I peered up at her and yawned behind my mask. 'How do you work that out?' I protested. 'All we want to do is crash. I feel like I've been run through a combine harvester and my brain has turned to mushy peas. Can't you just let us sleep?'
'Oh, you can sleep all right, if that's what you want,' she said, 'but you'll sleep the way I want.'
'Can't we just do this tomorrow?' Andrea whined. 'I need a shower and I'm ready to fall over. I've been in this doll skin thing for hours now.'
'Listen, you pair of silly cows,' Anne-Marie snapped, 'stuff has been happening back there, right Teenie? You've flipped out several times in the past few hours. I'm getting so I know the signs, even though you haven't had the chance to tell me.'
'Yeah, okay, you're right,' I admitted. 'But so what?'
'So you've been going back on your own, haven't you? Our dear little Andrea here has been left very much in our own time.'
'So what?' I retorted.
'Yeah, so what?' Andrea echoed.
'So,' Anne-Marie said, 'you can call me Miss Silly, but I reckon it would be a lot better if both of you were back there when things start coming to a head. I take it I'm right when I say the crunch is coming soon, eh Teenie?'
I nodded, almost without thinking. 'It's getting close, certainly,' I confirmed.
'Right then, so you need all the help you can get.'
'Well, the real Indira is doing okay so far,' I said. 'She seems to have a good idea of what's going on and she's adapted to it pretty well, all things considered.'
'Yeah, okay, but Andrea would be a better bet, wouldn't she?'
'Possibly,' I admitted. 'Particularly with what I've got in mind now.' I quickly related what had happened during my last time flip, keeping the details to a minimum, but stressing what I thought would be the importance of Paulie's role in what I was now planning. Andrea found it particularly funny, and would have had trouble keeping a straight face had not the doll's head mask been doing it for her.
'Well then,' Anne-Marie said, 'my plan is this. I'm going to keep you two sweet dollies together for as long as this now takes, as it seems Andrea goes back with you mostly when the pair of you are, well, connected at this end, as it were. If that Davina bitch had paired you together instead of being intent on humiliating me the way she did, it's odds on the fact Andrea would have gone back with you earlier, in my opinion.'
'And what happens if we don't time flip?' I protested, visions of what Anne-Marie intended flashing before my eyes. 'You intend we play fuck-a-dolly together ad infinitum, is that it?'
She shrugged. 'If that's what it takes,' she replied simply, 'though I think we all know it won't be that long. Things back there are speeding up out of all proportion to the passage of time here, aren't they?'
'Yes, but—'
'No buts. Besides, I seem to be the one here who's in the position to call the shots, so let's have no more crap. Let's get things set up properly and then see what happens. Worse scenario is you spend the rest of the night shagging each other silly, and you aren't going to try to convince me that would give either of you much trouble?'
End of argument.
Archie may not have got quite what he was expecting from our visit, but he was certainly well pleased enough to add a bonus of ten guineas when he paid Erik the balance of our fee and booked us to return on the following weekend. He also passed us a brief letter from a friend of his from Oxford, who would be visiting Brighton the weekend following, who wondered if we could accommodate him for an afternoon and a night if he extended his stay. Back at the hotel I penned a brief affirmative reply, together with instructions for the fellow to rendezvous with Erik at the hotel in Arundel, and Archie undertook to ensure it was conveyed to him in good time.
'Not bad at all,' I said to Indira and Erik when we were finally back at the mill house. 'One very satisfied customer and one new one and we've hardly started up yet.'
'Another letter there is,' Erik said. 'Collecting it from the shoemaker I was as we coming through this morning were.' He took out the packet, unfolded the contents and passed them to me.
