Ms Westbury's Niece 2: Secrets

(story continues from Ms Westbury's Niece)

Part Two: Secrets

Chapter 4

The house was large, even rambling. Cecilia judged that it must have been built in the early years of the twentieth or late nineteenth century.

‘Before the first World war, when they had loads of servants to keep it all in order’, she thought as she ran over in her mind the long list of jobs that she needed to do before Ms Westbury arrived home.

‘At least someone had thought to install central heating so I don’t have to be lugging coal up from the cellar all day.’

By late morning, she was vacuuming, ‘Hoovering’ she corrected, the carpet in the long second floor, ‘First floor’, Cecilia again corrected herself, ‘you are in England now, gel’, corridor leading to Ms Westbury’s private suite that was entered through a pair of double doors on the right near the end of the corridor. Sun light streamed through the tall window at the end and shone on a wide single door of a similar pattern in the wall opposite. Cecilia had tried the knob several times, but the door was always locked, as were the two other mysterious pairs of doors on either side at the start of the corridor. From the beginning Cecilia had been curious as to what was behind them, and what lay behind the door and why were they, and only they, locked. She had full access to everything else in the house, including Ms Westbury’s suite.

With passing days that curiosity became all consuming. She just had to find out. In fact, what lay behind the door opposite Ms Westbury’s suite was the lesser mystery. One day a week the outside of the downstairs windows had to be cleaned. From the garden Cecilia could see the bay window of Ms Westbury’s suite and the high corridor window to the right of it. This elevation of the house was not symmetrical, but though there was no bay, there was a large window next to it and more round the side matching Ms Westbury’s arrangement. Cecilia convinced herself that it must be another suite.

“But why was it locked? She said to herself for the hundredth time. And why did her Mistress seem almost to pretend it wasn’t there?”

However, it was the other two doors.

From the outside she could see windows, but internal shutters prevented her seeing anything of the inside. Surreptitiously she had paced out Ms Westbury’s suite, using the enforced limited stride of her hobble skirt as an improvised ruler, and comparing it with the length of the corridor. The locked rooms were quite large. There seemed to be no way of solving their mystery. The well-made doors fitting tightly in to their frames offered no encouragement to the idea for trying to slip something in to force the locks. Cecilia tried every key she could find, but to no avail. She even tried picking a lock with a hairgrip. She had no real idea of what to do, but it was what they did in stories so it was worth a try. No good.

The corridor spick and span once more, Cecilia bade farewell to the frustrating doors and turned her attention to Ms Westbury’s rooms. Ms Westbury had left in a hurry that morning, crossly telling Cecilia when, in response to a bell in the kitchen, she had brought breakfast in a tray, that a problem had arisen and that she would not be back until late. The state of the room told just how hurried had been her departure had been. Though not super tidy, her Mistress’s things were usually straighter than this, Cecilia thought as she picked up the papers Ms Westbury had been reading as she ate her breakfast, and placed them neatly on the dressing table. Then she noticed it, a small brass key. She had never seen it before, but she immediately knew what it was.

The doors!

She picked it up. It seemed almost to burn a hole in the palm of her hand as she stared at it.

“Don’t be so stupid”, she told herself as she put it back on the table. “You’re not supposed to look in there. You’ll get yourself dismissed”.

But it was no good. Every time she turned her head as she worked in the room, there it was and every time it seemed to grow bigger and bigger until it filled the whole of her gaze. Even the sun seemed to be conspiring to put temptation in her way, the key glinting in the light coming through the window. Finally she gave in.

“She said that she wouldn’t be back until late. If I just have a little peep she’ll never know”.

With the guilty, but excited feeling of a child about to do something that it knows to be wrong, Cecilia picked up the key and went out into the corridor and inserted it into the lock of the first door. To her immense disappointment it did not turn.

“Gosh, they must all be different”, she thought crossing the corridor to try the one on the other side. Her heart missed a beat as the key turned. The lock gave a click and the door swung open a crack. Cecilia held it to, hesitating to take the final disobedient step and open it. Finally she plucked up courage and, like someone ripping off a sticking plaster, threw open the doors.

