by Porphyro
LADY LOVERLY'S CHATS
A Seemly Sex Story
by
BobbyB.
This story, like all Seemly Sex Stories, is pure fiction, an imaginary concoction of the seemly but mischievous mind of BobbyB. Any resemblance to any actual person or situation is completely coincidental.
Copyright 2015 seemlybobbyb
LADY LOVERLY'S CHATS
Loverly Downs is a typical pretentious upper middle class suburban bedroom community development. It has hundreds of houses, each built to basically the same phony-elegant, grandiose plan. The developer's architects proudly insisted they had prevented any resultant monotony by having each house finished with different colors and details. This, combined with a half dozen variations of the basic plan, gives each house an unique individuality; or so the architects' plans and the developer's sales literature claim. Cynics, however, disagree. They say the houses are so similar that once a husband, returning home a trifle inebriated from a so-called late night business meeting, became confused by the houses' essential identity, entered a neighbor's house, and crawled into bed with the neighbor's wife. What is alleged to have happened thereafter varies with different storytellers from the silly to the salacious. Since the parties to the wrong-house-wrong-spouse affair have never been identified, the story is likely only an urban legend. Nevertheless, its continual repetition proves Loverly Downs residents are well aware they live in a cookie-cutter community.
The Loverly Downs name is a presumptuous invention of the developer, a name chosen to have sufficient subtle snob appeal to attract the targeted market segment: Young, well educated, business and professional couples, solidly upper middle class and aggressively upwardly mobile, at least in aspiration. The developer's marketing research had identified its intended customers with the cold-blooded precision of a slithering python patiently pursuing its prey. Loverly Downs was created for ambitious social climbers willing to saddle themselves with mortgages they could barely afford for houses much larger than they needed in the hopes of convincing everyone who could see their house (but not the scrimping existence its mortgage payments imposed) what truly significant up-and-comers they were.
Loverly Downs' hundreds of homogeneous houses were assembled on ninety-five acres of rolling countryside sufficiently close to the city for commuting but sufficiently far from it so the developer could escape the restraints of the city's zoning laws and land use plans. The Loverly name came from this land. Before the development was built it had been part, approximately half, of the Loverly family country estate.
The Loverly family was the leading force in the nineteenth century growth of the city and of its industries. In the process it made a fortune, one of nineteenth century robber baron proportions. The estate had been created primarily to make the family's great wealth as conspicuous as it was considerable. It did this mainly by being large, much larger than the farms surrounding it. But not since the Loverly family had owned it had the estate's many acres ever been farmed. Instead, crisscrossed by bridle paths, its fields were kept in a state attractive to quail and pheasants, its woods maintained as a reserve for deer, rabbits, squirrels and other game. In addition, its lakes were stocked with fish and maintained in a state attractive to water fowl. All of this provided riding, hunting and fishing recreation to members of the family and to persons of sufficient social standing or political influence to be invited guests.
In the past the family did not live at the estate, but rather at their mansion in the city. The estate was only a rural getaway. This arrangement was required by the speed limitations of transportation in the nineteenth century. In those times the Loverly lands weren't a mere forty minute freeway commute from the city. They were a day-long buggy or carriage ride away. Thus it was not possible for the Loverly family to have its residence at the estate while managing its business operations in the city. Even their many businesses outside the city made it necessary for the Loverlys to reside, not at their relatively isolated estate, but in the city, where transportation to and communications with other cities were at hand.
But the same speed limitation required some living accommodations at the estate. After traveling a whole day to reach it, one had to have some place to sleep and eat even if one intended to return to the city the next day. Accordingly, in the middle of the grounds, on its highest part, the first Loverly owners had built a retreat, a massive and massively ostentatious pseudo castle. It contains dozens upon dozens of rooms of varying sizes and uses, abundant lavish accommodations for family members, guests and servants. For, of course, the castle and estate required the services of a large staff. Its surrounding formal gardens alone required not only a chief gardener, but also a chief assistant gardener, in-residence specialists aided in the summer by a small staff of laborers. At one time, in its heyday, the estate had employed almost two dozen live-in servants of various specialties, all of whom were housed in one large wing of the Loverly estate castle.
II
Not all of the great nineteenth century family fortunes have persisted into the twenty-first century. Sometimes they have been dissipated by profligate descendents. Sometimes they have been eroded by changing circumstances. And sometimes they have been lost by bad or unfortunate business decisions. But by far the major reason why many nineteenth century family fortunes have not persisted through the decades is fecundity. Each successive generation adds many more members to the family in what mathematicians call an increasing geometric progression. Thus the familial fortune, even though it continues to grow, is spread out over ever more family members, each of whom may be well off, even prosperous, but none of whom has anything like the extraordinary wealth of the founder.
The Loverlys had avoided this procreative dilution by a simple means. They had not been fecund. Instead of each Loverly generation producing more and more descendents, each had produced fewer and fewer. According to the usual popular explanation, this occurred because the Loverlys were only interested in making money, not babies. But that isn't entirely accurate. The Loverlys made about as many babies as anyone else. But they seldom did so with their legal mates, mates who had been chosen for pecuniary rather than romantic reasons. Not only Loverly men, but often enough Loverly women as well had discretely made illegitimate additions to the nation's population. But the participating parent in all these cases had been quietly paid off then shipped off, taking the living evidence of Loverly sexual indiscretion with them. Each of these events had cost the family a pretty penny or two, but nothing ever exceeding what a family of such means considered a reasonable incidental recreational expense.
During the nineteenth century the size of the extended Loverly family had remained fairly constant. However in the twentieth century their numbers diminished slowly but steadily. Finally there were only two Loverlys remaining in their massive city mansion: Rudolph Loverly IV, the last direct (legitimate) male descendent of the Rudolph Loverly who founded the family fortune, and his spinster daughter, Lady. Actually, the daughter's name is Lucinda, but when she was a child her nanny had always called her Lady, a practice the family had adopted because the girl preferred it. Probably because it seemed appropriate for someone with more than royal riches to also have a royal title, the name has also always been used by the public. Indeed, many persons whose only knowledge of the family comes from reading the society pages assume Lady is a title in fact rather than its wealthy holder's nickname.
Rudolph IV died in the latter part of the twentieth century, a couple decades before Loverly Downs was developed. As he had approached the age of ninety with its implications for the inevitable end of life which even his vast wealth could not forestall, there was much speculation about what would become of
his fortune; speculation and anticipation. Every charity in the city, if not the nation, had designs on it. But they lusted in vain.
The last Loverly male was contemptuous of all charity. Though nominally a Christian, he never attended church, and he didn't know a thing about the theology of his or any other religion. But one thing he did know, and he knew it with the passion of a true True Believer: Charity is sinfully wrong. Charity giving, in his opinion, ranked with taxes as something vicious, immoral, atheistic and socially destructive. God intended people to work and struggle for whatever they got. It was heaven's way of separating the capable and worthy, such as the Loverlys, who would thrive in the competition and rise above it, from the incapable and unworthy, who would fail because of their own culpable inadequacies. It was sacrilege, Rudolph IV believed, to interfere with God's plan by in any way lifting inherently inferior people out of the divine squalor divine providence had put them in.
Unfortunately for Rudolph IV there are tax laws. And although he considered them to be part of the atheist, socialist
