I was but half listening. Though not indolent, she was learning her pleasures in the sly way known to such women. An occasional protest cleared her conscience, as she saw it. Her husband, she said, was a good man, a quiet man, like herself nearing thirty. He worked as a farm labourer. I released her hair.
'You will come shortly into my service, Maria-as also your husband. There will be work for him to do around the house. I am having a site cleared for stables. You may perhaps be my Stable Mistress, and it so please me. You have learned a little of the handling of females and you are acquiescent. You will learn under my instructions.'
I doubted whether she knew the meaning of 'acquiescent' any more than she would have recognised a fivepound note. I have since given field-girls a guinea piece for their intended services and seen them gaze at it in wonder.
Words unspoken danced upon Maria's lips. From the brief description she had given me of her husband, Ned, he would be amply able to service both Caroline and Jenny when required. Maria-given over to such pleasures as I occasionally permitted her-would soon grow used to it.
Amanda I called within. Lolling upon a rug on the lawn, Caroline stared at me in some wonder. I gave her a smile. 'Later,' I called. It would comfort her for a while. In my uprising was her safety, as she knew. The memory of being bound to her in our nudities was still one of my sweetest. We would play games of remembrance, perhaps. I would find a way. She would become my favourite handmaiden, an adored one. In the attic would be laughter again. I would brush her hair and fondle and pat her bottom, coaxing. In her shaftings would be the whisperings of sunhazed lust. The bees' wings on the windowsill would stir. I would make colours to enchant her eyes. Filled and fulfilled she would be led down the ladder again, her legs in their slimnesssweet uncovered still. The gold between her thighs would glint with sperm. In her richness.
'Is there richness, Amanda?' I asked. Knowing not, she did not answer. There was awkwardness in her gait as I led her up. Her small, tight bottom was attended to daily and yet still it jerked skittishly at the first stroke of leather or birch.
In my bedroom I stilled Amanda with my hand and made her stand, feet together, while I sat on the bed.
'This will be your first new exercise-to stand still on command. Will you do so, Amanda, if you are no longer caged or birthed?'
She nodded, an arising of hope in her eyes.
'What is it you seek?' I asked. 'There will be the strap still.'
'I do not know,' she mumbled. In my intuitions she was a relatively poor subject, though I knew not why. Rising, I moved around her and passed my hand up beneath her skirt to see whether or not she would flinch. She did not. I urged my thumb against her rosehole. Aunt Maude inserted the dildo twice daily in her now. It had improved her, I noticed. A tiny assenting movement of her bottom made itself felt against my thumb.
'You do not mind the strap?' I asked. I moved the ball of my thumb up and down between the elastic cheeks.
Amanda shook her head in a manner that was at least uncertain. Perhaps she feared to say no-or perhaps pride held her back. There was a possibility by now that she had begun to accept it with a surprised sense of pleasures- the stinging a challenge.
'Raise your dress, Amanda, and tuck it in about your waist. Feet together, hands at sides. Good. You will stand so when you are told. It will be a further exercise. Your thighbands-should they not be of silver now? Have you earned them?'
'I have been good.' Her lips quivered. Was she aware to what she had replied? I thought of the house from which we had led her here. The gloom of the rooms-the latticed windows too small. Male hands that had quavered briefly about our breasts.
'Silver,' I repeated. I ran my fingers around the metal bands. 'He is a jeweller, is he not? Would you not prefer silver?'
'I suppose.' The dull tone of her voice had the lustreless feel of the back of a dry spoon run over the tongue.
'Then it shall be,' I told her. Her eyes moved not. Could Aunt Maude have handled her differently, to a better end? I felt certain not. The curls about her pubic mount were tight and neat, trimmed straight across the top as my own had been. The curve of her belly was very slight, her breasts gelatinous and firm. I would have written messages on her mind save that in reading them she would not comprehend them. In two or three years perhaps she would be betrothed. Her eyes would move with vagueness through her days. Men would kiss her and bed her. She would respond with a vacuousness that would disappoint all save the lust-seekers.
He who was to mount her and fashion the broad rings of silver for her thighs would be such. They were mere oddments of people-of no account. Had there at least been slyness in her I could have used it, wended it within my wendings, eased tunnels of discovery.
By seven that evening, after the despatch of Frederick as messenger, the jeweller arrived. His eyes were haggard with expectancy.
'So soon?' he asked me. His eyes held querulous dismay that I, who had permitted my breasts to be fondled by him, should now have taken charge.
'Amanda waits upstairs,' I replied. Doffing his hat and cloak he accompanied me in some evident wondering, which I uttered no words to satisfy. At the turn of the stairs that led to the caging room I halted for a moment. 'It shall be as I say. You will do all that I say. You will not speak unless I request it. Otherwise a delicate balance will be disturbed. Thereafter you may take her back. You will find her acquiescent. There is but one thing more,' I added, leading him in.
At the sight before him he stopped dead. Amanda was over the bar, her body freshly bathed and perfumed. I had deemed it necessary to tie her wrists so that she could not rise. Her long legs were neat together. Naked, her bottom rendered its perfect apple shape. I closed the door upon us.
'Remember my words-the fine balance,' I told him again in a whisper. He accepted with a nod-deeming himself perhaps in Paradise. His eyes were tentacles about her yielded form. Aloud, I added for Amanda's benefit, 'Next week her common metal thigh bands are to be replaced by silver ones. You will no doubt think of an appropriate design to engrave around them. Remove your clothes now and watch.'
'R… r… remove?' he stuttered.
'Or you shall not have her. There are certain conventions that we have instilled in her,' I went on glibly. The entire scene amused me not overmuch but I intended to have it performed. It was my first experiment in any event with an unconditioned male. 'You agree to give her solid silver stocking bands?' I asked.
'If it is wished,' he croaked. Under my waiting eyes his hands fiddled with the undoing of his waistcoat.
'It is wished,' I replied.
With others the edge of farce might already have been reached, but here within this strange room and with Amanda perfectly poised for his pleasuring, the dolt was ready to accept all that I said. Her very muteness added to the occasion.
A florid cast came into his features as he commenced with ludicrous reluctance to remove his clothes in front of me. I affected not to look at him. There was a certain brawniness in his figure which perhaps had its brutish attraction. His trunk was thick, his thighs tree trunks. At the first offering of his nakedness his penis lolled inert but rose in anticipation as I led him to her. I had oiled Amanda's bottom already in preparation for the moment. To all appearances she hung there dazed. Only a slight trembling of her knees betrayed her.
He himself appeared now as one in a trance. Placing my hand in the small of his back I urged him yet a step forward. Stemming upwards, his penis-which was of full girth and good lengthpressed its pulsing column against the inrolling of her nether cheeks. Amanda immediately uttered a small cry, jerking like a nervous filly. The movement served only to bulge her bottom deeper against his balls.
'In silence, please, your wrists together behind your back,' 1 told him.
The gaping of his mouth at these words gave him an air of great stupidity. Nevertheless he obeyed. Taking him entirely by surprise in the fretful impatience of his loins, I manacled his wrists. His face became purplish.
'Silence!' I warned, 'the first act is intended as a ceremonial. You will receive instructions on how to handle her during the first weeks hereafter.'
Amanda's head began to toss. She strained at her wrist bonds. The most tearful of protests escaped her. She had awoken it seemed from the lulling comfort of her bondage. 1 had expected it. My next act therefore surprised her since, moving around to the front of the bar where her shoulders hung, I untied her wrists.
'Do not move,' I warned her. 'You have your choice even so. Accept his cock in you at last or you will stay for
