By a rough-planked door that still had its original drop-ring iron handle, Lady Maude came to a halt. ‘Get in boy!’
Her hand was harsh on Katie’s shoulder and, falling on one knee, she found herself in the middle of a room.
Briefly, she was aware of the red background and the jagged green patterns of a Turkish carpet beneath her knee. Bronze statues of naked athletes; perfect young men, perfectly hard with well-developed muscles and very small genitals stood on pedestals of various heights and at various levels. There were dark leather chairs and near the window was a long table on which something appeared to be moving at a constant speed and on a constant route. A tinny, searing sound accompanied the movement.
Clockwork, she decided, and as she got to her feet her eyes alighted on a miniature engine pulling miniature carriages and running around and around an oval track between tin houses, signal boxes and stations.
Hatless, his white hair upended by his hunched shoulders, Sir Charles leaned over the whirring model.
‘He’s here!’ barked Lady Maude.
Not without reluctance, Sir Charles turned round to face them. Immediately on seeing the boy Oliver, his face knotted into a smile and his faded eyes peered with obvious intent over the rim of his glasses.
‘So. The wanderer returns. Now where have you been all day, young man? With a young wench, I’ll be bound. Am I right?’
Katie shook her head.
Sir Charles ignored her reaction as though it suited him to do so.
‘You’ve been absent without leave, young man. And that deserves just punishment. Well, what have you got to say for yourself? Have you been with a brazen young hussy?’
He raised his bushy eyebrows as he peered into his face. His lips were wet and the tip of his tongue seemed to cleave to the middle of his bottom lip.
Katie was young, but nobody’s fool. The last thing Sir Charles wanted to know was what she’d been up to. No matter what her answer might be, fault would be found with it.
Control yourself You can cope with anything they do, she said in her head, and swallowed her misgivings. But what had gone wrong? Why hadn’t Gareth covered for her?
‘Well answer, boy!’
She felt Maude’s riding crop tap her behind.
She found her voice. ‘No, sir!’
‘No, sir? No, sir? You are lying, boy. Lying!’
She winced as Lady Maude’s broad palm slapped the back of her head. ‘Tell the truth, boy!’
Just you wait, thought Katie to herself. Just you wait. Sometime, I’ll get my own back. But sometime was not now.
Sir Charles was shaking his head in a mournful way as though he was despairing of her behaviour. What a sham, she decided, as she caught the sparkle in his eyes. You want to see my bottom again, you dirty old man. You want to run your cold fingers over my hot little behind and dip one into my little hole. What hypocrites the older generation are. Why couldn’t they be like her and the rest of the gay young things? Why couldn’t they be honest about what they wanted, what they enjoyed?
Silent and still, she listened to what he was saying and tried to judge exactly what she was in for.
‘Boys should be beaten to get the best out of them,’ he said with more desire than despair.
Ah! So that was it.
‘Maude.’ He turned to his tweed-suited wife. ‘Get this young scallywag to bend over that chair will you.’
Taking Kate by the scruff of the neck, Maude obeyed him. Katie had a go at struggling against the thick fingers that dug so grimly into her flesh. She wondered if a real boy would have found it any easier. Then she felt Maude’s hand casually run over her behind and begin to travel to her trouser buttons. Katie’s hands got there first.
‘My,’ exclaimed Maude. ‘You are a willing little sinner, aren’t you?’
More than you think, thought Katie. As she undid the last button, Maude’s free hand pulled down her trousers so that the cheeks of her bottom protruded over the waistband.
Determinedly, Katie gripped the front so they did not fall any further. She wriggled, suggestively rather than defiantly, as Maude tucked the tail of her shirt up out of the way. She was exposed at the rear, but not at the front. She kept her legs tightly together and clenched the cheeks of her bottom. So far, she was still Oliver - a boy. But for how much longer?
