Emily: Or, the Voluptuous Delights of a Once-Innocent Young Lady E-Book

James Jennings

• Herausgeber: Erotic eBooks
• Kategorie: Erotik
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

'Emily: Or, the Voluptuous Delights of a Once-Innocent Young Lady' is centered on the tale of the erotic pursuits of a young English lady at the turn of the century. This book starts innocently enough, but has a believable realism and a stomach knotting ending.
A young Emily is forced to marry the foppish son of a wealthy landowner to supposedly save her parents from the poorhouse. After learning what she likes, Emily goes out of her way to find 'distractions'.

Leseprobe

Emily

Or, the Voluptuous Delights of a Once-Innocent Young Lady

James Jennings

Emily Or, the Voluptuous Delights of a Once-Innocent Young Lady 1880-90James JenningsThis ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy.First edition 2014

Chapter One

‘You will marry soon’, was often said to me at twenty, and so often that I began to think of marriage as a far-off country, or rather an island whereon the inhabitants would be vaguely strange to me – having other manners, other attitudes – and where mirrors (in rooms that I had not visited but knew I must encounter) would reflect different images of me to those with which I was the more familiar. Sometimes I thought of marriage as a chair, a high chair, high with a straight back, and having ornaments of pearls and plumes, and having crested arms, in which I would forever sit.

Such curious fancies often took me then, and still possess me of many other things, of customs, attitudes, and fancies eaten as one eats a small, sweet cake. When I was young, was very young, in my eleventh year and still in bud, an old lady stopped me close by Shotter’s Wood into which a meadow rises and disappears as if it had loped forward in a long, green wave and then had changed its mind, not wishing to disturb the saplings as they were then, long ago. ‘Are there dreams to be had here, dear, my little dear?’ she asked of me.

‘Yes’, I said – said ‘Yes’ in my simplicity, for I knew there were dreams in the myriad leaves, wound in among the stunted hedges, surging in the loam that flows like a dark sea among the aspens and the elder trees. My aunt came hastening to me then, bidding a neighbour adieu, her footsteps purposeful along the lane. I felt her frown fall like a small cloud on my back.

‘What is it that you want?’, she asked the old lady who mumbled something, turned, and went the way that she had come.

I felt a sadness for her – black dress fading into horrid grey, perhaps a penny only in her purse.

‘There are dreams to be had here, Aunty, are there not?’, I asked.

‘What nonsense! Is that what she told you, pray? Downcast are those who live in dreams, for few are ever realised. Examine your mind for practicalities. Absorb your five-times table, Emily.’

I did not, nor have done so since. Tradesmen count money; I do not. I count the pearls of precious moments, yes, small drops of sunlight that I keep among dried shells, old coins and broken necklaces. I count the kisses, quick, impassioned, I have known. Such are not practicalities, but needs. Mama was not as my Aunt Mathilda was. When I spoke to her of dreams, she answered me in kind. Her lorgnettes would rise and she would peer at me with twinkling eyes.

‘Absorb your dreams as earth absorbs the rain, and let them nourish you’, Mama would say.

My sister, Eveline, would use me as an echo-chamber at such times and afterwards would absorb the words from me. I was senior to her by three years and much her monitor in our beginnings. We have been fortunate that our thoughts breathe together, as the thoughts of sisters sometimes do. Our brother, James, was more independent in his ways at first, sought butterflies where we sought petticoats and thought himself a wild explorer with a telescope through which he would peer at other houses far away, across the valley where the sunlight drew long shadows on the grass.

‘What do you see?’ I asked him once, for I had tried it and the aperture seemed far too small for my quick eyes.

‘He looks at the milkmaids’, Eveline said.

They were known to piddle in the grass sometimes, and James had seen them do and said rude words of it, that he had seen their bottoms all a-gleam, that some wore stockings, some did not, but none had drawers they needed to pull down. We were heard to speak of drawers and such by Mama, but she did not mind. At this time I was near eighteen, and more in blossom than I knew myself to be in such male eyes as cast themselves upon my form. Guests came and went like shadows then. They came from other worlds, I thought. The women all were pretty – some much younger than the men.

