Lords, Ladies, Butlers and Maids Page 8

  None of this he has done, despite my expectations, despite my hopes. It suddenly strikes me that he is not going to do so either. He is too much the gentleman. The very attributes I love him for will see me denied. Even though we have been so close in broad daylight, his respect for me means that, if he just closed his eyes now, I could regain my gown and put it on and slip away without him seeing any more of me then that little portion of my rear, and even then he quickly averted his eyes. As incredible as it seems, I have been naked and closer and more ready for this man than any other in my life, a man who clearly finds me attractive, and yet still I will be allowed to go without him fucking me.

  ‘Voilà!’ cries Duval, shaking me out of my trance. He is off out of the salon without even a goodbye, closing the door behind him loudly. I see he has tidied away his paints whilst I have been distracted. I can only presume the painting is finished and that is that. I look back at my Master, still only inches away. My tired neck can now straighten. I can look directly into his lovely eyes. I still see humour there, not mischief. We are naked and all alone and he has the right to do whatever dirty things he wants to do to me, yet still he is not going to bend me over this trunk and stuff me full. I feel pressure on my hand from his head. He is trying to ease himself back so that we are not so perilously close to kissing. I resist. I no longer care about immorality or what giving into it does to my soul. I sink forward and kiss him, full on the lips. My tongue tries to find his but meets with reticence. His hands do not grip my behind as I imagined, but instead go up to my arms to gently prise me away. The contact is lost but I still hold him as close as before.

  ‘Sidonie, I am married!’ he says, entreating me.

  ‘I will not tell,’ I say. ‘Every gentleman has a mistress.’

  ‘But I love her,’ he says, still quietly. ‘She is all I will ever need.’

  Again my stomach turns cartwheels. I hadn’t thought his chivalry and devotion to be that deeply ingrained. He truly is a man amongst men, not that this helps me. There is no way I can let this moment pass. What is the point of equality and sexual freedom if you cannot take what you need? I rise up onto my knees on the trunk, still with my hand tight against the back of his neck. I push my little titties out into his face. He is aghast and his still parted lips allow me to push one swollen nipple home. I force it in, trying to fill his mouth with my soft breast, pulling his head towards me. My other hand reaches down and I grasp his prick, feeling the delicious weight and warmth of it in my palm, the automatic swell against my gripping fingers. He twists his head to free his mouth of my breast and I sense the instant cool of his saliva upon my skin. His cock cannot help but harden and any second he will give in.

  ‘Stop it, Sidonie!’ he cries. ‘I cannot do this!’

  My hand is already working on him down below, gliding up and down his fattening length to defeat his resistance. He grips my wrist and pulls, dragging me off bit by bit although I am determined to hold him. His strength is too much and my arm is forced up and outwards, as if he is trying to unbalance me and throw me off the trunk. I shuffle sideways, my feet on the trunk now, thinking I should leap clear, but as I turn away my wantonness takes over again. I no longer have a hold of him. I shuffle further round so that my back is at his face, seemingly ready to dismount. Then I bring my weight down upon him, sitting hard on his lap.

  I spit myself upon him and it slides all the way up inside me. I am far too ready to do anything but open up. The penetration is shocking and electric, and searingly wonderful. I hear his throaty gasp beneath my own squeals. Now he must yield. Before he can react I have forced my ankles beneath his thighs so I can grip him with my legs and prevent him lifting me clear. Just being full of him is making me whimper and quake. I need to feel his passion too. I move up and down, drawing more breathless gasps from him. I rise up and slap down hard. I can feel my desire pouring out to drench him.

  He is still beseeching me to stop. He tries to drag me off but I grip tighter with my thighs and ankles, locking me in position. I feel his fingers all over me, gripping, pinching, slapping – trying anything to prevent me milking the pleasure from his loins. In the end he can do nothing but wrap his arms up underneath mine and grasp my shoulders, pulling downwards so that my riding motion is arrested. I cannot go up and down but I can go back and forward so I do, grinding out more pleasure. He has no other way to resist me. I see his face reflected in the mirror, the shock and defeat in his eyes, mixed with lust. I slide back and forth, saturated now. I squeeze my little swollen titties while he watches in the mirror. The sight of my rudeness ensures he stays hard within me, despite his pleas for me to stop. My right hand drops down to my groin and I rub myself, immediately drawing out the unstoppable rush of bliss. I have my eyes closed but I know he is watching me. I am saying over and over, ‘Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,’ grinding against him, frigging myself, being more free and wanton than I had ever dreamed possible.

