I had thought of them-of she and Caroline-as loving toys until that moment, thought of them as legs and tits and bulbing bottoms, furry nests, as loving kin who had no will that was not in great part my own.
“It is a game,” I said. I heard my own voice say the words.
“A game, yes. One that we respect. I am your Mistress, dearest, am I not today?” said Caroline, but made no move to me. I gazed at Lady Somner and my sister. All was still. To show my pretended insouciance, I emptied first my glass and then said “Yes.” The sound was a plum that swelled within my throat.
“Then come to me. Come, Harry, come!”
Again I wished to show my independence, but it could not be. I placed my glass down slowly and then walked to her, a foolish smile emergent on my lips. As I approached so Caroline thrust out one arm and took my nose and tweaked it hard. I yelped. She held to it and made me feel a fool, a crablike clown who knew not how to stand while to my horror Adelaide put on a look of mild amusement at my plight.
“Yeeek!” I squealed.
“A gentleman does not fight a lady, Harry-that's the trick of it, or part of it. I am your dominant. Say that I am!”
“You are my… my… my dominant,” I gasped. A fearful thrill was in me that I did not wish to have, to be handled so, to be handled so.
“Yes,” Caroline said simply and released my nose, then added, “Adelaide may do it, too, today. Today she is your Mistress, too, you know. Show your obeisance to her, Harry. Kiss her feet. Such pretty little feet she has!”
I could not refuse-knew that I dare not do. I had permitted Caroline to hold me so. I had not gripped her arm, struck it away. Besides, there were greater subtleties to it all that came to me. Adelaide had been forced to give lip-service to me. If I did not kneel, I would insult her. Thus, before all three I knelt and pressed my mouth upon her toes whose wriggling I could feel beneath the slippers that she wore. I heard a kiss above and then I rose, swaggered away, but knew not how to be.
“Harry-next time you do not rise until you are told to rise. You understand?” came then from Lady Somner, though her voice was quiet.
“Oh yes. Oh yes, the game, of course,” I answered very casually.
At that she rose and sauntered to me swaying her broad hips, confronting me, tits looming to my chest.
“Girls are put to gentlemen, Harry, frequently, and that is very properly so. Contrariwise, though gentlemen are sometimes put to girls, and in whatever way the girls should chose. Whatever way. Make sure you mark my words. The rules must be observed, you understand?”
I flushed deeply to be reprimanded so. I believe I wished to both strike her and embrace her at the same moment. Adelaide was staring at me, finger in her mouth.
“Of course,” I replied stiffly, and Lady Somner sighed and shook her head. “The game is Life, Harry. Do you not understand? Well-soon enough you will. Come, girls, we will depart. Harry, you will ride with Adelaide, and I with Caroline in the other carriage.”
Dumbly I followed, though I shrugged at Adelaide as if to say, “I do not care.” The valises were transported and we sat within. The carriage smelled of summer days with many motes of dust a-dancing like tiny moths between the bleared-glass windows.
“Kiss me,” I murmured as we started off. I made to take her lips. She turned her head away.
“No, Harry, no-don't want to, don't-not now.”
“Why do you not?” I tried to force her, wished to have my way with her to show I was not craven, nor would ever be.
She squeaked, she giggled, pressed against my chest and would not offer up her mouth. “No, Harry, no-I am your Mistress for today; you heard it said. So I will not- so there!” Hands smacking mine-into the corner of the carriage then she slumped.
“It is silly. Why do as they say? You were different just before-when we were in the drawing room alone.”
“I know, but… Harry! Ooooh! oh! ah!”
I caught her, held her as I wished, tilted her face by force beneath my own and mashed my lips to hers. At first she spluttered, clawed at me, but then subsided, took my tongue.
“You said you will be fucked tonight.”
“I know.” Sweet wet of her own tongue within my mouth.
“Don't want you to be,” I mumbled, roughed her skirt up, felt her thighs.
“Nooo-don't!” she moaned but then began to breathe more heavily as I reached my fingers to her quim and eased her warm-flesh thighs apart.
“You will be and you'll let him, won't you?”
“Yes,” eyes rolling up she pushed her bottom forward on the seat and spilled a trilling, salty spill over my finger-tips, laced them with wet, wriggled her bottom madly and then came again, and I wonder at her hot response, my cock stiff as a flagpole as she worked her hips. But then alarms! A bump of wheels, a coachman's shout, and the carriage of Lady Somner came alongside ours, the window down, she staring full within upon our amourous scene. Her fingers waggled once as we both stared and Adelaide tried to thrust her skirt down once again. Too late, too late.
“You naughty girl! You will be caned for this!”
Her voice rang full across and then her coach receded once again and followed in our wake.
“Oh God!” cried Adelaide and then began to sob.
CHAPTER NINE
I knew not how to think as we arrived, and no more did Adelaide perhaps. Caroline exuded only happiness. In the hallway of her house where the glass eyes of the stags' heads gazed into eternity, she squeezed my hand in the manner of a child arriving at a party. Adelaide walked on ahead, accompanied by Lady Somner. She held her back straight and her shoulders square. I loved her muchly in that moment, proud and graceful as her carriage was.
“Surely your Mama did not mean…” I whispered to Caroline who did not permit me to end the sentence, but knew well enough what I meant.
“Dearest, 'twill only be twelve strokes with the cane, or six if she is very good,” she answered.
Alarm filled me. I confess it. Was Caroline's nature after all so like to a chameleon's skin that she could change from honeyed words to such a cool appraisal of castigating poor Adelaide's bare bottom?
“But I cannot permit!” I uttered all too feebly, whereat I was shushed, my hand squeezed tighter. Lady Somner and my sister had preceded us already into the drawing room. I heard a gruff but cultured voice, the ownership of which I did not doubt, no more than did my love.
“Come, you must meet Papa,” she said, and led me in to make my first acquaintance with her sire-a man of goodly stature with a goatee beard who greeted me most courteously.
“You are to marry Caroline,” he said with some abruptness.
“If I may, sir, yes.”
“I have no doubt you may and that you will, if such she wishes. Come-let us have a toast to it.”
I felt as though I had been shuffled into a new life, just as a card is shuffled in a pack. All was a whirl, a swirl, yet done with grace. Caroline kissed her Papa-then Adelaide was drawn to do the same. He kissed them both upon the mouth and with no undue haste, thus causing my sisters eyes to look confused before she was drawn down on an ottoman to sit with Lady Somner who remarked immediately on her prettiness.
“And a perfect figure, insofar as I can see. You will stay with us, my dear? Have you played games today?” Lord Somner asked, running the sentences so closely into one another that they seemed as one.
“Masters and Mistresses-or rather, we made a beginning to it, Arnold. Adelaide is of course not fully tutored yet,” replied his wife, whereat my sister received amid her blushes another full appraisal from his eyes which swept up from toes to head. I thought him about to speak to her, but instead he turned to me.
“You believe in tuition, Harry,” I was asked.
“Indeed he does, Papa. We all are keen to learn,” said Caroline while I sat dumb. I wished myself both there and yet a thousand miles away, as often was my nature then. I thought of the “hut,” our jokes thereon, and wished us there in all our secret lovings and in our pleasures.