Young Bess Part Eight
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Young Bess - Part Two free porn video
Many thanks for the reviews! They provided the motivation to continue
this little tale. New readers are strongly encouraged to read Part One
before continuing further. All rights to YOUNG BESS are, of course,
retained by the author.
YOUNG BESS ? PART TWO
By Jane Howard
I reached the Montfort Estate late in the afternoon to find the kitchen
staff in the midst of preparing the main meal of the day. I handed my
letter to a plain looking young scullery maid named Mary, explaining
that it was my letter of introduction to Mrs. Norton and that it was my
hope to find employment with Mr. Montfort.
She was pleasant enough but cautioned that I would most likely have to
wait in the small yard until the dinner being prepared for the Master
and his guests had been dealt with.
After she disappeared into the depths of the bustling kitchen from
where I stood I could hear the clatter of silver and plates being drawn
down from the shelves. I could smell the combining odors of meat
cooking on the hearth and vegetable dishes boiling in the pots.
I'd not eaten anything in over a day by that time and was quite
famished. How I longed for a bit of bread and cheese to assuage my
hunger! There was nothing for it, however, than to wait the hour or so
that I guessed it would take for Mrs. Norton to complete her duties.
I spent the time walking about the grounds behind the main house where
the tradesmen made their deliveries. This was a part of the Montfort
holdings that I knew less well, but it was an area which the servants
traversed during their working day, and with time at such a premium it
was to the benefit of my mission to begin my investigations there.
However, after a time, I found that section completely deserted. I took
that to be the result of the great busyness required inside to prepare
the dinner.
I resolved to take my inquiries further afield.
The yard had two outlets. One led to the stables and the other to the
park, which Mr. Montfort had ordered to be designed as a wedding gift
for my sister Sheila. It contained a lovely maze populated with stone
benches, and charming roundabouts.
At this time of year it bloomed with a profusion of the loveliest
flowers. Not only of roses of all varieties, but with an explosion of
every kind of yellow, orange and blue flowers that made me think only
of rainbows. Tempted as I was to see it in all its radiance, I
remembered my duty and turned my steps towards the stables.
Mr. Montfort being an avid horseman, the stables were extensive. I
picked my way carefully through the mud, seeking only the driest spots
to place my feet. But even with care my slippers were presently pulled
right off my feet by the suction of the wet earth and I had to go
barefoot amongst the barn buildings, holding my slippers in my hand.
I stopped to watch a young stable boy whose name I knew to be Tom,
currying Mr. Montfort's favorite steed, an Arabian with a white star
above his eyes. I recalled that the horse was named Onyx.
Tom was several years older than I, and he knew me well by my former
appearance because at Mr. Montfort's request he'd spent several
Saturdays attempting to teach me the rudiments of riding by pushing me
backside first onto the saddle of a gentle mare. The training had all
failed. To be candid, I intensely disliked the experience of being
aboard such a large, powerful and dumb beast as a horse, no matter how
gentle it appeared to be. I always came down the other side as rapidly
as I could.
I laughed inwardly at the idea that Tom would ever dare to repeat such
familiarities with my rump now as he did on those tedious Saturdays. At
least, I hoped not!
Then I remembered my new, much reduced station in life and realized
that anyone could probably do just as they liked with me. I wasn't a
nobleman's son anymore but was just a dead peasant woman's daughter.
The thought made me suddenly very humble. I knew that I would have to
be very careful and very clever to survive all this.
"Spoiled your slippers, have you?" Tom asked looking straight at me. I
had been so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn't noticed that he'd
stopped his work to stare at me.
"Yes. The mud?," It was silly to finish explaining. He could see very
well what had happened.
His eyes roamed up and down my person as if I was a new colt he'd been
assigned to care for. My cheeks felt hot under his scrutiny.
Apparently, he was pleased with what he saw because a smile broke out
across his tanned face and he held out his hand.
"Give them here and I'll make them right for you."
He took the slippers and put them on a haystack. "They have to dry
first," he said.
"Yes. I suppose they do," I replied.
"Favor for a favor?" he asked.
"Of course!"
He threw me one of his brushes, which I caught rather awkwardly.
"Ever curried a horse?"
