Katherine
"Goin dahn ter Brunnington next weekend Miss Katherine" Kate's Ladies Maid, Jenkins stated, matter-of-factly, as she brushed out the thick, curly brown-black hair of the young woman seated in front of her.
Kate took off her necklace, laying it out in all its finery in the velvet lined jewellery box which stood open on her dressing table. She made an "mmhmm" of bored acknowledgement before the girl continued on as she disengaged from her combing and went to the chest of drawers to lay out a new nightdress for her Mistress.
"I do love a trip to Brunnington, Lady Brunnington, the Dowager Duchess, she always makes sure those maids as are visitin' are given a favour of some kind when they leave."
Jenkins went to close the curtains as Kate stood to slip out of her petticoat and into the nightdress. The two women performed this little dance each evening, an easy way of allowing her to dress without causing the servant any embarrassment. She could hear the girl wrestling with the heavy drapes, clearly doing the best she could despite her diminutive stature.
"Will that be all Miss?" Jenkins asked, and Kate replied in the affirmative as she clambered into the bed. The maid bobbed quickly, a half-curtsy and withdrew into the house beyond.
Kate liked the girl, despite her rough, East London accent, she had performed well below stairs in the family's house in the capital city, and had been promoted first to Parlour Maid, and then to Ladies' Maid in rapid succession, prompting many an annoyed, discrete comment from some of the longer serving members of the household.
When the family had come up to their country seat for the summer, Jenkins had accompanied Kate and her sister, Lucy, together with her sibling's maid in the uncomfortable, hot, carriage journey out into the country.
As soon as the maid had bid her goodnight, retiring down the back stairs to the servants' quarters, Kate threw back her covers and gently turned the key in the lock of her bedroom.
She hauled the nightdress she had only just donned minutes before over her head and tossed it over her dressing table chair, revealing her lithe, nubile body, almost perfect in its proportions, firm, oval tits crowned with flawless pink nipples giving way to a flat stomach and round hips. Her dark tresses flowed over her shoulders, the curly pubic hair in a triangular patch at her crotch similarly coloured.
She crossed to the window, where a parting in her curtains left by the maid's frustrated efforts to close them fully, let in a shaft of moonlight. Stepping into it, her smooth skin became almost luminescent in the darkness. Down the hill, in the hollow between the house and the village attached to the Estate, the lights of the Parsonage could be seen.
One occupant of that house fired Kate's imagination, and she idly moved one hand to stroke and fondle her right breast, bringing her friend Elizabeth, the Parson's daughter, into her mind's eye. Lizzie's golden hair, Lizzie's full bosom, Lizzie's full, moist lips upon hers.
She slid onto her bed, the sheets still retaining some heat from the withdrawn copper bed warmer, and pushed her fingers down to her already moist slit, whispering the name of her beloved as she imagined Lizzie's fingers doing the work.
She curled her spare arm round her feather pillow as the pleasure increased, pressing her thumb against her clitoris as she plunged two fingers deep into her cunt over and over again.
The tension in her nethers and her belly increased as she whispered "Ughhh Lizzie! My Elizabeth!" to herself in the darkness, her arm working in ever more frantic motions between her smooth thighs until the glorious release spread its ecstasy through her body.
It blossomed from a place deep inside her as she held the object of affection in her mind, imagining her naked body entwined with her own.
Her head slammed down onto the pillow as she came, and she continued to work her clitoris furiously until she squirted warm, wet orgasmic juices, her back arching on the bed.
She thought she was done until a little aftershock made her convulse again, the wonderful warmth suffusing her limbs following the delicious release of tension in her abdomen. She collapsed, her bosom heaving and her tummy rising and dipping as she recovered.
The tiny pang of guilt she felt about fantasising about her best friend she pushed away quietly in her mind. She knew she was unlike many young women in Society -- the various young gentlemen that she encountered either at home, or at other Great Houses, where families would often decamp for whole weeks at a time -- left her entirely cold.