I recall one, Adelaide, who was scarce much older than myself and sat with Papa and he touched her thighs. Her waist was wasplike, but no more than was my own. Her tutor, guardian – I know not who he was – sat next to me that evening. It was not our custom that the ladies should disperse from table that the gentlemen might smoke. Mama said this was a nonsense since the ladies then smoked, too, their gentle, perfumed cigarettes. James, Eveline, and my elder sister, Jane, had gone to bed. I was the favoured one that night. Mama had a slight flush upon her cheeks at my continued presence, yet she let me stay. We having passed the stage of port and wine, I took to a liqueur, and found it creamy, heady – a delight.

Across the table from me sat a girl of my own age. Her companion had a look I thought of then as saturnine. He held his arm about her waist and made her lean to him and kissed her neck. She stared up at the ceiling, blushed. I expected her to squeal, but she did not. Papa coughed – Mama made a clucking sound. I felt a hand upon my knee, and fingers groped my garters through my dress.

‘We shall retire’, Papa said, ‘Let us to the drawing room’.

I made to rise. The hand up on my thigh prevented me. Adelaide’s guardian conveyed to me a winsome look. Chairs sounded in their scrapings and the others rose. In rising, others float when one is still. I felt transfixed. The hand soothed, found my stocking top, the nascent, glowing flesh above.

‘Mama!’, I wished to speak, but she had gone, the others in her train. The dining room enlarged itself, then shrank.

‘Have you not been tutored?’, I was asked.

I strained my neck and stared at scattered plates, the debris of the feast, the wine stains on the otherwise clean cloth.

‘Sir?’ I spoke but did not look at him. His beard would graze my face, I thought. I moved my legs a trifle, felt his hand like a warm toad slide-slither down to feel my knees, then fall from me.

‘Later, perhaps’, said he, and rose.

His hand extended to me. I was led into the drawing room. Mama gave a look, quick look, then motioned me to sit beside her which I gladly did. A couple sat upon the floor and kissed. Papa and Adelaide perched on a sofa a full foot apart like birds uncertain as to whether to roost or fly. Her corsage was undone. Her white chemise emitted spills of lace. Another couple were together in a chair, the female full upon his lap, a glass uncertain in her hand.

‘There are times for dreams’, Mama said, looked at me, then laughed self-consciously and looked away.

Pamela, companion of the saturnine and older man, rose at a prod from him and came to me. ‘We have nice things to show you in our room – my room’, she said, correcting herself so quickly that the others laughed.

‘I may to bed’, I answered.

‘No’, Mama said, ‘You may go and see, my pet – and then you may to bed. ‘Tis early yet; you are allowed to stay up longer now’.

‘I, too’, the man said whose companion nestled the more deeply in his lap and whispered something in his ear.

The laughter there on bubbled all around, and Papa shifted close to Adelaide who gave me such a perky look and showed half of her titties, swollen, pale. I did not look, I did not wish to look. I thought them all inebriated at the least, yet knew upon the very birth of that quick thought that it was false.

There was a waiting for me to depart. I felt it like the chiming of church bells that come to one with vagueness on the wind and then retreat and fade and are not heard again. The hall seemed hollow as we entered it. For the first time I had not kissed Mama, Papa, goodnight. I had my waist enfolded by the man. The girl preceded us. Her bottom swayed.

Taller than I, she had long legs and showed a flash of patterned stockings, bootees black. Upon the landing, as we turned along the corridor, Eveline’s door chinked open and she peeped, her nightgown swirling close around her thighs. Our eyes met, then she closed the door again. I knew exactly how she would lean against it, lean.

‘A pretty girl’, the man said, and he touched my bottom as he spoke. I felt myself urged forward to a further room, passing my own.

The girl opened the door. As though I were in another house, I thought – as though I did not know the rooms that waited for their guests the long weekends. The bedclothes were drawn down; the sheet showed white, a waiting plateau, though I knew it not.

