Estelle's Story

by Robin Gideon

  “Get the money, Estelle. All of it. I need four thousand pounds, and don’t tell me you haven’t got it in the bank, because I know better.”

  He smiled then. Estelle would later realize that his smile should have been her warning, since he hadn’t smiled at her like that in years. But he smiled—and then his right hand made a short arc, his palm connecting solidly with her cheek with such savagery that Estelle fell backward into her chair. She was dazed by the slap, and in her ears was a high-pitched whining sound.

  “I’ll take these, for now,” her husband said as he pulled the diamond earrings from his wife’s lobes. Each clip was a full two carats in weight.

  Estelle was too stunned by the slap to stop Horace from plucking off her earrings. He already had them in his pocket before she found her voice.

  “Those have been in my family for three generations,” she protested. “They were my grandmother’s.”

  “Now they’re mine.” His eyes narrowed venomously. “Write a draft for me, bitch. Four thousand. Now.”

  “I can’t. Even if I did, it wouldn’t do any good. Mr. Morton at the bank wouldn’t cash it.” She rubbed her stinging cheek, blinking her eyes to clear her vision.

  Horace faked slapping Estelle a second time, and when she flinched, wrapping her arms around her head defensively, he laughed heartily.

  “Get my money, you cunt,” he whispered, breathing deeply. “You think a little slap is the worst I can do to you? Think again. Think real hard, because there isn’t much the courts or the Queen are going to do to a husband for disciplining his wife.”

  When Estelle turned violet eyes filled with contempt up to Horace, he slapped her a second time.

  “Never look at me like that again,” he said.

  Horace was chuckling as he walked out of his wife’s private bedchamber.

  * * * *

  Julian looked at his best friend, sitting across from him in the four-passenger berlin carriage, and said, “Alek, would it be asking too much of our friendship if I suggested that you should just walk away from Princess Estelle and leave her all to me?”

  Alek took off his Hamburg derby, tugged at his earlobe, and replied, “Funny thing, you asking that. You see, that’s the exact same question I have for you.”

  “I wish to hell I had seen her first, then I could lay claim to her.”

  “If you had seen her first, I’d be the gentleman and stay the hell away from her, but you were with me when we met her, so if there’s going to be a decision made on who she wants to be with, it’s going to be made by the princess herself.”

  Julian nodded. “That’s the way I see it, too.” He smiled. “Nothing personal, my good friend, but I’m hoping like hell she picks me.”

  Alek pulled the coach’s window curtain aside to look out. When he spoke, his tone was distant, distracted. “I hardly looked at another woman. I was at the museum the other night and saw Mary Kruitz with Anne Lewis. They made it quite clear that I could have them one at a time or both together. Before meeting our delectable Princess Estelle, I would have jumped at the opportunity to bed those women. Both are attractive. Both are married. Neither is looking for money or a husband. But when I was looking at them I kept seeing Estelle’s face in my mind. I ended up making some absurd excuse about having an important meeting with you that I couldn’t miss. That’s when I met you at the club.”

  “And proceeded to suck down damned near two bottles.” Julian chuckled. “I wondered why you were practically pouring the schnapps down your throat.”

  Alek gave his friend a weak smile. “It just wouldn’t do to have word get around that I’m turning down invitations for a good romp. I’ve worked hard to earn my bad reputation. When I turned down Ellie Anne, I kind of thought it was a fluke, an anomaly. Now it’s proving to be something more than that.”

  “Here’s a confession for you,” Julian said quietly as his private, four-horse carriage headed toward London’s West End. “Two nights ago my valet brings me an envelope. I recognized the handwriting right away—it was from Noreen Durst—and I set the envelope aside. I didn’t open it for a full day.”

  “What did she want?” Alek asked. He chuckled and added, “As if I couldn’t guess.”

  “She wanted me to come to her”—his eyebrows waggled above eyes glittering with amusement as he concluded in French—“appartement. She keeps it just for trysts, and apparently her husband doesn’t know a thing about it.”

