Her teeth showed as her smile widened.
‘Then worship me, Edgar, worship me!’
Although her voice was as hushed as a brush sweeping over stones, it commanded. And Edgar obeyed.
Still smiling and gazing at him, she arched her back as he entered her, savouring the hot, hardness of his stem as it ploughed through her petals of sensitive flesh.
His crisp pubic curls combined with her own and made a low rasping sound as his body rubbed against hers.
Still lying with her arms and legs outstretched, she took all that he was giving her; took the pleasure from his penis and the sensations that flowed like latent electricity from her squeezed nipples.
Spangled with silver, and reminiscent of garden statuary, he hung, rigid and poised above her, his pelvis tight against hers. With one thrust of his hips he poured his essence into her. Katie rose on her own climax to meet him. Like a wave, her orgasm crested and she cried out again and again before it rolled away to nothing.
‘What a show!’ Johnnie was standing just a few feet away at the edge of the lawn. Phoebe, wide-eyed and pink-faced, was right behind him.
Edgar got to his feet immediately. Katie lay staring at the moon and taking deep breaths. Her legs remained open.
‘Can’t a chap have some privacy around here!’
Edgar sounded flustered more than angry.
‘Was it a good show?’ Katie asked, stretching her arms above her head and looking at the moon through her fingers.
It was Phoebe, dear easily impressed Phoebe, who answered.
‘It was wonderful,’ she said. She clapped her hands together and her breasts jiggled like pink blancmange in the light of the moon. ‘Just wonderful!’
Katie laughed and Edgar began to look less flustered.
‘There, Edgar; she said softly, aware of a need to appease the more sensitive side of his nature. ‘Now everyone knows what a performer you are and that you’re not a pansy at all. Doesn’t that make you feel good?’
Edgar paused and she half imagined he was blushing. But he did begin to smile.
‘Gosh, Katie. I suppose it does. I really do feel good. In fact, I won’t mind doing it again tomorrow night if the moon’s still out and the weather still dry. What do you say, old thing?’
‘Goodbye, actually; said Katie as she got to her feet. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I won’t be around for quite a while in fact.’
She didn’t meet Phoebe’s look. In company, it was best not to. Not until they’d had a chance to talk about her intentions.
‘Good grief, Katie darling. What will I do without you?’ asked Edgar.
Katie raised her eyes, and Phoebe’s gaze met hers. A secret message ran like quicksilver between them.
‘I think the question is, who will you do? You’ll do Phoebe. Both of you. Like you did earlier this evening. Anyway, Phoebe’s experienced enough to handle you both. Isn’t that right, Phoebe?’
The prospect of having two such handsome young. men to herself made Phoebe all smiles and pink cheeks. ‘Oh, yes!’ she said. ‘It most certainly is.’
That night, the boys slept in their own room, and Katie and Phoebe slept in theirs. There were plans to be made, and plans were still being made the following morning when breakfast was brought up to them on a tray.
‘You’ll have to get me out there, Phoebe dear,’ Katie said before taking another bite of toast and another sip of tea.
‘Katie Fisher, you’re crazy,’ laughed her friend. ‘But I’ll do it for you, darling.’
‘I should hope you would. I don’t mind walking, but not in boots, and not seven miles.’
‘No problem, Katie dear. I’ll drive you. What time do you have to be there?’
Katie paused and viewed Phoebe sidelong. She did her best to keep a straight face. ‘Six thirty.’
‘What!’
‘Early to rise,’ chirped Katie between chuckles. ‘Makes you healthy, wealthy and wise.’
‘I’m alright as regards health and wealth,’ returned Phoebe, ‘and I’ve managed so far without the other.’
‘But you’ll do it for me?’
Phoebe began to laugh. ‘Oh yes, I’ll do it for you alright. I just have to. It’s such a hoot. I’d never have the courage to do it myself. Never!’
Katie pushed back the bed covers and swung her feet to the floor, then perched herself on her friend’s bed. ‘And you won’t tell a soul. Not a soul!’
