I looked down. The front of my skirt was looped over Jenny's head. Her tongue worked industriously, tracing the lips of my quim through my drawers. Despite a faint trembling of my knees I moved not.
'Down!' I commanded. The surge of power was within me. I knew the power. Jenny's response was instant. She sank down again. Her mouth deserted me. 'Go! go to your cage!' I said. With the closing of the door my aunt took my hand and guided me to sit upon the bed. Going to my closet she poured a liqueur for each of us. Returning, she sat beside me.
'You will continue your meditations,' she said, 'plan your plottings, manouevre them to your will.'
The freshness of cool water was within me after my handling of Jenny.
'All?' I asked.
Aunt Maude did not answer me directly. 'You dealt well with Jenny. It shall be so with Caroline and-upon your need-with Katherine. Observe the males. How proudly their cocks rise. Hidden sometimes beneath their breeches - at others lewdly exposed. Frig them, toy with them, play with them. The bubbling jets expel. Their faces soften, their cocks soften. They are as putty. Their training is no more arduous than that of the girls. They shall service you only at your bidding.' 'Service?' I sensed the meaning, yet I asked.
'In your lewdnesses, Beatrice your slit, your bottom. Never your mouth. Mouths are for others.'
'Such as Caroline?'
'Sly in her sweetness, she has sucked upon their bubblings, yes. Had you not known this? She is shy, acquiescent. Her mouth lends itself like a rose to the sperm, imbibing deeply. In her demureness she wipes her lips secretively and blushes. Did you not know.'
I hid my face. It was my last shyness. 'Perhaps,' I said. Spiders' webs glistened in my mind, broke, fell apart. I envied her for a moment-the big knob purplish at her lips, her tongue gliding beneath the veins. The urgent gliding, sliding. The silence save for the sucking of her lips. Sweet throbbing of the tool-its jets outspurting. Mouth salty, creamed, her limp form raised. Her bottom fondled.
I came to myself again. 'Shall we return soon?' I asked.
'At your wish, Beatrice.' A last flourish of her glass and she was gone. I leaned back. The wall was cool to my back. In the summer I would have cages on the lawn-between the shrubbery and the summerhouse. I would have my whip. My eyes would be as fire, my breasts uplifted.
Yes.
SEVENTEEN
The letter I had begun to Father lay as I had left it. I imagined him in his being entering and gazing at it. The Chinese, I have heard, never destroy a piece of paper once it has been written upon. Characters once imparted to it acquire a being, a magic, a presence. They rest upon the surface like the silhouettes of birds who have no wish to move again.
I took up the pen again. Dearest Father, / await your return Beatrice. It was enough. Now in my subtle shifting it sufced. He would move among the words at night as a poacher moves among the larches and the elms. Taking an envelope, I addressed it to him at the tea plantation in Malabar which his father had bequeathed him. He would return from thence with dust on his lapels-the musk of dusky women in his nostrils, the dream of a rocking horse.
I would place the horse on the lawn, perhaps, in a larger cage for Caroline. When the rain came it would stand forlorn and waiting. Raindrops in their crystal glittering on its stirrups.
I bathed and listened to a twittering of voices from the garden-Caroline's and Jenny's among them. Upon my descent for lunch I employed subtleties rather than assertions. At the serving of the soup I asked Maria what wine we were to have with the fish.
'With the fish, Riesling…' Maria began and looked as if towards Katherine, my aunt being seemingly deeply engaged with the unfolding of her napkin.
'Not the Riesling-we will have Piesporter, Maria, and you will address me as M'am. You understand?'
The poor woman almost curtsied in her confusion whereat Katherine swept a look along the table to Aunt Maude whose placid quietness gave full reply. 1 had additionally had Amanda brought down. She sat as one who is at a party without friends. Katherine's look passed to me. I received it briefly with a slight affectation of boredom.
'Caroline, you will gather flowers from the garden after lunch. The rooms have a slightly drab air. Place some in my bedroom first. Amanda will assist you,' I said, and turned immediately to engage my aunt in conversation. Katherine was thus neatly isolated, my uncle having gone-or been sent, I suspected-on some errand.
I rose first from the table. Normally, in the conventions, Aunt Maude would have done so and I would have waited upon her to do so. By this small sign, however, a silent Katherine received my further tokens. When I moved of a purpose into the conservatory she followed me-a slightly wounded falcon, I felt, though I bore her no malice. To the contrary, she attracted me both physically and mentally. 'There is change, then,' she asked quietly.
'As to all things,' I replied. I placed my arm about her waist and then slid my hand down very slowly to feel and fondle the quite perfect globe of her bottom. Beneath the light material of her dress the twin hemispheres had the smoothness of peachskin.
Katherine compressed her lips slightly and endeavoured to hide a smile of pleasure at the lightly-floating questing of my fingers. That she wore no drawers was evident by the way I could gently urge a single fold of her dress into the tight groove of her bottom.
'You have not yet given us a performance, Katherine.'
'No?' Her voice was light but shaky. She endeavoured to recover her usual poise and move away but a warning inward pressure of my fingers stayed her. 'The subject was forgotten,' she said. The faintest of blushes had appeared on her cheeks. It pleased me.
I drew her to a small bench where we sat side by side. The scent of fuchsias was rich in my nostrils. Earth smell, loam smella nostalgia of flowerpots, some straight, some tilted.
'Your performances have been few? I mean for your private theatricals, Katherine.'
'Le Theatre Erotique? There have been some amusements in the past. I engaged lord Ridge's three daughters upon a delicious masquerade last summer. It made excellent preliminary training for them. It is extraordinary what licences the erstwhile modest permit themselves when they believe themselves inhabiting a world of fantasy.'
'Wherein they also believe themselves full hid by their costumes?' I asked.
Katherine's look of appraisal would have been flattering in any other circumstances.
'Exactly. They had not so much as raised their skirts before nor shown their ankles. I had them attired at first in glittering tights with knee-boots and transparent bodices. Music entranced them to display themselves. A small orchestra was discreetly screened from the proceedings. We acted out at first an innocent game of circuses. The estate ponies were perfect for that. We used a large marquee. The audience was naturally small and the champagne flowed. I allowed the girls to imbibe freely between their frolics. In their gigglings and foolish ridings around on the ponies I gave them several twitches of the crop to enervate them.'
I laid my hand upon Katherine's thigh and fingered up the material of her dress slowly until her nearest leg was bared to me almost to her hip. My fingertips ran sensuously around her stocking top. She leaned back. Her lips remained slightly parted for a moment as if seeking breath. The transition from stocking top to silk-smooth skin was delicious.
'And the entertainment?' I asked. I guessed it was called that from my aunt's photographic interlude with Maria and Frederick.
'There was to be trick riding, I told them,' Katherine continued. She moved her knees wider apart to allow my hand to glide up more easily and fondle the warm inner surfaces of her thighs. 'The ponies were exchanged for three fine Arabian horses from Lord Eridge's stables. The door to the marquee was then tightly closed. The musicians, being in a separate marquee that abutted our own, could see nothing.
'I blindfolded each of the girls and had them mount the steeds, whereat their arms were secured about the horses' necks. There was a little fretting on their part about this, for fear they would fall. I comforted them,' Katherine went on with a smile and a half-closing of her eyes as I delicately touched the lips of her quim. Her bottom shifted forward slightly on the seat.
