The Young Governess (10 page)

And that was all that was required to send Kate over the top. She bucked and heaved, she moaned and squealed; yet Alice was merciless, keeping her lips sealed to the poor girl’s clitoris, tonguing it all the while. Kate’s limbs started to thrash spastically and her hips shivered and shook in a dance of agonising pleasure. It felt to her as if a great steel spring inside her that had been winding slowly had reached its breaking point and suddenly snapped. Kate shrieked with ecstasy and a great jet of ejaculate gushed from her cunt, striking Alice’s face full on; she lapped up the clear nectar, swallowing as if it had been the finest vintage Tokay. Kate was blissfully unaware of her liquid tribute to Alice’s tonguing, but a few of the ladies gathered around the little group murmured their appreciation. While Alice and the others dressed, she closed her eyes and fell into a dreamless slumber.

At last it was time to leave. The Handmaidens threw a thick, hooded, cloak over Kate’s naked shoulders and drew it tight around her. She was then half-pushed, half-bundled into the carriage and they were soon back at Walthrop.

When Kate failed to appear for breakfast that morning, Alice Fordham smiled. When an hour and a half later, Jenks reported to her that Miss Eleanor was still waiting in the schoolroom for Miss Spencer to appear, Lady Fordham’s smile broadened. She asked him to fetch her husband.

A slumbering Kate was shaken awake by Mrs Beveridge and told to dress quickly as the Master and the Mistress were waiting for her in the drawing room.

Kate hurriedly dressed and, only half-awake, ran downstairs to meet her employers. This time, it was Sir Bradley Fordham who spoke to her first, and his voice was angry.

“Tell me Kate, how much do we pay you a week?”

“Sir Bradley, I’m most apologetic for my tardiness… it’s just that with the Follower’s ceremony of last night, I…”

The baronet cut her short.

“I’m not interested in what you get up to at night, young Miss, I would like you to remind me of what salary we agreed to pay you.”

“Th-thirty-five shillings a week, Sir. Just over ninety pounds a year.”

“With full bed and board, moreover. Do you not sit at our table and do we not treat you as a member of our family?”

“Yes, Sir Bradley,” Kate replied in a forlorn, barely audible voice.

“These are absurdly generous terms for one so inexperienced in her profession. And yet you have chosen to repay this generosity by your extreme tardiness and dilatory ways. We cannot afford to keep slovenly staff in luxury; there are many who would give an eye-tooth for your position. So what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I- I will try to make amends for my lateness, Sir. I shall be more punctual in future. And if there is any small way I can repay you for this misdemeanour…” A pallid Kate let her voice trail off and looked for support from Alice, though she was not really expecting any.

“As a matter of fact there is. For the next three days, during Royal Ascot week, the house will be very full of guests and their servants. We shall need all the bedrooms, and yours to boot. You will therefore share the work and accommodation of the Handmaidens for this period and in this way you will be furnished with a highly beneficial reminder of how those less fortunate than ourselves must live.”

Inwardly, Kate heaved a sigh of relief. That could not be so bad. To endure a little more attention from the randy old goat of a pastor and his equally concupiscent wife… and besides, those girls seemed so gentle, so sweet. She would happily work beside them, and share their dormitory or wherever they slept.

“I would be happy to do this, Sir Bradley. It is the least…”

But he had already waved her away and turned his back on Kate to talk to his wife. Alice caught Kate’s eye and said quietly over her husband’s shoulder, “Go on, Kate, and hurry; you may pack a small valise with your night things to take with you. One of the housemaids will accompany you to the Rectory.”

* * * * *

In under half an hour, they had reached the Rectory. Mrs Pike greeted Kate coolly and dismissed the servant.

“I am informed that you will be staying with us for three days and working as a Handmaiden.”

Kate nodded.

“Well, you will need some training, I suppose,” sighed Mrs Pike. “Our best girl, Molly, will show you what is expected of you.”

She leaned out the window and rang a hand bell vigorously.

“But… but I have no idea what sort of work…”

“My dear, I am far too busy to explain!” Bella Pike interrupted Kate. “Let us just say that she will show you how to entertain the gentlemen who are visiting, either for the day, for the races, or staying at Walthrop with Sir Bradley and Lady Fordham for the duration of Royal Ascot. And here she is. Molly, this is Kate. I would like you to settle her in. Now, I must really go and see Cook about luncheon.”