That didn't seem very fair! He would clean my slippers in exchange for
my help in cleaning his horse!
I studied his face and there was a tension in the muscles around his
mouth. Why, certainly he was about to laugh! At me! At the idea of
someone like me performing such a filthy task and I had unwittingly
become the subject of his afternoon's entertainment?. Well, we would
see about that!
I resolved not only to surprise him by agreeing, and thus give myself
some satisfaction at his expense, but also because I realized that
there was also an opportunity here to gain information about Sheila's
situation. Distasteful as the task might be, I set my mind to
performing it with as much competence as I could muster.
Approaching the horse, even as hesitantly as I did because I feared
such creatures, I was pleased to see the look on Tom's face change from
one of amused contempt to one of approval.
I had a general idea that I was to hold the brush in both hands and
scrub downwards, which is what I did.
"Not like that, poppet!" admonished Tom. He stood behind me and brought
his strong brown hands around me to instruct my two smaller hands in
how to stroke the horse properly. Looking back on this experience after
so much time has passed, I am sure that it wasn't that my strokes were
wrong but more that Tom wanted a reason to touch me.
I confess that his touch wasn't all that unpleasant, even if he was
acting like a crude, unmannered stable boy. Which it comes to my mind,
is exactly what he was!
The scene was manifestly bucolic with cows lowing from a distance, the
occasional clucking of a hen nearby, the smell of hay and horse manure
permeating the air, and the brisk wet sound of the currying brush
pressing against Onyx's moist, silky coat.
I could smell Tom's odor since he was so proximate to me. I will not
deceive you about my reaction to it. The smell was not unpleasant. It
was manly, and if somewhat pungent, then only because it came from his
exertions on behalf of honest work.
I shivered briefly for reasons unknown to me, especially since the sun
was directly on us. Whatever the reason or reasons, I was instantly
brought to my senses by it.
'Collect your thoughts! This is no time for woolgathering!' I told
myself.
As pastoral and romantic as the position I found myself in might be, I
had not suddenly become the 'faithful shepherdess' in John Fletcher's
play! I was a spy and I needed to get on with being clever about it.
But just as I began to formulate my first question, Tom trumped me by
asking a question of his own.
"I'm Tom. What's yer name?" he asked.
"Bess," I replied, totally unsure as to why, of all the diminutives of
my alias which proliferated in the English speaking world, I'd not
chosen Liz, or Liza or Bet, or Betsy instead. It seemed, somehow, the
only natural choice and that somehow I had always been called Bess.
"Well, then, Bess," he continued, "What are you doing here at
Montfort's?"
"I'm hoping to find a position here. I am waiting to speak to Mrs.
Norton and naturally, I am entirely at her disposition about it." I
answered him honestly. There was no reason to deceive him about my
immediate circumstances. And, in the strictest sense, I wasn't
deceiving him, was I?
"Well then.. I don't wonder but that you'll get one!" Tom announced in
a voice filled with confidence.
"I hope I do! I so desperately need a position and I'm told the staff
is treated very well here. I have heard that the master is kind," I
said.
"True enough! But, oh, as for the position, you'll get it all right!
For, you see, you've come at the perfect time!" Tom said.
We could not continue speaking with me in front facing away and him
behind. It was becoming absurd. So I straightened and turned myself
around to look at him.
There wasn't much room for me since I was wedged in between Tom and the
horse. I had to lean back a bit, in order to avoid touching my bosom
against Tom's chest, but not too much since I dreaded the smell of the
horse attaching to my clothes. It simply would not do to take the
interview with Mrs. Norton smelling like a sweating horse, even if that
horse was a champion hunter like Onyx!
Taking only the briefest of looks at my pulchritude from time to time,
for which I was grateful, Tom proceeded to explain that a junior member
of the staff called Bronwyn, had left the estate abruptly, only a few
days earlier. Hence, both unexpectedly and fortuitously, a position had
opened that would be perfect for me.
"What was the cause of her leaving?" I asked.
"Dunno?," he replied and then added. "She were a right pretty lass. By
all accounts the mistress's favorite chambermaid and well liked."