‘Now,’ said Maude. ‘You will get what you deserve, you naughty boy. Stay as you are, and I will leave you in my husband’s hands.’
Katie did stay as she was but wondered at the tone of Maude’s voice, the increased breathing of Sir Charles, and the sudden closing of the door as Maude left the room. As the old man came closer, realisation dawned on her. Maude was nothing but her husband’s procurer. Sir Charles had his woman. He had Maude. It was boys he liked; young, adolescent men whose bodies loitered between pubescent childhood and the threshold of full manhood. She tensed, sure she would have to declare her true sex and true identity, or otherwise find her smallest orifice invaded by him.
Wait, she told herself, wait and see. Easier said than done.
Even now, his palms were running over her behind and his fingers were dipping between her twin orbs and prodding at her clenched anus. It was not unpleasant, but the thought of what else he might shortly insert unnerved her. There again, it wasn’t because of what it was, but who was doing the inserting. Sir Charles might have been quite a man in his youth, but not now. She had two choices; grin and bear it, or admit who she was and what she was.
As the clockwork train whizzed around and around its oval track no more than six feet from her head, she wished she was on it. Anywhere, but here!
Now he was stood behind her, his hands on her hips, the hardness of his erection pressing against the tweed of his trousers and, in turn, the rough wool pressing against her. His breathing was getting heavier. Soon, very soon, his buttons would be undone and, regardless what she said, there would be no turning back. He would be in her.
Endure, or confess. Which should she do? Just when she had thought endurance was unavoidable and his fingers had travelled to his fly buttons, she heard the door open and a cold blast of air against her naked behind.
‘Uncle Charles! What are you doing with my kennel boy?’
In a flurry of fast movement, the clammy, cold hands were off her and the rough tweed of his plus-fours had stopped scratching at her skin.
Saved! Without waiting for instructions, she straightened up, hitched up her trousers, and began refastening her buttons. Even before she had turned around, she knew who Sir Charles was uttering excuses to. With doe-like innocence, she raised her eyes to those of Carew.
The pinkness of his face and the nervous look in his eyes did not escape her.
What had he thought about seeing her bare bottom; so fresh, so exposed, and so obtainable?
Carew stood immobile as Sir Charles made his excuses and left.
Behind her, the clockwork train was slowly winding down.
Carew cleared his throat before he spoke.
‘I’m sorry about this, Oliver. I don’t actually adhere to this kind of thing but I did hear that you have been absent without leave. Is that true?’
As she answered, she reached for her bundle of belongings that had rolled some way towards the table on which the clockwork train had just come to a halt.
‘Yes, sir. It is, in a manner of speaking. But Gareth - Mister Rawlings - did say that he would take care of it. That he would tell Sir Charles that I had to go home and fetch a change of clothes.’
Wide-eyed, she held up her bundle, then dipped so she could pick up her cap from off the floor.
Disbelief was in his eyes, his chin was firm and his mouth was unsmiling as she pressed the cap down firmly on her head.
‘I will check that with Rawlings. If what you say is true, then Raw
lings is forfeit of a shilling for not informing my uncle. If you are lying, then regardless of my repugnance for such action, I will give you a strapping myself. Is that clear?’
Dumbly, she nodded, then, with all the allure she could muster, she looked at him wide-eyed. Instant colour suffused his cheeks.
You are falling, Carew Bentley Thompson, she said with those eyes. You are falling for me, but I am a boy, and that worries you.
It was hard not to smile, not to feel some sense of triumph. But the battle was not yet won. She wanted Carew on her terms, in her way, and in her own good time.
Although he looked every bit her master and employer, she knew instinctively that beneath the surface his pulse was racing and his mind was in turmoil.
‘Get back to your duties whilst I make the necessary enquiries,’ he said as he turned towards the door. Hand on door handle, he paused and turned to look at her. ‘By the way, was that just a passing motorist who gave you a lift here, or was it a lady friend?’