She reached round the jamb and fumbled for a light switch. She had no idea what she had expected to find, but in a thousand guesses she would never got even close to the mark.

“God!” Cecilia exclaimed out loud. “What’s all this?”

The room was one huge walk-in wardrobe, at least 5 metres deep and just as wide. A row of chests of drawers ran down the middle almost dividing the room in two. The drawers were neatly labelled, ‘wigs long’, ‘court shoes, 15 cm spike heel’, ‘boots ballet style’, and so on. She pulled out a drawer, there neatly lined up were a set of shoeboxes with sizes marked on the end. She opened one. Sure enough, inside was a pair of shoes with the thinnest of skyscraper heels. She turned them over in her hand, wondering what they would be like to wear. If her own shoes had been removable she would have tried.

“They look a bit on the big side, though”, she thought. Then she checked the size on the box, UK 10. “Hey, that’s a man’s size”.

The sidewalls were lined from end to end with cupboards. Cecilia opened them one after another. They seemed to be hung with nothing but a collection of outfits on hangers. Most of them were made of rubber, with some vinyl and some leather as well, each with a small label with a size. As she examined them more closely, she saw that it was almost all kinky female clothing. Some would certainly fit girls, but others in the same style again seemed to be sized for men.

Some of the things she found she didn’t much like the look of at all. One cupboard gave her a real fright. When she opened it, there seemed to be dismembered heads hanging inside, until she realised that they were masks and helmets, some with lengths of tube dangling from them giving them a weird insect-like appearance. Starting down the other side of the room, Cecilia found cupboards full of harnesses, whips and paddles, a black leather straight jacket, a drawer full of corsets, it seemed endless.

A bit overwhelmed, she glanced along the row of wardrobes. Three were labelled, ‘Uniforms’, with in smaller letters, medical, ecclesiastical and domestics. Cecilia opened the latter. In the centre hung six garments, three sizes each of essentially the same patterns as her latex French and parlour maid dresses. She lifted out a parlour maid dress. It was of even heavier material than her own, indeed it seemed to have been made out of two layers of rubber stuck together with semi-rigid boning from the hips to the top of the high collar sandwiched between the two.

‘Not so much a bodice as a corset’, she thought.

The dress had a distinctly Victorian flavour about it. The skirt was exceedingly narrow, but had a large bustle at the rear made of many metres of thinner material. Cecilia lifted it up. To her surprise, the part of the inner skirt where the wearer’s buttocks would be was cut out, to leave them bare save for being covered by the bustle.

However, what simultaneously fascinated and frightened her was not so much the body of the dress but what was attached to it. From the high neck extended a hood of similarly rigid construction, the moulded face closed save for small holes at the nostrils and an even smaller one at mouth level. Even the eyeholes were closed over, being glazed with dark almond-shape plastic lenses. She turned the hood over. The back zipped down from the crown, the slider meeting up with that of the bodice where a small lock slipped through the pair of them, a wide posture collar covering the join. D-rings ran down each side of the hood’s zip so that it could be pulled up tight with laces.

She glanced at a French maid dress. That too had a similar hood, though in its case it was separate. The sleeves of all the dress had attached gloves. At first glance these seemed to be normal black rubber gloves, a moment’s closer inspection showed that not to be the case. Though the thumbs were separate, the fingers were fused together in a rigid curve so they were more like mittens than gloves, she decided. Cecilia hung the dress back and looked again at the other things she had found. Wondering.

But the dresses kept haunting her. Eventually, curiosity got the better of her. She took a parlour maid’s dress off its hanger and tossing it in her hands to savour just how heavy it was. She held it in front of her. It seemed the right sort of size though if anything the unyielding waist was even narrower than that to which she was now accustomed. She just had to try it on. As with her own dress, this one had several locks, the keys for which hung from a length of chain fastened to the back of the cupboard. Unable to take the keys with her, Cecilia undid the locks on her contraband and, feeling furtive and a little scared, ran upstairs with it so that she could change.