There were two large five-pound bank notes and a sheet of paper, which I saw was a brief note from Julian Corner-Browne, requesting an 'appointment' at the earliest possible opportunity. 'We'll need to start a proper diary,' I chuckled. 'I'll write and let him know we can fit him in just after we get back from Archie next time. Perhaps you could make sure it gets delivered, Erik? Oh, and I have another little job for you, but it will mean riding to London.' No wonder the railway was greeted so enthusiastically in the next decade, I thought, but Erik seemed unperturbed at the prospect of several hours in the saddle.
'I have a name from Mister Marsh,' I elaborated. 'The gentleman in question is French, but he speaks very good English. He has a device that is available for sale I need you to bring back. It is very delicate, so it will need wrapping very carefully. You may need to buy another horse to bring it back on.'
Erik nodded and did not question me any further. As I have said, our funds had taken quite a pounding over the weeks, but I had put some cash aside for this particular phase of my plan as soon as it started forming in my head. The sudden appearance of young Paulie on the scene could possibly be an unexpected bonus, but it all depended upon whether what M. Delascier had to sell us, and on whether it could be made to work properly in the circumstances in which I wanted to use it.
As I considered this, I realised it was time to do a quick sidestep and try for a slightly different approach. 'On second thought, Erik, take the carriage and I'll write you a letter for the gentleman. It could be useful if we could persuade him to come down here for a few days, even if we have to pay him a bit extra. Nothing like having an expert when it comes to new technology.' That last word flummoxed not only Erik, but Indira as well. 'It's a new invention,' I explained. 'It's a sort of box for taking pictures of people. They call it a camera, but at the moment it's very new and probably very tricky. This Frenchman is one of the very few people who knows anything much about it, so we'll need his help and advice.'
'Why do we need a box for this?' Indira asked. 'What is wrong with an artist? Surely there must be a portrait painter living in the town?'
'I'm sure there is,' I replied, smiling, 'but a portrait takes time to be painted, whereas this box of tricks does it in about two seconds and it's a real picture, not something someone's painted. And we can have lots of copies made too, all of the same thing.'
At this Erik suddenly looked very alert. 'Ah!' he exclaimed. 'Believing I am that I know what it is you plan, mistress.'
'Yeah,' I said, sure he had caught on. There was so much more to Erik than met the eye and he was still surprising me. 'It's called blackmail,' I said, 'and if this works, we'll be setting a trend that will continue for centuries to come, unfortunately.'
By now I had realised, as I'm sure you have too, that Anne-Marie's plan to get Andrea back in time with me hadn't worked out, because Indira was still most definitely Indira. As to why the plan had failed, I entertained my own ideas, but more of that later. In the meantime, the real Indira was turning out to be a great help, and with Erik's calm Scandinavian attitude and apparent natural instinct for management and organisation, we were turning into a formidable team. In addition, pieces of the plan were falling nicely into place and luck seemed to be favouring us, so the original strategy was almost refining itself as we went along. Paulie was a perfect example of this, and I discreetly obtained an address where he could be contacted directly, without having to use Archie as a go between.
Meanwhile, my various artisans - the shoemaker, dressmaker and the young carpenter - were completing the various projects and tasks I had assigned them. I just wished we had a usable cellar at the house, but shutters, heavy curtains and the application of a lot of black paint eventually turned what had been the large rear sitting room into an acceptable substitute. As a fallback position we also had the barn, which now that we had extra horses, Erik and the builder had given a bit of
a facelift. Even with five horses stabled inside there was still plenty of room, and so I had two hoists installed and the main beam strengthened, just in case.
'If this doesn't all work out the way I intend,' I confided in Indira, 'then at least you and your mistress will have the basis of a profitable business here. Of course, I hope we'll get her fortune back for her eventually, but then who knows, she might want to continue with a profitable hobby?'
At this, Indira burst out laughing. 'When you are not here - not in her body, I mean - she talks to me of this,' she explained.
'And what does she tell you?'
'That she thinks you must have corrupted her mind, but that she is helpless to do anything about it.'
