Amelia 1
Captive of Watchnest Hall
by
Lindsey Brooks
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Lindsey Brooks
Published by Strict Publishing International
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Chapter 1
Amelia watched the great, dark bulk of the figure coming ever nearer. Her heart fluttered with fear. Slowly and deliberately, the fiend unbuttoned his shirt. He stripped it back from his thickly muscled torso and cast it carelessly aside. Moonlight flooding through the open windows behind him bathed the hard line of his jaw as his measured tread stopped at the foot of the bed. The eyes in his shadowed face glinted with menace.
Terror seized Amelia in a paralysing grip. Moments before, she had been sleeping peacefully, warm and safe, until some sixth sense had awoken her and she had seen the monstrous figure looming over her bed. Hands trembling, she clutched her blankets to her chin, staring horror-stricken at the stranger who had so daringly violated the sanctity of her room. How easily he could also violate the sanctity of her bed, or even - a chill of fear ran up her spine - her fragile, defenceless body.
The corded muscles of the brute’s arms rippled in the moonlight as he grabbed the lower edge of Amelia’s bedclothes and tore them from her feeble grasp. She cowered, exposed and unprotected, clad only in the thinnest of nightgowns. Desperate to jump up and flee, Amelia found her limbs refused to move. Even her vocal chords betrayed her. By the time her scream reached her lips it was no more than a faint, pathetic squeak.
A flicker of light showed in the dark face - cold moonlight reflecting in the stranger’s eyes as they met her own. His hand reached out. At last, Amelia found her strength and twisted away, scrabbling across the bed to escape. With terrifying ease, the monster caught her and flung her on her back. Disdaining her puny strength, he pressed her shoulders flat. Little contractions of fear made her belly quiver as she stared up at his invisible, shadowed face, not daring to move, petrified she would feel once more the brutal power that starkly told her she was completely at his mercy. But feel it she did as he seized her ankles and drew them wide apart. Fear kept her immobile when he began to slide her nightgown upwards, his big, rough hands sliding over the smoothness of her calves and thighs, slowly raising the flimsy garment above her waist.
Without warning, the fiend’s great paws tore the material like gossamer, baring Amelia’s up-thrust breasts. She recoiled in shock, her nakedness suddenly bathed in eerie moonlight as the monster drew back to view his prize. Amelia sensed the brute’s gaze drinking in her nudity as he fuelled his lust with the sight of her lithe curves and the rich mounds of her breasts. She caught her breath when the stranger began to unfasten his trousers. Terror once more took her in its grip and held her fast. His power had her cowed. His strength enforced her submission.
Above the thumping of her frantically beating heart, she heard the tiny noises of each trouser button being undone and the sound of the trousers sliding down thick-muscled thighs. The fiend hesitated, looking towards the door of the room as though to reassure himself he would not be disturbed in his work. Amelia looked too, longingly, at her only avenue of escape, so near yet so unreachable. When she looked once more at her assailant, her head spun until she almost fainted.
Rearing before her was a monstrous penis, as long and thick as her forearm. Strange feelings, unsought and unknown until that moment, suddenly uncoiled within her. Amelia’s face flushed with the heat of her modesty and she felt another sort of heat, unbidden and unwanted, stirring between her parted thighs.
The stranger reached for her, exploring her nakedness. To Amelia’s surprise, he did not use her roughly or with haste. His big, blunt-fingered hands moved slowly and gently, caressing her hips and waist, arms and shoulders, pausing for a moment to lightly stroke her cheek and brush her lips. Her blood was pulsing hotly through her veins and she could hear her heart pounding and her breathing quicken as the fiend stroked his way down to her breasts. Softly, the strong fingers traced patterns across the two up-thrust peaks, circling their tips, drawing ever closer to the nipples. Amelia gasped in astonishment as the stranger’s fingers caressed her twin buds and they swelled and hardened, tingling as they had never done before. There was a tingling too in the secret place between her legs, and all of her belly and thighs were quivering, not just with fear but also with a singular excitement. Astounded, Amelia heard her lips emit a breathy moan as the stranger’s hand slid slowly down her stomach and began stroking her thighs. Her belly tightened. Excitement and anticipation were making her head swim as with agonising slowness the fingers traced their tantalising way towards her sex.
She squirmed as the stranger’s caress slid to the inside of her thighs, pausing there to stroke the warmly damp skin, so very sensitive to his touch. His fingers brushed the silky hairs around the entrance to her sex and she felt an indescribable thrill of excitement. Amelia stiffened, remembering to be afraid, to be horrified by the dark, evil monster who was poised to ravish her. She could not cling to the fear. It slipped away, banished by the fire raging between her thighs and a reckless craving for pleasure that was suddenly all that filled her mind. A pulse of helpless delight coursed through her sex as a finger traced the line of her vulva, lightly separating the moist lips. Her hips leapt upward, her swelling outer labia parted at the gentlest pressure and the fiend’s finger sank inside her.
Amelia wriggled, gasping and giving little stunned moans of mingled delight and disbelief. She had never imagined any pleasure as great as that the big, broad finger of the stranger was creating in her quivering sex. Something seemed to be swelling within it, responding to the movement of the monster’s thumb beneath the little hood crowning her slit. The thing stiffened, rising from the little folds of flesh, rewarding each jerk and wriggle she gave with a fresh surge of arousal. Breathlessly, she moaned and whimpered, her entire skin aflame. Her nipples were so hard they ached, and all her belly and thighs burned with a fiery passion she had never known before. The thick finger teased the soft, moist inner lips of her sex apart and the heady scent of her womanhood filled the air around her.
The stranger moved suddenly, positioning himself between her open legs, and Amelia’s racing pulse quickened further. Anticipation made her giddy. She felt the monster’s weight upon her, his body heat, the texture of his skin against hers, all sensations that were new and strange and wildly intoxicating. Boldly, she reached up and felt the breadth of his shoulders and the thick, iron-hard muscles in his upper arms. She trembled and knew she was helpless. She could do nothing but surrender.
