Written By: Eliza Mcharty
“I do hope you’ll consider the arrangement.”
I tilted my head to look up at Lord Dunningham, knowing full well that it elongated my neck in both a proud and sensual way. My mother would have slapped my hand for stunt like it. I allowed my eyes to glitter up at the bastard in their cold way. “Perhaps.”
I took my gloved hand off of his arm, lifting the hem of my gown to a modest height to allow me a graceful exit up the stairs, my back painfully erect. When I reached my bedroom, I slammed the door, not caring that everyone who happened to have a room in this wing would take note of it.
“Oh I simply HATE him Minnie!” My lady’s maid looked up from the nightgown she was dutifully folding. I forgot whatever it was I was talking about for a moment. She tried to be decorous, she truly did. The neckline on her dress was not at all revealing and it wasn’t as if she was wearing red, it was only a gray wool dress with buttons from her throat to the hem, and her hair wasn’t elaborately made. It wasn’t her fault that her eyes were the strangest mix of sky blue, emerald green, and a pinch of yellow right there at the middle near her pupil, and that her black eyebrows were immaculate slashes above them that gave her the most exotic appeal. It wasn’t her fault that her bosom was frankly huge, and her hips flared outward in such a way as to make one think of Aphrodite, or that her rear made it pointless to wear a bustle. No, and she made no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact that her skin tone was… olive. Not at all fashionable, and she never took milk baths to lighten it.
My dear, sweet Minnie, so loyal and straight forward. She never tried to upstage me. It wasn’t her place to, being my servant. Hours and hours she spent with me, coiling my hair, tightening my corset and darkening my lashes with soot. She couldn’t help the fact that she made me feel incredible unbecoming next to her, even in my very finest sapphire blue satin gown, with the most daring neckline of the season. Not even my mother’s diamond and sapphire jewelry, worth, it seemed to me, half the island of Wales, could make up for the fact that she was positively lovely.
I loved her. I hated her.
She looked back down, focusing all her attention on the nightgown she was folding, smoothing out the wrinkles here and there with quick, decisive movements. I didn’t know why she worked so hard on it, I’d only be wearing it in about ten minutes, and then it would be wrinkled. No one would even see me in it except her.
“What did he do now?” she queried.
I blinked, trying to bring my mind back to whatever had brought me crashing into the room in such a fine fit of fury. Ah, yes.
“Do you KNOW what he did? Do you have any idea?”
“You know I don’t.”
I ignored her, angry once again. “He bought me a gown.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.” She walked to the seventeenth century armoire and deposited the nightgown in a drawer.
“It was for a woman half my size.”
She stopped, lifted one of those immaculate brows in a question. I swallowed back a lump of tears. “He said when it fit, we would marry.”Minnie immediately dropped the bar of soap she was unwrapping onto the Persian rug at our feet and rushed to me, her arms encircling me. The scent of her was heady, the smell of sunshine. Minnie was something of a cold girl, but not when it mattered.
“Ridiculous. Ridiculous!” she growled.
“My parents are actually considering his proposal!”
“Monstrous!” she said sympathetically, stroking my hair. She stepped back from me abruptly, seeming to shake herself. “I’ll help you undress. I’ve had a bath drawn for you.”
Minnie always knew not to focus on things one had no control over, she didn’t allow me or herself to indulge in self-pity. I always hated that, but sometimes it was the only thing that got me through the day. I turned my back to her and I felt her deft fingers flying down my back, undoing the pearl buttons that marched down my spine. It never failed to make me shiver when she did this, and I always wondered if she noticed the way the hair stood up on the nape of my neck. She parted the gown, pushing it down off of my shoulders, taking my hand to steady me as I stepped away from the mountain of satin that fell at my feet. Minnie proceeded in her usual efficient way to undo my underskirt, which I again stepped out of, leaving two little hills in the midst of the massive bedchamber. The ridiculous contraption of my bustle came off next. Undoing the laces of my corset and pulling my chemise up over my head, I could have sworn I heard a whimpering gasp behind me just as a feather light touch skimmed a spot on my waist where I knew there would be a red welt – the boning of my corset often left welts, having been tied perhaps too sharply. I craned my head to look over my shoulder.
