Chapter Two
Juliette stood in the pantry, trying to distract herself from her own thoughts by aggressively polishing the silverware. One of the butter knives had a very stubborn spot on the blade and she rubbed at it with all the pressure she could muster, her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes intent. Attempting to perform all the work the house demanded in so little clothing was nearly impossible. The house was too cold for anyone to work comfortably, so underdressed, yes, and yes, she'd been seen in this state by M. Jourdain, the young accountant, just as they descended the staircase, and Mme. Fournier, the cook, as they rushed through the kitchen, and Mme. Fournier was an incurable gossip, and now Juliette was anxious about yet another household gleefully passing around rumors about her, true - but the greatest difficulty was that every time she looked down, she saw her own body, saw the chalky white stain on her black satin panties where her thighs met, saw her own chafed kneecaps, and each time she glimpsed these things, she remembered exactly how she'd arrived in this state. Those memories presented their own challenges. She poured out more of the silver polish onto the cloth and resumed rubbing the stubborn stain on the butter knife.
The chemical smell of the silver polish was inescapable in the pantry, and Juliette wondered if perhaps it was unsafe for her to be using such a strong solvent in a closed room with no windows. It could be the reason she felt light-headed. She knew that it wasn't. Her mind immediately fell back into the well-worn rut she'd been digging in it over the past two hours: his hand, leaving a bright red handprint on the white skin of her ass. His lips forming the word "punishment." The certainty in his voice, saying, "You will remove your uniform," as though his mind could not conceive any other outcome. The simple sentence, "You may," just before she came all over her hand. His beautiful cock, waving right before her upturned face. The mild look of interest on his face, when she'd looked up at him from her knees while bathing his cock with her mouth. Yvonne's leg up on the armrest, watching her humiliation intently, pleasuring herself...
She shook her head, trying to clear it. "No, no, Juliette, this is how you always get yourself in trouble," she muttered to herself. Finishing the last knife in the drawer of silverware, she opened the next drawer.
The door opened behind her and she turned around to face it. M. Vachon stood in the doorway, a look of deep disgust on his wrinkly face. He normally wore an expression of mild disgust, so this expression was only slightly different from his expression on any other day. She folded her hands in front of her panties while trying to keep her nipples from view with her upper arms. He stood there looking at her, not speaking. He took his little rectangular glasses off, blinked, and put them back on, as though his spectacles couldn't be trusted if this was the scene they were showing him.
"There has been talk all over the house today, but I could not believe it for a moment, not such an outrageous thing as I'd heard. And now I see that it is true."
She nodded. "Yes, Monsieur Vachon."
"This is... this is..." He fluttered his hands limply on either side of his head, apparently frustrated by his own inability to form the words sufficient to express what he thought "this" was."Please explain your behavior, mademoiselle."
She nodded, and formed the words clearly and carefully, but emotionlessly, knowing they'd be repeated verbatim back to M. Leclair. "I have been a very filthy girl, and this is my punishment."
M. Vachon was silent for two of Juliette's heartbeats. "Monsieur Leclair did this?"
She nodded.
"I shouldn't wonder. I'm certain he had his reasons. I advised him against hiring you, you know. The references from your previous employers were generally positive, though somewhat vague, but the general consensus from the village is that you have one foot in the gutter. You're... trash." He pronounced the last word as though he'd been waiting to say it to her in this context for a month. "I'm almost afraid to ask: what did you do to earn this treatment?"
She was looking at the floor, her ears burning, hot. She murmured her answer.
"I could not hear your answer, mademoiselle. What did you say?"
She looked up at him, her eyes shining. "I touched my privates, in his presence, Monsieur Vachon. I did not think he would see."
M. Vachon clicked his tongue against his teeth, shaking his head slowly. "I will concede that he is a very handsome man. I am saddened, but not surprised, that a woman of such low repute as yourself might try to seduce the master of the house in such a... slatternly way." He sighed, and adopted the expression of a long-suffering martyr. "I am trying to make this house a respectable place. And yet, at every turn, my efforts are thwarted, resisted. Look at you, you're a disgrace. Do you think someone such as you should be working in such a grand manor, with such a rich history?"
She shook her head.
"Answer me!"
"No, Monsieur Vachon. I should not be."
He gestured towards her privates. "Your hygiene is atrocious. Your... body hair, emerging from your knickers. Don't you ever trim your... womanhood?" He pronounced the word as though even thinking of it gave him physical pain.
She blinked, and a tear fell from her eye and skittered down her cheek. She wiped her cheek with a knuckle. "I do, Monsieur Vachon, but not... recently. I did not expect to be this public in this manner of underdress today, or I certainly would have."
"It's ghastly. And are your knickers... soiled?" He shuddered prissily.
"I begged him to let me change, Monsieur Vachon! He would not allow it! I begged to resign, he would not allow that, either!"
"Mind your tone, mademoiselle," M. Vachon hissed. "Do not be insubordinate with me. Your employment here hangs by a thread. Were it my choice, that thread would probably have been severed long before your scandalizing behaviour today, and without question or hesitation after it. What a shame it is not always my choice. Keep yourself out of sight for the remainder of the day. And amend your behavior in the future. We will be speaking of this further."