“This is going to take a lot of getting into”, she said as she gave herself a liberal dusting of talcum powder. Unzipping the dress to give it a powering, Cecilia got another nasty shock. Built right into the hood was a gag, a ball of soft, but resilient sponge rubber that was clearly intended to fill the mouth. Cecilia was not sure that she liked the idea of it at all; in fact, she was sure that she did not like it. For a moment she hesitated on the brink of taking the dress back to where she had found it. But it was, oh so tempting; she just had to have little try with it.

Wriggling into the skirt revealed another of the dresses unpleasant little surprises. Cecilia had known that it was very tight, stiff and extra narrow round the hem. That was obvious from the outside. What was not obvious were the two wide cuffs glued inside the hem strip. It was clear that these were intended for the wearer’s ankles, so that the skirt had to move whenever a step was taken.

With hands made near useless by the mitten-like gloves getting the zips up unaided was clearly going to be a problem. Hopping, as much as walking Cecilia went in search of a length of string to help with the task. Half an hour later, and sweating profusely, she was in, some fumbled attempt made at pulling up the hood’s back lacing and the collar locked in place.

Foam pads over her ears blocked out a lot of sound. Clumsily she picked up a key and rapped it on the table. All she heard was a distant tap. She shook her head and tried to work her jaw. The high collar held her rigidly erect while that sponge filling her mouth and wanting to expand, acting against the rubber stretched tightly outside reduced movement to a fraction of a millimetre. In fact bending any way was next to impossible. The boning of the bodice was so long that she felt she was being held rigid from thighs to head, with precious little freedom elsewhere. Her arms were not much better. However, though the continual fight against the boning was quite tiring, being so constricted was both frightening and exciting at the same time. She wondered what she looked like. However, it was difficult to get a proper view in the small mirror, especially as she now discovered that from the inside, the hood’s eyepieces restricted her view to narrow vertical slots. With her head so effectively immobilised, looking sideways meant turning her whole body.

She put on her maid’s cap and stared at the featureless black face looking back at her out of the mirror.

“Weird”, she thought. “It doesn’t look like me, or anybody. Just a sort of robot maid or something”.

She tried to get a better look at the total outfit.

“If I go into Ms Westbury’s room I can use the big mirror and get a proper look. I’ve got to go down to undo the locks, anyway” she reasoned.

Gingerly, Cecilia made her way down to the first floor.

‘Heck, this is difficult’, she though. ‘These ankle loops are a real pain. It’s fun for a bit but I’m glad that I don’t have to wear it for long.’

She reached the door to Ms Westbury’s suite. It was slightly ajar.

‘Huh, I’m sure I shut that’, she thought. Turning the knob, she entered.

There, sitting in a chair, facing the door was Ms Westbury.

“I am disappointed in you. I had hoped that you would have had more self-discipline and integrity. I knew, of course, that you had been trying the locks as I had taken the precaution of dusting a little talcum powder in to the holes so I could see if anything had been inserted. Leaving the key was a test, which you failed. In actual fact I am unsure as to which fault I take the gravest exception, you allowing your curiosity to get the better of you or failing to notice and dust up the talc. I will give you two choices, go immediately with a stain on your character, or stay and willingly accept suitable punishment after which the slate will be wiped clean. Which shall it to be? Do you wish to leave?”

Cecilia shook her head or, rather, her body, as moving her head alone was nearly impossible.

“Very well then. You have been a stupid gel. You have squandered all the trust that I have placed in you, however I feel that you are still fundamentally a good gel. Some may think I am getting soft in my old age, but I will give you, even if you do not deserve it, another chance”.

Cecilia would have hung her head lower if the collar had allowed; instead she shut her eyes, trying to shut out the image of her angry Mistress. She was startled by a slap across the face.

“Look at me when I speak to you”, shouted Ms Westbury. “If you want any chance of redeeming yourself. At least you chose an appropriate uniform. But as you apparently like it so much that you were prepared to jeopardise everything for the sake of it, you will wear that parlour maid punishment dress continuously for the next seven days. You will not remove the dress during the time of your punishment. It will undoubtedly become unbearably unpleasant to be inside of it, but you will bear it nevertheless. You will carry out your full range of duties, morning, noon and night. There can be no concessions. You will find that, with some difficulty, it is possible to use a fine straw to drink through the gag, though I would advise nothing more substantial than fruit juice. As for personal hygiene, you will have to improvise. Is that clear?”