‘We have time’, the man said. There was awkwardness.

I felt the awkwardness, but knew not what to say, but finally said ‘Yes’, I knew not why.

The girl smiled, grateful for the word, and took my hand and led me to the bed. I felt as panicky as must a bird whose feathers are first clawed at by a cat.

‘What is it you have?’, I asked. I thought of ivory, of lace, of long and painted feathers, fans, some furbelows – I knew not what – and even so I knew they were not there.

‘I shall to the water closet’, said the man. The girl’s grip tightened as he spoke.

The door opened again and then was closed. I stood alone with her.

I turned, found myself turned, our faces close together.

‘Kiss me’, the girl said. There was urgency in that small voice.

I had not kissed with lips to lips before and thought it strange a girl should want to do. I let her lips touch mine. How soft they were!

‘No, more, you silly’. Her hands took my neck. Her mouth slurred the more closely into mine. Hands, arms, were twisted and I fell, fell falling on my back and she upon me with a little laugh, hands tight upon my shoulders so I could not move.

‘Don’t’, I said feebly, but my mouth was smothered underneath her own.

She groped my gown, began to draw it up.

‘No, no – what do you do?’ I blurted, felt her feel my thighs. She snapped my garters playfully and kissed my neck, forcing my legs apart to roll between, was heavy on me, breasts upon my own.

‘He will birch me if I don’t, and may birch you. Are you not birched?’ she asked me. Her words spluttered on my lips.

‘No please, get off. If Mama knows…’

‘Your Mama knows’.

The door re-opened and I heard his voice and saw the looming form above. ‘Tell her that her Mama knows’, he said.

‘Of course, of course she knows. They are all busy downstairs, anyway’, the girl said, mouth warm on my own.

‘Let me get up!’ I strained to force her off.

At that, he fell beside us both and placed his stronger grip upon my arms. ‘Take off her drawers and pleasure her’, I heard.

I squeaked, I kicked, I shook my head, hearing my own squeals – and yet I muffled them. Laughter and cries came faintly from below. I thought of Eveline and how she often leaned against the bedroom door to hear the sounds that floated up on long weekends and how I wished that she would not. My clothes thrown up, my bottom bumped. Ties of my drawers were loosed. I shrieked, whereat his hand clamped firm over my mouth. My drawers descended and were pulled right off, her shoulders forced between my thighs, knees on the floor as then she was. Tip of her tongue – a stamen seeking me between my pouting lovelips.

‘GOOO!’ I choked. Legs quivering, I felt her find my spot and titillate it, tongue-tip swirling, moist. My tummy tightened and grew warm.

‘Descending into pits of love’. His voice was husky to my ear.

Oh, I remember, I remember, yes, the curling shadows and the single lamp, the silence save for the warm hissing through my nose as her tongue lapped. My head sank back – his hand slipped from my lips.

Unwanted were his lips upon my own, invasion of his tongue within my mouth. He held my chin to hold my mouth beneath. Oh yes – remembering how my legs strained, strained forward then, knees limp upon her shoulders and my toes a-curl in the first onrush of my spilling spurts.

‘She is coming – coming on?’ Raising his hungry mouth from mine, he held my shoulders down and turned his head.

‘Mmmm…’, came her murmur.

‘HAAAR!’, I gasped. I arched my back.

Her lips clamped to me suavely and her tongue still lapped, I spurting on – a fine rain in her mouth, and then, and then, my legs hung still and limp. Half closed as were my eyes, I saw the ceiling as a cloud. The house was not my own, no longer real.

‘A fire will be lit in here in winter’, the girl said. She rose and wiped her lips, then loosed her dress and drew it off. Beneath, she wore only a chemise and stockings tightly gartered. The hem of the chemise swayed and flirted and I saw her bush.

Placing his hands beneath my arms, limp arms, the man drew me up and sideways on the bed, my head upon a pillow, my dress rucked up the more, my belly shown.

‘Remain so, for you look so sweet in disarray’, he said.