“We have to stop this,” she murmured angrily, seemingly to herself.
“Mother says it has to be done.”
“She also says you have no business having civil conversations with servants like myself or choosing your own husband, what does your mother know?” Minnie snapped.
I looked straight ahead at a wall. “It’s my own gluttony that makes it necessary.”
“Your own beauty!” she hissed.
A smile flickered at my lips. Any lord or lady downstairs would have fired the girl on the spot for intoning her opinion in such a way. But Minnie had been my maid since we were both young girls, and I would not betray the secret of her willful nature. Her hand slipped around to my belly. Startled, I looked down on it, the intimate way it touched my bruised flesh. As if she realized the peculiarity of her action, the delicate hand pulled away.
“Come, sit and I’ll take your hair down.” I followed her direction and sat before the mirror. It’s a strange thing, I reflected as I looked at the mirror in front of me. For all the pruderies of court, it’s strange how comfortable ladies are in full nudity with their maids. Or was that only me and my maid? I watched her eyes via the mirror flicker to my naked chest. I tried to straighten my shoulders subtly. Perhaps not entirely comfortable, I thought, then wondered why I’d care if Minnie thought my breasts oversized.
My dark hair suddenly came lose of it’s fastenings, spilling down like water over my shoulders, down my back. Minnie indicated the bath. I finally noticed it, sitting before the fire place. Huge, ridiculously big. Well, I wasn’t one to complain, it looked delicious. I glanced at Minnie as I made my way to the tub.
“Take your hair down too.”
If she was surprised at this didn’t show it. I may not have upheld formality in our speech, but this was perhaps a step too… comfortable. Dutifully she took it down. I bit the inside of my cheek. I’d never seen her with her hair down. My gut turned with a fit of jealousy, but I doused it quickly.
I felt lonely for a moment. I needed a friend. And still, dressed in that dowdy way, she didn’t look like a girl to gab with, but a proper lady.
“Come here,” I ordered. She didn’t seem to take note of the husky note in my voice and she obediently came. “Turn around.” She did, and I undid the buttons at her back, perhaps a bit more clumsily that she. A lot more clumsily. I wondered how she’d mastered it. I pushed the stiff wool of the gown down off of her shoulders. The palms of my hands burned as they made full contact with her skin from the crook of her neck to the end of her wrists. Then she wore only her underskirt and the thin, white chemise beneath. It was so thin it gave the impression of transparency, although there was nothing beneath to prove the theory correct.I stepped into the bath, then submerged my body. For a moment the heat was unbearable, and I felt sweat bead at my hairline. I sighed, lost in ecstasy. Sometimes I thought Minnie was something of a prophetess. She knew I liked nothing more than a bath, unfashionable though it might be, and she seemed to always pick the worst nights to prepare them, as if she knew I’d need them the most. I opened my eyes and looked down at my body, not displeased at the effect of it in the strong, wavering light of the fire in the hearth. Then Minnie’s hands were there, the new bar of soap in her right hand, the scent of lavender wafting up from it. She sat behind me, her arms reached on either side of my head so that I allowed myself to rest my head comfortably on herbosom. I watched her hands, fascinated as they did their usual deed – skimming lightly over my chest, the part of my stomach she could reach, the whole of my arms, then setting aside the soap she quickly rinsed the lather from my skin.
Then she did an odd thing. She picked the soap back up. I was snapped quickly out of my lethargy. Minnie was a creature of intense habit. Never had she strayed from it. For goodness sake, she alway washed my right arm before my left! But then her hands were there again and they seemed to me not to be the dependable hands of my lady’s maid, but someone else entirely,
for they meandered, uncertain of their course. She dropped the soap in the tub, something she simply never did. Then her thumbs massaged my shoulders.