Then he explained about the disappearance of his mistress and that
Bronwyn changed. "She went all quiet, secretive and would mutter to
herself when she thought she was alone. Just yesterday morning she'd
failed to come down for the bell, and upon investigation her room had
been tidied, swept and the bed made. As for Bronwyn and her few
personal possessions, they had apparently vanished."
"How mysterious. You say your mistress has disappeared, as well?" I
asked, doing my best to feign incredulity.
"Aye!" Tom's eyes narrowed. "But already that's well known. Where are
you from, lass?"
I named the town where my late cousin had lived, the cousin who died of
the paralysis. Then briefly, I told him my invented story of woe. About
the death of my mother and then the sudden death my own mistress, for
whom I had played the role of companion. I had a letter of
recommendation to Mrs. Norton. I did not elaborate on the details any
further.
Tom seemed to be listening to me, but at the same time I could see that
he was distracted as if he was thinking about something else. Even as
he nodded and made exceptionally sympathetic grunting noises in all the
appropriate places, I felt that his concentration was elsewhere.
Now I swear to you that it was nothing I did but rather the fault of
some unknown magic or chemistry or fate or perhaps demons of the air,
and I blush even now to write it, but I saw that the buds on my bosom
had begun to swell.
Much like the rose buds of early June to which the casual gardener is
at first oblivious, they had grown at an imperceptible rate until they
were pouting up. Fully extended they were about the size of the first
joint in my little finger, and looking for all the world like they
needed ever so desperately to be nurtured into even fuller blossom.
The one thing I am certain of in this matter is that these traitorous
new nipples of mine had not raised themselves in such apparent need on
my own account. I had never until then had an affinity for another
human being that would cause any swelling in my body.
It was this phenomenon that had drawn Tom's attention and distracted
his gaze so much during our discourse. I also suspect that he was able
to read the look on my face and understood my confusion and distress.
I believe he did not want me think of him as a common randy rustic oaf,
in aid of which he did something quite unexpected.
Taking my free hand into his own, Tom carefully inspected it. No gypsy
fortuneteller would or could have taken more care in examining it than
he did before he said, "Aye! This hand ain't known hard labor! It's as
soft and white as the fuzz on a new born dove, I'd say."
Rustic as he was, the boy was something of a poet. My respect for him
began to increase, despite his mischievous eye.
Still, there were inquiries to be made. "Do you suppose there is a link
between Bronwyn's disappearance and the disappearance of your
mistress?" I asked.
"There's nought for me to suppose about!" he replied rather too loudly.
"I'm a man for the work, and that's what I do. What happens with my
betters, well, that's none of my concern as long as I've got my cot,
board and my shilling every week."
"But still?,"
I never finished the sentence because Tom put a finger to his lips and
moved his face closer to mine, giving the path I'd taken from the house
to the stables a quick glance before continuing.
"Bronwyn was a pretty one," Tom said in a much lower voice so that he
was almost murmuring. I had to bring my own face closer in order to
hear him. "I may have fancied her in my fashion. That is until I seen
you. Since then, she's quite gone out of my head. And the mistress,
well, she's a proper lady in all ways. She was beautiful, generous,
virtuous, you know what I means. A real lovely gentlewoman of the first
rank to my way of thinkin'. Mr. Montfort, he's besides himself since
she run off or got spirited away or whatever it is that has happened to
her?"
"But?"
Tom continued his monologue right over me quickly and so quietly that I
barely heard it. "The master's gone a bit strange in the head over all
this, if you ask me. Drinking too much wine, where he never cared for
it all that much before. Can't sleep a tick. Now he's acquired a pack
of scoundrels all hanging about the house. Disreputable is too good a
word for them, despite such rank as they may hold among the better
families living hereabouts. Supposed to be helping him in his search
for his lost lady?"
A sharp sound interrupted him which turned out to be one of the other
horses. It had kicked up in his stall and broken a wooden rail with his
hind hooves. However it stopped Tom from telling me anything more.
"I've got it in my mind that the master has some kind of secret he's
holding inside him about all these goings on. Now turn yourself about
as you were before and help me finish my task young Bess!" he said but
before I did he kissed me.
I supposed that it was owing to our faces being that close together to
begin with, or it might have been his way of showing me that our little
tete a tete was over. Perhaps he was impulsive that way with all the
servant girls and perhaps he fancied me a little.