With a final pointed sniff of disgust, M. Vachon briskly left the pantry. It was a swinging door, so he was unable to slam it, but she saw that he wished he could.
"Go fuck yourself, you withered old toad..." she whispered to herself. Who was he to pretend he was so high above her? A fussy career servant nearing the end of his career, his life spent in the service of the wealthy who disdained him. An elderly man that spent an hour every morning styling his hair into that ridiculous white pompadour. And that mustache! If what the other servants whispered was true, he had climbed to his present position as head butler by conniving to sabotage the reputation of the previous head butler, slandering him behind his back, but praising him lavishly to his face, all while obsequiously kissing the ass of M. Leclair. "You are in no position to judge me, you ancient son of a whore."
She tried to tell herself that he was wrong about her, so wrong. She hadn't been trying to seduce M. Leclair, she'd never have thought of such a thing. She'd only been trying to appease a desperate urge brought on by his rough treatment of her, slapping her ass hard enough to raise welts. "You don't know me, you accursed bastard."
But then: wasn't M. Vachon right? Some of the stories about her were true. She was almost constantly compelled by the filthiest of urges. There seemed nothing she could do about it. She prayed desperately for relief, every day for years, before concluding that no celestial power was interested in helping her, and so, she gave up on prayer. Satisfying the urges only made them increase in strength when they returned, not much later, and not satisfying them - she was never able to resist for long, and the attempts at resistance made her feel so desperate as to be insane. And now because of her inability to control herself, she was to be regularly abused by M. Leclair, with no hope of any redemption. She began to revisit the morning's debasement in her mind, how he came all over her face like she was less than human. "Gutter trash..." she whispered. Without thinking consciously, her fingertips reached up to her swollen nipple and grasped it, making herself breathe faster. She could feel herself getting aroused again and cursed under her breath.
Don't dwell, Juliette, she thought to herself, and she could hear her mother's voice in her head saying it. Focus on your work.
Next task, organize the pantry drawer where the infrequently-used tools were kept. She reached into it and began to remove a garlic press, a cherry pitter, a small cheesecloth bag of ceramic pie weights, and placed each item carefully on the counter. She picked up a tool from the drawer and for a moment, she had no idea how to categorize it. She held it up and looked at it closely.
It was a little shorter than her forearm. A wand of some sort. It was probably an antique, many of the tools in this drawer were. A wooden handle, worn smooth from years of being grasped, with a metal head at the end of it. The silver head was shaped roughly like a lemon, round at its middle, and tapered at either end. There were deep ridges in the metal spiraling around the head. The lemon-like shape of the head was the clue that resolved the mystery for her: it was a citrus reamer, a tool for juicing lemons, limes and oranges. One would hold the wooden handle and press the metal head down on a halved fruit, and press, and twist, to squash all the juices from it.
She began to breathe a little faster, while the small voice in her head, the one she never listened to, told her to stop, immediately, don't even think this way...
She held the tool up in one hand and made a similar shape with her other hand, a shape she sometimes made at night, her four fingertips held close together, coming to a point around her thumb. She compared her hand and the reamer. The head of the reamer was a little smaller than her fist. Like a lemon. She looked closely at the spiraling ridges. The edges weren't sharp. They'd been worn smooth from years, perhaps decades, of being forcefully pressed into soft pulpy fruits and twisted...
Stop, Juliette... she heard the voice say. You are not going to do this, you should not even be thinking about it. Stop. She ignored the voice. Her heart rate increased and the usual buzzing in her ears began. The door to the pantry could not be locked. It was too dangerous. The danger made her want to do it even more. Anyone could walk in at any moment! And so what if they did, she thought. I will only be confirming what they already think of me. Also, there was one thing to be said for being the owner's plaything: for now, he still wanted to play with his toy. She wouldn't be dismissed, not for any cause, until he tired of her...
She tucked the metal head of the reamer into her armpit to warm it, and shoved the polished silverware and miscellaneous kitchen tools to one side of white tiled counter, clearing enough space for her ass. She leaned over and lowered the stained thong to her ankles and hoisted herself up on the white tile counter. She gasped when her naked ass made contact with the cold tiles of the counter, but the tiles didn't stay cold long. The cabinets above the counter didn't give her a lot of room for her head and shoulders, but she discovered if she hunched over, she could fit, if a little uncomfortably, her bare ass an inch from the edge of the counter. She bent her knees and put her sneakered feet up on the edge of the counter, the panties stretched between her parted ankles. She rocked her hips back and took the reamer in her hand.
She carefully teased apart the wet lips of her pussy, feeling the delicious nectar already flowing from her pussy from the anticipation that had been building in her. She held herself apart and brought the metal head of the reamer close to her entrance. She pressed it there, testing. It wasn't quite warm yet, and the cold metal touching her labia, probing, made her shiver. Well, one cure for that, she thought. She held the wooden handle at an angle and began to ease it in.
