Jenny's fingers quested beneath my bottom, pressing the thin wool up between my cheeks. I strained my legs and endeavoured to stand still. Aunt Maude entered, surveyed the scene and nodded. A faint scuffling of heels came and Arabella was patted and persuaded within by my uncle. Her grown was wreathed up to her hips, her eyes blindfolded. Her legs were superb: statuesque, long, and beautifully curved. The fluff of her tunny was thick with curls. Her thighs rubbed nervously as she stumbled forward.
'It is a simulation,' Jenny murmured to me.
Guided by my aunt's hands, Arabella was taken to the chairs and made to kneel upon the seats. But an inch before her mouthhad she but known it then-the servant's prick jutted its menace. Her magnificent bottom cheeks- cheeks such as Michelangelo might have carved in marble-pressed against the back of the other chair. The waiting hole there appeared to centre itself exactly in line with the deep divide between her hemispheres. Melon-full, her exposed breasts hung down. Her knees made to shift in nervous reflex, but the dipping of the sling-seat into which the weight of her legs pressed permitted little movement.
My uncle approached the back of the chair to which her haunches were pressed. His face had a haggard aspect. His jacket and waistcoat had been removed. The top of his breeches was unbuttoned.
'Not yet-you are not privileged,' Jenny said. With a last searching caress her hand relinquished my bottom. In my emptiness I stood while she blindfolded me, voices around me. How strange in the darkness of my dark. Did the furniture move-the sideboard menace? I had imaginings. A mystic magic. 'Hold her hips.' It was my uncle's groan.
'There is no nerd, Thomas. She will be birched if she moves, save in desiring. Open your mouth now, Arabella -feel for it, absorb the knob-now press your bottom back, tight to the leather. Thomas, now!'
Groans, gurgles, cries-a gurgling, a moan. A blubbering, a slap, a sucking sound. Her mouth corked. Her lips would puff around the servant's tool. Creak of wooden legs. A croaking whine from Arabella. Her bottom corked in turn.
In my impossibilities I swayed. But feet away from me the thin inhissing of breath sounded through Arabella's nostrils. Tomorrow perhaps she would receive guests for tea. The polite questions of everydayness would be asked. Music sheets would lay decoratively ranged upon a piano. Her parents would flank her sides. It would be known that she was obedient. The servants would move quietly in their domain. The curtains would be dumb to speak. Her bed would wait for night to fall. Sperm-drops around her stocking tops. Was here salvation? Her eyes would be hollow, receiving messages.
'Ah! in her to the root. She has taken both.' It was Katherine's voice. Her tongue licked in my ear. I trembled. I knew I must stand still. In my stillness standing.
No one would ever know. Beyond our circles, no one. We were the chosen, the receptors of lust in our desiring.
THIRTEEN
The laurel leaves of the garden hedge were dry. I moved my cheek against them. The breeze fluttered my skirt. For two hours on the following morning we had been caged, Caroline, Amanda and I. Then Jenny had taken us out one by one and accorded us twelve strokes of the strap across our naked bottoms.
'Your morning exercise-you may be given more pleasant ones shortly,' she said. Amanda blubbered quietly. Each of us sank down in our cage again, our bottoms seared. We were not to talk, we were told.
Released first and dressed, this time in a white wool dress with a gold chain at my waist, I was sent into the garden. I loitered palely. My hands toyed with twigs. The maidservant Mary brought out lemonade. It cooled my body with a sheet of cold within. My eyes were quiet against her own. I felt intimations of newness within me.
Father on the high seas sailing. I would write to him. By fast packet-ship my letter would arrive shortly after his landing. I returned within the house, not knowing whether I was permitted to return, and asked my aunt. The space where the two leather seat-supports had been the night before was now filled again by a small table. Bric-a- brac and vases stood upon it. I looked for the impress of the feet of the chairs in the carpet but saw none.
Aunt Maude sat embroidering. I asked if I might write. Her expression issued surprise. I would find paper, pen and ink already placed in my room, she said. As I made to go she beckoned me. I stood close. Her hand passed up beneath the clinging of my dress-perhaps to satisfy her that I was wearing no drawers.
'How firm and fleshy you are,' she said, and sighed. The heat of the strap was still in my bottom. It communicated itself to her fingertips. Her hand slipped down, caressing the backs of my thighs as it went. 'Write well and clearly,' she told me.
I ascended to my room. All was put ready for me as if it had been anticipated. A small escritoire stood against one wall. I seated myself and drew the paper toward me. The ink was black. I swirled it gently with the decorated steel nib of the pen. 'Dearest Father… .' A bird's wings rustled against the window. I rose, but it was gone. No message lay upon the sill. I leaned my forehead against the glass. 'Dearest Father…'
I started and turned at the sudden entrance of Katherine.
'There is nothing to say,' she said, 'it is all in the doing.'
'It is not true,' I said. I wanted to cry. Her arms enfolded me lightly as one embraces a child who must leave soon upon a feared journey.
'It is good that you know. If you had not known you would be writing swiftly. Is that not so?'
Her voice. coaxed. I nodded against her shoulder. A simple movement of her supple form sufficed to bring her curves tightly against mine. Half swooning I moved my belly in a sinuous sleeking against her own. She released me too quickly with a smile that I could feel passing over my own mouth in its passing.
'There is to be a reception. Brush your hair, wear a boater-it suits you,' Katherine said. She waited while I obeyed. Descending, she took hat and gloves from Mary who stood waiting. Two horses pawed the dust outside. This time the carriage was a hansom.
'May Caroline not come?' I asked. My question was ignored. I entered first, followed by Katherine who sat close beside me.
'We are going to see a friend,' she said.
The journey took an hour. We passed the house where Amanda lived. The children with the hoops had gone. They sat in some small schoolhouse, perhaps, learning the directions of rivers and the trade winds. Katherine had not conversed with me except to ask if I was thirsty. When I nodded we reined in at an inn. A potboy brought us out mugs of ale. The coachman quaffed his own loudly. With a belching from above and a cracking of the whip we were off again.
The house at which we arrived lay like my uncle's in rural isolation. Stone columns adorned with Cupids ranged at the entrance. The drive was long and straight. Immediately the hansom braked, a butler appeared and ushered us in with the grave mien of one who has important people to announce. We entered a drawing room where, to my astonishment, Arabella sat picking at crochet work. From a chair facing her own, the man with the military moustache who I had seen with her before rose and greeted us. Arabella nodded politely and smiled at Katherine. Her long fingers worked elegantly.
The gentleman, whose name was Rupert, drew Katherine aside to the end of the long room. I caught but a few words of their whisperings. 'It will progress her,' I heard him say. I glanced at Arabella. Her lips had pursed tightly. I perceived a slight tremor of her fingers.
Katherine turned back to me. 'We shall go upstairs,' she said. I wondered in my wonderings. The room was one of great charm. An Adams fireplace stood resplendent. Two small lions carved in stone rested on either side of the big brass fender. Blue velvet drapes were abundant. The furniture smelled of newness.
Katherine's voice seemed to encompass Arabella also. Her hands flirted with the piece of crochet work and fell. The gentleman spoke her name. She got up, her eyes uncertain. The lacework fluttered to the floor. Preceding us he advanced into the hallway and up the wide, curving staircase. There, at the first landing, several doors faced us as did also three young girls in servant attire who appeared to be in-waiting. They stood side by side against a wall. Their hands were bound behind them, their mouths gagged. Their black dresses, white aprons and morning caps were of the utmost neatness.
'This one,' Katherine said. She selected the smallest girl who looked about seventeen, her fulsomeness evident in the sheathing of her dress about her curves.
