“Well, yes, but-” Alice grumbled.
“But that is the actual truth. In the second place, I swear I had no thoughts except for your return when one afternoon there was a knock at my door, and there stood Miss Bashe and a friend of hers named Julia Denton. What did the forward young minx do but entreat me, taking me to one side, to involve her and her companion in one of the little dramas that take place in our beloved Snuggery. Miss Bashe gave me to understand that she had found a secret delight in being humiliated and thrashed and fucked, and that her friend, having just been jilted and being most unhappy, was also possessed of a secret yearning to be mastered and taken. What could I do but accommodate them?”
“You rogue! And you didn’t tell me one word of this until just now, because I trapped you when I found this note in your gown!”
“Which you ought not really to have done, my dear. That implies distrust, and at such an early stage in our marriage, an attitude like that is very unwholesome. But we will forget it all-”
“I am not so sure I will!” Alice defiantly retorted.
“So be it. But if you wish, I shall grant Molly and her friend a return engagement, and you shall be present to hold them to a strict accounting of our new relationship together if you wish,” I promised.
And so Alice was mollified and crept into my arms, and presently into my bed where we spent the most delightful of nights.
Yet for the first time the seed of discord had been sown. I could only wonder what would happen when Alice discovered that Marion, far from detesting me, had herself effected a most tender and burning reconciliation!
Chapter 19
But after this one altercation which was the first rift in the lute of marital bliss, my life with sweet Alice took on a most radiant aspect. It appeared that my young wife was most jealous of me, even so far as Fanny was concerned, for she meted out those moments when the pretty, dark-haired maid should have the privilege of sharing our connubial couch or bed, and invariably she saw to it that Fanny solaced her rather more than me. I offered no argument to this state of affairs, for I was thinking that the time would soon be ripe to have Connie and her Wilhelmina present in the Snuggery for our pleasure. Marion too had stayed away, though she had sent a note by messenger to welcome us back to London after our honeymoon and to wish us every happiness.
Meanwhile, at the end of about the second week after our return from Italy, Alice and I paid a visit to Connie Blunt to see how she and Wilhelmina were faring. Golden-haired Connie expressed herself as enchanted with the young maid’s prompt docility and eagerness to please, so I slyly asked, once Wilhelmina was out of the room, “By that do you mean that she provides some tender amorous joys for you, my dear Connie?”
“Oh my gracious, no, Jack!” Connie gasped and blushed. “She is much too innocent. I had not even thought of her in that way.”
“But I have,” Alice interposed with a naughty wink at me. “I should like to find out more of what happened to her at the orphanage.”
“I have asked her several times, dear Alice, but she has shown a great reluctance to discuss it.”
“Perhaps,” I proposed, “under the persuasive threat of a good smacking or a birching, she might be induced to be more frank about her past. And you, Connie, did you not miss me?”
“Now that is a fine question to ask another woman in your wife’s presence, sir,” Alice’s eyes flashed with anger, but when she saw me smile she couldn’t help laughing, and in a spirit of amicable friendship, held out both hands to dear Connie, who squeezed them and flung herself into Alice’s arms. “Oh, I could just eat you up, Connie dear!” Alice breathed.
Connie slowly disengaged her hands and stepped back, blushing divinely down to her throat and even to her dainty little ears. I remembered how we, Alice and Fanny and myself, had secured Mrs. Blunt and stripped her and fondled and felt her until she had finally yielded to her first real fucking-only to have me make the discovery that she was not a virgin, something which an earlier fingering had already suggested.
“I tell you what, Connie, why don’t you bring Wilhelmina round tomorrow afternoon to visit us?” Alice now proposed in a gay voice. “Are you sure that she has been so good you have no reason to wish her punished?”
“I really can’t think of anything, Alice dear,” Connie retorted.
“Well, if you can’t, I shall,” Alice said with determination. And so it was agreed…
The next afternoon at two promptly, the bell rang and Fanny admitted Mrs. Blunt and Wilhelmina. The latter wore a lacy maid’s cap, a black skirt and white blouse, black lisle stockings, and dainty shoes with little ribbon bows at the instep. I observed that she had let her hair grow longer now, so that the troublingly mannish look which she had had when we first encountered her as a pseudo-waiter from Willoughby’s was gone. Her hair was neatly piled in a round bun at the back of her head, leaving her nape and ears bare. But it gave her quite a charmingly saucy mien, all the same.
I had already apprised Fanny what was going to take place this afternoon, and the charming girl could hardly wait to be reunited with lovely Connie Blunt again. Connie wore this afternoon a pink long dress which did wonders for her pearly-white, deliciously dazzling skin, and I found that the bodice was even more audacious than she generally wore, indicating that doubtless she was as impatient to be reunited with us who had initiated her into the voluptuous mysteries of Life and Love as we were to augment her erotic education.
Fanny served tea, and cast Connie many ardent looks from under her thick curly lashes, which made the delicious young widow blush again.
“I am happy to see you again, Wilhelmina,” I now remarked, “and I trust that you are feeling more secure in your new situation and that you and Mrs. Blunt are at least good friends.”
“Oh yes, sir!” the charming young girl responded in that inimitably husky voice which never failed to set the blood coursing hotly through my veins.
“Why, that is good news, my dear girl,” I said generously. “I am happy that things turned out so well, aren’t you, my beloved wife?”
“Perhaps,” Alice said with a sniff of disdain, “but Wilhelmina still owes me three pounds, you know.”
“Alice,” I chided lovingly, “you are being petty. I am sure that she paid for that when we chastised her.”
Now Wilhelmina’s face was as crimson as Connie’s had been a little while ago, and she looked down at the floor as if wishing herself leagues under it.
“Tell me, Connie dear,” Alice drawled, “are you certain that your new maid has been properly disciplined, and that she performs all your orders without argument and question?”
“Well, not exactly,” Connie giggled, with an arched glance at me, “because I have persistently asked her to tell me about the orphanage, and she keeps silent on that score.”
“Oh, Mrs. Blunt, please, you really mustn’t ask me about that! I beg you not to!” came from Wilhelmina.
“Revolt in the ranks!” I laughingly observed as I rose with a gesture to Alice and at Fanny to hold themselves in readiness. “I think perhaps we had best thresh matters out. Come along, Connie, and tell your maid to accompany us.”
“Oh, what-what do you mean, sir?” Wilhelmina stammered.
“I mean, my girl,” I said sternly, “that you are at last going to tell us the truth about your origin.”
“No, I shan’t! You have no right to pry anymore! I paid my penalty, and I’m working for Mrs. Blunt and-oh do let go of me, sir-it’s wrong-oh please-don’t do this!” Wilhelmina cried as now Fanny and I and Alice seized her by the arms and elbows and dragged her toward the Snuggery, with Connie following.
But once we were inside, and once we had swiftly bound Wilhelmina’s wrists to the pulley ropes dangling from the ceiling, the three of us as a united household now turned upon the golden-haired young widow. “And you, Connie,” Alice said greedily, “still have a score to settle with me. Dear Jack and I both wish to know how it was that, for all your professions of maidenly innocence, we discovered that you were not a virgin at all, you naughty girl! Seize her, Fanny, and hoist her alongside Wilhelmina!”
“I have a still better idea,” I chuckled. “Move that lever so that the other set of pulley ropes will dangle exactly in front of Wilhelmina, and we shall have maid and mistress opposite each other for a reckoning!”
“A capital idea, my darling,” Alice approved.
And so it was. A few minutes later, Connie Blunt found herself with her arms dragged high above her head