But she yearned to surrender. Awestruck, Amelia felt her belly clench tight as the stranger laid the great, thick shaft of his penis upon it. With fearful fascination, she reached out and touched its swollen head. It was taut and hot, and very hard under her small hand. She drew back as though it had burned her. The stranger gave a throaty growl and Amelia felt his thick, rigid length slide down her stomach and over the soft curls on her pubic mound. Her heart and belly and sex were all trembling. She could scarcely breathe. The moment had come.
The broad head of the fiend’s penis touched her tender lips. It was huge. It was monstrous! Her fear rose up again and was vanquished at once by the intensity of her desire. Straining her thighs wide as the pressure against her sensitive opening increased, Amelia wriggled under a sudden thrust of the brute’s hips. The swollen penis stretched her and a ripple of shivering delight ran the length of her sheath. She cried out as her sex abruptly yielded and she felt the great shaft sink within. Immediately, she was filled with a sparkling excitement she had never dreamed existed.
The stranger laid his hard belly upon Amelia’s, giving short jerks of his hips as he worked his full length into her. His great bulk was crushing her, his face inches from hers, yet still she could make out nothing of his shadowed features. Only the silhouette of his dark head was visible against the moonlit ceiling, its outline becoming more vague as lust and passion blurred the young woman’s vision.
Ungentle hands were upon her breasts, squeezing the firm-fleshed mounds, pinching and teasing her hardened nipples, fuelling her arousal as the quickening thrusts of the penis raised the fierce heat in her sex to unbearable levels. Hardly aware of it, Amelia made thrusts of her own, driving herself onto the impaling shaft, giving little, involuntary yelps of passion in her frantic climb towards fulfilment. Both she and her assailant were sheened with sweat, and the animal scent of their lust clung to them as the speed of their coupling increased. Amelia raised her knees, her thighs gripping the monster’s waist as she strained to meet each bruising stoke and heighten the raw delight flowing through her. He was lunging hard and fast, hands clasped tightly on her breasts, his horny palms an agony of pleasure against their hard tips. He tore a cry from her, a cry of urgency and unendurable need that Amelia could not believe had come from her own lips.
She orgasmed. It overwhelmed her in an instant of blinding, incredible elation, a vast surge of heart-stopping brilliance that smashed her flat and deprived her of all other senses, leaving only the immense, shattering delight of her climax. Ripe juices flooded her sex. Its velvety ridges rippled with indescribable joy and then contracted, clamping hard around the great shaft filling her. Amelia heard the stranger’s animal cry and felt the sudden gush as he too came in a bucking, grinding, thrashing of his hips that triggered again her own passionate outpouring. White lights flashed before her eyes while her mind whirled and her stomach quivered and clenched in ungovernable ecstasy.
With a final shiver of pleasure fluttering between her thighs, Amelia opened her eyes. For a moment she lay quietly, staring at the canopy above her bed, feeling her blood cool and her heartbeat slow. She had not meant to do it, but she was glad she had given in to temptation, though slightly disappointed it had not worked out quite as she would have wished. The fantasy was one of her favourites, and she had hoped that this time she might at least have glimpsed the face of the stranger who ravished her in the darkness so thoroughly and so well.
Amelia looked towards the windows and sighed. It was not moonlight that was making patterns across her bare legs but the sun. Time was passing. Suddenly aware of it, the young woman took the instrument she had used to pleasure herself and put it carefully on the linen handkerchief that lay on the side table. She got up quickly and went to the washstand.
Her toilette completed, Amelia paused to check her appearance in the peer glass, smoothing down the pleats of her travelling skirt. Her bodice too looked a little creased from the effects of her impulsive frolic. She pulled it straighter, feeling her breasts flatten under the material, adjusted the cuffs and smoothed the collar, and with a nod of satisfaction to her image in the mirror, picked up her hat and gloves and hurried downstairs.
The drawing room was empty, as Amelia had known it would be. Jeavons the butler, last of the house servants, had left that morning. Amelia had stood at the door of the Hall, waving her handkerchief in sad farewell and the tears she had shed had been for Jeavons as well as for herself. He had stayed beyond the end of his notice, perhaps more loyal to the house he had served for long years than to its youthful mistress, but his gesture had touched Amelia. She had been generous to the servants. None would suffer for her ill fortune, but Jeavons had been her strongest support during her ordeal and she had been even more open-handed with him, and had the brief pleasure of his warm thanks when he took his leave.
Tearful again, Amelia turned from the window, resenting the blue sky and the mid-June sunshine that streamed into the drawing room, casting latticed shadows across the carpet. For her, the day was filled with gloom. She was leaving her home. Worse - she was being driven from it. She stared at the letter on the table beside the window as though her hatred could make it burst into flames. But it just lay there, still creased from the first time she had read it, when she had crumpled it into a ball and flung it from her with all her strength.
“Oh, Jonathan,” she said aloud, “won’t you come back and save me from all this?” Nothing but silence greeted her plea, and not for the first time Amelia roundly cursed Victor in terms that a young, respectable lady was not expected to know but which were familiar to the grooms of Watchnest Hall when dealing with a recalcitrant horse. Only when she had exhausted her vocabulary did she realise that she had forgotten all about her ‘toy’. It lay where she had left it, on the table at her bedside, nestling on one of her fine linen handkerchiefs.
The sound of impatiently stamping hooves made Amelia glance through the window. Her carriage stood outside, already packed with her belongings and waiting for her to board, just as it had been when she had given in to temptation. With what she knew was unseemly haste, Amelia hurried to her room to retrieve the ‘toy’, reflecting that it was an indication of how deep was her distress that she could have neglected to pack so important an item.