Phoebe’s eyes opened so wide they seemed to fill her face and tell everything Katie would ever want to know about her. She looked very serious for a moment. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Not a soul, I promise.’
Katie kissed Phoebe’s cheek.
‘Good,’ she said softly. ‘I’m glad of that. Now then,’ she said with her usual early-morning energy, ‘let’s get washed and do some shopping.’
Filled with joy and expectation, she leapt up from Phoebe’s bed, flung her arms in the air and her nightclothes with them. Then she crossed to the window and threw the casements wide.
‘It’s a beautiful day.’ She shouted and waved to Edgar and Johnnie who was strolling across the lawn after having had a heavy breakfast in the dining room. ‘Brazen hussy!’ laughed Phoebe but, in like spirit, she too threw aside her nightclothes and came to stand beside Katie, their bodies warm and naked together.
The shopping Katie had in mind was very different from usual. Without letting the boys know what they were up to, they roamed around the outhouses and the attic, searching for any bits of clothes that Katie would need.
Eventually, she had everything she wanted. When the morning came for reporting to Thompson Towers, her clothes lay in a suitably crumpled heap next to a pair of substantial but scuffed boots. There was only one task remaining.
‘Are you sure about this?’
Phoebe’s right hand held a pair of scissors. Her left hand held a comb.
For one last time, Katie gazed on the fashionable shingle that barely graced her jaw. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Yes,’ she said sharply. ‘Do it. Do it now!’
‘Very well.’ Phoebe took a deep breath then began to snip at Katie’s glossy, dark hair.
Bits of cut hair floated down over Katie’s naked shoulders and breasts. Some even landed in her lap and mixed with the cluster of dark silkiness that divided her thighs. She stared at the mix of head and pubic hair rather than look at the mirror and the snipping scissors.
‘I’ve finished,’ said Phoebe at last, and took one step back from what she had done.
Slowly, Katie’s eyes travelled up over the flatness of her stomach, the leanness of her ribcage and the neatness of her pert bosom. When her eyes met her reflection, she stared and sucked in her breath.
The face looking out from the mirror could not possibly be hers. She blinked, then began to take in how her new hairstyle had affected her face. Phoebe had cut her hair short all over. The silky regularity of her shingled bob was gone, and what was left was a cap of dark hair that covered her skull and framed her face. And that is what it was; a frame for her face. Dark eyes above high cheekbones now dominated the mirror. The effect did not displease her. Like a sad and beautiful urchin, her face was irresistible.
Still pink and undeniably sensuous, her lips slowly smiled.
‘I think I will do very well,’ she said, more to herself than to Phoebe. ‘I think I’m a very pretty boy.’
Phoebe, relieved that her work was approved, sighed and reached each arm over Katie’s shoulders so that she could replace the scissors and the comb on the dressing table.
As she did this, her eyes met Katie’s via the mirror.
She too stared at the reflection and, unable to resist, her hands dropped down to Katie’s breasts.
Katie did not protest. She was as affected by the boyish
face staring back at her as Phoebe was and besides, Phoebe’s palms were warm and her fingers knowing.
‘You’ll have to do something about these,’ Phoebe whispered near her ear and squeezed both breasts.
Katie smiled and turned her head so there was barely an inch between their two mouths.
‘The shirt’s baggy. The pullover is coarse and has an ugly pattern. No one will notice. No one at all.’
She could have let things take their natural course and have Phoebe’s head and excited little tongue trapped between her legs, but this morning was a special morning. She was going as a boy to Thompson Towers, and she wanted to go there fresh and determined to seek her prey. Only in her case, it wasn’t pheasant she was beating for but the body and soul of Carew Bentley Thompson.
Chapter 5
Pursington was a small village about half a mile from the main gates of Thompson Towers.