Kate recognised the strapping redheaded girl from last night. Two or three years younger than herself, no more. Huge-breasted, freckles on creamy skin. Hair the colour of a maple leaf in autumn. Here she seemed more confident, more her own woman, more on her own turf.

“We’ve plenty of time, Kate, the first customers isn’t expected until about five o’clock.” Molly had a soft, rural accent and a musical voice. “But they’ll be here ’til eight, and mebbe there’ll be plenty of them. Now take your things, if you please, and follow me.”

Kate followed her guide along the path that led through the little back garden to a gate, and there in the shade of some large beeches, lay the Old Stables, a long, single-storied building with a pleasantly aged look to it. Inside, a dozen or more stalls for horses were ranged in a long row. The other Handmaidens were variously occupied in sweeping, needlework and preparing lunch on a long table at the far end of the room. Were it not for the fact that they were naked, save for their little calico aprons, it would have seemed an entirely natural scene. Kate’s buxom companion stopped at one of the stalls, pushed the door open and pointed inside.

“Here you are, Kate. Not the luxury you’ll have been accustomed to up at the big house, p’raps, but it’s home for the likes of us. We eats at the long table down that end and at thissun there’s a washroom and water-closets.”

Kate stared stupidly at the pretty girl, not comprehending at first.

“You… you mean you… we… actually sleep here? Here in these stables?”

“Well of course we does, you silly girl. B’aint be no room for us nowhere else. And we works here, and all!”

“Work? What sort of work?” asked Kate with a sense of rising panic. In the corner of the stall there was a ticking palliasse, a small stool, and on the worn, wooden cobbled floor, a layer of clean straw.

“Why this is where they fucks us, girl. The swells. The toffs. The nobs. The gentry. In the arse or fanny, it doesn’t really worry me. Long as I gets me grub and ale. The grub’s good here, better’n the workhouse, and that’s for sure. Oh, and sometimes they wants you to suck them off. I likes that! Especially when they comes on me tits!” Molly gave a filthy laugh and paused to lift and squeeze her outsized, melon-like breasts by way of demonstration, and then continued, in a more sober voice, “They’re nice boys on the whole. Only one or two rotten apples among ’em and they soon gets told off by the others if they misbehaves, like.”

“But don’t the girls get with child?” was all that Kate could think of saying.

“Not often. Only one – Betty – and now she’s got a nice life, married off to a local farmer’s boy. Unless it’s our safe time of the month or they agree to spend outside us, the men wear these fancy rubber things. Them’s the rules, see?” said Molly, tapping her nose conspiratorially.

Kate did not see. What she had just heard amounted to yet another enormous, incomprehensible and outrageous affront to her person, her self-respect, her liberty, her very sanity. Surely… she could not be expected to…

Kate gave voice to her thoughts.

“Surely they don’t expect me to…”

“But of course they expect you to, m’dear!” Molly interrupted. “And you’ll be the toast o’ the swells. They’ll all want you. Purty new girl like you, talking posh, yes… lucky for us you’ll only be staying with us for a day or two, otherwise us lot’d have no fun at all.”

Molly paused and looked at Kate critically, head to one side.

“Some of the toffs like to have two girls to sport with. Now you’re a partner I wouldn’t say no to… I remembers you from last night – and you’re a bit of a goer if I remembers right!” And Molly laughed a low, musical laugh, but one that did nothing to raise Kate’s spirits.

“But have none of you girls thought of going to the police? A justice of the peace? You… we… are being prostituted!”

“Old Dan Wiggins? He’s a nice copper, true. He likes us girls. He has one of us every month, see? And we gets regular visits from the local magistrate too, and even the lord lieutenant, sometimes, though he’s a bit past it now. No, Kate, we doesn’t go to the authorities, they comes to us!”

Once more, it seemed to Kate, the Fordhams had betrayed her. Why, they were no better than white slavers! This was no club for decadent lesbians – this was a brothel! Now she was to be fucked by men for money! Complete strangers, men she would never see again! Kate’s sense of outrage was almost total, but somewhere far at the back of her mind, a small, clear voice was trying to make itself heard. Here were men, and likely most were married, too. But not all of them would be cheating on their wives. Some would surely be bachelors. Toffs and swells, as Molly so eloquently put it… eligible bachelors in other words. Wait and see, Kate. Wait and see, said the little voice.