‘Me, too?’, the girl laughed and she clambered over us and lay on the other side of me so that I then lay in between the pair.

‘Mama…’, I began. My mouth felt very soft. It was not a cry, but the beginning of an expression of belief that she might mount the stairs and intervene.

‘Fires will be lit in many rooms tonight’, the man said. Then he took my mouth.

The girl caressed my thighs and fluffed my pubic hairs. Once, I recall, when our carriage toppled, one wheel in a ditch and Mama screamed, I knew only the little world of the dust-hazed coach and its lopsidedness – knew only panic, fear. The world beyond had vanished. So it was within that bedroom then. The drawing room was part then of some otherness, as were the other rooms about the house. The gardens, dark with night, became a bog or a morass, perhaps. Fingertips soothed the innerness of both my thighs – eased them apart again.

‘Make her come again’, the man said, ‘Let me watch her eyes’.

I bleated ‘No’.

Her mouth came over mine and then she slithered on to me again.

‘No’, I said ‘No’ again, but clutched her arms.

Her stockings rasped to mine and then her bush purred moistly, stickily, to mine, and she began to move her hips and rub. I heard my breath hurr deep into her mouth and clutched her arms. The bed bounced softly as we bumped.

‘Do not!’, my mind said, but I could not stop. Squirming of oily lovelips to my own, her belly warm and sleek to mine.

‘Give me your tongue’, the man said, and he took my face, brought it from under hers to gaze into his own. His hands cupped underneath my head.

The breath kissed from my nostrils to his own. My knees pressed sideways, opened by the girl. Her breathing came as hurriedly as mine. The seconds passed; I stared into his eyes and through his eyes, my lips apart. He made me stay so, made me stay, watching the hidden flames behind my eyes. My belly tingled warmly and I felt her spurt her little rills of liquid round my quim.

‘Emily – extend your tongue. Into my mouth. Now, do it, girl’, he said.

‘WHOO-AAAR!’, I moaned. The white flames, small flames, ‘flickers’ (as I called them since) expanded in my honeypot, then held themselves as if within a ball, a sphere, that waits to burst. My corsage was unbuttoned as our mouths met in a sudden fury of desire, tongue long to tongue and wet and whirling round. My hand was taken, drawn down, grasped the root of him, thick root. I squeezed naively and I rubbed him there and felt him throbbing even more than I, his hand insurgent in my dress, my thorn-hard nipples stark against his palm…

‘He would have done it to me sooner if you had not brought him on’, the girl said in our limpness afterwards. My hand was sticky from the stain that showed upon his trousercloth. The man lay still and sighed and stretched his legs.

‘Mama may come’, I said.

‘She will not, but you seem to have a fear of it. How pleasant it was, though, was it not?’, the girl said, warm thigh to my own, two pillows shared between the three of us.

‘There will be fires lit in the rooms in winter’, said the man. He moved his hand, his knuckles to the wetness of my bush. I felt my tummy ripple to his touch. The girl moved slowly off the bed and slipped off her chemise. Her titties bobbled as she moved.

‘You may watch us. Do you want to watch?’, she asked.

‘She cannot stay’, the man said. He sat up, rubbed his face, then turned his body, kissed me on the lips. ‘Already you have learned to wriggle and to kiss’, he said.

‘I cannot stay’, I echoed, and my voice was like a piece of paper that lies blank, waits to be written on.

Partly to my relief the girl moved round the bed and flung herself beside him. A possessive look was clear upon her face. I found… I found it difficult to move. They knew I found it difficult to move. The man lay back again. Both closed their eyes. The stain upon his trousers was a map of nowhere-nothingness, and yet was stark.

‘Goodnight’, I said. My voice rang hollow in the large, high-ceilinged room. The door seemed heavier than I remembered all the doors. I heard them say ‘Goodnight’ and there was honey in the satisfaction of their tones.

Along the corridor I stopped at Eveline’s room, soothing my hair with fussy, trembling hands. Her lamp was lit still, underneath the door I saw its gleam and turned the knob. Naked she lay, one arm across her eyes. Her nipples glistened, quivered on their crests, were moist.