  Alek whistled softly. “Noreen is gorgeous. You must have been damned tempted.”

  “Oh, I was tempted, all right. But I didn’t act on it. I could have had one of London’s true beauties, and instead I stayed home and read my way through my library until I fell asleep on the divan.” Julian was shaking his head slowly, as though he found his own actions an unfathomable mystery. “In the past weeks we’ve both turned down offers of sex because of Estelle. Have you any idea how stupid that is?”

  “Sure I do. The trouble is, once a man gets a taste of Princess Estelle, all other women seem pretty bloodless, don’t they?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Exactly, indeed.”

  Julian thought for a moment, then said, “So let’s make a pact. Neither one of us will go see Estelle privately. Either we see her together, or we don’t see her at all. Agreed?”

  Julian leaned closer, extending his hand. He shook Alek’s hand, sat back in his seat, and moved the curtain again. It was a cool day, and the wind had picked up. The breeze off the Thames River was cold and moist against his face.

  “We really have fallen in love with her, haven’t we?”

  Julian sighed. “I wish I could say it’s all just a temporary infatuation, but I’m feeling things I never felt before. Damn.”

  Alek chuckled, reached into his inside jacket pocket for his silver flask of brandy, and replied, “Damn, indeed! Now let’s have a drink on it.”

  * * * *

  The breeze off the Thames River seemed particularly cold to Estelle, but the chill only prompted a smile from her. Wearing a midcalf-length mink coat, she pulled the plush collar a little more tightly around her throat and hunched her shoulders, for a moment burying her face in the exquisite russet-brown softness of the fur.

  She had taken her landau carriage to her church and then dismissed her coachman. The exhibit at the church, she had said, telling a plausible lie, ended at nine o’clock. The coachman could either return home or spend the next several hours in a public house if he wanted. Estelle had smiled indulgently and told her coachman he didn’t have to be entirely sober to drive her home, but he couldn’t be blind drunk, either. Then she handed him a quid, and when he beamed his happiness, she knew that he wouldn’t be sober for the ride home.

  In the many weeks that had passed since her ill-fated attempt at catching her vile husband “red-handed” so that she might have some grounds for divorce, she had found herself daydreaming much more than usual. In the past, whenever she fantasized, the men in her dreams were always faceless. She could see their bodies, their physiques, and their clothes. But never their faces. Now her fantasies were as distinct and vivid in her mind as if she was looking at a photograph. The men in her dreams were always Alek and Julian.

  She never thought of them individually, never just Alek or just Julian. She always thought of them collectively. Many times her servants caught her daydreaming of her lovers, and as many times they had stated, with obvious concern, that she was flushed and questioned whether she was feeling well.

  “I’m perhaps feeling a little under the weather,” Estelle would say.

  “Is it the Prince, my lady?” the servants would ask, keeping their voices low. Prince Horace’s reprehensible behavior was a poorly kept secret.

  Estelle would nod because she knew that then the questions would end. She always felt guilty for the deception, being innately against deceit of any sort—but what was she to tell her household staff? That she had begun an affair with two of the most eligible bachelors in England? That
even the most fleeting thought of them caused her clitoris to tingle and her pussy to get dewy? That a hundred times a day she thought about what it felt like to have both of them penetrating her body at the same time, thrilling her with their lust and love?

  Not likely.

  “Might I offer you a lift?”

  So entranced was Princess Estelle with her reverie that she had not noticed the big, black lacquered berlin carriage moving along the cobblestone street beside her as she walked. She looked up to see Julian and Alek inside the carriage.

  She smiled and replied, “Yes, you can.”

  Julian called for his coachman, Jarvis, to stop. When he opened the door, Estelle paused a moment to check up and down the street, making sure she didn’t recognize anyone. It wouldn’t do to be seen getting into the private carriage of one of London’s more infamous roués.