It might have been relaxing had I not be trembling. They slid done tentatively and cupped my breasts.My head reeled. I’d somehow deluded myself to think for so long that she’d never, in all this time, noticed that my nipples always stiffened when she helped to bathe me. I don’t know why I allowed myself to think that, considering her attention to detail, but perhaps it was because I didn’t want to have to stop her. Now she was framing in her hands the evidence of a wayward pleasure of mine and I was sure she was going to say something quite awful.
When the blood stopped pounding in my ears I realized her breath was coming raggedly at my ear. “They’re wrong.”
Before I could sort my thoughts to allow myself a moment to understand what she meant, her thumb and forefinger pinched my nipples. I jerked violently as if she’d hurt me, and water spilled over the edge, undoubtedly onto her although I could not see her. Though I made a surprised yelp she did not let go, and lightening shot, as if connected by some elemental string from my breast to the secret heart of my desire, between my legs. I bit my lip, tears coming to my eyes for no apparent reason. I could feel Minnie’s tongue at my neck, her unsteady breath, and realized with a shock that I’d never taken off the expensive jewelry, the necklace that Minnie now nibbled with her teeth. The water seemed suddenly cool in comparison with the lava flow between my fleshy thighs.
“Minnie?” I said, not sure what I wanted to ask.
“Shh,” she whispered hotly in my ear. She let go of my nipples and appeared at the side of my tub. She looked a different person then. Sweat or water ran down her neck and dotted her face, her eyes shone with something I’d never seen before, and she smiled. I’d never seen Minnie smile. I never even realized I hadn’t seen Minnie smile, that’s how uncommon her smile was. And now she looked like a succubus with that devilish smile and perfect teeth I’d never even noticed before. I allowed my gaze to slide down to the front of her chemise which now was truly transparent, being damp, and saw the way her breasts and their hardened nipples stained against the clothe. I couldn’t think straight, felt strange and confused.
Soap bar in the palm of her hand, she rubbed it against my womanhood like so many times before and unlike every other time. She dropped the soap again and simply rubbed me there. I’d never even touched myself there, but she seemed to know precisely what to do, and I closed my eyes, my head thrashing from side to side as if in the throes of a terrible fever. I bit at my lip to keep from screaming and soon tasted blood. My hands clutched at the rim of the tub, white knuckled. Her lips were there on mine, full and soft and so unlike Lord Dunningham’s, which were thin and cruel, comforting the mark I’d made while biting them. She did something Lord Dunningham never had: her tongue darted into my mouth. My eyes flew open in shock at the peculiarity of it, the way she tasted cool and warm all at the same time.
“Minnie, stop, please,” I whimpered, not sure why I wanted her to stop and certain that if she did I would die. My mother had warned me against the pleasures of the flesh with men, but never with women. Was this wrong, then?
“They’re so wrong, my Beauty,” she whispered, as if in answer to my question, and didn’t stop. She lowered her head to my breast and suckled there as her deft fingers rubbed the juices of my vulva around what I soon learned to call “the pearl” in intoxicating circles. I looked now at her, her full lips around my nipple, the firelight playing against the sheen on her high cheekbone. I screamed, not knowing what else to do when I suddenly became blind and the lava that I had felt between my legs seemed to explode like a volcano, not caring that the Persian rug now had more bathwater on it than I had in the bath.
Shivering as I came back down from some unknown height, I looked at her with awe in her eyes. I swallowed, trying to wet my dry throat. Slowly my head cleared although something throbbed in a not unpleasant way in my groin. She smiled at me softly.
“Why…?” I asked, again not sure what it was I wanted to know.
She stood, seeming her own age for once, the happy young companion I had been longing for only moments ago. She picked up the corset that lay on the ground and proudly tossed it into the fire, turning to me.
“You won’t wear the corset again.”
“But I…”
“You won’t. Or I’ll never do that to you again.”
I smiled. “Ah. In that case, I think corsets must be out of season.”
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