“We would not blame you, dear, for I am sure he indeed did look sweet,” she murmured to a sound of approbation from my stepmother.
“He was most fervent when I did so, though I scolded him for his boldness. Being dressed as a girl, a strangeness came over his character for I had perfumed him and made him sit most obedient while I saw to his good looks, the flouncing of the chemise and the fit of his drawers. When indeed I scolded him, a meekness came over him and he obeyed my every wish so that I truly had him docile as a little kitten,” said I, then gazed at both nervously as though I had said too much.
At that moment, as chance would have it, Clive returned from his perambulations upstairs, entered, looked upon us all and hesitated, divining perhaps that we were in more private conversation than had hitherto been the case. Upon that, my stepmother took the initiative.
“Clive, dear, would you wait a moment in your room?” she asked, and so softly did she put the words that he blushed, mumbled something, and withdrew again. Then, turning to Millicent, she went on, “We may now speak in greater confidence, my dears, for such amusements have a great excitement for ladies of our temperaments. Clive’s very obedience is a token of what we have been saying, is it not, Millicent?”
The lady sighed, causing her impressive breasts to rise and fall. “My husband ever interfered,” she said complainingly.
“Tut-tut, of course they do-if permitted to. I have known such cases and have also known how the intruding spouse might be quietened in the matter.”
“Have you?” Millicent leaned forward quite eagerly. I had no doubt that the turn of conversation was exciting her much. My stepmother stretched herself langourously.
“It is something of which we may speak later, Millicent. For the nonce let us attend to the matter of your dear son and what I divine to be his secret, dearest wish. His wife, though senior to Clara in her years, is yet too young of mind to understand such matters, or perhaps is insensitive to them.”
Millicent sniffed and I saw clearly a deep jealousy there. “Yes, I believe so,” she replied stiffly, my stepmother then gazing upon her with an air of great sympathy and understanding.
“Will you permit me, Millicent, the greatest of favours? I intend to take myself upstairs for a while. A few words with your son, perhaps. You will excuse me?”
Not waiting for reply, she was gone and so smoothly that the room seemed emptied of her in a second while I observed the conflicting emotions that passed across the face of Clive’s Mama. “What… what do you think she is at?” she asked me in a low tone of great secrecy so that I was hard put to avoid smiling.
“Perhaps it is as with my brother Robert. He was… he was very naughty sometimes when clothed as I wished him, yet-oh, I must tell you the truth! — tears of delight came into his eyes when first I soothed my stockings up his thighs, drew up his knickers and smoothed down his chemise. Was it not the same with you and Clive?” I asked with careful shades of shyness in my voice. “Oh, please, will you not tell me for I felt quite naughty myself and yet so much excited that I put convention to the winds.”
A flush rose in Millicent’s cheeks. My youth perhaps inhibited her. “There are moments that others would consider unseemly, I suppose,” she ventured. “Dear Clive, he so liked the feel of silk all about him. You put… you put your brother’s knickers on yourself, my dear?”
I evidently was the one to make confessions, for then she could hide behind my words in a manner of speaking and play upon those as would further her own excitement while, as it were, keeping her own hands clean in the matter.
“I undressed him as one might a little boy, though in truth he was seventeen. How immodest you will think me, yet I much enjoyed it, for all his parts were vibrant at my touch and so remained when I drew his knickers up.”
“My dear, how truly naughty of you and yet…”
She was given no time to finish the sentence for the door then opened to admit my stepmother. “All is well, Millicent. Will you come up, and you, too, Clara?”
A flush then rose deeper on the face of Clive’s Mama. Her hand went to her throat. She rose, toying with her pearls. Hesitance lay full upon her and yet her eyes were truly lustrous with an inner glow. “All is well-as you would wish it, Millicent, and I-come,” my stepmother said and extended comfortingly her hand. Nothing then was said as we entered the hallway and ascended the stairs, though rarely was such an air of conspiracy upon three females. The door to the bedroom inhabited by Stepmama stood half open. Without hesitation she entered and drew us in. There in a further corner stood Clive, his back to us. Shy as a girl, he was attired in one of my stepmother’s frilly petticoats and indeed nothing else save, visibly, for stockings. At our entrance his shoulders quivered, his head not turning. The look on his Mama’s face was a perfect picture. Her breathing sounded heavily.
“Will you not be seated, both of you?” we were asked and two armchairs indicated by the fireplace. A solemn silence then obtained, Millicent having a better view of her son since my back was partly to him.
“It would be foolish, I felt, to delay a matter of great desire to us all, Millicent. Clive, you may turn and face the room.”
A shuffling then occurred and he did so, his feet uncomfortably squeezed into a pair of my stepmother’s shoes. His lips were rouged, his eyelids shadowed. A look of perfect wonderment was on his face. Upon being almost face to face with his Mama, he blushed and hung his head.
“So timid, is he not-but that should be the way of it,” my stepmother purred. “Raise your petticoat, Clive, and let us see your drawers. Ah! do they not look well on him, despite his protrusion,” she smiled, for the outline of his erection was clearly visible beneath the pink silk of the knickers which he displayed by holding out the sides of the petticoat in fanlike fashion, well drawn up. “Of course, he was in two minds about it, Millicent, but your own future coaxings and demands upon him will further the matter. Jennifer will not have brought him up so well, I am sure, despite her probable endeavours. Will you show him your drawers, Millicent, or I? I would have matched the colour of his to yours had I but known it.”
Millicent’s face was suffused. Her hands clutched at the arms of her chairs, yet nothing in her aspect denied the rising pleasure in her frame. Seeing her apparently bereft of words, my stepmother laughed not ungently and said, “Very well, then, I shall show him mine. Step forward, Clive, a little closer to me.”
He swallowed, he gulped, he did so, still holding up the petticoat since he had not been told to lower it, and this aspect of his immediate obedience pleased me much. Millicent in earlier years had perhaps advanced him more than she thought or had cared to confess. A few steps brought him between our chairs and the end of the bed where my stepmother stood. Bending and gathering up the hem of her gown, she then raised it slowly-not to the total disinterest of Millicent’s sly eyes. Her rounded knees being revealed in fetching, patterned stockings of a dark shade of blue, there came then in our view her swelling thighs, her broad and pretty garters, pale rims of thighs and then above the puckered legs of her directoires which were baby-blue in hue. Being well mounded to her bottom, they displayed her rear cheeks perfectly.
An awed silence fell upon the bedroom. My stepmama crooked her finger beguilingly at Clive and beckoned. He hesitated for but a second or two then shuffled forward again, his eyes on her eyes, for they so commanded him. A trembling hiss came from his mother’s nostrils. She appeared to have some difficulty in breathing and sat bolt upright in her easy chair. Toes to toes he then stood with my stepmother whose bosom rose and fell in her excitement, she wreathing up her gown about her waist.
What a strange sight it was and yet how enervating! I wriggled with pleasure and gazed in awe.
“A certain lewdness, Millicent, excites them,” murmured my stepmother without taking her eyes from his. “It is requisite in all training. Lower your drawers, Clive-exhibit yourself!”