  “Sit next to Alek,” Estelle said, standing at the door to the carriage. “That way I can look at you both.” When Julian moved, Estelle stepped up into the carriage, taking the rearward-facing seat. The carriage immediately began moving. “When I got your note, I read it a dozen times and then burned it in the fireplace.” She smiled. “Who wrote it for you? The handwriting was too feminine to be either of yours.”

  “Mademoiselle Clarisse was gracious enough to assist us in our plan,” Julian explained.

  Princess Estelle flushed slightly at the mention of the woman’s name. The Frenchwoman had been witness to behavior that Estelle could not easily reconcile.

  The men were wearing black business suits of the finest quality, strongly suggesting Savile Row in origin. For a moment Estelle just sat quietly and looked at them, amazed at the suppressed, masculine power they exuded. With the curtains down, it was quite dark in the spacious berlin carriage, but Estelle knew that even in the most brilliant sunlight, Alek and Julian were stunningly handsome men, each in his own way.

  “We’ve come up with a plan,” Alek said.

  A stab of fear and anticipation went through Estelle. Dare she get her hopes up and imagine a life without Horace? Trying to sound very calm, though her emotions were most certainly quite the opposite, Estelle asked, “What plan would that be?”

  “Horace’s got markers all through the city,” Alek began. “He has gambling debts, wenching debts, and he has liquor bills in at least a dozen gentlemen’s clubs throughout London. What Julian and I want to do—with your permission, of course—is to buy up those markers. That way Horace owes the money to me and Julian. By consolidating all his debts with us, it’ll give us greater influence over him.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Estelle asked, her voice barely rising above the sound of the horses’ hooves and the rattle of metal-rimmed wheels against cobblestones. “It would cost you a fortune.”

  Julian grinned and said, “Luckily for you, Alek and I have a fortune to spend.”

  “Several fortunes, actually,” Alek said quickly.

  Estelle’s mink coat had opened slightly. She closed the coat around her legs. “I could give you the money.”

  Alek shook his head. “We don’t want your money.” He said it in his customary way, which didn’t allow for rebuttal. “Once we buy the markers, we’ll make it known that anyone extending him more credit will become our permanent enemy. What happens after that, we’ll just have to see. If Horace decides he can live without his opium and whores, we won’t have much influence over him. I’m doubting he can go long without his indulgences. He’s too weak inside.”

  Estelle looked away. With a fingertip she moved aside the curtain and looked out at the river that snaked through the heart of the city, her mind spinning as she considered the possibilities of happiness that would be open to her once her husband was no longer a threat.

  She said, “I come from a very old and respectable family. I don’t want a scandal. I can’t do anything that would bring shame to my family name. To get my divorce, I need everyone to know just how swinish a man Horace really is.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “As you well know, his family can be very, very dangerous, and his parents think Horace can do no wrong.”

  Julian said, “We’re making some discreet inquiries into them as well.”

  Estelle whispered, “You’re really going to do this, aren’t you? You’re really going to figure out some way of releasing me from that horrible, horrible man?” When Alek and Julian nodded, each half smiling, each as determined as the other to save her, Estelle’s lips trembled and she nearly started crying. But then, after only a few seconds, she recovered control of her emotions. In a clear voice she stated, “Did I mention recently that in my opinion you’re the greatest men in all of England, and that I adore you both so completely it frightens me?”

  Chapter Nine

  If there was a more beautiful woman in England, Alek couldn’t imagine who it might be. Seated across from him in Julian’s custom-built four-passenger berlin coach was Princess Estelle, wearing a mink coat that covered her from the neck nearly to the ankles.

  “You look lovely,” he said to Estelle. “I’ve thought about you a thousand times.”

  “And I’ve thought about you two constantly,” Estelle replied. She pulled off her kidskin gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of her mink coat. “I didn’t know I could behave…well, like I have.” The darkness of the carriage could not hide her blush.

  “Uninhibited?” Julian prompted.