‘Eveline?’

‘Emily? Someone came and kissed me, took my nightdress off. And it was dark. I know not who it was’, she said.

Chapter Two

‘Did you sleep with Rose last night?’, Mama asked after breakfast when our guests had gone.

‘Rose?’, I asked, ‘Rose?’

‘The girl whose things you went upstairs to see. Or did you not?’

‘Oh yes – I did a little, yes. She fell asleep so quickly, though. I went back to my room at last’. I blushed. I tried to hide my blush, but I could not.

‘I have noticed in dreams an instantaneous transition from one state to another, from one action to another, that does not occur in our waking lives. Instantaneous’, said Papa. He unfolded his newspaper as he spoke and held it up before him – gazed into its pages. As if I could see his eyes; as if I could see his eyes.

‘Am I as slim, my skin as fair, as when you married me?’, Mama asked him.

‘Instantaneous. There is no sense of suspension between one moment and another’, said Papa.

Was it in part an answer to her question? Such subtleties were often spoken in our house. I felt that he was wrong, yet dared not say so. At the moment of the utmost warmth and moisture in my honeypot the night before; at the moment of the electric tingling of another’s tongue within my mouth, all had seemed instantaneous. All moments merged into the next.

Mama was jealous, perhaps, of Adelaide. I felt a spite for her myself. Had she put her tongue in Papa’s mouth last night? In his solidity, his breadth, his strength, solemn of demeanour as he often was, I thought it quite impossible. And yet her corsage had been loosed and half her breasts exposed in seeming readiness. And Eveline, her nightgown off and nipples risen. Quite plump already were her yearling tits. Many such have I since caressed and known the ineluctable, firm-silky feel of them. Their very brazenness invites the palm to shape the waiting globes.

Eveline and James had gone to play, Mama said. Often she said ‘play’, though we three were too old for such. I found them in the narrow walk between the conservatory and the potting shed. Eveline was struggling closely in James’ arms. Her hand was down between them and I saw his cock, the helmet ruby and the stem brown-white. I stayed my steps. They had not seen me then.

‘Don’t! Stop it, no!’, said Eveline.

James’ neck was flushed; he held her dress half up, her stockings white around her slim, young legs. ‘Hold it, you silly’.

‘No, won’t! Oh!’ Her dress up at the back, her drawers tight-filled.

He palmed the close-sheathed cheeks and felt beneath. I had my mouth go dry; my face felt hot.

‘What do you do?’, I asked, and Eveline sprang back. I saw her garters, pale flash of her thighs.

‘I did not mean to; it was James’ fault’, she said and made to tug her dress down, but I stepped before her and I seized her wrist.

James grinned at me, his trousers all agape and stalk up-sticking to my view. So fresh, so firm it looked, I felt a thrill of sin in me.

‘I shall tell Mama’, said Eveline and tried to tug away.

James said, ‘She is a sillikins; she won’t’.

‘Best not to say, best not to speak’, said I.

A slur of footsteps sounded and a maid approached, dustpan in hand, to empty it perhaps. She had not seen us. Round the corner, rushing, bumping, giggling of a sudden ran we three, James with his naughty thing still sticking out. He leaned against the sunburned wall and grinned at us with that unease that males have when they are in lust.

‘It’s naughty’, Eveline said, but she still stared at it.

‘You were naughty last night, were you not?’, I asked, and of a sudden pushed her to him, bright with newfound excitement as I felt.

James clasped her, belly to his cock. She squealed.

‘Oh, shush!’, I said, and then the maid came round the corner, came on us, and stood stock-still, she stood and stared. Her arms limp, legs apart, she stared, the dustpan dangling from one hand. Fine cloud of dust like fairies in the light.

‘Mary, come here’, I said to her.

I felt a tautness, in me, an excitement tight, like a constriction in my throat. My sister turned her face away, cried out. Her hips turned, and the maid saw James’ cock.

‘Miss, I got work to do’. She looked as we had looked and saw it clear, its urgency upthrusting from his balls.

