Victorian Taboo

by Bryn Colvin

  VICTORIAN TABOO

  By

  Bryn Colvin and Emy Naso

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  VICTORIAN TABOO

  Copyright (c) 2005 by Bryn Colvin & Emy Naso

  ISBN: 1-59836-095-7

  Cover art and design (c) 2005 by Dan Skinner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  For information, you can find us on the web at

  www.VenusPress.com

  Dedication:

  For Jonathan and Mary

  Chapter One

  Looking at the tombstone, Caroline Terrington wondered, not for the first time, why she had never cried. The funeral had taken place almost two years ago to the day, on a day that, looking back, seemed almost unreal. She had moved through it in a trance of shock and disbelief.

  Josiah had died suddenly, claimed by a heart attack at fifty-eight. She had never thought he would die so soon and widowhood closed her already narrow life almost completely for a long time. Her father found her a suitable companion in the form of Amelia Fontenbrass just as some years previously he had found her a suitable husband in the form of his wealthy friend Josiah. She had been a tender nineteen years of age when her father had given her away as a bride.

  Looking around, she could see O’Shea waiting at an appropriately respectful distance, the light wind tousling his dark hair. The intensity of his gaze unsettled her, making her glad that she was seldom obliged to spend any time in close proximity to her footman. She supposed he was handsome enough, but he was wild and Irish, with an accent she barely understood. Why Josiah had given employment to such a roguish individual she was uncertain. She had been told that the Irish were an entirely untrustworthy race and, feeling that burning gaze on her skin, she felt inclined to agree with the assessment.

  Sighing deeply, she turned from the graveside. Her parents had encouraged her to think that she should marry again, but she could find little enthusiasm for the subject. Her husband had been a companionable man whose conjugal demands had been modest and almost tolerable. She regretted the absence of children from their seven years of marriage and supposed she might not be too old for such things. The prospect of a child provided some reason to consider matrimony.

  In visiting the graveside she had hoped to find some insight or inspiration but nothing had come to her. Caroline had never wept for her deceased husband, nor did she have any real sense of what her fondness for him meant. He had always been kind to her. Was there nothing more to love?

  O’Shea offered his arm to assist her up into her coach and she placed her fingers lightly on his sleeve. Once she was seated, the handsome footman waited for her next command.

  “Home,” she said wearily. He bowed his head and closed the door. She felt the carriage creak slightly as he climbed up beside the driver. The fingers of her left hand were trembling slightly where her gloved hand had touched his arm. The man always made her nervous. She could send him on his way, but that would mean going through the rigmarole of finding someone else.

  She supposed Amelia could do it. It was difficult, having more money than she knew how to manage. Amelia knew how to handle everything, and comparing the two of them, Caroline was painfully conscious that her own manners seemed a little less than perfectly polished. Anyone who truly knew about such things could tell at a glance that Amelia possessed true breeding while her own family belonged to the nouveau riche, struggling to pass themselves off as something a little better.

  It was so difficult to know what to do for the best, to determine what would be most appropriate. How she might find a suitable husband she was unsure, but she felt it was her duty to do so, even if Amelia had preached independence and self-determination.

  Chapter Two

  “Drink with me.”

  With the gas lamps extinguished and only the flickering firelight on her skin, Amelia looked more bewitching than ever. Her dark hair circled her face, her expression regal as she stretched forth her bare arm proffering her wineglass to the nervous maid. This was not the work Sophie had been trained for and the display of exposed flesh before her was startling in the extreme. She had been told that upper class women were often libertine but, even so, this seemed too much.

  Sophie’s hand was shaking as she refilled the glass, crimson droplets falling like blood onto the dark rug beneath her feet.

  “Gently, girl, I do not intend to bite you…not yet.”

  Startled, Sophie almost dropped the bottle. She tried not to let her eyes stray across Amelia’s exquisite shoulders or, worse still, to let her tempted eyes make that alluring journey down the silken skin of the lady’s fair chest to where the curve of her breasts could be seen only too clearly above her corsetry.

  “Does my appearance startle you?” Amelia asked, her tone gentle. Sophie considered her reply carefully.

  Amelia was like a cat about to pounce, pretending softness and hiding her claws only so long as it suited her to do so.

  “A little ma’am.”

  “Drink, girl.”

  Sophie did so, letting the wine pass through her mouth, barely tasting it. She felt the warmth of it in the pit of her stomach, pleasant and unfamiliar. She placed the bottle on the nearby table, uncertain of what she should do next.

  “Now, my sweetling, how do you think we should entertain ourselves tonight?”

  Sophie blushed, her colour as deep as that of the liquor she had just consumed. Amelia reached out and lifted the glass that had been clenched so awkwardly in the serving girl’s hand. With a lazy, graceful gesture, she poured the rest of its contents across her chest, letting the intoxicating liquid find its own paths down across her body, soaking the top of her corset and making ribbons of colour to show the path beneath her clothing.