One of them had even tried to get her to indulge in the aristocratic bed-hopping that often went on during these gatherings, and she had eventually resorted to jamming a chair under the door handle to deter his unwanted attentions.
She had begun to gain a reputation amongst that set as a quiet, bookish girl who would end up as a spinster rather than making a decent match if she continued in the same vein of behaviour.
Women, on the other hand, were an entirely different prospect, and practically no-one, she was sure, ever noticed her admiring glances of a graceful neck, a pretty smile, or a heaving bosom boiling over the top of a bodice.
She knew that the maids, in their sparsely furnished rooms, often slept two to a bed. She envied their casual intimacy, and wondered how many, if any of them had taken that intimacy further.
When she had become aware of how women could pleasure themselves without the need for a man, she had found that it was Lizzie's face, and Lizzie's body that had come into her thoughts, quite unbidden.
Lucy had always been the more daring of the pair of the daughters of the house. She was the elder sister, at twenty years old, by a little less than two years to her sister Kate. Some would even have called brazen, though not to her face.
Did Lucy know of her particular proclivities, she wondered? She knew of the stories that were whispered amongst the servants and estate folk -- that she had taken a fancy to one of the groomsmen that took her out riding, and that she was not a virgin, the two of them having been overheard indulging in riding of an altogether more indecent sort.
Recovered and satisfied, she rose and used the basin of water left by the maid to wash herself before slipping her nightdress back over her head and climbing back into bed, her head full of more romantic than sexual thoughts about Lizzie, holding her hand by the riverbank or curling her golden hair behind her ear until sleep took her.
Lucy
Lucy walked back into the house in her riding gear, and handed one of the staff her hat and crop before making for her room to change. So it was that she heard the raised voices of her parents coming from their wing.
Later, she wondered what may have happened, how the future would have been different, had she not lingered in the hall to listen to their words. Flattening herself to the wall, she could see the two of them standing in their morning room, in front of the tall windows that looked out onto the formal gardens beyond.
"For God's sake Georgina!" her Father raged. "She's bringing the house into disrepute, you know what they call her in the village, don't you? Whore."
She saw her Mother's pained expression at this, and for a moment felt for her usually cold and unsympathetic parent, whilst cringing that her extra "riding lessons" were clearly not the secret she had previously assumed.
Who would have talked? Not Her sister, surely. Her sister was her closest confidante. More likely the man himself, the damned fool. He risked his position, but clearly could not resist his boast that he had lain with one of the fine ladies of the big house.
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised after all. She clearly has her Father's immoral nature. I had hoped that under my influence the girl would grow to become a person of good standing and character. Well, it would seem blood will out in the end. It pains me to say it, the man was my friend after all, but Cordingley was a degenerate devil-worshipper!"
Her Mother's reply came back and she was surprised. She hardly ever stood up to her Father. "May I remind you, Charles, that your family was on the edge of financial ruin until my Father rescued you by making this match. God knows I have tried to love you since then, but you do make it terribly hard. "
Lucy felt a shock grip her heart at the revelation implied by the words of her parents, that the man she thought was her biological Father was in fact no such thing, and she had clearly been conceived out of wedlock.
More than that, that her real Father was Arthur Cordingley, the man who had died in the fire that had gutted the Great House of the neighbouring estate some 20 years earlier, in the autumn of 1844.
She had once asked her Mother, Lady Georgina Belmonte why nobody had ever rebuilt the blackened eyesore that even now was still clearly visible from the main road to London and had been swiftly rebuffed.
Her shock only increased when she heard the slap of her supposed Father's hand against her Mother's cheek and her sob as she held her hand to where it had stung her.
"I had thought I had made my feelings clear on this matter previously," he told her in a sneering tone. "I will not tolerate insolence in my household, either from you, or your bastard daughter."
He began to walk in Lucy's direction briskly, and she pressed into the corner between the door and the corridor, holding her breath as he marched away. Her Mother had seemingly retreated to her boudoir to compose herself.