I set my teeth. I had a wild foolishness upon me then, perhaps. Eveline leaned back from James and caught the mood of me and said, ‘Yes, Mary, do. Emily will give you half a sovereign if you do’.

‘No, Miss, I…’

‘Mary, come HERE! A sovereign it will be, I promise you. Come – touch it, feel it nice and firm’, I said.

‘No, Miss, please, Miss…’.

But Eveline leapt, gazelle-like did she leap, her face in flush as was my own and grabbed at Mary’s wrist and drew her close.

The dustpan clattered down. Its tinplate quivered on the flagstones, then was still. ‘I can’t!’

The maid’s teeth chattered, but we had her close and pressed the blackness of her skirt to James who clasped her waist and boldly kissed her neck. Her hands were clenched.

I forced her fingers open, though, in spite of it, and put them to his prick and whispered, ‘Yes, a sovereign, Mary – a whole sovereign’, in her ear.

‘Ah, no, it’s wicked, Miss – don’t make me do!’ She struggled, twisted, writhed within his clasp while Eveline drew the maid’s skirt up and laughed. She had nice legs and was no more than seventeen or so. Her calves were slender and her thighs were plump, fresh as a turkey’s, plump and white.

‘She has no drawers on’, James said.

Both his hands had shifted from her waist – were up her skirt. The maid’s arms strained against him and her head hung back. My sister seized her hair and pulled it down to make her neck strain back the more. White of her throat, her lips apart. She moaned but did not squeal out loud. James rolled her skirt up to her hips. Beside them – leaning close against – I saw his pego poking underneath her dell.

‘No sir! No, Miss! Oh, please! Ah – OOOH!’

They were too close, too close for me to see, and curiously I felt a fear for her at that stiff poker underneath her quim. ‘No, James – wait! Put it in her mouth instead!’ I knew not why I said it, with my head a-spin. The maid was sobbing, yet there were no tears.

‘Oho, yes, inbetween her lips!’, said Eveline and clasped the maid’s slim waist and made her bend, as I did too, my hand upon her head until the swollen crest was at her mouth and dong-like brushed against her rosy lips.

‘Ho… ho… ho… hold her nose’, James gritted, and I felt for it and did.

She snorted, wriggled, but then finally sucked breath in through her mouth and, with it open, in his knob was slid. I saw the inches, pinky-white, absorbed.

‘T… t… two sovereigns!’, stuttered James and I said ‘Yes!’ and saw saliva on his stalk that then was half-embedded in her mouth while Eveline had bared the girl’s round bottom and was feeling it. I watched James’ face. His mouth went slack. I want to see her eyes, the man had said of me and I, remembering, took note of James’ slack look, the presence of a wonderment, a charm.

‘Oooh-wer, I’m feeling her!’, said Evelyn and laughed.

‘T…t… two sovereigns if she sucks’, said James again.

The maid was snorting less. I loosed my fingers from her nose and heard her slurping as she drew upon the piston of his hot desire, hips wriggling to my sister’s fingers underneath her bottom where the sunlight gleamed on her twin orbs.

‘Oh, darling!’ Gasping, suddenly my mouth was close to James’, and one hand lightly placed on Mary’s head. Mouth then to mouth we kissed. Warm, hurried breathings and wet tongues a-touch.

‘Goo-goo-goo-goooh!’, he gurgled and I felt his hips a-shake. A glubbing sound came from the maid’s own mouth. James’ eyes screwed up; he sucked upon my tongue.

‘Dooo-doo-doo-doooh!’, he stammered on my tongue. I knew him to be wetting – coming – then. His form was all a-shake, a-shake throughout. The maid was spluttering. James’ breath hissed fiercely to my own – legs shook – and then he drew his dripping penis out.

‘SPMMMF!’, Mary spluttered.

Skirt up still, we let her rise, hand to her mouth and wiping it.

‘Oh! I am going in!’, said Eveline in a panic then, and ran. Her footsteps sounded far, then she was gone.