  He will not be able to climax but nothing can stop me. I do so with racking force, falling back against him, my hips jerking, my chest thumping. He is the motionless organ of my pleasure, resigned with his usual grace to sacrificing his principles for the good of others. His arms drop down and release the pressure at my shoulders now that I am done. He is still hard inside me and it seems a sin to leave him this way. My pleasure has been taken but my mind won’t clear of lust. I slide off him, releasing my grip on his legs. I should climb off and accept whatever fate awaits me but I don’t. Instead I go on all fours, my rear thrust out at him, inviting him to take me any way he fancies, as is his right.

  Odd, despite my overpowering desire, part of me wants him to refuse me, since staying true to his wife makes him even more of the man I hold in such high regard. If he does not enter and have me now then I am finished; cast out, no doubt, from his safety into a world I know nothing about, of rioting and graffiti and Molotov cocktails hurled at police. My only hope would be to join the revolutionaries I so despise, to try to beat them to the gates as they storm this chateau, and to ravish my peerless Monsieur a final time before they strip his nobility away. I feel his movement behind me and I pray that he cannot resist. So strange how I want all those principles I love and admire to desert him now.

  The Lady and the Maid

  Kathleen Tudor

  Anna selected a necklace from her collection on the table and held it up. It was plucked neatly from her hand, and she savoured that tiny moment when Jane’s fingers brushed against her own. Her maid had been with her since she was only a girl, and the maid was only the cook’s daughter, and yet their touches had grown fewer and fewer over the years.

  Jane slid the necklace around Anna’s throat and fastened it, and Anna shifted in the mirror, admiring its hang with a critical eye. Her hair had already been dressed, styled into an updo that looked as if it might have required hours but had taken skilled Jane only a few minutes.

  ‘Do you think I need another comb?’ Anna asked, glancing at the collection she’d laid out for consideration.

  ‘No, my Lady, unless you want to. I think it looks lovely, so simple.’ Jane backed away and Anna stood to turn in front of the full-length mirror.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ She nearly asked Jane how she looked, but the girl always gave the same flattering answer, and Anna had grown tired of the assurances. Anyway, Jane wouldn’t let her go down to dinner looking like riffraff.

  ‘Papa said he had something important to announce at dinner,’ she said. ‘I hope he’s pleased with me.’ She’d run over and over her list of possible transgressions but, try as she might, she wasn’t sure what she might have done to attract her father’s attention. He was always busy with some aspect or other of the estate, and she tried to stay out of his way.

  ‘I’m sure it’s something nice,’ Jane said. She tilted her head enquiringly and Anna waved a hand.

  ‘You may go. Thank you, Jane.’

  Jane bobbed one final curtsey and vanished.

  *

  A
nna picked at her tiny portion of roast and resisted the urge to fidget. Her father had yet to tell her whatever it was he wanted to say, and he and her mother chattered amiably with her grandmother and her cousin Lady Frances.

  She picked up her wine and took a tiny sip, then went back to picking at her dinner. Her mother glared subtly and raised her eyebrow, and Anna sat up straighter and smiled, pretending engagement with the insipid conversation. Really!

  She was just beginning to wonder if she could get away with excusing herself with a ‘headache’ or some such fabrication when her father cleared his throat and turned towards her. ‘My dear, you’ve been very silent tonight.’

  ‘My mind has been wholly occupied with wondering what you might wish to discuss with me tonight, Papa,’ she said. She saw her mother turn and glare at her again, but only smiled even more sweetly and said, ‘Perhaps you might put my curiosity to rest?’

  ‘Yes, well, I had thought to wait until we’d all gone through for tea, but I suppose now is as good a time as ever.’ He adjusted himself in his seat in an unconscious movement that she recognised as ‘putting on his Earl countenance’. She sighed at the apparent gravity of the conversation, but made an effort to keep her frustration to herself, lest her mother feel the need for further reprimand.

