BEATRICE Page 13

  I turned from her and made my way upstairs. The door to my uncle's study lay open. He was writing at his desk. At my passing he looked up. His eyes were hollow. I swayed my hips with a certain insolence. I wished him to look. “How firm and fleshy you are,” my aunt had said. I sensed my perversities. The air of the house hung now about me like an old cloak.

  Jenny was naked in a cage. Amanda lay upon the couch on her back, tightly bound from head to feet. I unlocked the cage. Jenny's arms were strapped to her sides. She wore black stockings and a long string of pearls which hung between her melon breasts. She was sitting. She stared at me dully. I motioned my head and she rose with an effort, rolling for a moment against the bars. Then she recovered herself and stepped out.

  I led her to the bar. I intended to strap her. Her small, tight bottom had a fascination for me. It was like Amanda's except that Jenny was shorter than she. Her hair had been trimmed in an urchin cut.

  “Do not speak until I speak,” I said. I bent her over the bar and gave her bottom a sharp smack. With her arms bound, it was needful for me only to touch the back of her down-bent head lightly. The sound of the smack coupled with the resilience of the cheeks and the wild little gasp that she uttered thrilled me tremendously. Slowly I left her and walked over to the wall where the straps hung. I selected the shortest and thickest. Amanda's eyes beseeched me briefly. I gave her a small tight smile that betokened nothing.

  “When we were younger, did Father have you?” I asked Jenny. In uttering my words I brought the leather across her bottom with a loud Cra-aaaaack! Her hips swayed and jerked inwards so far as the bar would allow them to. A dull flush spread across her hemispheres.

  “You intend not to answer, Jenny?”

  Her face was suffused. A second, sharper stroke of the leather made her yelp more.

  “Yes, Beatrice.”

  “When you came to sleep in the guest-room?” The double doors of the past opened more clearly to me now. They yawned upon our yesterdays.

  “Yesssssss!” she hissed as the loud-smacking strap again seared her bottom.

  “You will tell me later in precise detail. Rise!”

  Her face contorted as she did so. She swivelled round on her heels and stood before me. Her head hung. I smiled and tweaked her nipples.

  “How delicious you must have been for him,” I said coldly. I felt no emotion. It was an observation. I led her downstairs by her string of pearls which I knew she would fear to, have broken. Her small feet padded silently on the carpet. Leading her into my room which was empty again, I gave her a further smack, making her jump. She skittered nervously forward and then stood still.

  “Kneel!” I told her. A sense of severity entered into me, but I was as yet not entirely tutored. A few months hence and I would have handled her even better. Kneeling and with her head and shoulders bowed dutifully, she looked as one seeking protection. It was part of her attraction. I wanted her tongue—her small darting tongue—but it was too soon as yet.

  I walked round her, inspecting her slowly. She had grown little through the years, I thought. Her body was small, curves tight and sweet.

  “You were strapped that night?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  The little word upon the carpet lay. I stood before her once more and raised my foot, bringing the sole of my boot down gently on the back of her head. Her lips touched the toe of my other boot and kissed it.

  “Begin, Jenny.”

  Her mouth mumbled against my boot. Her lips smudged its glossy surface. I edited her text in my mind as she spoke, sensing her slyness. Her conversion that night had been swift, as she would have had me believe. In the double bed to which she had been carried while supposedly half asleep, her nightgown had been stripped; her bottom poised. Fearful to cry out lest she woke me, the strap had scorched her. Confessions had been drawn from her that she said were false. After a score of strokes she had been stilled, even as my uncle had stilled me with a long deep plunge and then withdrawal. But then it had entered her again and so remained, deep in its throbbings.

  On being carried back at last to the guest room, she had felt isolated, lonely. The silence of the house at night had hung about her like bat's wings. Her bottom knew heat and emptiness and longing. In her tinglings she had lain.

  “Go on,” I said when, at this part of her narrative, she halted.

  “There was no more,” she mumbled. Her mouth moved over my boot even more fervently.

  “Do you believe her?” It was my aunt. She had entered unseen, unheard. Her look ignored Jenny. She came across, lifted my chin and kissed me. The kiss endured. My aunt's hand reached down and sought Jenny's hair while our mouths were locked. She drew Jenny's face upwards, beneath my skirt, between my thighs. Open, warm and seeking, Jenny's lips nuzzled into the vee of my drawers. I felt the pleading lapping of her tongue. I did not move. My hips were unresponsive as if by instinct. By placing her free hand beneath my bottom, Aunt Maude could tell it was so. Her lips moved with pleasure upon mine. Our salivas mingled.