  Alek watched as a devilish twinkle came into the princess’s amazing violet eyes. She unfastened the collar button of her coat, then another one. “Yes,” she said, continuing to release buttons. “Uninhibited.”

  Estelle was opening the mink coat slowly, and as she did, Alek’s heart began racing. There was something in her eyes, in her demeanor, that subtly teased his senses. When she finished with the last button near her knees, she tossed open the two halves of her coat. Beneath the coat she wore an underbust corset of white silk, and attached to the corset’s garters she had on white silk stockings. She did not have on drawers, and the small, rectangular patch of golden pubic hair seemed, to Alek at that moment, like a holy temple, a shrine to the majesty of carnal urges.

  Alek started toward Estelle, but she put her hands up quickly. “No,” she said. “Just sit there for a moment.” Her eyelashes fluttered briefly against passion-flushed cheeks. “I’ve never, ever done anything like this. But once I thought of it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the two of you.” She pointed toward their belts. “Lower your trousers for me, please. I want to see what you have for me.” Her tone was oddly formal, like a child politely asking for a gift.

  Highly motivated, the men uncharacteristically followed orders without hesitation or complaint. Within seconds their trousers were down and their flaring erections were standing up, the long shafts pale in the darkened carriage.

  “I want to watch you touch yourselves,” the princess whispered, her hushed words lewdly delivered. She gave her head a little shake of amazement. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  Alek stroked himself, his eyes open wide, drinking in Estelle’s beauty. When she reached a hand up to lightly pinch her left nipple above the half cup of her corset, his cock grew larger, reaching full extension in only a few seconds, completely filling his huge fist. When Estelle touched her cunt, easing her middle finger between pussy lips glistening with her feminine honey, Alek groaned low in his throat.

  “If you think you’re going to keep me away for long, you’re in for one hell of a disappointment.” Alek growled.

  Softly, Estelle asked, “Would you make me satisfy you?”

  Alek nodded. “And if you displease me in any way, I’ll give you a spanking.”

  At the prospect of a spanking, Estelle moaned softly and her finger completely disappeared inside her slick feminine passage.

  “Over here, Princess,” Alek said. “On your knees.”

  This time it was Estelle’s turn to act quickly. She slipped off the seat and knelt in the carriage, s
traddling Julian’s right leg and Alek’s left leg with her knees. Her hands were shaking slightly as she reached for her lovers, wrapping her fingers around shafts that throbbed lustily and were solid as stone—solid for her.

  Cognizant of the princess’s fascination with submission, Alek grabbed her by the hair and pulled her closer. “Suck me,” he said, guiding her head downward slowly, but with force.

  He watched, wide-eyed with wonder, as Estelle parted her full lips, taking his solid cock into her mouth deeply. When the heated wetness of her mouth enveloped the head of his cock, Alek let out a low, throaty groan of primitive lust.

  “That’s it,” he said, his fingers entwined in her hair as he brought her head up and down. “Let me feel those lips.”

  He released the hold he had on Estelle’s golden hair and settled back a little in the big coach to enjoy fellatio performed by perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever encountered. She was unquestioningly the most enchanting. He was thoroughly bewitched by her.

  After two minutes of just being merely an observer, Julian said, “Over here, Princess. There’s another cock that needs your sweet loving.”

  She made a whimpering sound of passion as she released Alek’s erection. Leaning over Julian’s thigh, she licked the head of his erection several times before pushing her lips down over it. The count found it amazing that he could watch the princess give his best friend fellatio and yet not feel in the least bit jealous. As possessive and protective as he was toward Estelle, he didn’t view Julian as a threat to either the feelings she had for him, or he had for her.

  Alek leaned forward, reaching down to caress Estelle’s breast, catching her lust-hardened pink nipple between his middle finger and thumb. He pinched and tugged on the nipple, and he knew that she liked what he was doing because she began bobbing faster over Julian’s cock, the sounds of her heated sucking and passionate moans filling the carriage.