by Bryn Colvin
Chapter Twenty-Two
The stylish blue jacket and elegantly cut trousers looked fabulous, there was no denying it. Only a little stitching had been required to render the fit perfect. With her corsets off, Amelia had spent a while exploring the possibilities of binding her breasts down flat. She had read enough stories in which women did just that in order to disguise their gender, but it proved to be a lot harder than she had anticipated.
The first challenge was simply getting the process started and not squashing one breast off sideways, then the trick was keeping the fabric even across her back, and it required a remarkable amount of material. After three tries, she could do it well enough. Looking at herself in man’s attire was unsettling, and rather alluring in its own way.
Her long hair circled her face, making her androgynous and belying the overall effect. She ran a slender finger through her treasured hair and sighed. She could not go out in search of her lost friend with her long tresses on display, and even a hat would not hide it safely. It was a lot to give up for what could prove a wild goose chase, but she supposed it would grow back in time and her loyalty to Caroline demanded it.
“Are you ready?” Frederica called through the door.
“Almost, you may come in.”
There was an uneasy truce between them, and Freddy’s presence made Amelia uncomfortable–she was still deeply attracted to the woman but her betrayal of Caroline seemed intolerable in its calculated callousness.
Freddy was attired more simply, with black trousers, a white shirt and a dark green waistcoat with pocket watch. Her slender figure looked boyish. She eyed Amelia thoughtfully, and nodded.
“My hair,” Amelia said, shaking her head.
“The same thought occurred to me.”
“It will have to come off.”
Frederica looked shocked for a second, and then her expression evolved into one of thoughtful pleasure.
“That would be very daring. I shall do no less.”
They set to work on each other, Freddy clipped away Amelia’s beautiful hair and styled a simple, and more manly, look, then Amelia returned the favour, working carefully to shear away the dark tresses that had once captivated her. Without asking she took a small lock and slipped it into her jacket pocket.
When it was done they stood side by side, looking at their reflections. The effect was startling: They looked, for all the world, like two fresh-faced young men preparing for a night on the town. Walking in trousers was challenging as they sought to emulate the way in which men moved and talking was always going to be difficult. Of the two, Amelia had the deeper, more resonant voice and they could only hope she would pass.
They took a cab, wanting to remain anonymous, and Freddy asked for one of the addresses she had heard her brother mention. Stepping out into the cool evening gloom, they found themselves in a run down and filthy area, the streets were clogged with litter and wet with who knew what. Dingy buildings loomed over narrow alleyways, making the area closed in and oppressive. From across the street came a sound of coughing as an old woman, bowed down and ragged, shuffled past them. There were sounds of singing and loud talk from the nearest two pubs and, as they watched, a door flew open and a man crashed out onto the pavement, his pug nose streaming blood. Instinctively, they reached for each other, hands clenching only to be released again as both realized they could not afford such mistakes.
The public house was crammed full of noisy, unwashed people and they had to struggle to reach the bar. Amelia was conscious of eyes on her as she ordered two pints of beer.
“Looking for a bit of rough are we, boys?”
“We might be. I have a bet on with a friend as to which of us can lay the most red-haired whores.”
“Have you now? Well it just so happens there’s a lovely little red head upstairs if you want to pay her a visit.”
“You only have the one?”
“Sadly.”
“Then my friend here and I will go together if it is all the same to you.”
There was little that the landlord had not heard before and he was well used to seeing the occasional moneyed youth in his establishment. These two struck him as being a lot more naïve than the usual sort, but he supposed they all had to start somewhere, and as soon as he had seen their money, he was pleasantly disposed towards them both.
At the top of the stairs, he opened a creaky door and called out, “Look lively, Emma, couple of chaps for you.”
Amelia and Freddy exchanged glances, and then stepped into the room. It was a squalid place that smelled of stale sex and sweat. The only furniture was a large bed on which sat a young woman in corsetry that had seen better days. She was pale and gaunt, but her hair was a striking dark red and it framed her face beautifully. Her eyes were glassy and there was a distant look in them, as though she was gazing out onto some other world. Her figure was boyish and undeveloped, and to Amelia’s eye, she looked like a child.
“How old are you, girl?” she asked.
“Old enough.”
The girl’s too-large eyes were turned her way, suggestive and speaking of experience. Knowing they would have to spend a little while here before leaving if they were to avoid attracting attention, Amelia sat on the bed and looked more closely at the girl. She might have been pretty, but she was painfully thin and her skin looked dreadful.
“You just looking or what?” the girl piped in her thin, reedy voice.
“I like to look,” Amelia answered.
“What about you, you looking too or do you want a bit of a feel?”
The girl pulled a breast free of her underwear and squeezed the nipple out, pointing it at Freddy. The breast was small, like a little hard plum, and the sight of it reinforced her appearance of youth.
“How old are you?” Freddy repeated Amelia’s question.
“Fourteen,” said the girl.
It took all of Amelia’s self control not to wince.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Couple of years. Lots of men like a nice young thing. So, you want a fuck or what?”