  “Do you believe her?” she asked again.

  I would not answer. I wanted what I knew within myself. My bottom squeezed in my remembering. My aunt's mouth swam back from mine. “Tell her,” she said quietly.

  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 m
ove again.

  I took up the pen again. Dearest Father, I await your return. Beatrice. It was enough. Now in my subtle shifting it sufficed. 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. I 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 smell—a 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.

  “You strapped their ankles to the stirrups—yes, go on,” I said confidently.

  “First I had them ride in a circle. Unknown to them three of the menfolk guided the stallions by their reins. The sisters thought themselves most adept and laughed shrilly, if sometimes nervously. Occasionally I gave them a harder twitching with a schooling whip than they had before received. By then they were quite flushed with all the excitement. I judged them ready. The horses were stilled and to multiple shrieks from the three lovely heroines of the piece their tights were swiftly drawn down. Then with a single bound a male leapt up behind each of them, raised their bare bottoms from off the saddles and . . .

  I leaned to her. Our lips, tongues met. My forefinger circled the increasing sticky lips of her slit.

  “Each was fucked more than once?” I asked. I had not intended to use a word of such coarseness. It spilled unbidden from my lips. Katherine's tongue swam around my own.

  “In succession from the males—who had long waited upon such an occasion—each girl received a triple dose. They had quietened considerably by the time a second foaming lance entered their pussies. The gentle jogging of the horses as they continued to move round slowly in a circle added to their pleasures, no doubt.”

  “Their bottoms were feted, too?” I asked. Katherine's parted legs had straightened. I sought right beneath the sweet orb of her bottom and found her puckered rose.

  “No . . . n . . . no. . . . not then,” she stammered. “That pleasure had been reserved. Half fainting with untold pleasures, the girls—were finally dismounted and taken blindfolded into the house, their wrists secured, their tights removed as well as their boots. Their naked bottoms were quite rosy after their ridings, of course. In the main bedroom of the manor all had been prepared beforehand. Taken within, the three were strapped side by side upon the bed with pillows piled tightly beneath their bellies to elevate their bottoms.

  “The squire—entering then ready for the fray with his penis bobbing—exerted his efforts valiantly in each of their bottoms in turn, stilling each while they moaned and squirmed fretfully. Then, taking the elder—whom I placed in the middle—he pumped her bottom fully, fondling the other two meanwhile. Such was his pleasure that the rosehole—from which he finally withdrew—frothed most fully, I can tell you. Oh! oh, Beatrice—your tongue, dearest, I implore you!”

  Her beseeching for my mouth between her elegant thighs was to my satisfactio
n since I intended then to ignore it. She had asked and been refused. It suited me perfectly. Taking her chin I pushed her face back and ceased the toying of my fingers.

  “Later, perhaps,” I purred, “upon your continued good behaviour. You have not finished your recital. What then occurred?”

  “His prick considerably limper, of course, he left the squirming and blindfolded beauties to their wonderings as to the possessor of the doughty staff which had cleft their bottoms—not entirely to their dissatisfaction, as it later transpired. They were then released, bathed and cossetted—by myself and Jenny, as it happened. We said nothing of the lewdnesses to which they had succumbed and indeed brought wine and cakes and made merry as if the afternoon had been nought but gaiety.”

  “Their training began thereafter, Katherine?” My hand held her chin still in a commanding pose.

  “Yes. They were clothed henceforth as you have been—in close-fitting wool dresses with nothing beneath save their stockings and boots or shoes. Frequent but light applications of the birch did wonders. With sisters—they were sixteen, eighteen and twenty respectively—it is best to keep them herded close at all times. The breakfast room, being large, was transformed into a recreation room for them. To a large circular table I had a short centre post fixed. Each girl was spread across the table with her wrists secured to the post. Their ankles were tied by a rope which circled the table and looped around their outstretched legs.

  “For the first week they continued to be blindfolded when brought down, their dresses secured up around their waists. Into the breakfast room I patted them, one by one. They had adorable bottoms and were quite quiet and obedient when secured in a circle around the table. A dozen swishes of the birch came first, bringing a pink glow to their offered bottoms. The twelfth stroke was always the sternest, bringing loud shrill squeals—for they quickly learned that it was followed by the stiff insertion of the throbbing staff into each of their bottoms.