Cecilia’s heart sank.

Chapter 5

Cecilia sensed rather than heard a bell ring in the scullery, so sensitive had she become to the sound of Ms Westbury’s summons that her response had become almost telepathic. Cecilia checked. The tell-tale for the study was swinging. Cecilia hurried to the room as fast as she could, which was not very fast at all. It was mid-afternoon and she had only just exchanged a French maid’s uniform for one of her hobbling long skirted parlour maid’s dress. Earlier when serving lunch, Ms Westbury had specifically asked her, ‘yes’, Cecilia thought, ‘asked rather than ordered’, to wear the latest latex version of the garment that was tighter, heavier and all together more demanding that the satin ones. What was more Ms Westbury had again asked Cecilia to select and wear with the dress some of the items out of the punishment cupboard.

“You are not being punished, my dear”, she had said “you will understand my reason later”.

‘Very odd’, Cecilia had thought. ‘Some sort of initiative test, don’t know.’

But now, in addition to the dress she had locked on under ankle cuffs joined together with twenty centimetres of chain, as if the dress wasn’t hobbling enough, and had added a large butt bung her chastity belt. That had taken some getting in and she was already regretting being so enthusiastic. She was also having the gravest of doubts about of pair prickly little nipple clips to which she no longer had access. Cecilia had also selected a latex hood with back lacing and an integrated pump-up gag and was wondering about putting it on when the bell had rung.

When she got there Ms Westbury was tapping a pencil on her desk in some impatience. Cecilia gave an automatic courtesy and wondered about an apology for keeping her Mistress waiting. But that would mean speaking before she was spoken to and could well make matters worse.

“Cecilia”, Ms Westbury broke the silence. “You have been in my service for six months. Though I expect that you have not read it properly, your contract states that at the end of that period you may decide to be paid and depart freely or remain indefinitely, at the same time agreeing to always be subservient, never challenge what I may ask of you and never seek to leave my service. Today is when you must make you choice. Return to whatever part you wish of the life that you living before, or trust your future in me”.

Cecilia opened her moth to speak, but Ms Westbury held up a hand.

“Don’t tell me now. I want you to take time to consider all that it means, both to leave and to stay. That is why I asked you to dress as I did. I want you to appreciate both the pleasure and the pain of any decision. From your body language I am very pleased to see that you have made a good selection and the hood will be an excellent addition for what I have in mind. Put it on my desk for a minute and get one of the small coffee tables out of the lounge and bring it here in the middle of the room”.

Cecilia dutifully went for the table, wondering what the elderly lady was up to this time.

“Oh, and bring one of the high stools of the kitchen too”, Ms Westbury called after her.

Cecilia fetched the furniture and placed it as directed.

“Now the hood”, Ms Westbury opened one of the drawers of her desk and took out a key, and went over to her maid. “Sit down”, she ordered.

Cecilia sat down on the hard stool and gave a little squeal as the bung, already well inside her, pressed deeper still.

‘As I thought’, Ms Westbury said to herself, then to Cecilia.

“Hook you heels over the stool’s stay”.

Cecilia did as she was told, wriggling to try to find the least uncomfortable position as the change of weight thrust the plug even further in to her.

“And sit still. Now put on the hood and inflate the gag”.

Ms Westbury disappeared round the back and started to pull the laces tight. Using the key, she unlocked Cecilia’s collar, pulling the zip down a few centimetres. Cecilia shuddered slightly at the sudden inrush of cold air. She happened to realise just how hot she had become. Ms Westbury seemed not to notice. She smoothed the hood’s lower edge down Cecilia’s neck, pulled up the zip again so that body and head became essentially as one, finally replacing the lock through the dress’s neck ring and a D-ring on the hood. Ms Westbury reappeared in Cecilia’s field of view, drastically reduced as it was by the hood’s small glaze over eyeholes.

Ms Westbury placed the key in the centre of the table, returned to her desk, then came back to face Cecilia once more. Placing an envelope and an airline ticket book in front of her, she leaned close to Cecilia’s ear and in a loud voice, so that she could be heard through the hoods padding said,

“I will leave you now. When you have made you choice you will know what to do”.