  “Drink,” she commanded, and there was no refusing the authority in her voice.

  She sat forward on the chair and Sophie inched closer, moving like one under some spell or hypnosis. The invitation was unmistakable but still she hesitated, fearing to cross the boundary into such forbidden delights.

  Finally she knelt at Amelia’s feet, reaching up with her lips to lick the trickling wine from the softest skin. When Amelia sighed, the sound of it made her bold, and she plunged her tongue deep into the hidden crease, lace tickling at her nose as she sought out the droplets that had run deeper.

  “Unlace me.”

  Sophie went to work then, her fingers skilled with the mysteries of woman’s attire. She had performed this task both for Lady Amelia and for Caroline every day for several years now, but never in such compelling circumstances. She had always loved the unlacing, the slow loosening of ties and freeing of flesh, those rare moments when skin was exposed and she might dare to steal a look.

  Both of the women she worked for were beautiful. Amelia turned, and she hurriedly loosed the bindings releasing the tight whale-boned garment and gently removing it. Wine had blazed a scarlet trail from Amelia’s cleavage down to her navel, and Sophie eyed the tracks hungrily, looking for some sign that she should continue.

  Whe
n Amelia nodded, she returned tongue and lips to their previous work, licking clean the tender flesh of her mistress’s companion. When she was finished, Amelia lifted the bottle from the side-table, and poured afresh, drowning her breast with it. Sophie needed no further encouragement and fell to it, guided in her innocence by enthusiasm.

  “Slowly,” Amelia ordered.

  Sophie ran her tongue lightly across the wine-sodden nipple, testing the hardness of it before fastening her lips more firmly to this mouth-watering nub of flesh. She suckled gently, feeling a calm descend over her even through the mayhem of unleashed desire.

  “Shall I tell you what I am going to do?” Amelia asked, whispering hot breath into her ear.

  Sophie, her mouth full, did not answer at once, and so the lady continued.

  “Tell me girl, have you ever had an orgasm?”

  Sophie had no idea what the word meant, or whether she had. Abandoning her prize she said, “I don’t know, ma’am.

  “Have you ever touched yourself, between your legs?”

  “No, ma’am!”

  “Has anyone else, some delivery boy, the butler perhaps?”

  “Certainly not, ma’am.”

  Amelia raised her fine eyebrows.

  “Remarkable. Come here.”

  Within moments, Sophie was seated upon the couch, her legs spread wide while Amelia’s hand journeyed under her skirts. She felt fingers press through the cotton of her underclothes and trembled at the sensation. She had been taught that this nameless part of her was shameful, to be hidden, not spoken of, not touched and that to let anyone see or handle her was a sin.

  For the nineteen years of her life behind her, she had obeyed these teachings without question, but as Amelia’s hand began to caress and stimulate her, the notion of sinfulness was very far from her thoughts, indeed. She felt as though she was melting and closed her eyes, letting the sensations carry her. A strange pressure seemed to be building in her stomach; one that fast consumed her loins and the tops of her thighs, until she could hardly think of anything else.

  She felt hot and tremulous, as though some vast thing was poised ready to tear out of her, and still the pressure grew more potent. Amelia’s hand vibrated frenetically against her, the undoubted source of this most tantalising experience. Was this what the lady had meant by orgasm, she wondered?

  Then it came like blinding light, as though an explosion had taken place within her. Sophie shook and gasped, her hips bucking beyond her control, fingers digging into the plush covering of the couch. She gritted her teeth against crying out, not knowing whom of the other servants might be in earshot.

  “Perhaps I will teach you how to perform that little trick for yourself.”

  “Please,” Sophie gasped, knowing that whatever it was, she wanted more.

  “When you retire tonight, come to my room, and we shall see what else you can learn.”

  * * * *

  With her employer gone off to some family gathering in Bath, Amelia’s usual services were not required for the week, and she had the London house entirely to herself. It allowed her the scope to revisit certain enthusiasms that, thus far, she had not risked indulging during the two years of her employment.

  Her mistress, Caroline, might be young and beautiful, but she was the most frigid and repressed example of femininity that Amelia had ever encountered. It was not just a matter of mourning a dead husband; Amelia was sure that her marriage bed had been a lifeless place. There was a wall of impenetrable icy propriety around Caroline, and Amelia had not yet found a way to crack it.

  At least this week would give her a chance to sate her long unsatisfied hunger for a pretty girl in her bed. It would have been impossible to seduce the charming little maid under the very nose of the mistress of the house, but with a little luck, by the time the good woman returned it would be easy enough to carry on unnoticed.

  Chapter Three

  Impatiently Sir Jasper Akenfield looked at his pocket watch, swung it on its chain and then, with an expression of consummate arrogance, returned the timepiece to his waistcoat pocket. He was late. Damn the Prime Minister and the man’s infernal speeches about Ireland.