Returning to the drawing room, she looked around her beloved home and sanctuary for the last time. Her heart could not have felt heavier. Here she had felt safe, been safe, from the rigours and dangers of the world beyond the Hall’s boundaries, cocooned behind its thick walls, protected by Jeavons and the other servants from the painful vagaries of fortune that had so plagued her earliest years.
Memories of what she was sure had been the happiest time of her life came to her as she surveyed the familiar surroundings for the last time. At first there had been visitors, mostly the ladies of the local gentry with sons of marriageable age, although when they had learned she had no dowry, their eagerness for her to meet their offspring had quickly faded. Amelia was indifferent. Happy in her comfortable isolation, she had kept the accounts, directed the servants in their duties, and controlled the house’s domestic affairs with all the energy at her disposal. In her leisure hours she had walked in the gardens, ridden on the estate, sketched and painted, read books from the library to improve her mind (and learned much thereby), or the novels of romance and adventure that she had loved since she was a girl.
Sometimes she had just wandered unhindered around her adoptive home. There were pictures, statues and many curious objects that Jonathan Barron had brought back from his travels in lands near and far. Jeavons had always had a tale to tell about them and his stories had fascinated and excited her for hours, until she had longed for Jonathan’s return so she could at last meet the brave adventurer the butler described. But the years had passed with hardly a word from him and the chance of their meeting had seemed to grow ever more remote.
Yet Amelia had been happy, relishing what Jonathan had given her and learning to manage the household he had entrusted to her care with a scrupulous efficiency that had earned the admiration of her benefactor’s butler, something she considered high praise indeed. She had taken to exploring the more obscure corners of the Hall while reliving the adventurous tales Jeavons had told of her distant ancestors whose portraits decorated its walls. In the cellars, she had found rusting relics from the Civil War, when the Hall had been a Royalist stronghold and prepared for a Roundhead siege that never came. In the attic she had discovered more of the curios Jonathan and others before him had collected, and had spent two whole weeks rummaging through them amid the dust and cobwebs.
Once each year, suitably chaperoned by the lady’s companion she had employed, she had gone to the County Ball, held in a grand stately home so glittering with gold leaf and chandeliers it made her own dear Watchnest Hall seem modest by comparison. But Amelia did not greatly care for these entertainments or for the ladies and gentlemen she met at such gatherings, and had quickly decided parties and balls were not her pleasure. Thus, she had given no encouragement to those who had shown an interest in her and had soon earned the reputation of being cold and aloof. Indeed, she had learned that some called her arrogant and disdainful, though she knew she was no such thing. Once, she had overheard a young man refer to her as ‘Miss Prim and Proper’. That had stung, but Amelia had smiled to herself, thinking that if she revealed how eagerly and frequently she sought her secret place, he would know how inappropriate that name was. And she had known too, how eagerly he would have sought it, were she to give him the chance. The thought had set up such a prickling between her legs that Amelia had had to sit down and fan herself briskly. And immediately upon returning home she had shut herself in her room and at once raised gown and petticoats, and applied her fingers to the little, moist slit between her thighs that was the centre of her delight.
The recollection brought her back to the present and she dabbed away her tears with her handkerchief, then carefully wrapped it around the ‘toy’. This was neither the time nor place to be feeling the tingle of excitement the sight or touch of it always caused her. Quickly, she opened the pigskin valise that stood on the table by the window and put it inside. There was a faint, metallic clink as she did so, reassuring her that her money was still there. The courts had stopped her access to Jonathan’s bank accounts, but she had anticipated that and drawn money while she could. It had paid off the servants handsomely, as well as purchasing the tenancy of an attractive cottage in Weymouth for Amelia. She knew that Jonathan would not want her left penniless and that he would approve of what she had done. In her valise was the balance of the money, all she had apart from her belongings on the carriage, but those thousand pounds in notes and sovereigns would keep her in comfort, if not in the manner to which she was accustom.
Amelia’s belly fluttered nervously. She had a journey to begin. She must treat it as an adventure, she told herself, doing her best to summon her courage. But adventure was something she much preferred to experience in the pages of her novels or from Jeavons’s tales, than to confront in reality. She reached out to fasten her valise and was surprised to see a carriage coming up the drive at a brisk trot. The coachman sawed back on the reins, and with a jingling of harness and stamping of hooves, brought it to a halt beside Amelia’s own. Wondering who would call upon her on such a day, for she did not encourage visitors, she watched the coachman dismount and open the carriage door. As he did so an awful thought struck Amelia and a moment later her stomach gave a lurch as she saw Victor Birchwood step down.
Hatred and anger made Amelia’s head swim and her heart pound as she watched Victor address her coachman. The man replied with a gesture towards the Hall and Victor appeared to speak more sharply, with gestures of his own. The coachman tugged at the peak of his cap, got down from his seat and, to Amelia’s alarm and consternation, began to unload her luggage.
Her first impulse was to rush outside and remonstrate with him, but she was determined her enemy would not see her flustered or distressed. She drew back as Victor glanced towards the house, but not before she had seen the last of her baggage piled on the ground and her coach drive off towards the stables. Worried as well as angry, Amelia paced the floor agitatedly, wondering if she had been wise to hang on until the last possible moment before departing. She had so hated the idea of having to abandon the safety of her home, and hated too the feeling that by doing so she was letting down her benefactor. Returning to look anxiously through the window, she saw another man had dismounted from Victor’s coach and together they were walking towards the Hall. Amelia took a deep breath. The second man was Victor’s lawyer, the architect of her downfall.
There was no knock at the unlatched door. Victor walked straight in as if he owned the place. His footsteps rang hollowly in the entrance hall. The drawing room door opened. Amelia found she was still holding her breath and let it out with a rush into the sudden silence. The ornate clock above the fireplace ticked loudly. Victor looked her straight in the eye, his face hard and uncompromising.