‘Do you want me to take you right up to the gates?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Of course not. Boys being paid sixpence a day to beat for pheasants do not arrive by motor car.’ Katie patted her face with some of the dirt she’d found in the pockets of the old jacket. ‘Anyway, it’s too public.’ She went on to tell Phoebe of the narrow lane going off the main road just before the first houses of the village. The road, she explained, led to a disused quarry.
‘Drop me there. I can manage that distance,’ she told her.
So, biting her lip, and her eyes shining with admiration, Phoebe did just that.
‘Here’s your lunch,’ she said, and handed Katie a red-spotted handkerchief that she knew held a lump of cheese and a thick wedge of bread. Mrs Webster had told her that food was provided but all the likely lads came well prepared with a bite of their own. ‘Young lads,’ she had told Katie with an air of one who knows, ‘have an almighty appetite. They be suspect if they don’t,’ she’d exclaimed, eyeing Katie up and down and no doubt wondering why she wanted to know such things. Katie, not wanting to be suspected of anything, gave her the excuse that she was writing a modern day thesis on the area; things about people’s jobs, how much they got paid; dying traditions: that sort of thing.
Mrs Webster believed her.
Phoebe watched as Katie scuffed the bundle on the dirty road until it looked acceptable for the likes of a lad going to do a day’s beating. ‘What time do I pick you up?’ she asked, bemused, but intrigued.
‘No idea.’
‘Katie, I have to have some idea. The boys might start asking questions if I don’t keep to some sort of timetable. I have to have some excuse ready.’
‘You are right,’ said Katie, chewing her cheek as she studied the oat bran that sat in the turn-ups of her trousers. ‘Make it five, but if I’m not here by seven, I won’t be coming. It means they’re keeping me on for the whole of the beat so I’ll be staying overnight. If I want to see you urgently, I’ll get to The Homeley Bun Teashop and leave a message for you there. Will that suit?’
Phoebe nodded and slid back into the seat of her cloth-top Austin Tourer. As she did so, her skirt rode up over her bare thighs and the warm smoothness of the leather seat sucked on her buttocks. She opened her legs a little wider, a grateful smile on her face because her French knickers never covered as much as they were supposed to.
‘Alright. If that’s the way you want it. Take care, Katie dear. Please take care.’
Her words were sincerely meant, but somehow Katie didn’t want to meet her eyes. She just pressed her cap down on her head, nodded and told her to get going.
Even before the shiny spokes of the wheels where turning and fuming dust behind them, Katie was down on one knee, letting the fine cloud dirty her face and the brown and green mix of men’s clothes she was wearing. It wouldn’t do to present herself too spick and span to go beating for pheasant in a field of corn stalks.
Phoebe and her car were gone by the time she began walking back down the narrow lane. Like a torn veil, the morning mist clung between and above the tree tops but, even though it was still before six, the warmth of the rising sun was sucking it upwards through the clustered leaves.
As in most agricultural villages, folk were up and about in Pursington. Some nodded good morning and raised their hands. Others just spat on the ground, unwilling under any circumstances to speak to someone they did not know.
A woman stood by the open door of the inn, beating a mat against the wall. Dust thicker than the morning mist flew in circles around the woman and the mat. The beating arms stopped short, and plump hands rested on plumper hips.
Katie studied the toes of her scuffed boots as she walked - anything, rather than acknowledge the hungry eyes she could feel raking her from head to toe.
‘Well, me fine lad,’ said the woman in a voice as broad as her hips. ‘Now where might you be going on this fine morning?’
Katie made an unsuccessful effort to sidestep the wide body.
‘To the cornfields up the Thompson place; for the beating - for the pheasants.’ Katie measured her words and delivered them in as gruff a voice as she could manage.
‘Are you now!’ The woman stepped directly into her path. ‘I could find you better things to do than chasing them innocent birds. I could take you into a cornfield and make yer bum red and yer willy wilt. What do you think of that then, me fine lad?’
Katie didn’t blush, though felt as a young lad she should have. Again, she prepared to move.
‘I’m sorry, madam. I have to go. Another time, maybe.’