She left, switching off the main lights as she went, leaving just the top of the table, its key, envelope and tickets starkly lit by the single bulb.

Cecilia sat staring at the table, mesmerised by what lay on it. She was hot and sticky and uncomfortable. The only sound that seemed to be able to penetrate to her was whistling of the air sucked and blown laboriously through the small tube in the gag. She had no way of judging the passage of time. Had she been there an hour, several hours, a day even? Nothing existed, but the table. Her choices were quite clear now. She could easily reach out for the key, unlock herself, take the tickets and the money that she was sure was in the envelope, though she dare not touch nor look inside. But if she did, she would for ever turn her back on the life she had always craved and which she had been living for the last six months; living with an intensity that she had never thought possible. However, if she stayed, what then? Ms Westbury was a bit odd, to say the least, but though very strict she was kindly at heart. But, then, there was that bit about always being subservient, never challenging. What to decide?

Time passed. Then Cecilia knew what she had to do, in fact, she had known all along. She unhooked her heels and gingerly tried to stand up, clinging on to the stool for support as her legs, that had gone to sleep a while ago, came in to existence again. Picking up the things on the table, she turned off the light and returned to the kitchen, found a small silver tray, put them on it and went in search of her Mistress.

Cecilia found her in her bedroom. With a deep curtsey she offered the tray and its contents to Ms Westbury. The response she got took Cecilia aback. Ms Westbury grabbed her and gave her the warmest of hugs.

“Good girl”, she was almost sobbing. “Oh, good girl. I was frightened that I had been too strict and you would decide to leave. Oh, I am so relieved. Here …” She took the key, unlocked the hood and almost ripped it off in her excitement, hugging and kissing her again.

Cecilia tried to say something in reply, but did not get a chance. Ms Westbury grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room and across the corridor to the mysterious door opposite. She produced a key and flung the door open.

“This is your suite from now on. The one upstairs in the attic was just to test you. I hope you like it, this one I mean? If there is anything that you want, just tell me”.

“It’s wonderful”, stammered Cecilia, unable to believe what had happened. “It’s … it’s like a fairy tale”.

Ms Westbury laughed, “Am I the wicked witch or the fairy godmother?” she asked.

“Both”, blurted Cecilia, without thinking.

“Probably”, Ms Westbury agreed with a smile, “Shall I show Cinderella round the palace? You can fetch your things down later. I will officially lend you the master key just this one time”.

“You mean”, said Cecilia”, I still have to lock my things on when on duty?”

“Why, of course, my dear. Shall we proceed?”

Chapter 6

“Do you do French?”

Cecilia gave a start and blushed.

“I do not know what you thought I meant, but I was referring to the language”, Ms Westbury went on, having noticed Cecilia’s discomfiture.

“Just a few words, Ma’am. There is more call for Spanish then French in the States nowadays with the growth in the Hispanic population”.

“Quite so”. Clearly, Ms Westbury was unimpressed by the discussion of American demography. “Well, I have here a French course on cassettes. It is supposed to take seven weeks to attain some degree of fluency. As you have plenty of spare time a gel of your intelligence should be able to master it in half that”.

‘What spare time?’ Cecilia thought.

Ms Westbury went on.

“I have an important client in Paris to see in three weeks-time, perhaps one of the most important ever, certainly the most demanding. You will come with me, as I suspect I will require more support than a hôtel can possibly give. Afterwards we will visit my friend, Alain, at his château in central France. Really, it is a big nineteenth century country house in the château style. I expect that there will be several other houseguests there too to keep you busy running up and down stairs. Here are the tapes. I will now take my afternoon coffee in the study”.

When Cecilia returned with the tray, Ms Westbury was sitting in an easy chair rather than at her accustomed place behind the desk.

“Put the tray down here”, she said, patting the coffee table, “and come and sit by me”.

Cecilia sat down, keeping her body very straight. She felt very uncomfortable, psychologically because she was so conditioned to stand in her Mistress’s presence, physically, because she had recently been presented with a new more rigid and narrow-waisted corset which she was still breaking in, ‘or vice versa’, she had thought.