He had once been quite a handsome man, Amelia knew, and was still quite well muscled beneath his broadcloth coat, though it bulged somewhat around his belly. His eyes were dark and somewhat hooded, as though to conceal their menace, his nose long above a thin-lipped, peevish mouth. Though he and Amelia were only very distantly related, they shared one characteristic, for both had hair that was raven black. There was perhaps also a hint of her own high cheekbones in his face, though Victor’s heavy features were far from Amelia’s smooth, full-lipped, feminine beauty. He was in his mid-thirties, she knew, a few years younger than Jonathan, but the effects of his reputedly profligate lifestyle were showing clearly on his lined and florid face.
She stared back at him, her wide eyes full of anger and disgust. Although her belly was fluttering, when she spoke she managed to sound cold and disdainful. “I might have known, sir, that you would not have the decency to wait for the appointed date to complete your theft.”
Victor’s lips twitched and his face flushed. “As well I did not, Miss Barron, since it seems you have been apprehended in a theft of your own. Were the instructions not clear to you that all property was to remain with the house?”
Amelia drew herself up, her temper on a short rein. “Oh, they were perfectly clear, sir. Have no fear. There is only one thief in this room and it is not I.”
“Then how do you explain the carriage, piled high with your plunder and ready to depart?”
“What?” Suddenly at a loss, Amelia took several moments to recover her composure. “Those are my belongings, sir, to which I have every right, as any honourable man would tell you.” Her eyes flickered to Charles Dunkerley, the lawyer, who was standing behind Victor, but he made no move to intervene.
“And how were they paid for?” Victor demanded. “Did not the proceeds of this estate buy them? And am I not….” He paused to replace his angry snarl with a smug smile of satisfaction. “Am I not now the owner of this estate?”
“Damn you if you are, sir,” Amelia spat, “and your lackeys who connived with you in your fraud, for Jonathan will return and when he does you will rue this day.”
Victor laughed humourlessly. “The courts have established that Jonathan is dead. Witnesses have testified they saw him swamped in a rowing boat in Valparaiso harbour and drown before he could be rescued. Everyone else is willing to believe the evidence.” He gestured at the large pile of Amelia’s baggage on the drive. “I see now why you persist in refusing to accept the truth.”
“Not at all, sir. For the truth is Jonathan Barron is alive. No body was ever found, and I do not believe a word of that sea-captain’s claim that he saw it happen, or those sworn affidavits from his crew, who were always conveniently at sea whenever there was a court hearing.”
Victor’s face clouded. “Have a care what you are implying, Miss Barron.”
“I imply nothing, sir,” Amelia snapped back. “I state outright that the captain was paid by you to lie.”
“Why, you slanderous little minx. You only ever showed up in court once. What the devil do you know about it?”
“Enough to recognise a fraud and a liar when I’m face to face with one,” Amelia sneered and saw his anger flare. Broad and imposing, Victor took a step towards her and she had to swallow her apprehension to hold his eyes with her own defiant glare.
“To hell with your damned arrogance. You no longer give the orders here. I am the Master of Watchnest Hall, and you are leaving it for good.”
“Give me my belongings and I will be gone,” Amelia assured him. “I would not spend a moment longer than necessary with such as you.”
“Oh, you will go, miss! But you’ll take nothing of mine with you.”
His hand moved like lightning, seizing the front of her bodice, and she felt his appalling strength as his fist closed on the rich material and pulled. With buttons popping and cloth ripping, the bodice split from neck to waist and Amelia cried in alarm. Red-faced with fury, Victor cast the torn piece aside and grabbed at what was left, ripping and rending until it was in tatters.
“Ruffian,” Amelia cried, scandalised that he should dare lay hands upon her. “Let me go.”
“Gladly,” Victor said through clenched teeth. “When I have what is mine.”
His hand clawed at the ragged remains of the garment around her shoulders, catching in the neck of her shift. Amelia felt the jerk, heard the thin silk rip and with a shriek of outrage, clutched at her suddenly exposed breasts. Mouth wide in alarm, she turned to run, but Victor seized the waistband of her skirt, almost pulling her off her feet as he yanked the material. With a loud tearing, the skirt’s seams split. Amelia felt the fine linen of her petticoat part and the silk of her drawers rip. She was naked.
“Monster,” she screamed, outraged, and leaped at Victor, hands clawed to rake his face. He jumped back, knocking Dunkerley over but saving his eyesight. Only one of Amelia’s nails caught him, ploughing a thin, red furrow down his cheek.
He roared in pain and seized her wrist in a grip of iron, dragging her towards the door. “Out, you bitch,” he shouted. “Out with you and your damned arrogance.”
Amelia’s anger died at once as she realised his intention. “No, you can’t,” she cried, pulling against the arm that was dragging her inexorably towards the door. “You can’t throw me out nake-.” She stopped. Even in her anxiety, she could not say the word.
She saw Victor look at her and his temper fade as he realised for the first time that she was nude. Suddenly, she too was acutely aware of the fact and quickly raised the arm not in Victor’s grasp to cover her breasts. His stare dropped to her belly and she had to lower her hand to hide the furred triangle at her thighs, but then he looked at her breasts again and she had to lift her hand to cover them, feeling her blush burning her cheeks.
“Sir,” she said, summoning all of her dignity, which was not much in the circumstances, “you are no gentleman.”
Charles Dunkerley regained his feet and dusted himself off. He looked up, caught sight of Amelia naked and his mouth fell open. The look on his face was vaguely familiar to her, but somehow strange and out of place. Then she realised that she had only ever seen it before on her own features when she looked in the mirror. It was desire.
Suddenly she snapped. With the snarl of a wildcat, Amelia balled her fist and struck at her tormentor, heedless of her bouncing breasts. Momentarily surprised, Victor let go of her, but in a second his big hands pushed her away. Amelia shot across the room as if propelled by steam and struck the table that stood in the window. One of her flailing arms swept the fateful letter and her valise to the carpet. The letter floated harmlessly down. The valise landed on its side with a thump, scattering five-pound notes and golden sovereigns across the floor. And out from it too, rolled something wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief.