'That's funny - funny as in curious, I mean. I was wondering whether or not that was the case, or if perhaps it was the other way around.' I sighed heavily and lowered my eyes. 'Ever since all this started,' I continued quietly, 'I've been thinking I must have inherited some family trait from the past, which is the present here, of course, and that it was the Hacklebury genes to blame.'
'You seem sure you are descended from Miss Angelina,' Indira said.
I nodded. 'Pretty sure, yes.'
'And you think Hacklebury must have fathered a child with her?'
'Yes, of course, at least—'
'Well, it hasn't happened yet,' Indira stated. 'I can swear to that. Don't forget, I am with my mistress, or with you, very nearly all the time. I would know, and what I do know is that you are most definitely not carrying Hacklebury's child at this time, not unless one certain rule of nature has changed drastically.'
I pondered this statement, understanding exactly what she meant, and although this cheered me in one way, in another it did not bode well, for it indicated Hacklebury might not yet have finished where Angelina was concerned and that was a far from pleasant prospect.
The days passed by steadily, punctuated by further lessons for the three girls, making sure they remained 'match fit', and interspersed with other matters so routine as to be humdrum. It was about now I found I had enough time on my hands to sit back and consider properly what was happening here, and as the weekend approached for us to return to Chichester, for the first time I reflected on how truly unbelievable all this time tripping was. This time around I had been back here for nearly two weeks and yet, back in my own time, I was pretty damned sure I was exactly where Anne-Marie had left me only a matter of minutes before my last jump. At this rate I was going to end up effectively living through a couple of hundred years back in the past whilst living maybe seventy or eighty in my own time.
As events since have unfolded, this proved to be more than true, and that was before I came to realise my time in the past seemed to be adding credited time to my life expectancy in my present existence.
I opened my eyes and immediately realised I was back in nineteen seventy-five. It should not have come as a surprise by now. In fact, the actual time jumps did not, but what did catch me on the hop this time was the fact that I had been many days back in Angelina's body, with little of import apparently happening, and then suddenly, just twenty-four hours before we were due in Chichester, I reverted to being myself again. Or rather, I reverted to being the helpless doll Anne-Marie had left impaled upon Andrea's huge artificial cock with my arms bound about her as hers were bound about me, an unbreakable embrace of coitus Anne-Marie had been convinced would be the answer to the pair of us making the next jump in unison.
Wrong.
I knew why, but the frustrating thing was, I could not tell her, for apart from the fact that she had left us alone in Andrea's bedroom, she had replaced our dolly gag inserts, twisting them to engage the snap fitting securing them, so that we remained locked in silence, me filled to bursting by an outsized inanimate phallus and Andrea with her own equipment trapped and feeling nothing within its soft lining and rigid outer layer.
Not that this lack of sensitivity seemed to be stopping my rubber lover from making a good attempt, for as I came back to consciousness, I could feel her making good use of the little slack our bonds allowed, pumping steadily in and out of me. It was then I remembered the vibrating plug Anne-Marie had inserted into her just before leaving us. I groaned silently and made a note that when I was finally loose from this impossibly stupid and unproductive situation, Anne-Marie and I were going to have words - lots of them, and few of them overly subtle.
If there was a way to get Andrea back to help me as the plan moved towards its climax, it was not this, and from now on, whether Anne-Marie liked it or not, things were going to happen in this timeframe as they were happening in the earlier one, my way and my way only. Meanwhile, all I could do was sit there with my legs wide open and think of England, nineteenth century England, as it happened, not that it would have made any difference to twentieth century Teena's situation.
I stood in the centre of our now completed 'torture chamber' and nodded in satisfaction. The room was not large, not by the standards of the cellar dungeon complex in Chichester, but it would more than suffice, especially as we had moved one or two items of equipment into the corner bedroom, leaving only the X-shaped cross against the end wall, and a faithful copy of the Chichester whipping horse in the centre of the floor area, with one of the two bondage chairs pushed back into a corner, where it stood in shadow outside the circle of light cast by the four lanterns now hanging from the ceiling.