Ms Westbury took a sip of coffee; she liked it very hot. Many a time, in the early days, Cecilia had been ticked her off, for arriving with it cold. That had been before she had mastered the art of walking quickly on sixteen centimetre heels with fettered ankles. Today all seemed well.

“Cecilia”, she began, “now that you have graduated from probationer to my permanent companion and helper, you need to know something about the nature of the business I am in or, more accurately, used to be in, as I all but retired some while ago. You may have drawn some conclusions from what you, shall we say, ‘accidentally’, discovered that room”.

Cecilia blushed at the thought of that adventure and winced at the unpleasantness of the punishment that had ensued.

Ms Westbury carried on.

“It is true that there was a time when I was younger that I provided a Mistress service. The things that you found in the cupboard are relics of that era. Some of the other cupboards have interesting secrets that I will share with you later; indeed, for your education you may feel you should sample them personally. That is for you to decide, bye the bye”.

“Anyway”, she went on”, the business was lucrative, but clients generally prefer a younger dominatrix, so thinking of the future I set up what I like to think of as a very high class, very discrete and very exclusive business called, Chaperones. That is to say, I make arrangements for people to meet - the true rôle of the Victorian chaperone being not so much to keep the sweet young things apart as to bring them together gently so that they did not bounce apart again”.

“I’m not sure I understand”, said Cecilia, trying to take it all in.

“Without naming names, let me give you some examples that might make it a bit clearer what I, we”, she corrected herself, “do.

“We arrange liaisons between famous people in the public eye who do not want their current partners to know what is going on. Similarly, politicians and statesmen. Suppose that you run a major business and you want to talk about a merger with a rival. You can’t do it openly, so you decide to meet somewhere in secret. That’s where Chaperones comes in. We make all the arrangements. Perhaps party A stays at one hotel, B at another. Then we arrange for B to travel, probably in disguise, to see A, travelling in a delivery van, say, that drops him at a back entrance of A’s hotel. We provide a change of disguise and he leaves by taxi from the front. Of course, for politicians and businessmen, in particular, there are often extracurricular activities to be provided. They usually call for even greater care in covering traces than the main business. I must confess that there have been times when I have thought of reopening some of the facilities here. I reckon I could still provide a better service than most and the profit margin would be higher”.

“So, there’s a bit of background. You’ll find out more with time, but you needed to understand things a bit before Paris. As I said before, we going because I have to finalise what promises to be the biggest and most delicate deal so far, but I am worried about some of the things I have heard and, to be honest, feel the need to have at hand someone in whom I can have complete trust”.

*****

Ms Westbury’s daily routine hardly varied when she was a home. She woke at seven, Cecilia bringing a breakfast tray and the morning papers to her room at seven-fifteen. By eight Mr Westbury was behind her desk, checking through the papers for who were doing what to whom, from time to time laughing quietly to herself at some press scoop or latest revelation concerning an affair that she had facilitated in the previous months. The mail arrived at about ten o’clock. It was now Cecilia’s job to sort the small avalanche that each day appeared behind the front door. The large amount of junk was destined for immediate dispatch to the waste bin. Obvious bills she now opened and, in with the additional rôles of confidant and secretary, prepared the necessary cheques for Ms Westbury to sign. Usually there was a small residue of obviously personal letters. These and any of which she was not sure, she took unopened to the study at morning coffee time.

Today’s mail contained an obviously special letter. An oversize envelope of stiff rough paper, handmade Cecilia surmised, the address written in a florid hand using brown ink, the flap sealed by red wax embossed with a crest. Certain that it must be important, she decided not to delay until coffee time but placed it on top of the pile of other letter and delivered it to the study. Curious as to who should be writing such a thing she dallied pretending to do a little tidying.

Ms Westbury picked up the letter and turned over it in her hands, looked at the seal and clearly somewhat vexed, ripped open the envelope and withdrew a sheet of the same hand-made paper. She read the letter, snorted angrily, read it again and looked up.