Molly interrupted her short reverie.

“Come and meet the other girls,” she said.

* * * * *

Nervously, Kate prepared for her first ‘customer’. With the limited resources available in the washroom, she ran a comb through her hair and applied a dab of cologne behind her ears and on the insides of her thighs as Molly had told her to. She was relieved that the girl seemed to like her so much, for she didn’t think she would be able to survive the ordeal that lay ahead without such a staunch ally. Molly had told her much in the short hours they had spent together.

“The girls that Sir Bradley and old Pike choose are mainly from the workhouses. Orphans or abandoned by their parents and suchlikes, they’re only too keen to leave that horrible place. And those two have a knack for sniffing out the randy ones.” She laughed. “There’s never more than about half a dozen of us. When we comes of age, Sir Bradley helps us find work in London. Our Jenny, now, she comes back to visit us the other day in all her finery – she’s still sweet on one of the girls here, see – and she earns a pretty penny I daresay. Heavens! The jewels and fur stole she sported alone must have cost a fortune!”

She paused to help herself to another large slice of game pie. Kate had to admit, if this luncheon was anything to go by, the food the girls were given was delicious and plentiful – none of them looked hungry, that was for sure.

“Now usually, we gets a gentleman mebbe once or twice a day. But then Sir Bradley has these weekend parties and the gentlemen staying are business or sportin’ friends of his. They likes to use us a lot more. Ascot week… that begins tomorrow… why the place is swarmin’ with swells. I serviced nigh on twenty in a day, last season!” Molly giggled. “It was a lark, I’ll say! All of us girls in our stalls, busy fucking and shrieking … the toffs wandering up and down, you’ll see – it’ll be like that tomorrow, a regular party. When the weather’s warm, we are to wear just our aprons as we are now, and no more. Mrs Pike’s ever so strict about that. She’ll whip a girl for less. But she’s not a bad old cunt – although not all of the girls like to lick her fanny; she keeps an eye out for us. Oh Lor! Talk of the devil. Here comes the old baggage herself now!”

The subject of their discussion appeared, looking extremely self-important. She smiled approvingly at Kate and drew her and Molly aside, leaving the other girls to finish their lunch at the long refectory table.

“Lord Barchester and his French manservant, a deaf-mute, will be arriving shortly. You have time to finish your luncheon. He has requested your company and that of another girl, Molly. I suggest you choose Kate, for this would seem a perfect opportunity for you to introduce her to the way our girls are expected to work. He is a pleasant enough man and his servant – although it is highly irregular for one of our ‘visitors’ to be accompanied thus – should be no trouble at all.”

When Kate emerged from the washroom, Molly and Lord Barchester, a handsome, burly man in his early thirties, were waiting for her, seated at the long refectory table. Kate felt a warming tingle when she saw the way his eyes moved over her body, lingering at the swelling peaks of her naked breasts and again at the little calico kilt that barely covered the most intimate parts of her body.

“You are even prettier and shapelier than Sir Bradley described you,” he grinned, his rich baritone masculine voice sending tingles through Kate. “Come,” he said, getting to his feet and placing his silk top hat and cane on one of the chairs, “Henri’s already waiting for us in Molly’s stall.”

Molly wore the same little covering as Kate and the shortness of the skimpy garment exposed her long, willowy legs from the crotch to her toes as well as the bottom curves of her opulent arse. Her wondrously large breasts hung like ripe melons against her chest, the nipples temptingly hard and prominent, begging to be kissed and sucked.

Lord Barchester finished his drink and smiled.

“Sir, you must understand that I am quite unused to this sort of… I- I cannot say that I find my predicament… ,” Kate struggled to justify her presence, to cling to some tattered shred of respectability at the same time as trying to quiet the rising excitement she felt when her eyes were drawn to the bulge in Lord Barchester’s trousers.

“Don’t be silly,” he told her. “If that’s the case, we’ll soon show you the ropes, won’t we, young Molly?” The peer grinned widely.

“Oh, that we will, M'lord,” laughed Molly.

She took Kate’s arm and they fell back, allowing their ‘visitor’ to get a little ahead of them.