In contrast to the black walls and dark wood of our bizarre furnishings, Indira, who stood beside me, was a vision in pure white, having chosen this moment to unveil the results of her many hours of needlecraft. From head to toe she was dressed in dazzling kid leather, a close-fitting bodysuit that showed every single one of her ample curves, with a hood and mask completely disguising the colour of her skin. She had even added a fine horsehair ponytail to the top of her hood, bleaching that to match the leather. When the time came, Hacklebury would never make any connection between this exotic creature and the hapless Indian girl he had so brutally banished from Angelina's company.
'You look stunning!' I told her in genuine admiration, and wondered what Andrea would have thought of the outfit had she come back this time. I imagined her strutting around the room, poised and full of attitude on those high heels, swinging the coiled whip, itching to be able to put her new persona to good use. But then again, I marvelled, that was exactly what Indira was doing now. The change in the former serving maid's personality since the night of our escape was incredible. In many ways, she was now the dominant personality in the household. Even Erik seemed wary in her presence, even when she was wearing her normal dress or sari. In this mood, and looking more like a modern day superhero, she was truly terrifying.
'I am glad you like it,' she said, offering me a mock little bow and clicking her heels together in military style. 'I wish to use it to practice my techniques with the young man.' I knew she was referring to Paulie, who was due to arrive within the next two hours or so.
I nodded. 'He's all yours, if that's what you want. Will you want Erik with you?'
Behind the mask, Indira trilled a laugh and shook her head. 'No, indeed, that will not be necessary.'
'Fair enough, if you're sure.' I smiled at her. 'Would you mind if I sat in, as an observer, that is?'
She seemed to hesitate and there was a silence of several seconds. 'Would you agree to sit in, as you put it, on my conditions? I wish to discover if I have the ability to exercise control, and your presence in the room as the Contessa would not make it a fair trial.'
'I could get a screen in here and hide in the corner behind it,' I offered.
She made a negative gesture. 'No, that was not what I had in mind. A corner, yes, but in full view.'
'Then how...?' I began and stopped, my jaw dropping and my eyes flickering towards the bondage chair. 'Oh!' I exclaimed, momentarily at a loss for words. 'You mean...?'
She nodded. 'You will pretend to be one of the girls. You are smaller than any of them, of course, but I doubt whether young
Paulie will remember much about the other evening. Well,' she corrected herself, 'he will remember plenty, but the height and bosom size of the female company will not be that clear in his silly mind.'
I turned away from Indira, considering the proposal, feeling my pulse rate quickening as I pictured the scenario. I walked over to the cross and fingered the heavy straps I knew would soon be holding Paulie ready for whatever Indira had in store for him, and answered without turning back.
The chair could have been the model for what was later to become the electric chair in America, but this particular one would be generating electricity of a totally different nature. As Indira led me into the room and paraded me once around the helpless naked figure already stretched over the horse, I struggled to remain calm, breathing with difficulty due to the corset she had laced so tightly about me and tottering on one of the highest heeled pairs of boots we had.
My arms were clad to the shoulders in soft kid gloves, my wrists bound together in front of me with a wide satin ribbon tied off in a huge bow. My legs, apart from the ankle boots, were sheathed in black silk stockings held up by black and red lace garters. Between the tops of the stockings and the lower hem of the corset I was naked and completely hairless. From behind the mask hood I peered out at the brooding scene, reflecting that we had indeed done a good job with the room as I looked across at Paulie, wondering what was going through his mind. If it was anything like my thoughts then he was not, I suspected, about to be disappointed.
Indira drew me around in front of him and pushed me forward, so that I was standing with my denuded crotch only inches from his head. She reached out, grabbed his hair and lifted his head so his face was raised and he was looking straight at my already moistening jewel. I knew his nostrils would now be full of my scent, for I could smell my own arousal even over the dull musk of my hood.
Teena: A House of Ill Repute Page 19