“What are you waiting for?” she snapped at Cecilia

“Sorry Ma’am”, she replied, taken aback by the harsh tone that she was no longer expecting in the new relationship. “I thought that it must be important and I wondered if you would like coffee early?” she excused herself.

“It is I who should be saying sorry for snapping at you like that”, Ms Westbury said with a smile. “And, yes, I will have coffee now. In fact this letter”, she stabbed at the piece of paper with her letter opener as though she would have liked to kill it, or more probably, its author, “has made me so angry I’m tempted to have something a bit stronger than coffee. Better not though, go and make some and bring one for yourself I need to tell you about it”.

Cecilia returned with two steaming cups placed on the desk and, taking the other with her sat down rather uncomfortably on the edge of the chair that Ms Westbury indicated. Uncomfortably, because as a result of her initial training she still felt an almost irresistible need to stand in the presence of her Mistress but also because, following her decision to stay, she had as a reminder of that pivotal day in her life taken to wearing the same chastity belt with its large butt bung as part of her everyday uniform.

“I am sure that you were curious about this letter”. Ms Westbury indicated the envelope.

Cecilia protested.

“Do not tell fibs. If you were not curious I should be disappointed. It was clearly special. Hand-made paper and stationery, of course”, she went on, slipping in to her Holmesian mode. “Brown ink, a colour much preferred by the aristocracy. Unless I am very much mistaken this is real sepia, very expensive and almost impossible to come by nowadays. I do not expect that you have even had cause to study heraldry”.

Cecilia shook her head and tried to get more comfortable.

“Well I have good reason to recognise these”, she pointed to the arms embossed in the paper. “They belong to the Prince whose amorous assignation we are trying to facilitate. However, the letter is from his equerry who I am supposed to meet in Paris to agree final details. I told you that I was unhappy with what I had heard about him before. Now I am even less happy. Here, you read it for yourself and tell me what you think”.

Cecilia stood up, relieved at having an excuse to do so, and took the letter from Ms Westbury.

‘Dearest Madam’, it began. ‘I am so very much looking forward to our immanent meeting, for which your proposed venue and time being entirely acceptable. I am certain that the affairs in which we have a mutual interest will then be most satisfactorily resolved. However, may I ask a further favour of you that would, I am sure, help to guarantee success? His Eminence has spoken of the number of occasions when in the past you were able to provide him with personal services of his particular taste. On those occasions he recalls you wearing a particular red gown. Though, of course, he will not be at our meeting, he is insistent that you should wear the same gown so that I may take a photograph for his album.

Yours etc…’

Cecilia looked up with an expression that said, ‘What’s all that about?’

“I told you that ten years or so ago I provided mistress services. The Prince was a frequent client. His basic need was simple. He spent all his life lording it over people, surrounded by flunkies who pampered to his every whim, “Yes, your Eminence, no your Eminence”. He just liked, for a change, to ordered around and humiliated, all in play, of course. He was dreadful with his staff. As far I was concerned, however, the main problem was that he bored so quickly and I had to think up new ideas for each session. One thing was constant though. After the first session he insisted that I always wear the same long red latex dress with gloves and a hood to match. A sort of Morticia Adams in red. That bit is true. What I am sure is not true, is that the Prince wants a photograph”.

“Why do you think that?” asked Cecilia. “If he was so keen on you wearing it he might not have like to ask at the time”.

Ms Westbury gave a snort that she turned in to a laugh.

“Cecilia, oh Cecilia, where have you been living all this time. He may have liked playing at being humiliated, but if someone like him wants something he gets it. No, I know he has an album full of pictures because he commissioned both studio and location pictures from a famous fashion photographer. No, it is his equerry, not the Prince. My guess is that he was a bit embarrassed about his gallery coming to the notice of his prospective bride and asked his equerry to hide them. And the latter being unable to resist taking a peek now sees an opportunity to ogle first hand and engage in a bit of black mail.”

“Do you still have the dress?”

“Yes, it should be in the Cupboard”, the word that now seemed to have been adopted to define the walk-in wardrobe containing the collection of fetish clothes and equipment.

“That is irrelevant; I do not like being blackmailed. And I do not trust his intentions”.

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02.01.15

story continues in Ms Westbury's Niece 3: France

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