In any event it was the first kiss on the mouth that I'd had from
anyone in my entire life and for that reason alone I shall never forget
it. But I showed him nothing in the way of a reaction as I quickly
turned round and went back to my task. I should add with rather more
vigor than I had used before our lips touched.
Despite the tingling that persisted somewhere in the area of my navel,
or perhaps slightly below it, my head remained clear. My preoccupation
now was with all the questions that ran through my poor brain as a
result of the information Tom had disclosed, rather than with his
affections and at whom they might be directed. Indeed, for all I knew,
he had practiced his kissing with every maiden in the county, even this
Bronwyn he had just told me about!
What was the connection, if any, between my sister's disappearance and
that of her maid? Why had my brother-in-law contracted for the
assistance of a pack of knaves to help him in finding Sheila? What was
Montfort's secret?
Would Mrs. Norton accept me? It was more critical now than ever for me
to gain a place in the household.
It was good that I had this simple work to do or else my head would
have exploded into a thousand pieces! So Tom and I were as we had been
before, with him behind me directing my hands.
It was all very comforting, to have him so close during the constant
stroking of the horse, and the fact that I was accomplishing something.
Even if this task was of such little importance, it gradually silenced
the chattering in my mind and in that way calmed me.
Until Tom had contrived to entangle me so, I hadn't realized that to be
held in a strong pair of arms was exactly what I needed. I was feeling
quite fluttery and I was so completely alone in my intrigues. Except
for my uncle I was nearly friendless and I was probably in some
personal danger. Tom was not completely a stranger to me although he
did not know it and I took solace in the strength that radiated from
him.
Then it struck me that perhaps Tom could become a good friend to me or
at least an ally of sorts.
Gradually, we worked the brush down Onyx's flanks towards his legs.
This caused me to bend more and more at the waist, and, out of
anatomical necessity, I pressed my bottom into Tom's groin, especially
since he seemed so intent on refusing to do the gentlemanly thing by
simply backing off a few inches.
As we moved toward the horse's fetlock, and below that to its hoof, I
detected, what I shall for the sake of delicacy, refer to as a
persistent hardening of young Tom's resolve. Indeed, I thought that
Tom's member seemed to have been aggravated into such an alarming state
of turgidity by the languid up and down motion of the currying brush
and the backwards thrusting motion of my behind.
I then recollected that Uncle Isaac had always said that one action
would always precipitate an equal and opposite reaction.
I deduced from this same recollection that there was an advantage to be
gained here. A lusty lad like Tom could easily become obligated to a
lithesome young wench who granted liberties and perhaps even more
favors in future. It would only work provided that Tom perceived that
there was no other strategy and that I was as innocent, virginal and
na?ve as the spring lamb.
Tom was randy as a bull. My covert peeks at his inflamed groin and the
hard thrusting messages of urgency that Tom's steely manhood was
transmitting to my nether end had put me in expectation that his cod
and bollocks were indeed of bullish proportions. It seemed to me that a
fellow who was so constructed would like nothing better than to mold me
and educate me in the expression of passion in all its forms.
However, his belief must always be that he was leading me, and not that
I was leading him. So to be completely sure of my power over him, I
tested him.
Bringing myself lower still, so low in fact that my derriere was much
higher than my head, I pressed myself ever more ardently against him,
all the while currying away like mad. Then, looking back at him with
eyes wide and lips apart, I hesitated a few moments before asking,
"Tom? Are we almost done?"
"Nah!" said Tom, who was turning quite ruddy under his tan.
"There isn't much horse left to curry then, is there?" I said.
Tom replied by saying, "Gah!"
"Pardon?" I asked.
The poor boy's face became at that moment not redder really, but more
of a fuschia which is a color I have always been partial towards. His
eyes began to bulge in the most alarming manner and he actually looked
as though he was about to become the victim of an apoplexy. It was
really quite fascinating to watch him falling to pieces.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" Tom huffed like a blacksmith's bellows.
"Well, there is just this little bit left to brush," I conceded,
lowering myself from the waist as far as my spine would allow. In that
way, Tom's manhood came into partial contact with my rear. I quickly
gathered that having placed my body in this most extreme position it
pleased him mightily because he threw his head back and began roaring
my name at the sky.