  On leaving the chamber of the House of Commons a short while previously, Sir Jasper had muttered to Philpot (the ruddy faced Member of Parliament for some loathsome northern constituency), that Billy and Oliver had the right idea. The gentlemen he had in mind were King William of Orange and Oliver Cromwell, who both had a past reputation for handing out harsh measures to the Irish. With these thoughts still very much occupying him, Akenfield crossed Parliament Square and hailed a cab.

  “Where to, Sir?”

  “Dalton’s Hotel in The Haymarket,” Sir Jasper curtly instructed him, then leant up and closed the small opening above him in the cab. He neither felt like conversation with the driver perched above him nor wanted to hear the abuse this cockney peasant would throw at the other horse drawn carriages trying to negotiate London’s increasingly chaotic thoroughfares.

  “’Ere you are, Governor.”

  Sir Jasper, Member of Parliament for Polchester (a constituency pleasingly near to fashionable Bath), disliked what he considered the London cabbie’s familiarity and insolence. He grudgingly relinquished the fare and added a tip. As he crossed The Haymarket he looked casually around him to see if anyone would take due notice of the distinguished air he knew himself to possess. Self admiration usually prompted this action, but today a more unusual desire for self preservation motivated him: Today Sir Jasper had no desire to be noticed or recognized by anyone who mattered.

  Mrs. Akenfield had died in childbirth ten years ago and consequently his meeting a lady would hardly be a social crime. The individual he was engaged to spend a few hours with, however, was no lady to meet with the approval of society. Jenny Nightingale had become the darling of the Drury Lane Theatre. She had stage-door admirers by the dozen, Sir Jasper not being amongst them.

  As a baronet, Member of Parliament, and aspiring minister in the Liberal Government–something he daily expected to achieve–he could not be seen to court actresses openly. Sir Jasper’s passions and predilections were hardly something to parade in high society in this, the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-two, even though he knew full well that he was hardly alone in his private enthusiasms. What one did in private and what one admitted to in public were entirely different matters.

  Satisfied that there was no one to hand who knew him, Akenfield entered the establishment of E. Izod and Sons and assumed his normal pose of haughty elitism. At forty-five, he believed himself to be handsome, desirable and dashing. Most women, even though deploring his supercilious manner, would have undoubtedly agreed. A young female assistant approached him. Sir Jasper found himself unable to resist a flirtatious gesture with his eyes.

  “May I help you, sir…or would you like me to call a male assistant?”

  “I’m sure you will suffice,” he drawled in his unctuous way. “My name is Andrew Matthews. There is a package awaiting my collection.”

  She curtsied as if he were the gracious Queen Victoria herself and trotted off. A few minutes later the pretty lass returned.

  “Here you are, Sir. Mr. Izod says he will put it on your account.”

  Sir Jasper put out a hand to take the package. As the assistant handed it over, he made sure he held her hand for a long moment and then bowed like a chivalrous knight at a jousting tournament acknowledging his fair maiden. Coming closer to the young woman, he whispered in tones of silken Jamaican sugar.

  “Here is my visiting card, my pretty one. If you should ever yearn for something beyond the humdrum world of this little shop, you must call me. A beauty like yourself is wasted in such surroundings.”

  The girl blushed a pleasing crimson, her eyes modestly downcast, tantalising in her apparent chastity.

  Both the name and the address were ones that he only used in certain circles – for assignations, deliveries and the like. Andrew Matthews was a man of indepen
dent means and no connections. He was a careful invention established over many years to serve certain requirements in Jasper’s life and permit him the freedom he desired without particularly risking his good name and reputation. As today’s little rendezvous was his first with the charming young actress, he had chosen a favourite location where he was entirely established in his alter ego. There was, of course, a risk that Jenny would not prove to be discrete, but he considered it unlikely as she stood to gain so very much from his patronage.

  Two minutes later he entered Dalton’s Hotel.

  “Good afternoon, sir.”

  The doorman, Harold Chambers, had greeted him quietly, almost clandestinely.

  “Ah, Harold. Is everything ready?”

  “Just as you asked, sir.”

  “And the lady?”

  “She arrived thirty minutes ago. I let her in through the kitchens and took her upstairs to the room. You can go up by the service stairs if you wish not to be seen…that is, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  Sir Jasper shrugged, flipped a gold coin at Chambers and walked toward the stairs. He had come to almost enjoy these necessary intrigues.

  Room eleven was at the end of the corridor. Sir Jasper thought about knocking, then decided he was paying for the room, the lady and for pleasure. He walked boldly in.

  Jenny Nightingale was even more stunningly delectable in the cold light of a first floor hotel room than she was fully made up on the stage of the Drury Lane Theater. He moved to her and pushed back the hood of her cloak that had concealed her head. He appreciated her beauty and discretion.

  “You came, dear Jenny.”

  As his honeyed words caressed her face, his lips immediately found the whiteness of her neck. His eyes feasted on the swell of her uplifted breasts, pulled, snuggled and exposed like two soft and ripening, pale melons.