Freddy reached into her pocket and thrust a coin into the girl’s grubby hand and then turned for the door. The girl looked at the guinea with an expression of disbelief and Amelia decided it might be as well to leave.
Outside in the street, Freddy was shaking and close to tears.
“She was just a child,” she said, anger and horror mixing in her voice.
“I know,” Amelia said gently, realizing that Freddy probably knew less about this sort of thing than even she did.
“Just a little girl and so ruined, so corrupt…”
“Did you not know they do this sort of thing?”
She did not clarify who she meant by ‘they’, but both women knew that it meant wealthy young men of their own class. From Freddy’s tears, it was evident she had not really guessed what it could be like.
“We must keep looking.”
“Oh, God!”
It was a hard night. They walked and spent their money in tavern after tavern, asking after red-haired whores and seeing more than a few. Some were young, like the first girl, others older. All of them had a washed out, worldly weary quality. Some of them told stories of poverty and desperation; others were silent and took the money without question. They saw more evidence of cruelty and depravity that night than either woman had in all their lives.
Stood in an alleyway a little after midnight, Freddy clung to Amelia’s arm.
“I cannot bear any more.”
Amelia was sickened to the core by all that she had seen, but her determination to find Caroline was only fuelled by this.
“They are so wretched,” Freddy said.
“I thought you considered the poor to be beyond contempt. You told me once you helped Charles dispose of a whore who had died as a result of one of his experiments.”
Freddy’s shoulders shook.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know, God help me.”
<
br /> “I think we are beyond the gods, now; we probably need a goddess.”
Freddy shook her head.
“Might we find a cab and go home. I feel that I need to wash this place from my skin.”
They walked, trying to appear confident and self-assured, looking for a cab that might bear them safely home.
“Oy!”
There were four men. One had a broken bottle in his hand, and another carried a knife. Amelia felt her stomach clench with fear.
“Come on, pretty boys, let’s have your money.”
Amelia reached for the wallet she was carrying and hissed to Freddy to do the same.
“Rings, pocket watches, snuff boxes and anything else you’ve got or we’ll mess up those nice faces of yours.”
Amelia complied, hoping that they wanted no more than money. The blow caught her completely off guard, and she fell to the ground, her face burning with pain. A kick landed on her stomach, then another one. She curled into a ball, trying to protect her head. They could die, she realized: they could die on these streets and be just another pair of bodies in the river. Their names, class, connections and friends could avail them little. Shaken by blows and pain, all she could think about was how much she wanted to live.
At last it was over, and she heard the men move away. Dragging herself up onto her knees and elbows, and grimacing against the pain, she looked around for Freddy. The other woman had fared no better, her clothes torn and one eye blackened.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The beautiful Lake District of England appealed to Gabriel Waterburn’s romantic senses. He could stand outside the rented cottage and hear the voices of the poets calling. It had not taken him long to conclude that if the London set could not appreciate the genius of his latest exhibition then that was their loss. At least he had his darling Belle with him. Painting his lover had become his idyll. To complete the perfection of this arrangement, he planned, this evening, to introduce her to his idea of the perfect Isle of Avalon.
Belle Lark watched him and all she wanted to do was…do something! This rural backwater had soon become utterly boring for her. She loved the excitement of London. Gabriel used to take her to the theatre and all those exhilarating parties, but now there was nothing whatsoever to amuse her. She missed all that life. This Lake District was dull, full of sheep and dim locals. Now all Gabriel went on about was some Avalon. He had once explained this mythical place was in Somerset and the spiritual home of the Knights of the Round Table. This was Cumberland surely? What had it to do with this Avalon?
Gabriel was waving at someone. Belle went to his side. A young woman was skipping carelessly along the lane. As she drew nearer Belle could see that she was a local lass, dressed in appalling clothes, so gauche and unfashionable.
“Come in, Flora,” Gabriel called to her as the woman arrived.
“This is my Belle,” he proudly introduced the women, “and now we are complete.”
Elated by the prospect before him, he busied himself with pouring wine, all the time smiling at the two women as they sat opposite sides of the bench table, trying to hide the animosity each immediately felt towards the other. Waterburn kissed Belle’s hair and then walked over to Flora and did the same.
“Here we are: The perfect triangle. I shall be the great knight of this divine and hidden place and you two shall be my handmaids. We are going to live such a life.”
“But, Gabriel…” Belle tried to interrupt his overflowing ebullience. He would not listen.
“…and to celebrate this ordained meeting, I will paint you two as the nymphs of innocence. Flora, you go into the other room and attire yourself for your role. Belle already has her costume.”
Belle wondered why Gabriel had insisted she wore the tiny skirt and parade with her breasts almost bare. She obediently took up the shepherd’s crook he proffered and posed by the set Gabriel had arranged. He eagerly started to sketch and sang happily.
“Where is Flora?” he asked and strolled impatiently off into the other room. Belle relaxed and waited. Ten, then fifteen minutes went past. She became bored with gazing at the unchanging view visible through a small window. Walking into the other room she stopped at the door. Gabriel was balls high into Flora as she lay on her back, with her legs wrapped around his waist, her toes wriggles over the bouncing naked rear of Waterburn.