Chapter 2
The room went suddenly silent. Amelia crouched on the floor, doing her best to hide her nakedness. The pins had come loose from her hair and its concealing tresses flowed across her shoulders and breasts. She stared in shock at the money on the carpet. Victor too seemed speechless as his eye followed a single, shining sovereign that rolled towards him and came to rest with a gentle bump against the toe of his boot. He picked it up and peered at the bright gold between his fingers. Then he turned a fierce stare on Amelia. As Victor approached her, she shrank back and tried to turn away to hide the tears in her eyes. Coldly and deliberately, he slapped her face. Amelia sprawled on the carpet with a sob.
“You dare call me thief?” Victor demanded.
Charles Dunkerley placed a hand on his arm and drew him aside. “Wait a moment, my dear fellow. A word with you, if you please.”
Astonished as much by the daring she had shown in standing up to Victor as by its outcome, Amelia watched them, eyes blurred with tears, cheek stinging and head ringing from his blow. She could hear the men’s low-pitched voices but not their words. They paused, turning their heads to look at her, and she clasped her arms around her nudity. Despite her fear, she seized the chance to creep to the remains of her clothes. Most were in shreds, but she found a sizeable piece of skirt. Clutching it to her bosom, she retreated to her original position, as though the further from her enemies she was, the safer she would be. She sat silent, wishing they would forget her presence.
Of course, they did not. It was Charles Dunkerley who approached first, with Victor Birchwood a few paces behind, dabbing a reddened handkerchief to his bloodied cheek. Heart thumping, the young woman watched from the corner of her eye. She felt trapped, cornered, and had to fight the urge to scream. She could feel Dunkerley very close to her but did not lift her head.
“Stand up,” he told her, quietly.
Only when the lawyer reached out for her, did Amelia manage to overcome her fear and rise unsteadily to her feet, pressing her inadequate covering to her body. She kept her head down, hiding her face with her thick mane of black hair.
Dunkerley spoke in his clear, clipped, lawyer’s voice. “You are a thief.”
“No.” She looked up, stung by the accusation.
“Liar,” Victor snarled.
Dunkerley held up a calming hand, a thin smile playing around his lips. “You are a thief, Miss Barron. Caught in the act of your theft and with the evidence all around you.” He gestured at the money on the floor and picked up the letter. “Here is the proof you were instructed to take nothing with you, yet you have plainly ignored the court and helped yourself to Mr. Birchwood’s property.”
Amelia did not look at the letter. She knew its contents well enough. It mocked her with its terse instructions - that the servants be given notice, that ‘all furnishings, goods and properties’ were to remain with the house. She remembered word for word its final sentence – ‘You will quit the property on the fifteenth of next month, ensuring that all is in good order for the arrival of the new owner the next day’. ‘The new owner’. Those words rankled most. Victor was no more the owner than she was, and certainly had less right to be there, in the house Jonathan had allowed her to call home for the last four years. And, she suddenly realised, Victor should not have arrived until tomorrow. It was not a point that Amelia cared to dispute while standing nearly naked.
“Well, do you admit your thievery, Miss Barron?” Dunkerley demanded.
“No,” Amelia said. “That’s not the way it is at all.”
“Oh, it most assuredly is that way, and I don’t doubt the judge at the assizes will think so too.”
Amelia stared in shocked disbelief. “Assizes? Oh, no! You cannot. You would not do that.”
“Do you doubt it?” Victor asked, baring his teeth like a predator. “Perhaps you don’t recall a night two years ago when I came here in desperation to request a small loan. One hundred and twenty pounds to clear my debts was all I needed, but Miss Amelia Barron was not willing to see me. Your stuffed-shirt butler put me out in the rain and threatened me with your grooms.” Victor’s eyes narrowed. “I ended in debtors’ prison. Seven months in a stinking gaol ‘til I’d paid my creditors. Seven months to plan how I’d pay back your slight, too.” He looked at Dunkerley. “How long for a theft like this?”
“Oh, five years I should think. Or transportation, of course. Some judges think Australia is the best place for all of our felons.”
Amelia gave a little cry of terror. Australia! Panic rose inside her. “Please,” she choked, the word barely audible.
“Do not alarm yourself, Miss Barron,” the lawyer said evenly. “I’ve discussed matters with Mr. Birchwood and he has generously agreed to an alternative. If you are able to agree to his terms, we will arrange a settlement here and now. If not, the constables can easily be summoned.”
Amelia looked at him helplessly. Victor had just told her he hated her. He was not going to treat her with kindness. But transportation! Prison! The words alone filled her with a terrible dread. Her legs felt weak. “Terms?” she asked hoarsely.
“A moment,” Dunkerley said and went to Amelia’s writing desk. Dipping a pen, he wrote for several minutes while Amelia stood with her head turned from Victor. She was horribly, humiliatingly aware that she was wearing nothing but shoes and stockings and a scrap of dark-red cloth in the presence of two total strangers. Her tears began again but with the last of her resolve she managed to keep them in check. The lawyer held out a sheet of paper and she read it.
I, Amelia Barron, by appending my signature to this document enter into the following agreement with Victor Birchwood: I will, for a period of three months from this date, act as servant in his household, undertaking such tasks as I am directed by the said Victor Birchwood, or those he places in authority over me. During my servitude, I will receive room and board, and on completion, the sum of six pounds for my labour. In return, I receive immunity from prosecution for all criminal acts I have committed to date.
Thus I submit to his will.
Amelia stared at the document. Words and phrases jumped out of the page – ‘servant’, ‘as directed’, ‘authority’. ‘Submit!’ She shivered.
“Five years in gaol won’t leave those hands so soft or that lovely face so smooth,” Dunkerley said, echoing Amelia’s own thoughts. He took the opposite edge of the paper between finger and thumb, and pulled gently. Numbly clinging to the page, Amelia let herself be led to the writing desk. Overpowered by the enormity of what had befallen her, she sat down and took the pen the lawyer handed her. Dumbly, she signed her name.