  ‘Well, my dear, since you may not inherit this estate, and are well beyond a minimum marriageable age –’

  ‘Darling,’ her mother interrupted, her tone warning. A good thing, because Anna was fit to burst over the comment herself.

  ‘Well, she is,’ the Earl muttered. ‘My dear Anna, we feel that it is time for you to marry. We shall be inviting several likely gentlemen to dinner over the next few months, but I promise you, Anna, if you refuse to choose one, then one of them will be chosen for you. Even if you don’t want to marry your cousin Charles to become countess, you must consider your future, and I wish to see you settled.’

  Frances and Grandmother had fallen completely silent as they regarded Anna, no doubt waiting to see if she would throw one of her legendary tantrums, but Anna was too stunned to speak. She knew in her heart that she would have to marry one day, but she wasn’t ready! None of the eligible men she could think of were the least bit interesting to her, especially dim, foppish Charlie. Couldn’t they see that she simply needed more time?

  She pushed back her chair, waiting until she felt slightly less dizzy before she stood. Papa hastened to rise as well, and she turned towards him. ‘If you will excuse me, I feel I am not at all well. I’m going to lie down.’ She dipped her head respectfully in his direction, then spun and strode gracefully from the dining room.

  Behind her she heard Papa sigh. ‘I knew she would be like this. I had hoped having you here might keep her calmer, dear Frances. Perhaps you could talk to her about the joys of married life?’

  Anna moved purposefully toward the stairs and into her bedroom and rang for Jane, but she didn’t even wait for her maid before she started to tear the comb from her hair. She was wrestling with the clasp on her necklace when Jane arrived, hurried to her side, silently took the clasp and swiftly removed the necklace.

  ‘Are you well, my Lady?’ Jane asked.

  Anna looked at her lovely maid in the crisp black and white uniform and sighed. ‘My father thinks it’s high time I married,’ she said. ‘He swears that if I can’t settle on any of the gentlemen he presents me with, he’ll choose one himself.’ Jane remained silent, carefully not offering an opinion, and Anna stepped forward crossly, pushing herself out of the gown that Jane had nearly finished unbuttoning for her. ‘Don’t you have an opinion about anything?’

  ‘Of course, my Lady, but it isn’t for me to say,’ she said. She bobbed a tiny curtsey and helped Anna into her nightdress and robe.

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’ Anna turned, surprising Jane. ‘But I find myself wishing more and more that you would share one, anyway.’ Jane smelled of soap and of lamb stew. Anna must have interrupted the servants’ dinner when she’d rung for her. ‘Are you going hungry on my account?’ she asked. She was so close that she could feel Jane’s breath lightly fanning the hairs that drifted around her head, freed from the comb but still untamed by a brushing.

  ‘No, my Lady, they’ll set me aside a portion of supper for when I return. But I wasn’t that hungry anyway.’

  Anna smiled sadly at the echo of her own lie. Her lovely maid, willing to go without, to serve her lady. Such loyalty and kindness were rare, she thought. And Jane was one of the kindest and best-spirited people she knew, or at least Anna thought so. A beautiful soul to go with a beautiful face. ‘I wish I could choose to marry you over any of the English gentlemen,’ she said, startling them both. Jane stepped back, and Anna turned and seated herself at the vanity to let Jane brush her hair out.

  Where had such a thought come from? Certainly it was sinful and wicked for two women to marry, wasn’t it? Such a ridiculous notion was so exceptional that it had never been mentioned. Perhaps it was a sin so wicked that no one dared speak of it. She could have laughed at that, but sorrow still lay heavy in her breast.

  Jane picked up Anna’s brush and started to run it through her hair. Anna closed her eyes, luxuriating in the sensation – her favourite of the day. The gentle pulling at her scalp, the soft caress of the bristles through her hair and the way Jane’s hand followed the brush, petting the soft strands to smooth them. She made a small sound of pleasure, and Jane’s hands stilled for a moment, then continued.

  ‘What about you, Jane? Do you have to marry? Perhaps you have a sweetheart in the village?’ When they were children they might have shared such secrets, but it had been years since they had been girls giggling together, and their stations in life had torn them apart. Anna had tutors and lessons and hunting, while Jane had been trained to service and offered a place among the staff.