With slow deliberation Belle walked back into the other room and went to Gabriel’s easel.
* * * *
The house had never been noisy. Even when the late Master, Mr. Terrrington, had been alive, parties and gaiety were not part of his life. Mrs. Terrington continued in that way. Now, it had become a mausoleum. With the disappearance of the Mistress and the quiet comings and goings of these people asking questions, it had become a lonely and desolate house.
Only his Sophie, the maid, and that irritating footman, O’Shea, remained in service. The man’s thick, Irish accent was like a swirling babble of blarney and Myles struggled to discern more than one in every four words he uttered. Of all of his fellows, O’Shea was the one he would most liked to have seen depart, and he wondered again why the fate of Mrs.Terrington concerned the footman so much?
Myles Cornwallis, butler and trusted servant, sat in his own cosy parlour at the top of the house. He maintained his weekly practice of making the accounts tally--in his favour. Putting down his pen, he wondered why, in his thoughts, he had referred to Sophie as his Sophie? True enough, his predilection for this maid had grown from lust for her innocence, and some would say, corruption of sexual awareness, into them becoming frequent and passionate lovers.
Never previously had he envisaged himself in the role of the debauched seducer. He consoled himself with the thought that Sophie’s corruption had been far greater at the hands of Lady Amelia. When he thought about it, ‘hands’ was indeed the right expression. He still grew warm and hard whenever he fell into thinking about what went on between a maid from below stairs and such a highborn woman as the Lady Amelia. Sophie had not been sparing in her descriptions of their antics and his lusty imagination had much to dwell upon. He shook his head and rubbed his cock inside his trousers, feeling it stiff at the erotic thoughts flowing in his brain and boiling blood in the veins of his shaft.
A knock at the door brought him away from these wandering thoughts.
“I thought I’d find you here, Myles,” Sophie floated in. Every time he saw her, he became slave to desire anew. She came up beside his chair.
“What are you doing?” she said softly.
“Just the accounts, Sophie.”
She looked over and pointed to a figure in the column.
“What is that amount?”
“This is the account for the wine merchant. One hundred and ten pounds.”
“We don’t drink that much!” she laughed.
“Not us, my darling. It’s for the household. Mind you, this last month there hasn’t been any use for it. I’ll have to remove that entry and credit the total account.”
The maid sat on his lap and wriggled herself engagingly into his loins.
“I’m no great person with all these figures, Myles. Who apart from you understands them?”
He chuckled and put his hand around her to feel the swell of her breasts.
“Nobody, my dear. They trust me, you see.”
Sophie shrugged, seemingly content with the answer.
“What are we going to do Myles? This house won’t need servants if the Mistress has gone off her head.”
“Sophie, don’t talk like that. I’m sure everything will resolve well enough.” As he spoke, Myles felt the inflamed passion he always experienced near to Sophie.
“They’re saying she’s gone mad and run away.”
“It’s not ours to question, nor to talk, but I’ll admit I have no idea what may become of our Mrs. Terrington.” He allowed his hand to inch up her dress and wander beneath its light cotton surface.
“Sophie!” he gulped, “you’re not wearing anyt
hing under your dress.”
She giggled and leaned back against him even harder.
“I thought you wanted to make love to me this afternoon…and this would make it easier. Besides, I have something to tell you.”
“What, my sweet?” he idly asked, as his hands felt the soft down of her mound.
“Do you remember when I went down to Crystal Palace with the Mistress?”
Myles nodded, more interested in his lover’s moist sex than the direction of her musings.
“Well, one day not so very long ago, Mrs. Terrington let me have a few hours off. I strolled down Penge High Street. There was a lovely little tearoom there. And do you know what?”
“Tell me, my Sophie,” he asked, his thoughts and erection both becoming absorbed in dreams of a very different nature.
“The shop happens to be for sale.”
He stopped exploring her and asked,” What are you saying, Sophie?”
“Myles, we need to consider our future. What are we going to do when they close this house?”
He knew she was right; the collapse of the household was both obvious and clearly imminent, but to buy a shop! That was ridiculous. The chances of them finding employment in the same establishment seemed unlikely, but he did not want to be parted from his young temptress.
“Do you know how much it would cost, Myles?”
He did not answer. She pointed to the figure in the column.
“You are so clever, Myles. Nobody knows that money exists except you.”
He lifted her up gently and eased her dress high to her waist. With a few wriggles and manoeuvres, he slipped his cock out and had it pressing against her willing loins. She cooperated in the seated fuck and squealed with delight as he entered her.
“Myles, I’d be a good wife to you…and such a help in the tea room,” she purred as he gently bounced her for their mutual pleasure.
“Yes, my sweet,” he moaned, careless of his words as he enjoyed her. The sensation was good but his lust grew stronger. He wanted her as his submissive maid. Picking her up he took Sophie to the bed and instructed her to kneel. She needed no encouragement, knowing full well that this compliant display of her posterior appealed to him above all else.