She was a servant.
“Up,” Victor shouted, startling her. “Come on. A servant doesn’t sit in the presence of her employer.”
With an effort, Amelia stood, turning towards the men so the minimum of her bare flesh was visible. She was too crushed to look at them.
“Well, something of a reversal of fortune seems to have taken place, Amelia,” Victor gloated, and the young woman realised she was no longer ‘Miss Barron’. “Let us see you perform a simple task for us. Gather up my property.” He gestured to the carpet.
Prison. Transportation. All other thoughts were blotted from Amelia’s mind. Keeping her barely-covered front to her tormentors, she knelt carefully and began to pick up the money.
“Not that,” Victor said impatiently. “Those rags of clothes. Pick them up. Give them to me.”
Amelia let fall the coins and gathered up her tattered clothing. She held the bundle out, desperately clinging to her scant covering. The harsh smile on Victor’s face frightened her as he took the rags from her hands.
“Give me all of them.” His words were quiet, full of menace.
Amelia knew at once what he meant. He had all of her clothes except the scrap she held to her breast. It was the only thing preserving her from total humiliation and Victor was demanding she surrender it. She looked up into his face and saw him clearly for the first time since the destruction of her fortunes. His wolfish features were close to hers. His broad-shouldered frame loomed over her. The strong, long-fingered hands were only inches away, and could reach out at any moment and force her to submit. Submit! The word whirled around in her mind. Submit!
Her vision blurred until there was only blackness before her eyes. She thought she had fainted, but she could feel her belly grow tight and her breathing quicken, and hear the racing thump of her heartbeat. A shiver ran up her spine, then down again and carried on to tease the moistening entrance to her sex. Her whole body shuddered, her lips parted to draw in a long breath, and then her eyes could see again and she was looking at her hand offering the scrap of cloth to Victor. He snatched it and stared at her nudity.
Amelia’s long hair partly covered her breasts, and modesty made her cross her hands in front of her sex. Her thighs pressed tightly together in a vain attempt to stifle the feeling that was growing there. Rigid, she stared at Victor. He reached out his hands. She did not want his touch. She hated him and his lawyer friend. They had plotted her downfall and brought her to her present ruin. Yet, her blood was rushing through her veins and the mounting heat of unwanted arousal was spreading rapidly through her belly. Victor pushed her hair back, baring her breasts. She felt his fingertips brush her shoulders, and to her utter horror and humiliation, her nipples sprang suddenly, darkly and very obviously erect. They could not fail to see it.
“By gad,” Victor said, and Charles Dunkerley moved closer.
Both were staring at Amelia’s jutting breasts and the hard, up-tilted nipples high upon their crests. She wanted to hide, to fall into a crouch and conceal herself from their bright, greedy eyes. Instead, she stood still, feeling the mounting heat between her legs, the glow suffusing her skin, the rapid pulsing of her hard-tipped breasts. She caught her breath as Dunkerley slid the tip of his finger down her belly all the way to the curls of her pubic hair. It touched the hands that she clasped before her sex, the lightest of pressures separating them, and she felt them hang uselessly at her sides. The lawyer stroked the fronts of her thighs and they trembled, and then parted as his hand pushed between them. Amelia wanted to pull away but her arousal was stronger than her will. Her eyes were misty and heavy-lidded. Victor’s long fingers closed over one of her breasts and squeezed, teasing the stiff nipple, while his other hand explored the backs of Amelia’s thighs and the taut rounds of her buttocks. Unable to stop herself, she gave a breathy, sighing groan
Charles dropped to one knee and loosened Amelia’s garters. Every movement of his fingertips as he slid her stockings down her legs sent a teasing thrill of pleasure through her dampening sex. He bent each of her knees in turn to pull off shoes and stockings together, and the movement made Amelia’s thighs rub against each other and pressed the slick lips of her vulva together. She moaned softly and then much louder as Charles rose, his hands smoothing up her legs until he reached the gap at the top and slid his fingers into her moist slit.
The feeling was electrifying. Amelia wriggled and squirmed on the tantalising fingers, conscious all the time of Victor touching her breasts and buttocks, bringing her sensations she could never have given herself. They swamped her mind, driving out coherent thought. Deep within, she was panicking, screaming silently at what was being done to her, but her body was held fast by an animal passion that swept away all control. She could not tear herself away.
Sparkling pleasure spread from where Charles stroked and teased the inner lips of her sex. She gave a cry, half-despair, half-delight. The insides of her thighs grew damp and her legs began to shake. She felt her clitoris outgrow its little hood and stand out, as stiff and erect as the nipples on her out-thrust breasts. A strong arm encircled her just below the breasts and hands took hold of her legs around the knees. Suddenly her back was resting on the carpet. She lay panting, her head on someone’s thigh, his hands on her bare shoulders. With slitted eyes, she looked up into Charles’s face.
“Are you ready to submit?” he asked softly.
Never, Amelia’s mind cried. Her sex was burning.
Victor pushed her legs wide. “Are you going to submit?”
No, Amelia’s mind cried. No. Her lips moved to form the word. “Yes,” she said.
Victor cast his coat aside and unbuttoned his trousers. Amelia’s eyes grew wide and her belly tight as she saw for the first time in her life, the thick, upright shaft of a real, erect penis. Everything else seemed to fade into darkness until only the shiny, purple-headed beast filled her vision, looming above her. It was monstrous and filled her with dread, and a frightening longing that only part of her turned from in revulsion. Breathless, she watched Victor kneel. He leaned forward, hands on the floor at either side of her shoulders, and Amelia shrank from the feel of his hairy, muscular legs against her smooth and slender ones. She felt her thighs pushed further apart and the hardness of Victor’s penis pressing against the soft, tender swell of her vulva, demanding entry.