She sidestepped onto the dusty road, but the woman sidestepped with her. Then, to Katie’s annoyance more than embarrassment, the woman undid the two top buttons of her blouse and pulled the coarse material downwards. A deep gorge divided her large breasts. The woman ran her fingers downwards and white lines of flesh appeared through the dust. Then, she shook them just under Katie’s nose. Immediately, the gross sweat of someone who did not spend too much time washing wafted upwards.
‘How do you like these here then, me fine lad. Big enough for you?’
‘Too big,’ Katie said quickly. ‘And too bloody ugly - just like you!’
A big arm swung and a hand as broad as a dinghy paddle missed Katie’s ear by a sliver. She ducked, stumbled, and dropped the precious spotted handkerchief. Both bread and cheese rolled into the road where a scrawny mongrel grabbed the wedge of Cheddar and made off with it.
But losing the cheese was of no importance to Katie.
She was on her feet and running, both hands on her head so that her cap wouldn’t end up in the dust with the bread.
‘Dirty little swine!’ shouted the big-breasted woman. ‘Dirty little swine! Making lewd suggestions to a respectable married woman!’
Someone laughed.
Someone else shouted, ‘Leave the lad alone, Tuppenny Tess. Pick on someone yer own size!’
Katie didn’t look back and didn’t stop running until she had to.
‘My darling, Carew,’ she said between puffs of breath, ‘you had better truly be worth it!’
There was a gathering of men and boys at the gate of Thompson Towers. There were also some who appeared to be in charge, and some who put themselves in others’ hands. One of them was Mister Benson who viewed her with no more interest than he viewed any lad come to beat for the shooters.
Aware that shiny cars and expensive people were also clustered in a separate group to her left, she kept her gaze on her boots and whistled a lackadaisical tune as she sauntered towards the groups of boys and men who were all grouped around Mister Webster.
All the same, she was aware of at least one person watching her from among the well-dressed group by the cars. Her heart sank.
Please, don’t let it be anyone who knows me, she prayed. If that happens there will be. no point going on, and I shall end up just being another flower in Carew Thompson s daisy chain.
>
‘Over here, young man.’ The voice was sharp and highly imperial.
Young man! Someone had called her young man.
Katie took a deep breath and dared to look.
The woman who had spoken was dressed in tweed and sported a shooting stick and a monocle. She had broad shoulders and hips and her bosoms threw a deep shadow over her belly.
Katie bunched her fists and tried not to look nervous as the woman looked her up and down.
‘Here for the beating are you, young man? Well, you look a bit fragile for that task. Not limp-wristed are you?’
Katie stared. She knew damned well what the woman was referring to but, seeing as she’d never been of the right sex to be accused of something like that, it took some getting used to.
‘I’m strong,’ she blurted.
‘Good,’ said the woman thoughtfully, as her eyes again travelled over the person she took to be a handsome boy. ‘Then you can carry my husband’s guns for him,’ the woman went on. ‘Come along.’
The broad back had turned on her before Katie had time to say anything. But as ordered, she obeyed and followed. Just briefly, she looked back over her shoulder at the men by the gate. Judging by the sour looks being thrown, she had landed a job that was viewed as a soft option. Katie would be with the guns - the men and women who were shooting the birds. The beaters would be on ahead, continuously tramping through the crisp, sharp straw, sticks in hand to drive the birds to fly.
‘Come along, young man. Don’t dawdle!’ ordered the woman with the monocle.
Katie quickened her step and followed just two or three feet behind.
‘Please madam,’ she said in a voice she had last used for an amateur production of Oliver Twist. ‘I’ve never done this before - carry the guns I mean. Is there much to it?’
The woman spun on her heel and caught Katie a sharp slap across• her right cheek. She started, rubbed at it like a boy would, but did not cry out like a woman.
‘You will speak when you are spoken to, young man. The job is easy, so there are no excuses for you being slip-shod about it. If you do make a mistake you will be corrected - in more ways than one! Now, what is your name, boy?’
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