"OH, BESS! OH, BESS! OH, BESS! OH, God! OH, BESS!"
I am very sure that if Tom had been a volcano he would have had a most
satisfying eruption.
Indeed he would have, were it not for the fact that the servant who had
first met me appeared carrying a wooden tray on which were placed a
small pitcher of milk, and some bread and cheese.
Now at that juncture, that was one of those junctures when two events
merge that are in their very essence are incongruous and incompatible
two things happened.
The first event was that Tom, seeing Mary approaching, moaned like the
winter wind as it blasts its way across the Yorkshire moors. He fled
unseen by Mary with tremendous speed behind the barn with his back
hunched and his hands clutching at his head. He reemerged shortly
afterwards carrying a buck board low enough in front of him to conceal
the remains of his former excitement. He then coolly busied himself,
whistling all the while, with replacing the rail in the stable fence
that had just been broken.
The second event was that Mary offered me the tray. Her demeanor gave
nothing away of what she might be thinking if she'd seen what was going
on between the two of us.
"Mrs. Norris thought you might be hungry," she explained.
I straightened my hair and my dress.
"Tom was teaching me to curry a horse," I said.
"So I see," Mary replied.
"Please thank Mrs. Norris for the tray," I said.
"You are to return to the house to speak with Mrs. Norris as soon as
you have eaten," Mary instructed.
"I will," I promised.
With that, Mary turned and left us.
No sooner had she disappeared behind the hedges than Tom was at my
side, eyeing me and the cheese with equal interest.
This put me in mind of a story I had once read of a sailor who had been
marooned alone on a Pacific island for several years with only coconuts
and fish to eat. Upon his rescue and subsequent return to England, he
had been given a choice between food and the bawdy attentions of a
beautiful wench. This choice was offered to him by his new captain, a
thoroughly modern man who found it an interesting experiment to
discover which was more important to one who had been bereft of both
meat and love for such a long a time.
"Which will you have first?" the captain asked the sailor, "A turkey
dinner or a wench?"
I related this story to Tom whilst we took turns pouring water from a
bucket over our hands in preparation to share the cheese and milk. I
asked him which he thought the sailor had chosen to do first.
"Oh! To eat!" Tom replied, without hesitation.
"You are sure?" I asked.
"Indeed I am!" said Tom. "But I'm also sure he made rollicking love to
that turkey's carcass before he ate it!"
Men!
Tom divided the cheese with his knife, giving me the largest share and
taking none of the milk for himself. We did not speak at all during our
small meal. Instead, Tom spent the time brushing my slippers clean just
as he had promised
When we were done, he hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, and
wished me good luck. We said our farewells and I began my brief walk
back to the main house.
My mind is never at rest. Thoughts whirled around in it like the wooden
horses on a carousel as I picked my steps carefully through the muddy
lane, slippers in one hand and tray in the other.
Given all that had happened in the past hour, I wondered at my conduct
with Tom. Although I had stooped very low indeed, it appeared that my
stratagem to bond him to me had been successful, given the keen
solicitude he had demonstrated during our parting. Nevertheless, it all
gave me pause to consider who I was, and what I had become.
What I mean to say is that I had engaged in the most provocative acts.
Acts more typical of the French and their filthy perversions than of
our own properly puritanical traditions. My God! I had actually engaged
in frottage and worse still, I had enjoyed it!
Where did this behavior come from? Certainly not from the James I had
been before the transformation. Before Goody Whitfield had gotten her
fey hands on me I had been innocent, unworldly, and reasonably
masculine in my outlook.
Not so anymore And then it struck me!
Goody Whitfield may not have only changed the outside of me maybe she
had changed the inside, as well. Had my mind, my heart, my very soul
all been transformed?
It seemed possible, given my attitude of late.
And yet? And yet I was still James, was I not?
Whether James or Bess, I still must face Mrs. Norris. I hoped that
since she had offered me something to eat it was a good sign. But,
then, a good Christian woman might also be inclined to offer a beggar
lass like me a bit of food before sending her on her way.
My hand shook as I knocked at the freshly painted white door that would
lead me to her, and through her, eventually to learn more about my
sister's fate.
End of Part Two
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