For one desperate, hopeless moment, Amelia reasserted her will and clenched her buttocks to contract her sex. Then Victor’s hips lunged forward. A wave of pleasure and excitement swamped the young woman’s senses as the thick shaft sank deep in a single thrust. Rippling delight surged through the sensitive walls of her sheath. From somewhere she heard a cry, not recognising it for her own as she writhed in an orgasm that almost stole her senses. Bright, flashing tremors of intense pleasure spread through her whole body and, scarcely even aware of it, she lifted her hips to meet the thrusts coursing over the velvety ridges of her sex. Her breath came in short, groaning gasps, wrung from her by the violence with which Victor plunged into her.
He took her with bruising force, driving in to the limit, while his fingers pinched her stiff nipples into twin points of pain that only served to goad her to another thrashing, whimpering orgasm. Sweat dripped from Victor’s naked belly to mingle with her own and soak the bushy darkness of her pubic hair, already damp with her juices. Charles gripped Amelia’s shoulders as the speed of Victor’s movements increased, and his grip on her nipples tightened until she cried with pain. With a sudden, furious lunge that seemed to penetrate even more deeply than the others, Victor gave a breathless, grunting cry and Amelia felt the hot splash as his semen gushed inside her. Her own climax was an explosion of pleasure that made her dizzy and set stars flashing before her eyes, and then she was lying beneath Victor with her skin on fire, dragging great, heaving breaths into her burning lungs.
Amelia feared she would suffocate under Victor’s weight as he lay gasping from his exertions, but at last he moved and she opened her eyes for the first time in long minutes. She felt drained and weak, but her sex was still twitching and her abused nipples remained achingly erect. Before a single thought of any clarity could enter her head, Charles seized her. Horrified when his touch alone provoked an immediate resurgence of excitement, she let herself be lifted and placed belly-down over a footstool. Turning her head to the side, she could look back at the lawyer’s hard penis, the swollen, plum-headed tip rearing arrogantly on its thick-veined shaft as he knelt behind her.
Once more, the horrible enormity of her situation seemed insignificant as Charles’s hands explored the hot, damp skin of her buttocks, parting them to rub his shaft in the lightly furred crease bisecting the two firm rounds. A sticky wetness coated Amelia’s inner thighs and she knew the pouting crescents of her outer labia were agape and dripping, exposing her tingling inner lips to his lustful gaze. Her whole body quivered when Charles’s fingers teased at their soft petals, and she moaned as the urgency of her need gripped her once again. Belly jumping, she felt his broad-headed penis stretch her opening and slowly and deliberately, he slid its engorged length into her quivering sheath.
With her remaining strength, Amelia wriggled her hips, giving little cries at each forward thrust of the hard shaft. The bruised outer lips of her sex protested painfully when Charles plunged hard into her, and when he slowed it was only so he could pinch and twist her heavy breasts and stiff nipples until she was whimpering - in pain or pleasure she did not know. Amelia’s arms grew weak and she lowered her head to the carpet, seeing through half-closed eyes how her downward-pointing breasts swung to the same rhythm as Charles thrusting hips. Beyond them, upside down, she could see the underside of the footstool over which she knelt and her own parted thighs, and Charles kneeling between them with the taut roundness of his scrotum slapping against her. Her stomach fluttered wildly as she watched the slick, shiny length of the penis sliding in and out and felt the quivering pulses of excitement it was creating in her sex. Each one was driving her closer to another climax.
Charles increased the speed and vigour of his thrusts, forcing Amelia down onto the footstool, pressing her belly into its padded seat as his weight came down hard upon her. He was moving so fast she could scarcely draw breath between each stroke, and the friction of his thick cock on her sensitive sheath was sparking flashes of incredible delight within her. Amelia’s orgasm came in a sudden rush, pleasure so fierce and intense it made her head swim and her vision blur. The cry from her parched throat was no more than a croak as her sex tightened convulsively and Charles’s penis seemed to swell within her. With a savage jerk, he pulled Amelia back hard onto it at the moment his come jetted into her. He held her like that, bucking hard, moving even as his erection slowly subsided, savouring the feeling of being buried to the hilt in her spasming sex. When he finally released her, she slumped over the footstool in a faint. Worn out by her ordeal, Amelia barely noticed as she was lifted and carried to the sofa. Only half conscious, she sank onto its soft cushions and swooned.
* * * * *
Charles Dunkerley sat back in his chair, sighed with satisfaction and drew on his cigar. He had just eaten a very acceptable cold supper and accompanied it with an excellent wine, some of which remained in the glass on the table before him. The light was fading as the short June night approached. The sun had set, leaving behind a rose-pink glow on the horizon. A single gold-tinged cloud drifted lazily, low in the western sky. Dunkerley blew cigar smoke in its direction. “Well, what do you think of my idea now, Victor?”
Victor put down his glass and puffed at his own cigar. They were sitting in the long dining room of Watchnest Hall. Both had angled their chairs so they could look through its wide, double doorway into the adjoining room where Amelia slept, her pale, nude body contrasting with the dark damask of the sofa on which she lay.
“Capital, my dear Charles, capital,” Victor replied. “I confess I would have been happy to cast her out a naked pauper and see her scorned as she scorned me.” He chuckled throatily. “But to have the conceited little bitch for my servant. Ha! I would never have dreamed of it.” He looked at Amelia’s sleeping form with a self-satisfied expression. “Not to mention the way she gave herself up like that. She came the second I entered her and once more by the time I finished fucking her.”
“Twice,” Charles corrected.
“Was it?” Victor laughed. “Who would have thought there was such a little wanton hiding behind all that haughty respectability?”
“She certainly behaved most strangely; one moment our bitter foe and the next a willing partner in what we know most respectable, young ladies would consider a disgraceful act of immorality. But perhaps more importantly,” Charles added, “this way we can keep an eye on her all of the time. She won’t be in any position to make trouble.”
“Trouble?” Victor’s head turned sharply. “What trouble?”