  ‘No, my Lady, there’s no one. But I’m not lonely. It’s a good life.’

  ‘One you are free to choose for yourself. Sometimes I think I envy you, Jane.’

  Jane smiled at her in the mirror. ‘You think so, but there are freedoms and traps that each of us must deal with, and perhaps we will each always envy each other.’

  ‘How did my maid grow so wise?’ Anna teased. Truly it was wise, though that was hard to believe at a time like this, when she felt her life closing in on her. If she wanted her future son to have a title, with all of the freedoms and rights that entailed, then to give him that life she would have to give up her own freedom, at least a little, and choose a titled husband.

  ‘I’m not wise, my Lady, just practical,’ Jane said. She tied a ribbon to finish off the braid, and stepped back. The bed was already turned down, the room prepared for Anna to sleep. But although she had fully intended to do so when she’d stormed out of supper, she no longer felt tired.

  ‘Jane, why don’t you have a sweetheart?’

  Jane blinked. ‘There’s … no one appropriate whom I fancy, my Lady.’

  ‘No one at all? What about inappropriate?’

  ‘I shouldn’t say, my Lady.’

  And it would be wrong of Anna to use her position to push. She knew it. But she stepped towards her maid anyway, and lowered her voice. ‘Come, Jane, we were girls together. If you can tell no one else, surely you can at least tell me. You must know I would never betray your confidence in me.’

  Jane didn’t answer with words. Instead she leaned forward and closed the small distance left between them, pressing her lips to Anna’s in a charged kiss. Anna felt her head swim and her heart burst with excitement and joy at such a simple touch. It was everything she had never dared to imagine, and she revelled in it, wishing she could lose herself for ever in that simple, chaste embrace.

  But Jane pulled back, looking shocked at herself, and started to turn away. Anna grabbed her arms and held her still, and the maid stared, stricken, into the middle distance. ‘My Lady, forgive me.’

  ‘Never.’ Anna kissed her back, feeling her beloved Jane slowly melt from panicked sti
ffness into soft acceptance beneath her hands. Jane’s tongue teased over her lips, and Anna whimpered and opened instinctively to welcome her in. God, the world was spinning apart and being remade anew around them, and nothing would ever look the same again.

  When they fell apart this time, both of them were breathing heavily, and Jane did not try to flee, though she still looked stricken. ‘It’s folly, my Lady. Foolishness. I am the daughter of a cook, and you are the daughter of an earl. There is no future here. None!’ Her eyes shone wetly, and her voice was thick.

  ‘Don’t you dare leave me over this. Promise me you won’t.’

  ‘No, my Lady. I could never leave you. Not unless you sent me away.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. How could I ever send you away when you’ve changed my life and opened my heart? And anyway, if you took off that maid’s livery and I took off my gown, we’d be just the same.’

  Jane’s eyes went round with shock. ‘My Lady, you mustn’t do that!’

  ‘Perhaps. But I still want to. Will you hold me?’

  Jane stepped into her arms, and Anna sighed in silent pleasure as the two women held one other. She wanted Jane – wanted her in ways she should probably never even consider – but there was time yet. She stepped back and gave her maid a sad smile. ‘Get on with you, and enjoy your supper. I hope it’s still hot.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s been kept warm for me,’ Jane said, curtseying. Anna wished she wouldn’t – not after what they’d shared, and what she still hoped to share. ‘Good night, my Lady.’

  ‘Goodnight, Jane,’ Anna murmured, watching the door close behind her. She climbed into bed and pressed her eyes shut, her mind whirling with imagined images of Jane’s soft skin and sweet, rounded breasts and the cries she might make in the dark of night when Anna brought her to the heights of passion. Anna slid one hand beneath her gown, and brought herself to torturous, silent pleasure.

  *

  Anna smiled politely as Lord Robert was presented to her. He was a marquess’s heir, so marriage to him would technically be a step up for her, though she knew that her dowry would be important to maintaining his family’s status. She dipped her head, mustering every ounce of manners she had been taught, and allowed him to lead her to a settee for quiet conversation. She was sure she was going to choke on the frustration of it all. Lord Robert was her fourth suitor, out of the six her father had apparently lined up for her inspection.