don’t have the wine.”

  “They’ll go upstairs soon, won’t they?” Eliza chewed her lip. “They can’t stay down there all night.”

  “And we can’t hide all night either.”

  “If we go back like we’re just coming that way for the first time, they’ll think it was someone else who caught them,” Eliza suggested.

  “Let’s just wait a bit. We don’t even have a candle—they’ll know it was us if we go down there without any light.”

  They huddled a while in the corridor. Eliza pondered what they had seen. Ylinda had called her naïve and it galled her. She was nineteen, twenty in the spring. She was still a maiden, and it was expected that she should be until her wedding night. But that didn’t make her naïve, did it? She knew what cocks were and where men stuck them. But surely wedded couples made love in bed, face to face, not bent over clothing chests in the cellar.

  The farrier’s son and one of the kitchen girls had been caught in the barn the season past. They were engaged now—though they might not have been if they hadn’t been caught. However, they were bad. Giving in to lust and passion was no virtue.

  Was it?

  Ylinda rose to her feet. “They must be gone by now. And we’ll be missed for sure. We’re going to get flogged for this and it’s not even our fault.”

  Eliza trailed along behind her. Their lantern was at the top of the stair, beside the door. Someone had turned it down low, but it was still burning. Timidly, they turned up the flame and ventured down the stairs again.

  It was all dark this time—nothing stirred but a hunting tomcat—and they fetched the wine they had been sent for and hurried back up the way they had come. Over the smell of the paraffin though, over the dark, cold stone smell of the cellar, she was certain she could still detect the lingering odour of sex.

  * * *

  “Lady Kempsly and Lord Kempsly are missing,” Rigori, the steward, whispered to Kell and Emerlin. Rigori was wringing his hands, his forehead beaded with sweat. He had a sitting room full of lords and their companions to entertain and no hosts to greet them.

  Emerlin snorted. “Have you checked between their sheets?”

  “Oh, ha ha,” Rigori said bitterly. “You just have to stand here at the door. Those snobby pricks don’t want to talk to me. And they don’t much like being kept waiting either
.”

  Kell and Emerlin had been watching the steady procession of gentlemen and gentlewomen, all dressed up in their finery and new gowns. Most of them had porters trailing along behind them, puffing as they hauled chests or bags or trunks with the rest of their masters’ costumes inside. Most of the lords already had their masks on, of course, but there would be more elaborate headgear and plumage to add, which would have been impossible to wear in their carriages. Not to mention cold, as most of them arrived in thick furs or coats. Now they were all in much less modest attire.

  “Let them talk to one another,” Kell said flatly. “Just ask some of the serving girls to bring in whatever wine they’re supposed to be drinking first. They can ogle each other’s companions and get drunk and they won’t even notice Lord Kempsly is late.”

  “Or they can ogle the serving girls,” Emerlin laughed.

  Kell frowned. He didn’t want them ogling the serving girls. Not that many of them were much to write home about, but there were a few that a hot-blooded man could look at all day. And one in particular that he would prefer no one ogled at all.

  Another carriage arrived and Kell and Emerlin stood up straight, trying to look regal and fierce, as if they were guards at Queen Victoria’s palace gates instead of just guarding the doors to a keep in the depths of the moors with their bracken and heather and mist.

  A grey-haired lord with a sagging gut and a beautiful doe-eyed girl who could have been his daughter strode by together. Rigori rushed to greet them, offering compliments to the lord and trying to engage him in a conversation about the weather. The girl paused to flutter her long lashes at Kell, but he was too busy brooding to return her smile.

  Emerlin glanced at him when they had passed. “You look like you’re sucking on a lemon. What is it?” He paused and then grinned. “Are you cross because those lords might be looking at Eliza?”

  His shoulders stiffened and he felt his cheeks go hot.

  “Don’t talk about her. It’s distracting.”