James grinned the weakest grin; his cock hung limp, was smeared around the knob and rosier than when he had first put it in.

‘OH-WOH!’, the maid sobbed.

‘There, there, shush’, said I. I put my arms around her and James slid away. He buttoned up his trousers as he went. I rather hated him for his cowardice, and thought all males were so, perhaps. After they had come, as it was called.

‘I didn’t, didn’t want to!’, Mary sobbed, though still there were no tears.

I soothed her hair. We clung as skylarks cling in summer to a wall. ‘You will have your money, honestly’, I said.

‘Don’t want it, don’t!’ She wiped her lips again.

I wondered at the volume he had spilled within, and knew her cry to be a false one by the tone of it. ‘Come, Mary, don’t be silly; yes, you do. Come to my room now – come indoors. Oh, what a jape it was’, I laughed. My laugh was tinsel, though. I had a warmth between my thighs and sensed that she too had.

‘I shall be told off now’, she snivelled as we walked away.

‘You shall not be, Mary. I will say, if asked, that my dress was snagged against the hedge and that you helped me get it free. Tompkins will dare say naught to me’, I said, referring to the housekeeper we then had.

‘You don’t have to give me anyfink’, she whined.

I wished her not to whine – wished her to walk upright, lips parted at the wonder of it as I thought I would myself have done.

Mama was in the morning room and saw us enter, scolded Mary for her wrinkled dress, but I – explaining in a mumble that we had fallen down – took the girl upstairs and to my room. She stood there humbly while I closed the door, sought for my purse and handed her a coin. She would not take it till I pressed it to her palm.

‘Master James will give you another, Mary; I will see to it’.

‘Don’t want it, Miss’. But even so, she clasped her hand around the shining piece.

‘It is not for earning, Mary. Do not think of it as such, but for a pleasure spent, and yet another you may spend upon your own. Did it taste funny, nice? Oh tell me, do.’

‘Dunno, Miss.’ There was crimson in her cheeks.

I sensed in her that girlish urge I often had myself to laugh and cry in the same moment. ‘It was not horrid, really? Was it? No?’

‘It tasted funny… well, not nasty, no. It’s…’

‘Go on, Mary, tell me, do. I often wanted… well… to do the same’.

‘Tastes creamy, salty. There was ever such a lot!’ She giggled suddenly, then choked and held her hand up to her mouth. She smiled, she bit her lower lip.

I could not help but do the same and hugged her to me. Stiff at first, she then relented, let me hold her close. I felt her belly warm to mine, her thighs. ‘I will get the other sovereign for you, Mary – give it you tonight.’

‘All right, Miss, yes. I’ll get a bonnet, a new dress, and hide the rest away, I will’.

‘I bet it throbbed! Oh, Mary, did it throb?’

Her eyes were bright, her lips were close to mine. I wanted much to kiss her, but instead I soothed her cheeks. Her breath was milky, pleasant, with a scent of sperm such as I had known upon the bed. She did not answer, dropped her eyes. Our noses touched and tickled. Hard her breasts felt up against my own.

‘Would you do it again, Mary, if I asked you to?’

‘Dunno, Miss.’

‘Would you, Mary?’

‘Might. I shouldn’t, though – should I? You said… Oh, Miss, you said…’

‘I said I’d thought of it. I have. I haven’t done it, though, myself. I will do, though, I know I will. But not with Master James, of course. There – now we have a secret each. I will not tell, and nor will you’.

‘Oh no, I never would, Miss, no. I darst not. They would turnme out. My Dad would be that angry with me that I don’t know what. I never done it that way, Miss, before.’

‘But you have done it, though? Oh, tell me… No, not now perhaps, or Mama will wonder at your absence and our solitude.’

‘Yes. Better go, Miss.’ Startled at our boldness, she released herself, ran out.

I leaned against the door as Eveline did. I had kissed James upon the mouth – had put my tongue between his lips. His cock had jetted into Mary’s while we did. My head a-spin, my quim a-throb, I eased my dress up, felt my bottom warm against the moulding of the door and touched my lovelips through the cotton’s veil. Head buzzing, eyelids drooping, I began to rub, but then was startled into otherness.