Charles shrugged. “Who knows? She fought hard enough to stop you getting your hands on this place. I doubt she would just forget about it after she left.”
“Perhaps we should have laid charges,” Victor suggested. “After all, she did steal my money.”
“Do you know the chances of success if we did?” Charles said. “We would have to prove the money and everything else she took had been obtained after she was informed of the courts ruling that you own the Hall, which I doubt is the case. Any jury would be sympathetic to a pretty, young woman in her circumstances and we – you in fact – would be the villain of the piece. She would walk free and we would attract the attention of the newspapers. We don’t want that.”
Victor was silent, absorbing what Charles had told him. “But what could she do?” he asked finally. “The courts have backed us at last. I have possession of the place and whatever money comes with it. She wouldn’t have a chance of taking it from me.” His worried face belied the confidence of his words and he sought reassurance from Charles. “What could she do?”
“Oh, probably nothing. After all she’s only one penniless woman.” He drew on his cigar. “Curious though, that someone should send us warning to come here today instead of tomorrow. Especially an anonymous warning that could earn them no reward.”
“Maybe a vindictive servant after revenge for some slight the girl dealt her,” Victor suggested. Charles made a face that said he thought it unlikely. “Who else could have known about her having the money?” Victor persisted. “Judith didn’t. But she left six weeks ago. The servants have only gone in the last few days. It must have been one of them.”
“I suppose so,” Charles said doubtfully. “I admit I can’t think of any other motive for it.”
Victor looked at Amelia. “Superb tits,” he observed.
Charles smiled. “Yes.” Victor was always inclined to be earthy. Cunning, Charles thought, but not a deep thinker.
“I don’t like all that hair on her cunt, though. I like to see what I’m getting into.”
“That’s easily addressed,” the lawyer said.
Victor turned to him. “You don’t really think the girl is a danger, do you?”
Charles smiled again. If there was one thing Victor cared about more than fucking pretty women, it was money, and now he had it, he was determined to hang on to it. Charles hoped he would. He was due a percentage. “Certainly not while she remains with us,” he replied. “I wish I had specified a longer term. I’m sure she would have agreed to it. Did you see how frightened she became when we mentioned prison?”
“Nearly pissed herself.” Victor chortled and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy myself here immensely with that haughty little minx at my beck and call. What fun it will be to train her in the same way as the others.” His grin grew even broader. “Fun for us, that is. I doubt she’ll like it.”
Charles put a hand in his pocket and felt the object he had found while gathering up the fallen money, an object wrapped in a fine linen handkerchief embroidered with the initials A.B. “Oh, I’m not so sure.”
* * * * *
Amelia drifted into wakefulness. She was lying on her side, knees drawn up, hands pressed together beneath her cheek. The pressure of her left arm upon the fullness of her breasts felt warm and sensual. She gave a start. She was naked. Memory came with gut-wrenching suddenness, and she snapped open her eyes.
It was almost dark and the room was filled with shadows, except for a pool of lamplight that spilled through the open, double doors of the dining room. Two men sat at the table. Amelia knew at once who they were and that they had seen her move. She could not feign sleep.
“Come here, Amelia,” Victor called.
The tight knot in Amelia’s stomach twisted. Urgently, she looked for something to hide her nudity. There was a lace-edged cover on the back of the sofa. She grabbed it and wrapped it around her body above her breasts. It only came half way down her thighs, but it was better than nothing. Knowing she had to face them, she rose stiffly and moved on bare, reluctant feet into the lamplight. The room was warm from the heat of the day but she felt herself shiver. Her inner thighs felt damp and clammy.
“Closer,” Victor ordered.
Amelia stepped into the dining room, feeling a flush of heat on her cheeks as the two men eyed her long legs and bare shoulders. In an agony of embarrassment, she remembered every moan and cry they had forced from her lips, every thrust of her hips, every stab of pleasure her treacherous body had yielded to under their touch. The recollection was too awful. She shut it from her mind.
“So, my servant wakes at last,” Victor said with a gloating smile.
Amelia cringed inwardly at his tone. How could she have behaved as she did? “Please, may I have something to wear?” she asked softly.
“Of course,” Victor replied. “You may wear anything that belongs to you.”
“My wardrobe is upstairs.”
“But that belongs to me.” Victor’s teeth bared in a grin.
“You are wicked,” she said, but without emotion. She still felt drained and numbed by the events that had overtaken her so suddenly.
“I think I have been generous,” Victor said. “The prisons are full of penniless little thieves who would gladly change places with you.” He looked sternly at her. “I know. I have been there.”
Amelia swallowed hard and said nothing. The material wrapped around her slipped and she clutched at it.
“I didn’t give you that,” Victor snapped.
“I borrowed it. I can’t go n...n…naked.” She struggled to speak the word.
“Yes you can,” Victor said flatly.
“Where did you get this?” Charles Dunkerley asked suddenly.
The knot in Amelia’s stomach tightened and her mouth fell open as she stared in horror at what Charles was holding up. On the table next to him was a neatly folded handkerchief, the initials embroidered on it - her initials - clearly visible.
Chapter 3
“What the devil? By Jove, is that what it looks to be?” Victor asked.
“It is,” Charles confirmed. The pale ivory of Amelia’s ‘toy’ gleamed in the lamplight. She cringed with embarrassment. They knew! Heart thumping, she watched Charles slap the dildo into his palm. The touch, the sight, even the thought of the phallus, always affected her in the same way. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, but already, between her legs a little glow of excitement had begun.
“Come on, girl,” Victor said. “Answer the question. Where did you get it?”
Amelia shook her head.
“You can’t buy these at the local emporium,” Victor persisted. “Tell us where it came from.”
Strong fingers encircled the young woman’s upper arms, and she opened her eyes to find Charles standing behind her. She struggled against his grip but all it achieved was to cause her makeshift garment to slip down to her waist. Lightning-quick, Victor reached out and pinched her nipples between his fingers and thumbs.