He’d seen her! He’d actually seen her with Phoebe. Swiftly, she measured her answer. ‘A lady friend.’
Perhaps if she’d answered more quickly, she would have said that Phoebe had been purely a passing motorist giving a footsore boy a lift. But Katie was a quick thinker. If he’d seen her, then he must have seen them kiss. Anyway, there was something more in his eyes than interest. He was jealous, and she wanted him to be jealous.
He smiled. ‘I didn’t know you had a lady friend, young Oliver. How long have you known her?’
‘Quite a while, sir. She’s a sad lady and fair dotes on me, sir. Women are like that, sir, when they’ve had a sad life, aren’t they?’
Carew raised his eyebrows. ‘You might say that. But why is she sad?’
‘Her life, sir. She was orphaned when she was sixteen or so and put with an uncle and aunt who also had two sons. Being as they were family, she thought they would treat her well, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. Seemed as though she’d been brought to be nothing more than a plaything for the two sons and a drudge for the parents.
‘By day, she would be forced to scrub floors wearing nothing but a loose dress. At any time, one of those sons could come along to her, pull up her dress and push himself into her, and, of course, she would be required to carry on scrubbing as he ravished her.
‘At night, she would be required to sleep naked between them and they would take her in turn, or one would enter her at the front and one behind.’
Carew looked stunned. He had not been expecting Oliver to start telling a story at such a rapid speed, but now he had started, he just had to hear more. ‘What did she do?’
‘Ran away, sir, but not before she’d had her revenge.’
‘How did she do that?’ asked Carew, his voice as incredulous as his face.
‘Well, it was like this, sir. The sons liked a drink, so one night after they’d taken a fair drop on board, she slid out from in between them, and instead of one of them poking it in her, one brother poked it into the nether region of the other. When what had happened came to light, they came to blows, and as the parents tried to separate them she made her escape. Not that her new position was that much better.’
‘Why was that?’
‘She fell in love, sir. He was beautiful, she said, with very beguiling eyes and hair as dark as ebony. Their love was truly spiritual and she never saw him naked. But she swooned in his arms as he played with her naked breasts and the rest of her body. She didn’t mind that. Not at first. By the will of his fingers, she reached the heights of delight, but the day eventually came when she wanted to know more of him and feel his member enter her. But he was elusive, sir. Very elusive. So by stealth, she decided to find out exactly why he would not use her as a man usually does a woman.’
Katie took a breath and congratulated herself on the quickness of her imagination. Seeing that Carew was still listening avidly, she continued her tale.
‘Saying she had a headache, she went on to bed which was in a room immediately over the bathroom. Every night her lover took a bath - most fastidious he was, sir - but on the afternoon previous to the evening in question, she had made a small hole in the floorboards through which she could see her lover naked for the first time.
‘Well, sir. She was truly shocked. Her lover was not at all as expected.’
‘Why was that? Did he not have the necessary equipment to do her justice? Was it too small? Too large?’
Katie shook her head. ‘No, sir. It was non-existent. Her lover was a woman like herself. Sad, wasn’t it?’
Carew licked his lips and seemed to come out of the daze he had entered. ‘Yes, I suppose it was. An interesting story, Oliver. Most interesting indeed.’ A nerve trembled just below his eye and his skin took on a shine that had not been there before. However, he did a good job of pulling himself together. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘before you tell me any more, I suggest we go down and ask Gareth exactly what the situation is with regard to your going off for the day.’
Without saying anything else, he spun on his heel and left quickly. It was as though he wanted a space between them, a barrier against his undoubted interest in her stories and her person.
As she followed him, she studied the broadness of his shoulders, the nervous clenching and unclenching of his hands which were clasped behind his back.
Her bottom, and her story, she decided, had indeed affected him.
In the garage which had once housed horses and now housed a Bentley and a Rolls Royce, he asked Gareth whether he had given Oliver permission to leave earlier that day.