A loud knock sounded. Papa called my name.

Chapter Three

‘It is Arnold’, said Papa.

I felt dismayed and disarrayed. ‘Oh? Why then did not the maid come?’, asked I and felt a thrill of wonderment and apprehension coursing through my veins at my impertinence.

‘Mary is not to be found, the valet has injured his leg, and… Why do you ask?’

‘I beg your pardon, Papa; I did not think’. I felt a guilt at what had passed and also had a sense of irritation to be disturbed at such a moment, dress up and my calves on view.

‘Indeed? Have you a fever? You appear to me quite flushed’. His look absorbed me, and I had the strangest feeling that I saw him and yet saw him not. His eyes became transparent. Through them I could see again the merriment outside, against the wall, and wondered if it, too, were in his head, in my strange fancy, though he could not know.

‘I was playing, father, and I just came up’.

‘You are beyond such sport now, are you not? Your activities henceforth should be otherwise. Give thought to it, my dear, for Arnold has a serious intent – I do believe he has. Indeed, he has spoken of intentions, privately to me, of which I find approval.

Are you of the same mind – to wed?’

I turned my back on him. Dismay showed in my eyes. Arnold was four years older than myself. His father was a merchant, though so rich that Society forgave him that. His mother was a little vulgar, so I thought – his sisters strange.

‘Papa, he has not - ‘

‘Not what?’ Approaching me as he then did, I hunched my shoulders and I blushed. It seemed an oddity to say what I then needed to. Mama I might have said it to, but not Papa.

‘He has not even kissed me yet’. So tightly and with such embarrassment the words came that my throat was as a tube from which one squeezes water, urging out the drops.

‘Not kissed, not kissed? Such is not to be taken as a token or a promise. Many people kiss whose thoughts are at the same time of another – hence there then is little value to it, or they may have but a passing fancy for the moment, upon which – having savoured the lips they sought – they find the least fulfilment therein. Arnold will inherit much. The only son, you know’.

‘I know that, yes, Papa’. I did not turn, I would not turn. I hated what he said, or had no liking for it at the least.

‘I am to be sold, then? Am I to be sold?’ My bitterness surprised me, yet I could not help but say. James had leaned against the wall. The maid had succoured, sucked, him. There was freedom there. Against the wall, against the sunlit wall. Mary would not be immured in marriage just for that.

‘It is the way of things that women are given in marriage, Emily’.

‘Is it?’ My ire was up, and such as I had never known before. I, meek in Papa’s presence always, was a rebel now. I had my cause. The swallows flew against the tall blue sky all summer long and never landed. Never had I seen one need to rest upon a bough. I wished, I wished, to be as them – to fly, to fly.

‘I have often kissed you, Emily. ‘Tis but a token – not a promise never to be broken’. His voice was softer. I did not receive the strictures, reprimand, I had expected. Face to face we stood, I turning, twirled, by guiding hands and brought to face, nose tickled by his black cravat, my hair a little rumpled and no powder on my cheeks.

‘It is not the same’, I mumbled, knowing not how I should put my arms, my hands. I let them fall, held them against my skirt.

‘You must be guided by your elders, Emily. Mark this kiss – it shall be no more, no less, than others are.’ So saying, he lifted up my chin.

Uncomprehending (I could not do otherwise) I allowed his lips to fall, full fall, upon my own, O lightly at the first but then they pressed, merged, moistened, mouths became as one mouth yet were two. I felt a dizziness and clutched his arms. His chest absorbed the firmly jellied pressure of my breasts. My shoulders were enfolded – the whole length of my slim body pressed to his; his thighs were tree-trunks to my own. Hands shaped my back and pondered at my bottom’s bulb, tasting the twin globes that they found beneath my dress.

One minute, two perhaps, we breathed, thus breathed, upon each other’s tongue, and there was wilderness and wildness in my mind, a hollow sounding as of songs I never heard befo [...]