Gareth, who was instructing two lesser mortals on the finer points of the internal combustion engine, glanced briefly at her, then straightened up before replying. ‘Yes, sir. I apologise, sir, but I got so busy with this and that, I forgot to tell you or Sir Charles about it.’ Carew, hands clasped behind his back, nodded tersely, almost as though the answer disappointed him.
Yes, said Katie to herself, yes. You are disappointed, and you, Gareth Rawlings were in two minds whether to say I was lying and save your shilling. But she did not voice her misgivings. Tonight, she was sure, Gareth would take his money’s worth from her.
Like a hungry waif on some sorry street corner, she looked appealingly up at Carew. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow, and though his voice might be steady she knew that inside he was anything but.
She felt obliged to say something. ‘I am sorry, sir. I will ask you again in future.’ There was a disarming quality in her voice that was as enticing as it was innocent. Thank God for amateur theatricals, she thought and, without appearing to, sucked in her cheeks so that her eyes might appear bigger to him and her features more precisely and perfectly carved.
He winced. She was sure of it. But he kept his aristocratic expression and retained his starched upper lip. He jerked his head in a gesture of affirmation before he left. The bods being instructed on car maintenance looked up furtively from beneath rough checked caps once he had gone. Tofts bothered them, she thought, and in all honesty, now she had joined their ranks, she knew how they felt.
Gareth put her to harsh work for the rest of the afternoon, mucking out stables and polishing both cars. Her sweat started at her head and ran rampant trickles through her cleavage, down her spine and between her buttocks. On top of that, Gareth was free with his slaps and shoves. By word and by action, he left her in no doubt that he objected to losing his shilling.
‘But never mind,’ he muttered, the wetness of his lips spitting into her ear. ‘I’ll be finding a way of you paying me back, young squib. You owe me lad, and you’re damn well going to pay!’
Fair exchange is no robbery, she thought to herself, and looked forward with interest to what the evening might bring.
It was beyond sunset when everything was finished. The two boys that had been receiving instruction from G
areth were stripped off to the waist and were taking it in turns to work the old hand pump that stood in the middle of the stable yard. Each yelled with shock as the first gush of cold water ran over their heads and their backs. Katie envied them, but she knew she could not - must not - join them.
But Gareth had other ideas about her getting-washed. ‘Come on, squib. I’ll have no dirty lad sharing my room.’
Wide-eyed, she shook her head. ‘No, sir. I cannot. I shall take a chill.’
Gareth adjusted his cap and glanced knowingly at the two lads.
‘Then if you ain’t washing willingly, we shall have to do the job ourselves. Ain’t that right, me lads?’
They laughed and she ran.
She ran through the stable yard, into the stalls, the horses neighing and tramping the ground as she slewed past them.
She ran around to the kennels and started the dogs barking with wild excitement.
Doubling back, she ran through the hay barn and, once again, found herself in the stable yard, the buildings to the back of her, the pump and the horse trough in front.
‘Leave this to me, lads!’
Gareth fixed her with his eyes as though it were his hands. He’d get her, she knew he’d get her, and then the pursuit of her obsession would be all over.
The lads laughed, took off their caps and mopped their brows.
‘We’ll leave you to it then, Mister Rawlings. If you’re sure you can manage by yourself, that is.’
‘I can manage this young squib, me lads. Be off with you. See you tomorrow.’
They went, and as the shadows falling across the cobbled yard grew longer and more solid, Gareth moved towards her.
‘You’re sweaty, young squib, and you’re getting a cold dosage under that there pump whether you like it or not.’
Katie’s eyes swerved from left to right. Which way, she screamed inside, which way?
To the left, she decided. One, two, three strides and he had her.
She struggled. Her pullover went first along with her cap, then, even before his hands ripped her shirt so that the buttons popped off one after the other, water was gushing down into her shirt and over her bare breasts. It was then that Gareth Rawlings realised what he was holding.
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